4 ms·

Bitcoin – Millennials Fake Gold

44 points by adambyrtek 9y ago

hyprCoin 9y ago
Nice unbiased report > A client jokingly told me that his biggest gripe with me in 2016 and 2017 was that I didn’t buy him any Bitcoin. I told him not so jokingly that if I bought him Bitcoin, he’d be right to fire me. Maybe I’m a dinosaur; but, like gold, Bitcoin is impossible to value. What is it worth? I get it that you feel like you missed the boat. The boat hasn't left the harbor in the actually useful ecosystem of crypto currencies. Bitcoin is not the end-all
- autokad 9y ago
  i'd fire him because he thinks gold is impossible to value.
  - bdamm 9y ago
    Although this is the not so subtle secret about gold isn’t it. If you invested in gold simply due to the inherent industrial value, you’d never get in at this price.
    - hackinthebochs 9y ago
      This is exactly why I don't think ETH has any long term value aside from its potential to unseat bitcoin as the dominant cryptocurrency. I just don't imagine even an ideal world of distributed applications running on ethereum to be worth billions. The demand for obnoxiously slow running distributed/trustless applications is extremely small in the scheme of things. Most real world cases in need of "programmable money" will just deposit to a centralized site where all the programmatic features will execute and then distribute back the result. Trustlessness just isn't that valuable outside of the currency itself.
      - hyprCoin 9y ago
        It's important not to conflate the present issues with the eventual issues. Eventually, ETH will be an immediate and decentralized distributed value network with extremely low to nonexistent processing fees. When we are dealing with money, trustlessness means not asking permission. It also means you can review what the code is doing before sending your valuable money to it. We also get a global headless processing center for free. I think you should re-evaluate your opinions on eth. But, maybe you are right and people are ok with throwing their money into a centralized repository. Maybe visual sourcesafe will make a comeback as well.
        hackinthebochs 9y ago
        My point was that its currency features are the only thing that make it potentially valuable. It being a "distributed computer" like some people envision is doomed to failure. Programmable money is useful, but not to the tune of multi-billions. The majority of value is in the trustless money aspect, not the trustless programmability. Most people will have no problem trusting sites for short periods with smallish amounts. That's not to say there wont be any use-cases, or even many. There could be very many use cases for eth in fact, but it still not be multi-billion market cap valuable.
  - christoph 9y ago
    Bizarrely, as everyone jumps on BTC, i've just cashed my BTC out and am eyeing up gold in its place. The intrinsic value of gold has barely, if at all changed since Roman times. Maybe BTC will soar to $1m a coin and all the millennials will have the last laugh.
superquest 9y ago
TLDR: - Bitcoin is an "un-valuable" as an investment security. - Bitcoin is only worth something because we agree that it should be worth something, and this consensus is fragile. - Governments will outlaw it.
ohquu 9y ago
Wow, what a totally original and fresh perspective. Also, I don't like watching the author's face pop up every thirty seconds while I'm reading the article, telling me he's the next Benjamin Graham.
- spondyl 9y ago
  I thought this was a joke but the quote is literally "Vitaliy Katsenelson is the new Benjamin Graham"
ky738 9y ago
Why is this shit being upvoted?
- gtrubetskoy 9y ago
  Because most people here sadly do not get it. Hacker news isn't what it used to be.
  - loceng 9y ago
    What don't we get?
  - astrowilliam 9y ago
    Oh, you mean when we talk about news about technology? You mean what we've been doing for years?
- superquest 9y ago
  Because we love to argue about Bitcoin.
- hackinthebochs 9y ago
  HN loves anything that shits on bitcoin right now. Probably a lot of people sore they didn't buy in and so they want it to fail to validate their decision.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
cvsh 9y ago
All the kids from my high school still working menial jobs in my hometown 10 years later have been buzzing about buying Bitcoin all weekend up and down my Facebook feed. To me, there's no clearer sign that any money to be made during this rally has already been made. I liquidated all my cryptocurrency holdings on Friday. When Wall Street steps in this week and shorts it, it's difficult for me to envision any other outcome than all those kids panicking and selling.
- adameast9000 9y ago
  Same here. All of the sudden all of the college dropouts from my area are blockchain experts, talking up new coins as if they read the whitepaper (as if that is enough anyway). These are the "get rich quick" folks, the same ones who were selling herbalife(or vemma or whatever) a few years ago. Despite this, I can't say for sure that they'd sell given some serious volatility. There's a growing cult like groupthink attitude best represented by the phrase "HODL". There's also some serious fraud allegations at the exchange level, and I think there may be some truth to the rumor that USDT is being printed to drive up the price of BTC. While all of this is concerning, it's hard to believe that BTC will drop lower than 1-2k in a panic. I think the market value has been established on a psychological level. I think blockchain is going to be taught in ECON101 classes in a few years. And