7 ms·

Bitcoin Approaches $10,000 a piece

42 points by jeremyleach 9y ago

down 9y ago
As the older generation doesn't get why you would buy a bitcoin and where you would keep it, the newer generation doesn't get why you would buy a shiny piece of metal as in gold bullion and where you would safely keep it. Bitcoin market is still minuscule comparative to gold, and while most will point out that it doesn't work amazing as a currency, if it gets to like 50% of the current gold market, it is going to be worth a lot.
- lsd5you 9y ago
  Yes, but bitcoin is not scarce in any meaningful sense in the long run. Using the same software alternative versions of the coin can be created. Or worse better versions ... Gold will cease to be meaningfully scarce if we ever mine an asteroid or something like this, but the barriers to that are obviously somewhat higher.
  - jstanley 9y ago
    "Alternative" bitcoins aren't as good as real bitcoins in the same way that "Alternative" USDs aren't as good as real USDs.
    - Udik 9y ago
      Not true. USD is backed up by a State entity; bitcoin doesn't need one. An alternative USD needs an alternative guarantee of its value, an alternative bitcoin is as safe as the original one.
      - Klathmon 9y ago
        Not quite, since the "backing" of Bitcoin is in it's proof of work, an alternate won't have as much hashpower backing the work, so it won't have as much guarantee.
        Udik 9y ago
        Good point. I guess that the major bitcoin miners could already derail any emerging competitors with a few intermittent 50% attacks.
        Klathmon 9y ago
        Every now and then I like to look at the chart at [0] to show just how important this is. The most prominent "fork" of bitcoin (bitcoin cash) is still only about 45 days away from having their entire history since the fork rewritten using just 25% of the available hashpower. In a little over a month, they could re-mine every single block since the fork changing which transactions are included. And that's the most popular fork, rewriting the entire chain since the fork. If you want to rewrite just the last 50 or so blocks? You'd need something like a few days and a few percent of the overall hash power to do it. Are you in possession of like 1% of hashpower? Then it's more than possible for you to send something like 100 BCH to an exchange, wait for the 10 confirmations, then go to work rewriting the chain from that point to "current" without your transaction. [0] https://fork.lol/security/fork https://fork.lol/security/fork
  - down 9y ago
    is scarce, is like a social network, make another facebook, "better technically", no one will care, there is only one bitcoin, its value is in the code as much as facebook value is in react and php.
  - jay_neyer 9y ago
    Wrong. Bitcoin has a fixed supply of 21M bitcoins that will ever exist. I could also create software alternatives of Facebook & Wikipedia, but they would have no value. Network effects are what matter.
    - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
      21M with fractions down to 0.00000000001, so while it's fixed it's also fractionable to a very small number.
      - aninhumer 9y ago
        I'm not sure if this is the point you were making, but divisibility doesn't make something less scarce, any more than being able to cut a gold brick into nuggets means gold isn't scarce. A single Bitcoin remains exactly as scarce regardless of how it is divided.
        TYPE_FASTER 9y ago
        I don't think scarcity necessarily correlates directly to value. Land values are a good example. New land is not getting created, you can subdivide it down to small pieces, yet it's worth more in some areas. Since Bitcoin is divisible down to a small fraction, and you can trade it for whatever price you'd like, it makes more sense to me for the two parties involved in a Bitcoin transaction to take some tiny fraction of a coin and use that as a token to transfer the value from one party to another. You'd convert fiat -> BTC fraction -> fiat almost immediately. You would have the benefit of the decentralized network to make completing the transaction much easier, and by using a fraction of a coin you'd remove risk caused by exposure to fluctuations in the value of a whole BTC.
  - andy_ppp 9y ago
