5 ms·

It's 100% bubble. It could go up to $6,000, $50,000, or even $1M. It's not localized like tulips, and it's connected to the internet, so the universe of people

It's 100% bubble. It could go up to $6,000, $50,000, or even $1M. It's not localized like tulips, and it's connected to the internet, so the universe of people available to fuel the speculation is enormous. That the Chinese are highly speculative is what's mainly driving the current price. It has no intrinsic value. It's like gold in that it's not a productive asset. It doesn't yield anything like stocks or bonds. The only thing a bitcoin holder can hope for is that someone will buy their coins in the future at a higher price. The interesting part is watching human nature unfold. People who hold bitcoin mistakenly believing they're investors because the price action is reinforcing that belief. They're 100% speculators by definition. It's OK to speculate. It's neither illegal or immoral, but you should know when you're speculating and when you're investing. You can't make this stuff up. Look at the people coming out of the woodwork: The Winklevoss Twins, Dan Bilzerian, professional wrestlers, and such. All the community leaders are either fighting with each other or in jail.

tunetine 9y ago
I don't see any arguments from the commenters here that convince me in the slightest. It's like magic to them. As long as they believe, it has value.
- tradersam 9y ago
  > As long as they believe, it has value. Yup, just like every other currency ever to exist.
  - billions 9y ago
    This. Gold has value like Nike has value. It's a brand. Like the word 'Mom', it's about the strength of the wirings in people's heads. If Bitcoin was around for 1000 years, with less than 1% fluctuations, and accepted everywhere, who wouldn't "believe" in it? So the question is how far down that path are we? Will there be volatility early on? Did the guy that founded the first bank ever get robbed?
  - tunetine 9y ago
    Does that belief change when your hard-earned money loses a few hundred/thousand dollars in value over a few hours, for no apparent reason?
cyphunk 9y ago
the china essentialist argument was debunked once CN regulators forced CN exchanges to institute a know-your-customer policy. Result, the bots they used to fluff their order books had to go. You can see this difference from that day onward very clearly in exchange trade volume comparison: https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/2y?c=e&t=b https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/2y?c=e&t=b actaul trade from china is similar or smaller to that in the EU at the moment
- johnwheeler 9y ago
  They're not trading. They're holding and creating the price support. The only people who are trading right now are John Q. Public and a few whales who manipulate the market with shill bids.
brownbat 9y ago
> the Chinese are highly speculative It's almost crazy how gambling and stock bubbles are nearly unheard of in Europe or America, precisely because of how seldom those peoples speculate. To think, if it wasn't for Jinan province's tulip mania, we'd barely understand the phenomenon of speculative bubbles. Or maybe it was Dandong, I forget.
- johnwheeler 9y ago
  The Chinese speculate more
  - brownbat 9y ago
    My mistake, it's not like you were saying all Irish are drunks, or the Irish are the only drunks, just that the Irish like their whiskey more. Since there are only 1.4 Billion Chinese, these sort of sweeping generalizations are perfectly reasonable.
    - johnwheeler 9y ago
      No, it's like I'm saying "College graduates earn more income" or even "Men like football more than women do".
      - brownbat 9y ago
        Yikes, turns out humor didn't really disarm the situation. On the contrary, if you're resorting to sockpuppet downvoting then we've hit pure freakout mode. So... let's take a breath. We all have assumptions about the world, there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes they're right and sometimes we're wrong. What we want to do, is (1) recognize that blanket statements about an entire ethnic group can sometimes strike others as offensive or just comically antiquated, and therefore, (2) sanity check these generalizations against actual data. I mean, it's one thing to offend a bunch of people if you're right, right? Maybe that's worth it... occasionally. But why waste the energy if you're going to be wrong? Or even just unsure? Ok, I'm sure you're bursting with anecdotes already to defend the claim. I'll spare you some effort and try a few. Like... the Chinese stock market is crazy! Well, yes, but actually a pretty normal level of crazy for a developing economy with some corruption and off-book efforts determining winners and losers. Or... Macau is a huge gambling city! Sure, but lots of places have had a huge gambling hub before. They're often a symptom of other factors. A maturing hospitality sector... or restrictions on certain types of income. They make a great way to launder illegal money or support subtle capital flight. Ok, what if we could look at gambling by country more broadly then, not focused on hubs but entire nations? Well, gambling revenues track with GDP really well, countries with the most money are the ones that gamble the most. The US is way on top of the list. Go figure. Ok, so let's control for GDP... If you run that check on the dozen or so countries big enough to matter, you'll find Italy and Australia topping the list with twice the proportionate losses as China. China muddles around the middle, squarely between the UK and the US, not much beyond France or Japan. It's perfectly boring. Beyond this, levels of regulation seem to have a strong influence, so we'd want to control for the weird mixed status of Macau vs. the mainland (which has legal lotteries but not slots). It's a project that could be done, possibly useful, but the data already screams other factors that matter more. Patterns aren't determined by culture so much as they're determined by all these simple exogenous factors that obviously require a control, like how much money is in people's pockets, how much access they have to games. And speaking of controls... we're being generous here by not even controlling for population, which would tank China's rating. There's a reason gambling isn't strongly tied to a certain nationality, why several regions have been gambling hubs over the ages. There's a similar reason speculative bubbles happen in markets around the world, not just in China. Speculative affinity isn't a cultural characteristic, to the extent it's even measurable at all. Ok, we can save time at this point. I'm pretty sure you still disagree. If it makes you feel better, downvote this one too, they're just fake internet points. But if you make sweeping generalizations disparaging an entire race based on archaic stereotypes, you should expect some pushback from time to time. It shouldn't strike you as a sudden unexpected shock to occasionally get called out on that sort of thing. Frankly I don't think it's a hill worth fighting and dying on, but everyone has to pick their own redlines I suppose. Good luck with your Internetting.