while I don't think BTC is the best cyptocurrency, I believe in the coming years its value will stabilize, transaction fees will get fixed, and it will be a great store of value. It will be especially valuable for those without access to good banking systems. The other really big problem is liquidity/access. I live in NYC and my coinbase account was randomly locked a few months ago(good luck if this happens to you). Now the only way I can buy/sell bitcoin is at a cash ATM with an 8% fee, or buy.bitcoin.com with a 7.5% fee. Bitcoin doesn't solve the problems of those without access to good banking if it's impossible to reasonably buy. I think this will get better too, but it's definitely gotten worse recently. In conclusion: I think there's a chance BTC could be worth less than it is now this time next year. I think in 2 years, the total market cap of cryptocurrencies will be significantly higher than it is today.
  - cvsh 9y ago
    >Despite this, I can't say for sure that they'd sell given some serious volatility. There's a growing cult like groupthink attitude best represented by the phrase "HODL". True, but the rise in price seems to have largely been due to newcomers entering the market who don't share the attitude of longtime HODLers. See: Coinbase shooting to #1 on the App Store. I think that raises the odds of a crash considerably. The new crowd is in it because they expect the rally to continue and if they realize it won't, they'll want out en masse ASAP.
paul7986 9y ago
Curious for those who own bitcoins ... how are you using it to enrich your life? Buying a lot of things on Overstock.com, eating at Subway frequently, buying eGifter gift cards (that looks like the best deal), selling gift cards at a small loss ($75 for $100 gift card) or other ways? I was going to buy a bitcoin or two in 2013 when it was $400 and my co-workers at the time, but darn I didnt.
- wslh 9y ago
  My company has customers who pay in Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies so at the end our employees and cofounders have a normal life based on cryptocurrencies use which are converted into fiat money. Regarding the article, it is impossible to have an objective view about cryptocurrencies price (not technology) in general but it is creating a lot of millionaries down the road. I don't know if this will happen to the new entrants but it happened to the ones who bought and haven't sold Bitcoins for less than 4 years. All this have a strong economical impact in your life and the life of many others, probably more people are getting millionaries from cryptocurrencies than from startups.
- astrowilliam 9y ago
  I know a few people who have invested in BTC and they cash out any profits that they get over $100/day. That way they are making a decent amount per transaction. So they take that cash and use it as they normally would. It's more of an investment for them, I'm not sure if they actually use BTC to buy anything.
- Helloworldboy 9y ago
  > how are you using it to enrich your life? Selling them for way more than I bought them.
- uberswe 9y ago
  So one of the problems is that if you really believe that Bitcoin will keep going up then it is hard to spend it as you are most likely better off saving it. What I have personally done is to take out small chunks whenever Bitcoin increases, 1% maybe or even less of the total bitcoin I own and treat myself to something nice like a new desktop perhaps. Lately some of my coworkers have started using mobile wallets for Bitcoin and it is common for us to pay each other if someone pays for everyone in fiat for lunch for example. It's still hard to find places that accept Bitcoin but I see it popping up here and there which is pretty cool.
dominotw 9y ago
>The Chinese government outlawed cryptocurrencies in September 2017. Wasnt it just ICO's?
- tr4cefl0w 9y ago
  Yes, else they wouldn’t allow NEO to exist.
bdamm 9y ago
There will come a reckoning when these kinds of analysts realize they simply weren’t working hard enough to understand the value that crypto currencies, and specifically bitcoin, bring. They’re useful.
tzury 9y ago
As Cryptocurrency will evolve, and zillions of great other blockchain implementation will be out there solving real-world distributed data problems, bitcoin will be a piece of nostalgia no more than that.
backpropaganda 9y ago
Why don't such hitpieces talk about the non-liquidability of bitcoin? Sure the price is 15k right now, but can anyone actually convert a large number of coins to USD with this price? Wouldn't this trigger a sharp decrease in price as soon as people start seeing people selling their BTC?
- scotty79 9y ago
  10btc? Sure. Just one exchange trades more than that within some hours.
- thwoaraway2 9y ago
  This is an issue with liquidating most stock portfolios also, so I'm not really sure what you are getting at. This is usually worked around by people unloading in smaller increments over a longer period of time, just like people do with say a stock vestment.
  - cjalmeida 9y ago
    Except stock portfolio usually pays dividend or growths economically by ways of profits (or the expectation of it). Bitcoin does not grow (asymptotically) by design. So, unless you assume it has intrinsic non economic value (like gold), it makes little sense to hold it due to low liquidity. But gold is established as a value store. You can buy and sell massive amounts of it anytime you want. BTC? It's more like holding a fortune in blood diamonds.
tzury 9y ago
Why flagged?
mdotk 9y ago
Yes, kids with no money are the reason that billions have been pumped into Bitcoin the last week.