    You are wrong, Bitcoin has a designed in limited number of 20999999.9769 BTC.
    - Halian 9y ago
      Why isn't it a round number of BTC?
      - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
        Probably something to do with floating point numbers; https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Units https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Units has a link to http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(sum(210000*floor(5000000000%2F2%5Ei) http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(sum(210000*floor(50000...),+i%3D0+to+32)%2F10000000, idk what all that means but, 32 bits I guess.
- a254613e 9y ago
  The younger generation probably gets it, but it doesn't sound as attractive as 1000% return of investment within a relatively short period that a lot of people who own bitcoin (and thus depend on new people buying it) are trying to promote.
kompiuter 9y ago
There is also concern that Bitcoin could be vulnerable to hackers. Mr Ahmad said that recently it lost almost 20% in value on fears it was being hacked. Am I missing something or is the hacking part nonsense?
- down 9y ago
  I think he confused with ETH, he also mentions south korea banning ICOs, which has nothing to do with bitcoin.
  - edf13 9y ago
    There is a big confusion where all cryptocoins are read as bitcoin for many.
- bognition 9y ago
  They aren't talking about hackers breaking the blockchain but rather about hackers gaining access to the wallets. Short of moving the bitcoin across an air gap there is always a risk of hackers finding and pilfering the bitcoin.
shp0ngle 9y ago
Nobody actually uses bitcoin for payment. There is more or less the same places where to spend it as there was 4, 5 years ago. And they all have about the same traffic, which is nearly zero. Most people only use it for speculation. This can't end well.
- jstanley 9y ago
  I use bitcoin for payment. I get paid in bitcoin and I pay in bitcoin wherever possible.
  - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    Does your pay get adjusted according to the current price of BTC? It's got to be strange to have money in your account that is worth 20% more over the weekend.
    - jstanley 9y ago
      I'm self-employed. I occasionally adjust my prices when the value of BTC changes.
- mdgrech23 9y ago
  Why? Gold is used for speculation. So is land...
  - cvsh 9y ago
    You can't build an apartment complex on a bitcoin
    - jstanley 9y ago
      And you can't transfer an apartment complex to the other side of the world within minutes without asking for permission. What's your point?
- viridian 9y ago
tomconte 9y ago
I think most people buy Bitcoin for its speculative value but never use it as a currency to actually buy or sell stuff.
- jstanley 9y ago
  I use it as a currency to both buy and sell stuff.
  - albedoa 9y ago
    Okay? Do you have any insight as to whether you belong to the set of "most people"?
  - ComputerGuru 9y ago
    If the gp had said “no one uses it to...” your anecdotal sample of one response would have been sufficient to disprove the claim. However, it is at best anecdotal and at worst completely irrelevant to the actual claim made (i.e. that most BTC users are investing in the currency).
- rpmcmurphy 9y ago
  I bought some Bitcoin over five years ago, totally forgot about it, and then remembered I had bought some. I sold it and bought an SLR camera to photograph the total eclipse this summer. It felt like the time I won a few hundred bucks at the slots in Nevada.
wimagguc 9y ago
The previous discussion with Bitcoin crossing $9,000 is still warm (posted 19hs ago) at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15782222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15782222 Do we have anything new to add at each 1K step announcement?
189723234 9y ago
