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I love this article. It just shows how mainstream is still clueless about Bitcoin. Dolar denominated trades? (All but the largest are denominated in BTC or ETH

I love this article. It just shows how mainstream is still clueless about Bitcoin. Dolar denominated trades? (All but the largest are denominated in BTC or ETH on any serious exchange) So small its insignificant? (Yeah, exactly like when it was 10M marketcap beginning 2017) This is the best indicator tgat the bubble is nowhere near its bursting point. Worry the day when CNBC starts talking about paradigm shift.

shusson 9y ago
I'm worried because family and friends of mine who are not tech oriented at all, are buying bitcoin as investments. They are my canary in the coal mine.
- himlion 9y ago
  Same here, a lot of my non tech friends are trading cryptocurrency parroting the technobabble in the ICO whitepapers without any understanding of the technical basics.
- andruby 9y ago
  Yup. I've got the same canary dying at this point. Work colleagues are asking me "which crypto" they should buy. 4 years ago, when btc hit $1000, it was my uncle who asked me to buy a couple. A few months later it dropped to $300. Crypto currencies feel a lot more mainstream this time around. It makes me worried that a crash could actually impact the "real" (as in non-crypto) economy.
  - flatfilefan 9y ago
    Did he ask you to sell those couple B at $20000 recently? Well, even if he did not then, selling at $13000 now isn't that bad either.
  - lagadu 9y ago
    In your uncle's defense, buying bitcoin at $1000 turned out to be a huge bargain.
    - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
      In hindsight, yeah, but you can't predict the future. I wouldn't be surprised if e.g. Bitcoin collapses, for example due to the transaction costs and time. If the miners pull out the network dies.
  - dx034 9y ago
    At $1,000 the economist hat a story on bitcoin which probably caused (some of) the following rise and crash shortly after. This time the buyer base is much larger (low yields on nearly everything else) but bitcoin has already been struggling to keep its value in recent weeks.
- scalesolved 9y ago
  Short it all and profit then right?
  - usrusr 9y ago
    Successful shorting is only possible if you can predict the timing of the collapse, if you could do that you might just as well play the regular pyramid game (and then start shorting on the way out, for maximum gambling reward)
gwbas1c 9y ago
A good currency has a stable value, and is fungible. Bitcoin is neither: The dramatic surge in Bitcoin's value is awful for real commerce. In contrast, a dollar or euro's value changes very little on a day to day or year to year basis. (Inflation is about 4% a year.) You know what a dollar is worth without needing to follow currency markets. I can exchange a dollar with little overhead. (Hard currency, Visa, Amex, or check.) The time it takes for Bitcoin to settle, and the fees, means that I can not conduct any real commerce with it. Bitcoin is an experiment. The limited supply made it useful to demonstrate how a cryptocurrency may work; but that ultimately makes it a poor replacement for real currency. The best thing to do is to learn from it and re-apply blockchain elsewhere.

shusson 9y ago

I'm worried because family and friends of mine who are not tech oriented at all, are buying bitcoin as investments. They are my canary in the coal mine.

himlion 9y ago
Same here, a lot of my non tech friends are trading cryptocurrency parroting the technobabble in the ICO whitepapers without any understanding of the technical basics.
andruby 9y ago
Yup. I've got the same canary dying at this point. Work colleagues are asking me "which crypto" they should buy. 4 years ago, when btc hit $1000, it was my uncle who asked me to buy a couple. A few months later it dropped to $300. Crypto currencies feel a lot more mainstream this time around. It makes me worried that a crash could actually impact the "real" (as in non-crypto) economy.
- flatfilefan 9y ago
  Did he ask you to sell those couple B at $20000 recently? Well, even if he did not then, selling at $13000 now isn't that bad either.
- lagadu 9y ago
  In your uncle's defense, buying bitcoin at $1000 turned out to be a huge bargain.
  - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    In hindsight, yeah, but you can't predict the future. I wouldn't be surprised if e.g. Bitcoin collapses, for example due to the transaction costs and time. If the miners pull out the network dies.
- dx034 9y ago
  At $1,000 the economist hat a story on bitcoin which probably caused (some of) the following rise and crash shortly after. This time the buyer base is much larger (low yields on nearly everything else) but bitcoin has already been struggling to keep its value in recent weeks.
scalesolved 9y ago
Short it all and profit then right?
- usrusr 9y ago
  Successful shorting is only possible if you can predict the timing of the collapse, if you could do that you might just as well play the regular pyramid game (and then start shorting on the way out, for maximum gambling reward)

gwbas1c 9y ago

A good currency has a stable value, and is fungible. Bitcoin is neither: The dramatic surge in Bitcoin's value is awful for real commerce. In contrast, a dollar or euro's value changes very little on a day to day or year to year basis. (Inflation is about 4% a year.) You know what a dollar is worth without needing to follow currency markets. I can exchange a dollar with little overhead. (Hard currency, Visa, Amex, or check.) The time it takes for Bitcoin to settle, and the fees, means that I can not conduct any real commerce with it. Bitcoin is an experiment. The limited supply made it useful to demonstrate how a cryptocurrency may work; but that ultimately makes it a poor replacement for real currency. The best thing to do is to learn from it and re-apply blockchain elsewhere.