44 points by adambyrtek 9y ago

Nice unbiased report > A client jokingly told me that his biggest gripe with me in 2016 and 2017 was that I didn’t buy him any Bitcoin. I told him not so jokingly that if I bought him Bitcoin, he’d be right to fire me. Maybe I’m a dinosaur; but, like gold, Bitcoin is impossible to value. What is it worth? I get it that you feel like you missed the boat. The boat hasn't left the harbor in the actually useful ecosystem of crypto currencies. Bitcoin is not the end-all

autokad 9y ago
i'd fire him because he thinks gold is impossible to value.
- bdamm 9y ago
  Although this is the not so subtle secret about gold isn’t it. If you invested in gold simply due to the inherent industrial value, you’d never get in at this price.
  - hackinthebochs 9y ago
    This is exactly why I don't think ETH has any long term value aside from its potential to unseat bitcoin as the dominant cryptocurrency. I just don't imagine even an ideal world of distributed applications running on ethereum to be worth billions. The demand for obnoxiously slow running distributed/trustless applications is extremely small in the scheme of things. Most real world cases in need of "programmable money" will just deposit to a centralized site where all the programmatic features will execute and then distribute back the result. Trustlessness just isn't that valuable outside of the currency itself.
    - hyprCoin 9y ago
      It's important not to conflate the present issues with the eventual issues. Eventually, ETH will be an immediate and decentralized distributed value network with extremely low to nonexistent processing fees. When we are dealing with money, trustlessness means not asking permission. It also means you can review what the code is doing before sending your valuable money to it. We also get a global headless processing center for free. I think you should re-evaluate your opinions on eth. But, maybe you are right and people are ok with throwing their money into a centralized repository. Maybe visual sourcesafe will make a comeback as well.
      - hackinthebochs 9y ago
        My point was that its currency features are the only thing that make it potentially valuable. It being a "distributed computer" like some people envision is doomed to failure. Programmable money is useful, but not to the tune of multi-billions. The majority of value is in the trustless money aspect, not the trustless programmability. Most people will have no problem trusting sites for short periods with smallish amounts. That's not to say there wont be any use-cases, or even many. There could be very many use cases for eth in fact, but it still not be multi-billion market cap valuable.
- christoph 9y ago
  Bizarrely, as everyone jumps on BTC, i've just cashed my BTC out and am eyeing up gold in its place. The intrinsic value of gold has barely, if at all changed since Roman times. Maybe BTC will soar to $1m a coin and all the millennials will have the last laugh.

superquest 9y ago

TLDR: - Bitcoin is an "un-valuable" as an investment security. - Bitcoin is only worth something because we agree that it should be worth something, and this consensus is fragile. - Governments will outlaw it.

ohquu 9y ago

Wow, what a totally original and fresh perspective. Also, I don't like watching the author's face pop up every thirty seconds while I'm reading the article, telling me he's the next Benjamin Graham.

spondyl 9y ago
I thought this was a joke but the quote is literally "Vitaliy Katsenelson is the new Benjamin Graham"

ky738 9y ago

Why is this shit being upvoted?

gtrubetskoy 9y ago
Because most people here sadly do not get it. Hacker news isn't what it used to be.
- loceng 9y ago
  What don't we get?
- astrowilliam 9y ago
  Oh, you mean when we talk about news about technology? You mean what we've been doing for years?
superquest 9y ago
Because we love to argue about Bitcoin.
hackinthebochs 9y ago
HN loves anything that shits on bitcoin right now. Probably a lot of people sore they didn't buy in and so they want it to fail to validate their decision.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

cvsh 9y ago

All the kids from my high school still working menial jobs in my hometown 10 years later have been buzzing about buying Bitcoin all weekend up and down my Facebook feed. To me, there's no clearer sign that any money to be made during this rally has already been made. I liquidated all my cryptocurrency holdings on Friday. When Wall Street steps in this week and shorts it, it's difficult for me to envision any other outcome than all those kids panicking and selling.