I feel that bitcoin is unstoppable. It offers massive, tangible benefits. Money that is not controlled by corrupt institutions completely changes the game. There is an entire industry being built around it. Thousands of engineers are creating new businesses as we speak. It has different properties to stocks. The more people that convert their money to bitcoin, the more use it has. This is a basic property of currency. While people will say you can't buy much with it now, the very fact that massive amounts of people are now acquiring bitcoin gives incentive to people to start accepting bitcoin as a form of payment. Most governments can now no longer make it illegal. The horse has bolted. By the time it is made illegal, millions of people will have bitcoin and you will be committing political suicide. They will try to regulate it in a way that benefits large corporations though. I believe the transfer of money away from questionable stocks like facebook, into something based on real value like bitcoin, will crash the share market.
- soVeryTired 9y ago
  > Most governments can now no longer make it illegal. Ha. Wait and see.
- zby 9y ago
  The problem is that bitcoin cannot be a currency - because it cannot facilitate more than 7 transactions per second, this is many orders of magnitude not enough for a currency. It can be something similar to gold - mostly a value store. But personally I have doubts - first of all the energy costs are crazy. I think it will be eventually replaced by a POS coin - proving that the value store function of something that new is not very reliable. https://medium.com/@zby/proof-of-work-8d8265def194 https://medium.com/@zby/proof-of-work-8d8265def194
  - jstanley 9y ago
    7 transactions per second isn't enough for it to be an everyday currency for everyone. It's certainly enough to be an everyday currency for the people who want to use it as an everyday currency at the moment, and Lightning Network will expand the capability massively.
  - 9y ago
cs702 9y ago
Current market capitalization in US dollars: Global M2 money supply over $90.0 trillion [a] US dollar M2 money supply $13.8 trillion [b] Euro M2 money supply $13.2 trillion [c] All coins and banknotes in circulation $7.6 trillion [d] All gold ever mined $7.1 trillion [e] Bitcoin under $0.2 trillion [f] The world needs these money-like assets to function everyday. Otherwise, the global economy would ground to a halt. Bitcoin has very different, unique characteristics compared to the other money-like assets on the list. For example, like gold, Bitcoin's continued existence doesn't depend on the good management of any national economy; however, unlike gold, bitcoins are digital so they can be encrypted, backed up, emailed, etc. Bitcoin is truly a new kind of money-like asset. The trillion-dollar question is, to what extent does the world need a money-like asset with Bitcoin's unique characteristics to function in the 21st century? [a] http://money.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-money-markets-one-visualization-2017/ http://money.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-money-markets-one-v... [b] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2 [c] http://sdw.ecb.europa.eu/reports.do?node=1000003501 http://sdw.ecb.europa.eu/reports.do?node=1000003501 [d] http://money.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-money-markets-one-visualization-2017/ http://money.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-money-markets-one-v... [e] https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/17/how-does-bitcoins-market-cap-stack-up-next-to-gold.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/17/how-does-bitcoins-... [f] https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/
truthisheree1 9y ago
The user 'jstanley' is probably one of the Bitcoin speculants. Just check his comments...
sreyaNotfilc 9y ago
I feel its too late for me to buy in and to get any value out of Bitcoin. 3 years ago (when it was around $350 per coin) I asked my friend about buying one up and I received a pretty good reason not to jump in. 3 years later and it looked like I made the wrong choice. I don't have $10,000 just hanging around to buy into one whole coin. Oh well...
- brosirmandude 9y ago
  You don't have to buy a whole coin though. Bitcoin can be broken up. You can buy 0.01 BTC for $100 if the price is $10k.
- dagw 9y ago
  It's just as easy to buy $350 worth of bitcoin today as it was 3 years ago. There is no real reason or advantage to buying whole coins.
- cwkoss 9y ago