tunetine 9y ago

I don't see any arguments from the commenters here that convince me in the slightest. It's like magic to them. As long as they believe, it has value.

tradersam 9y ago
> As long as they believe, it has value. Yup, just like every other currency ever to exist.
- billions 9y ago
  This. Gold has value like Nike has value. It's a brand. Like the word 'Mom', it's about the strength of the wirings in people's heads. If Bitcoin was around for 1000 years, with less than 1% fluctuations, and accepted everywhere, who wouldn't "believe" in it? So the question is how far down that path are we? Will there be volatility early on? Did the guy that founded the first bank ever get robbed?
- tunetine 9y ago
  Does that belief change when your hard-earned money loses a few hundred/thousand dollars in value over a few hours, for no apparent reason?

cyphunk 9y ago

the china essentialist argument was debunked once CN regulators forced CN exchanges to institute a know-your-customer policy. Result, the bots they used to fluff their order books had to go. You can see this difference from that day onward very clearly in exchange trade volume comparison: https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/2y?c=e&t=b https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/2y?c=e&t=b actaul trade from china is similar or smaller to that in the EU at the moment

johnwheeler 9y ago
They're not trading. They're holding and creating the price support. The only people who are trading right now are John Q. Public and a few whales who manipulate the market with shill bids.

brownbat 9y ago

> the Chinese are highly speculative It's almost crazy how gambling and stock bubbles are nearly unheard of in Europe or America, precisely because of how seldom those peoples speculate. To think, if it wasn't for Jinan province's tulip mania, we'd barely understand the phenomenon of speculative bubbles. Or maybe it was Dandong, I forget.

johnwheeler 9y ago
The Chinese speculate more
- brownbat 9y ago
  My mistake, it's not like you were saying all Irish are drunks, or the Irish are the only drunks, just that the Irish like their whiskey more. Since there are only 1.4 Billion Chinese, these sort of sweeping generalizations are perfectly reasonable.
  - johnwheeler 9y ago
    No, it's like I'm saying "College graduates earn more income" or even "Men like football more than women do".
    - brownbat 9y ago
      Yikes, turns out humor didn't really disarm the situation. On the contrary, if you're resorting to sockpuppet downvoting then we've hit pure freakout mode. So... let's take a breath. We all have assumptions about the world, there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes they're right and sometimes we're wrong. What we want to do, is (1) recognize that blanket statements about an entire ethnic group can sometimes strike others as offensive or just comically antiquated, and therefore, (2) sanity check these generalizations against actual data. I mean, it's one thing to offend a bunch of people if you're right, right? Maybe that's worth it... occasionally. But why waste the energy if you're going to be wrong? Or even just unsure? Ok, I'm sure you're bursting with anecdotes already to defend the claim. I'll spare you some effort and try a few. Like... the Chinese stock market is crazy! Well, yes, but actually a pretty normal level of crazy for a developing economy with some corruption and off-book efforts determining winners and losers. Or... Macau is a huge gambling city! Sure, but lots of places have had a huge gambling hub before. They're often a symptom of other factors. A maturing hospitality sector... or restrictions on certain types of income. They make a great way to launder illegal money or support subtle capital flight. Ok, what if we could look at gambling by country more broadly then, not focused on hubs but entire nations? Well, gambling revenues track with GDP really well, countries with the most money are the ones that gamble the most. The US is way on top of the list. Go figure. Ok, so let's control for GDP... If you run that check on the dozen or so countries big enough to matter, you'll find Italy and Australia topping the list with twice the proportionate losses as China. China muddles around the middle, squarely between the UK and the US, not much beyond France or Japan. It's perfectly boring. Beyond this, levels of regulation seem to have a strong influence, so we'd want to control for the weird mixed status of Macau vs. the mainland (which has legal lotteries but not slots). It's a project that could be done, possibly useful, but the data already screams other factors that matter more. Patterns aren't determined by culture so much as they're determined by all these simple exogenous factors that obviously require a control, like how much money is in people's pockets, how much access they have to games. And speaking of controls... we're being generous here by not even controlling for population, which would tank China's rating. There's a reason gambling isn't strongly tied to a certain nationality, why several regions have been gambling hubs over the ages. There's a similar reason speculative bubbles happen in markets around the world, not just in China. Speculative affinity isn't a cultural characteristic, to the extent it's even measurable at all. Ok, we can save time at this point. I'm pretty sure you still disagree. If it makes you feel better, downvote this one too, they're just fake internet points. But if you make sweeping generalizations disparaging an entire race based on archaic stereotypes, you should expect some pushback from time to time. It shouldn't strike you as a sudden unexpected shock to occasionally get called out on that sort of thing. Frankly I don't think it's a hill worth fighting and dying on, but everyone has to pick their own redlines I suppose. Good luck with your Internetting.