adameast9000 9y ago
Same here. All of the sudden all of the college dropouts from my area are blockchain experts, talking up new coins as if they read the whitepaper (as if that is enough anyway). These are the "get rich quick" folks, the same ones who were selling herbalife(or vemma or whatever) a few years ago. Despite this, I can't say for sure that they'd sell given some serious volatility. There's a growing cult like groupthink attitude best represented by the phrase "HODL". There's also some serious fraud allegations at the exchange level, and I think there may be some truth to the rumor that USDT is being printed to drive up the price of BTC. While all of this is concerning, it's hard to believe that BTC will drop lower than 1-2k in a panic. I think the market value has been established on a psychological level. I think blockchain is going to be taught in ECON101 classes in a few years. And while I don't think BTC is the best cyptocurrency, I believe in the coming years its value will stabilize, transaction fees will get fixed, and it will be a great store of value. It will be especially valuable for those without access to good banking systems. The other really big problem is liquidity/access. I live in NYC and my coinbase account was randomly locked a few months ago(good luck if this happens to you). Now the only way I can buy/sell bitcoin is at a cash ATM with an 8% fee, or buy.bitcoin.com with a 7.5% fee. Bitcoin doesn't solve the problems of those without access to good banking if it's impossible to reasonably buy. I think this will get better too, but it's definitely gotten worse recently. In conclusion: I think there's a chance BTC could be worth less than it is now this time next year. I think in 2 years, the total market cap of cryptocurrencies will be significantly higher than it is today.
- cvsh 9y ago
  >Despite this, I can't say for sure that they'd sell given some serious volatility. There's a growing cult like groupthink attitude best represented by the phrase "HODL". True, but the rise in price seems to have largely been due to newcomers entering the market who don't share the attitude of longtime HODLers. See: Coinbase shooting to #1 on the App Store. I think that raises the odds of a crash considerably. The new crowd is in it because they expect the rally to continue and if they realize it won't, they'll want out en masse ASAP.

paul7986 9y ago

Curious for those who own bitcoins ... how are you using it to enrich your life? Buying a lot of things on Overstock.com, eating at Subway frequently, buying eGifter gift cards (that looks like the best deal), selling gift cards at a small loss ($75 for $100 gift card) or other ways? I was going to buy a bitcoin or two in 2013 when it was $400 and my co-workers at the time, but darn I didnt.

wslh 9y ago
My company has customers who pay in Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies so at the end our employees and cofounders have a normal life based on cryptocurrencies use which are converted into fiat money. Regarding the article, it is impossible to have an objective view about cryptocurrencies price (not technology) in general but it is creating a lot of millionaries down the road. I don't know if this will happen to the new entrants but it happened to the ones who bought and haven't sold Bitcoins for less than 4 years. All this have a strong economical impact in your life and the life of many others, probably more people are getting millionaries from cryptocurrencies than from startups.
astrowilliam 9y ago
I know a few people who have invested in BTC and they cash out any profits that they get over $100/day. That way they are making a decent amount per transaction. So they take that cash and use it as they normally would. It's more of an investment for them, I'm not sure if they actually use BTC to buy anything.
Helloworldboy 9y ago
> how are you using it to enrich your life? Selling them for way more than I bought them.
uberswe 9y ago
So one of the problems is that if you really believe that Bitcoin will keep going up then it is hard to spend it as you are most likely better off saving it. What I have personally done is to take out small chunks whenever Bitcoin increases, 1% maybe or even less of the total bitcoin I own and treat myself to something nice like a new desktop perhaps. Lately some of my coworkers have started using mobile wallets for Bitcoin and it is common for us to pay each other if someone pays for everyone in fiat for lunch for example. It's still hard to find places that accept Bitcoin but I see it popping up here and there which is pretty cool.

dominotw 9y ago

>The Chinese government outlawed cryptocurrencies in September 2017. Wasnt it just ICO's?

tr4cefl0w 9y ago
Yes, else they wouldn’t allow NEO to exist.

bdamm 9y ago

There will come a reckoning when these kinds of analysts realize they simply weren’t working hard enough to understand the value that crypto currencies, and specifically bitcoin, bring. They’re useful.

tzury 9y ago

As Cryptocurrency will evolve, and zillions of great other blockchain implementation will be out there solving real-world distributed data problems, bitcoin will be a piece of nostalgia no more than that.

backpropaganda 9y ago

Why don't such hitpieces talk about the non-liquidability of bitcoin? Sure the price is 15k right now, but can anyone actually convert a large number of coins to USD with this price? Wouldn't this trigger a sharp decrease in price as soon as people start seeing people selling their BTC?

scotty79 9y ago
10btc? Sure. Just one exchange trades more than that within some hours.
thwoaraway2 9y ago
This is an issue with liquidating most stock portfolios also, so I'm not really sure what you are getting at. This is usually worked around by people unloading in smaller increments over a longer period of time, just like people do with say a stock vestment.
- cjalmeida 9y ago
  Except stock portfolio usually pays dividend or growths economically by ways of profits (or the expectation of it). Bitcoin does not grow (asymptotically) by design. So, unless you assume it has intrinsic non economic value (like gold), it makes little sense to hold it due to low liquidity. But gold is established as a value store. You can buy and sell massive amounts of it anytime you want. BTC? It's more like holding a fortune in blood diamonds.

tzury 9y ago

Why flagged?

mdotk 9y ago

Yes, kids with no money are the reason that billions have been pumped into Bitcoin the last week.