  If you think there is a chance that Bitcoin will continue gaining value long term: - Decide what you think a bitcoin could be worth in X years - Multiply that by the probability that outcome occurs - That's your 'fundamental' price Ex. if you think bitcoin has a 10% chance of being worth $100k in the future, it is rational to buy at prices up to $10K. (some time-value of money handwaviness, but can be a useful way to look at things. ideally should be compared against other investments)
sensecall 9y ago
I get the feeling a lot of people are going to get a very nasty shock in the not too distant future. Other than buying purely for speculation, does Bitcoin really have any purpose right now, at scale? Geniunely curious.
- jstanley 9y ago
  Bitcoin is the world's first way to send money to anybody else, anywhere in the world, almost instantaneously, without asking permission from anybody, and without trusting any intermediary. That's huge. Bitcoin is to money what the internet was to communications.
  - soVeryTired 9y ago
    But I do trust intermediaries. Intermediaries are fine. And I think it's appropriate that large international transactions should be scrutinised by authorities.
Geenirvana 9y ago
I am a bit on the fence with Bitcoin. A few years ago I brought a little bit of altcoin and 'believed' in it. I only put a small amount but I still was nervous spending money on some 'pretend' digital asset. Within a few days it was worth half what I started with. Thinking I was in a low point of the chart, I invested a little bit more. It then dropped again, so much I lost around 80% of the value within a week. I then declared the money lost and saved my private keys. Fast forward to the beginning of this year, I randomly picked up my private key from a backup drive that I was going to wipe and decided to check it's value.. around £15 As it was such a little amount I decided just to cash it out, buy a pizza and continue with my life. However, as it wasn't so straight forward to just 'cash out' I left it. A few months later I hear the news that bitcoin is rising so checked on my altcoin (because the altcoin charts followed closely to the bitcoin charts), and there you go, I tripled my initial investment. I still declared the coins 'dead' so wasn't worried about losing it, but converted them into bitcoin as that felt most secure to me. The conversion lost me some percent but I stuck it out and have had 0.1BTC in my wallet since. It's nice watching my little amount go up. It's not a deal breaker if I lost it, but it's now more 'alive' than 'dead' to a point I have started thinking about converting it into fiat and enjoy a good Christmas. But there is that little bit inside me now, that refuses to listen to my 'the coins are dead, and I wouldn't really lose anything' mentality which is unfortunate because I feel as the price goes up that feeling will cement harder to a point I would never cash it out.
zipwitch 9y ago
Bitcoin mania appears to be well underway. Yes, bitcoin has uses. (Including some cool, elegant and potentially very significant ones.) But despite the troubled state of the world, it does not appear to me that anything has happened that would justify the current ongoing explosion in price. For an example of a mania in action, take a look at the price spike in tulip bulbs in the early 1800s: http://www.thebubblebubble.com/tulip-mania/ http://www.thebubblebubble.com/tulip-mania/
paulus_magnus2 9y ago
To people who believe it's not a bubble. Please explain what wasn't priced in yesterday that warranted +17% today.
- ac29 9y ago
  People read about bitcoin hitting new all time highs over the weekend, today their bank transfers to exchanges started to clear. So, what wasnt priced in was all the new money. I'm not really taking a position on whether its a bubble or not, though. My gut says yes, but it also said so back when it was $5 (having risen rapidly from nothing to "break the dollar", then up 5x more pretty quickly).
- cwkoss 9y ago
  In 20 years, Bitcoin will either be worth $0 or $350k. (Stability and history to become a safe-haven asset something like gold.) People don't think that the network today is +17% more valuable, but rather that the chance of Bitcoin going to zero in the next 20 years is 17% less. Institutional investors building positions in Bitcoin makes a strong case for long-term viability, because if the govt tries to mess with something in everyone's mutual fund, the financial lobbyists will push back strongly.

