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You and everyone else, which will drive up demand and price, and thus the cycle continues
by robinduckett 9y ago
You and everyone else, which will drive up demand and price, and thus the cycle continues
- bsaul 9y agoI guess bitcoin is a great tool for studying human psychology related to speculation. As it is the most virtual asset one could imagine, backed by absolutely nothing real, there is nothing you can base your analysis on other than « what people think other people will do ».
- Donzo 9y agoNot only that, but there is a robust set of public data unlike any before.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> bitcoin is a great tool for studying human psychology related to speculation It’s distilled animal spirits. No pretense of utility, no room for analysis. A number you can buy and watch go up and down.
- folgore67 9y agoas much as gold and diamonds are. Stones traded at high prices.
- jacques_chester 9y agoI feel like Semper Augustus bulbs and the first bubbles of joint-stock companies give us the flavour of bitcoin and ICOs respectively.
- olalonde 9y agoFiat currencies are a bit similar in that regard (except taxes).
- bsaul 9y agoExcept they're the official money of a country. that is something the general people often don't understand with fiat currency. The fact that they are the official currency for a country, used to pay the salaries of state employees, and to pay taxes, as well as the central bank policy. All of this gives it an official utility, and thus an official value.
- notahacker 9y agoIt's also has legal requirements to accept it for settlement of debt, and in practice is issued almost exclusively as repayable debt...
- CPLX 9y agoIt's way more than that. Currencies vary based on the entire productive capacity of a country. When people decide that Japanese cars are reliable, that Costa Rica's beaches are lovely, or that the Russian private banking system can't be trusted, that dramatically affects the price of currencies. Currencies are a proxy for a country's whole economy not just the public sector.
- bsaul 9y agoYou could imagine the private sector running on a different economy than the country’s one. It happens when the government has gone bankrupt ( because of war or unsustainable debt, for example). But even in that case, the money still has some value, and can’t completely disappear, even if state employees run to the bank to exchange their salary against us dollar. Their value are correlated to the trust and ability to function of a state.
- Drakim 9y agoSome of the cryptocurrencies attempt to have baked in functionality that allows it to have utility past speculation.
- banachtarski 9y agoThe advent of regulation is a new piece of the puzzle however, and more information related to the coins' susceptibility to market manipulation without the scrutiny of regulation may make people think twice. Betting that it will rebound yet again is as much of a gamble as it ever was.