42 points by jeremyleach 9y ago

down 9y ago

As the older generation doesn't get why you would buy a bitcoin and where you would keep it, the newer generation doesn't get why you would buy a shiny piece of metal as in gold bullion and where you would safely keep it. Bitcoin market is still minuscule comparative to gold, and while most will point out that it doesn't work amazing as a currency, if it gets to like 50% of the current gold market, it is going to be worth a lot.

lsd5you 9y ago
Yes, but bitcoin is not scarce in any meaningful sense in the long run. Using the same software alternative versions of the coin can be created. Or worse better versions ... Gold will cease to be meaningfully scarce if we ever mine an asteroid or something like this, but the barriers to that are obviously somewhat higher.
- jstanley 9y ago
  "Alternative" bitcoins aren't as good as real bitcoins in the same way that "Alternative" USDs aren't as good as real USDs.
  - Udik 9y ago
    Not true. USD is backed up by a State entity; bitcoin doesn't need one. An alternative USD needs an alternative guarantee of its value, an alternative bitcoin is as safe as the original one.
    - Klathmon 9y ago
      Not quite, since the "backing" of Bitcoin is in it's proof of work, an alternate won't have as much hashpower backing the work, so it won't have as much guarantee.
      - Udik 9y ago
        Good point. I guess that the major bitcoin miners could already derail any emerging competitors with a few intermittent 50% attacks.
        Klathmon 9y ago
        Every now and then I like to look at the chart at [0] to show just how important this is. The most prominent "fork" of bitcoin (bitcoin cash) is still only about 45 days away from having their entire history since the fork rewritten using just 25% of the available hashpower. In a little over a month, they could re-mine every single block since the fork changing which transactions are included. And that's the most popular fork, rewriting the entire chain since the fork. If you want to rewrite just the last 50 or so blocks? You'd need something like a few days and a few percent of the overall hash power to do it. Are you in possession of like 1% of hashpower? Then it's more than possible for you to send something like 100 BCH to an exchange, wait for the 10 confirmations, then go to work rewriting the chain from that point to "current" without your transaction. [0] https://fork.lol/security/fork https://fork.lol/security/fork
- down 9y ago
  is scarce, is like a social network, make another facebook, "better technically", no one will care, there is only one bitcoin, its value is in the code as much as facebook value is in react and php.
- jay_neyer 9y ago
  Wrong. Bitcoin has a fixed supply of 21M bitcoins that will ever exist. I could also create software alternatives of Facebook & Wikipedia, but they would have no value. Network effects are what matter.
  - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    21M with fractions down to 0.00000000001, so while it's fixed it's also fractionable to a very small number.
    - aninhumer 9y ago
      I'm not sure if this is the point you were making, but divisibility doesn't make something less scarce, any more than being able to cut a gold brick into nuggets means gold isn't scarce. A single Bitcoin remains exactly as scarce regardless of how it is divided.
      - TYPE_FASTER 9y ago
        I don't think scarcity necessarily correlates directly to value. Land values are a good example. New land is not getting created, you can subdivide it down to small pieces, yet it's worth more in some areas. Since Bitcoin is divisible down to a small fraction, and you can trade it for whatever price you'd like, it makes more sense to me for the two parties involved in a Bitcoin transaction to take some tiny fraction of a coin and use that as a token to transfer the value from one party to another. You'd convert fiat -> BTC fraction -> fiat almost immediately. You would have the benefit of the decentralized network to make completing the transaction much easier, and by using a fraction of a coin you'd remove risk caused by exposure to fluctuations in the value of a whole BTC.
- andy_ppp 9y ago
  You are wrong, Bitcoin has a designed in limited number of 20999999.9769 BTC.
  - Halian 9y ago
    Why isn't it a round number of BTC?
    - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
      Probably something to do with floating point numbers; https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Units https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Units has a link to http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(sum(210000*floor(5000000000%2F2%5Ei) http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(sum(210000*floor(50000...),+i%3D0+to+32)%2F10000000, idk what all that means but, 32 bits I guess.
a254613e 9y ago
The younger generation probably gets it, but it doesn't sound as attractive as 1000% return of investment within a relatively short period that a lot of people who own bitcoin (and thus depend on new people buying it) are trying to promote.

kompiuter 9y ago

There is also concern that Bitcoin could be vulnerable to hackers. Mr Ahmad said that recently it lost almost 20% in value on fears it was being hacked. Am I missing something or is the hacking part nonsense?

down 9y ago
I think he confused with ETH, he also mentions south korea banning ICOs, which has nothing to do with bitcoin.
- edf13 9y ago
  There is a big confusion where all cryptocoins are read as bitcoin for many.
bognition 9y ago
They aren't talking about hackers breaking the blockchain but rather about hackers gaining access to the wallets. Short of moving the bitcoin across an air gap there is always a risk of hackers finding and pilfering the bitcoin.

shp0ngle 9y ago

Nobody actually uses bitcoin for payment. There is more or less the same places where to spend it as there was 4, 5 years ago. And they all have about the same traffic, which is nearly zero. Most people only use it for speculation. This can't end well.

jstanley 9y ago
I use bitcoin for payment. I get paid in bitcoin and I pay in bitcoin wherever possible.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  Does your pay get adjusted according to the current price of BTC? It's got to be strange to have money in your account that is worth 20% more over the weekend.
  - jstanley 9y ago
    I'm self-employed. I occasionally adjust my prices when the value of BTC changes.
mdgrech23 9y ago
Why? Gold is used for speculation. So is land...
- cvsh 9y ago
  You can't build an apartment complex on a bitcoin
  - jstanley 9y ago
    And you can't transfer an apartment complex to the other side of the world within minutes without asking for permission. What's your point?
viridian 9y ago

tomconte 9y ago

I think most people buy Bitcoin for its speculative value but never use it as a currency to actually buy or sell stuff.

jstanley 9y ago
I use it as a currency to both buy and sell stuff.
- albedoa 9y ago
  Okay? Do you have any insight as to whether you belong to the set of "most people"?
- ComputerGuru 9y ago
  If the gp had said “no one uses it to...” your anecdotal sample of one response would have been sufficient to disprove the claim. However, it is at best anecdotal and at worst completely irrelevant to the actual claim made (i.e. that most BTC users are investing in the currency).
rpmcmurphy 9y ago
I bought some Bitcoin over five years ago, totally forgot about it, and then remembered I had bought some. I sold it and bought an SLR camera to photograph the total eclipse this summer. It felt like the time I won a few hundred bucks at the slots in Nevada.

wimagguc 9y ago

The previous discussion with Bitcoin crossing $9,000 is still warm (posted 19hs ago) at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15782222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15782222 Do we have anything new to add at each 1K step announcement?

189723234 9y ago

I feel that bitcoin is unstoppable. It offers massive, tangible benefits. Money that is not controlled by corrupt institutions completely changes the game. There is an entire industry being built around it. Thousands of engineers are creating new businesses as we speak. It has different properties to stocks. The more people that convert their money to bitcoin, the more use it has. This is a basic property of currency. While people will say you can't buy much with it now, the very fact that massive amounts of people are now acquiring bitcoin gives incentive to people to start accepting bitcoin as a form of payment. Most governments can now no longer make it illegal. The horse has bolted. By the time it is made illegal, millions of people will have bitcoin and you will be committing political suicide. They will try to regulate it in a way that benefits large corporations though. I believe the transfer of money away from questionable stocks like facebook, into something based on real value like bitcoin, will crash the share market.

soVeryTired 9y ago
> Most governments can now no longer make it illegal. Ha. Wait and see.
zby 9y ago
The problem is that bitcoin cannot be a currency - because it cannot facilitate more than 7 transactions per second, this is many orders of magnitude not enough for a currency. It can be something similar to gold - mostly a value store. But personally I have doubts - first of all the energy costs are crazy. I think it will be eventually replaced by a POS coin - proving that the value store function of something that new is not very reliable. https://medium.com/@zby/proof-of-work-8d8265def194 https://medium.com/@zby/proof-of-work-8d8265def194
- jstanley 9y ago
  7 transactions per second isn't enough for it to be an everyday currency for everyone. It's certainly enough to be an everyday currency for the people who want to use it as an everyday currency at the moment, and Lightning Network will expand the capability massively.
- 9y ago

cs702 9y ago

Current market capitalization in US dollars: Global M2 money supply over $90.0 trillion [a] US dollar M2 money supply $13.8 trillion [b] Euro M2 money supply $13.2 trillion [c] All coins and banknotes in circulation $7.6 trillion [d] All gold ever mined $7.1 trillion [e] Bitcoin under $0.2 trillion [f] The world needs these money-like assets to function everyday. Otherwise, the global economy would ground to a halt. Bitcoin has very different, unique characteristics compared to the other money-like assets on the list. For example, like gold, Bitcoin's continued existence doesn't depend on the good management of any national economy; however, unlike gold, bitcoins are digital so they can be encrypted, backed up, emailed, etc. Bitcoin is truly a new kind of money-like asset. The trillion-dollar question is, to what extent does the world need a money-like asset with Bitcoin's unique characteristics to function in the 21st century? [a] http://money.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-money-markets-one-visualization-2017/ http://money.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-money-markets-one-v... [b] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2 [c] http://sdw.ecb.europa.eu/reports.do?node=1000003501 http://sdw.ecb.europa.eu/reports.do?node=1000003501 [d] http://money.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-money-markets-one-visualization-2017/ http://money.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-money-markets-one-v... [e] https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/17/how-does-bitcoins-market-cap-stack-up-next-to-gold.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/17/how-does-bitcoins-... [f] https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/

truthisheree1 9y ago

The user 'jstanley' is probably one of the Bitcoin speculants. Just check his comments...

sreyaNotfilc 9y ago

I feel its too late for me to buy in and to get any value out of Bitcoin. 3 years ago (when it was around $350 per coin) I asked my friend about buying one up and I received a pretty good reason not to jump in. 3 years later and it looked like I made the wrong choice. I don't have $10,000 just hanging around to buy into one whole coin. Oh well...

brosirmandude 9y ago
You don't have to buy a whole coin though. Bitcoin can be broken up. You can buy 0.01 BTC for $100 if the price is $10k.
dagw 9y ago
It's just as easy to buy $350 worth of bitcoin today as it was 3 years ago. There is no real reason or advantage to buying whole coins.
cwkoss 9y ago
If you think there is a chance that Bitcoin will continue gaining value long term: - Decide what you think a bitcoin could be worth in X years - Multiply that by the probability that outcome occurs - That's your 'fundamental' price Ex. if you think bitcoin has a 10% chance of being worth $100k in the future, it is rational to buy at prices up to $10K. (some time-value of money handwaviness, but can be a useful way to look at things. ideally should be compared against other investments)

sensecall 9y ago

I get the feeling a lot of people are going to get a very nasty shock in the not too distant future. Other than buying purely for speculation, does Bitcoin really have any purpose right now, at scale? Geniunely curious.

jstanley 9y ago
Bitcoin is the world's first way to send money to anybody else, anywhere in the world, almost instantaneously, without asking permission from anybody, and without trusting any intermediary. That's huge. Bitcoin is to money what the internet was to communications.
- soVeryTired 9y ago
  But I do trust intermediaries. Intermediaries are fine. And I think it's appropriate that large international transactions should be scrutinised by authorities.

Geenirvana 9y ago

I am a bit on the fence with Bitcoin. A few years ago I brought a little bit of altcoin and 'believed' in it. I only put a small amount but I still was nervous spending money on some 'pretend' digital asset. Within a few days it was worth half what I started with. Thinking I was in a low point of the chart, I invested a little bit more. It then dropped again, so much I lost around 80% of the value within a week. I then declared the money lost and saved my private keys. Fast forward to the beginning of this year, I randomly picked up my private key from a backup drive that I was going to wipe and decided to check it's value.. around £15 As it was such a little amount I decided just to cash it out, buy a pizza and continue with my life. However, as it wasn't so straight forward to just 'cash out' I left it. A few months later I hear the news that bitcoin is rising so checked on my altcoin (because the altcoin charts followed closely to the bitcoin charts), and there you go, I tripled my initial investment. I still declared the coins 'dead' so wasn't worried about losing it, but converted them into bitcoin as that felt most secure to me. The conversion lost me some percent but I stuck it out and have had 0.1BTC in my wallet since. It's nice watching my little amount go up. It's not a deal breaker if I lost it, but it's now more 'alive' than 'dead' to a point I have started thinking about converting it into fiat and enjoy a good Christmas. But there is that little bit inside me now, that refuses to listen to my 'the coins are dead, and I wouldn't really lose anything' mentality which is unfortunate because I feel as the price goes up that feeling will cement harder to a point I would never cash it out.

zipwitch 9y ago

Bitcoin mania appears to be well underway. Yes, bitcoin has uses. (Including some cool, elegant and potentially very significant ones.) But despite the troubled state of the world, it does not appear to me that anything has happened that would justify the current ongoing explosion in price. For an example of a mania in action, take a look at the price spike in tulip bulbs in the early 1800s: http://www.thebubblebubble.com/tulip-mania/ http://www.thebubblebubble.com/tulip-mania/

paulus_magnus2 9y ago

To people who believe it's not a bubble. Please explain what wasn't priced in yesterday that warranted +17% today.

ac29 9y ago
People read about bitcoin hitting new all time highs over the weekend, today their bank transfers to exchanges started to clear. So, what wasnt priced in was all the new money. I'm not really taking a position on whether its a bubble or not, though. My gut says yes, but it also said so back when it was $5 (having risen rapidly from nothing to "break the dollar", then up 5x more pretty quickly).
cwkoss 9y ago
In 20 years, Bitcoin will either be worth $0 or $350k. (Stability and history to become a safe-haven asset something like gold.) People don't think that the network today is +17% more valuable, but rather that the chance of Bitcoin going to zero in the next 20 years is 17% less. Institutional investors building positions in Bitcoin makes a strong case for long-term viability, because if the govt tries to mess with something in everyone's mutual fund, the financial lobbyists will push back strongly.