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The sad thing about this Bitcoin bubble is that it amounts to taking money from everyone who got in after you. That's the only thing that is giving it value rig

The sad thing about this Bitcoin bubble is that it amounts to taking money from everyone who got in after you. That's the only thing that is giving it value right now: new people willing to pay higher prices for BTC. People have mortgaged their houses to get into this bubble, and many of them are going to be left holding the bag. It's not like people are buying BTC because it gives them a place to live or because it allows them to transact in a way they couldn't before.

sharemywin 9y ago
The same thing can be said about the internet bubble.
- dragontamer 9y ago
  The internet bubble created companies like Google or Amazon. When you bought into Google's IPO, Google received money which then purchased servers. At the end of the day, that's what stocks are all about. A mechanism to give your money to a public company. A better example of recent history is how TSLA raised a bunch of money through stocks to build the Gigafactory. $5 Billion USD was raised through a combination of debt (aka: old-school banks) + Stock offerings, and now there's a working factory in Nevada churning out batteries and cars. What does buying BTC do aside from increase the price? When you give USD to a BTC holder, all you did was reward that person for mining. I think we can confidently say that all of the servers that were given to Google ended up creating something more than a a simple data-center. Google, as an entity, has more value than the sum of all of the servers that it runs. Can the same be said about BTC mining equipment and BTC? No. Because at the end of the day, the value of BTC doesn't "grow" if you pump it full of USD. We already know the secret of blockchain. Google's value grew in the 90s because buying more servers in the 90s allowed it to search more web-sites and build a better search algorithm. Putting $1000 into Google Servers made MORE than $1000 of gains later (as services like Google, GMail, Youtube, etc. etc. were all made on top of those servers). In contrast, investing money into BTC doesn't actually do anything. There's no company that actually benefits, aside from bigger-and-bigger mining centers. The innovation is dead: the BTC community has become too bulky and politicized to accept even minor changes (like Segwitx2). Besides, Segwitx2 doesn't need us to pump money into BTC miners for it to work or innovate. If BTC crashes tomorrow, the lightning network will STILL be developed and no harm will come to the innovators in the community.
  - sharemywin 9y ago
    Give it another 15-20 years and let's see what happens: Ethereum, golem, decentraland, storj, ICONOMI,steemit, Basic Attention Token funded buy bitcoin.
    - dragontamer 9y ago
      How is it "funded by" bitcoin? Tell me. If all the money in BTC markets dried up tomorrow, would the cryptocurrency innovation stop? I argue that innovation would continue, even if BTC crashes to $5 tomorrow. Because cryptocurrencies, as they are currently implemented, don't require money for people to improve them. The entire concept of "equity" and "market cap" is completely, and utterly devoid of meaning in this space. If you buy up Google or TSLA stock, those companies have more money to actually make factories, data-centers, or buy computers. This happens through a mechanism called stock offerings. Ex: https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/20/tesla-raises-146b-in-stock-sale-at-a-lower-price-than-its-august-2015-sale-ifr.html https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/20/tesla-raises-146b-in-stock-s... If you buy up BTC, the innovators do NOT get money. Only the miners do. Its way better to just Paypal the money directly to BTC foundation or directly to Etherium developers if you actually care about "funding" those projects. ------------ As it stands right now, the Winklevoss Twins are getting more BTC money than the BTC core developers. The "investment" scheme of the BTC world is broken. BTC "market cap" does NOT benefit the devs. https://cointelegraph.com/news/winklevoss-twins-become-first-official-bitcoin-billionaires https://cointelegraph.com/news/winklevoss-twins-become-first...
      - sharemywin 9y ago
        if google, facebook etc get disintermediated by blockchain than the stock is worthless too. The value is in the network. Not the code. Should devs get paid? yes. why should a dev get any premium over any other early adopter that contributed value to a network? In my opinion the work(dev, qa, docs etc) of a network should be put out for bid with a minimal as possible funded by trx fees. Bitcoin already served it's purpose to get money into the crypto ecosystem.
- econner 9y ago
  To a degree the internet bubble was sad. Many people lost their shirt in the dotcom crash when they took on debt to exercise stock options or mortgaged their homes to buy dotcom stocks that failed. But, of course, the internet bubble allowed all the fiber to be laid that formed the backbone of the internet & that gave rise to the great internet companies. I'm long cryptocurrencies and I believe the technology is going to persist. It would be nice though to be able to do it without a whole bunch of people losing their life savings in a bubble, but perhaps that's wishful thinking.

sharemywin 9y ago

The same thing can be said about the internet bubble.

dragontamer 9y ago
The internet bubble created companies like Google or Amazon. When you bought into Google's IPO, Google received money which then purchased servers. At the end of the day, that's what stocks are all about. A mechanism to give your money to a public company. A better example of recent history is how TSLA raised a bunch of money through stocks to build the Gigafactory. $5 Billion USD was raised through a combination of debt (aka: old-school banks) + Stock offerings, and now there's a working factory in Nevada churning out batteries and cars. What does buying BTC do aside from increase the price? When you give USD to a BTC holder, all you did was reward that person for mining. I think we can confidently say that all of the servers that were given to Google ended up creating something more than a a simple data-center. Google, as an entity, has more value than the sum of all of the servers that it runs. Can the same be said about BTC mining equipment and BTC? No. Because at the end of the day, the value of BTC doesn't "grow" if you pump it full of USD. We already know the secret of blockchain. Google's value grew in the 90s because buying more servers in the 90s allowed it to search more web-sites and build a better search algorithm. Putting $1000 into Google Servers made MORE than $1000 of gains later (as services like Google, GMail, Youtube, etc. etc. were all made on top of those servers). In contrast, investing money into BTC doesn't actually do anything. There's no company that actually benefits, aside from bigger-and-bigger mining centers. The innovation is dead: the BTC community has become too bulky and politicized to accept even minor changes (like Segwitx2). Besides, Segwitx2 doesn't need us to pump money into BTC miners for it to work or innovate. If BTC crashes tomorrow, the lightning network will STILL be developed and no harm will come to the innovators in the community.
- sharemywin 9y ago
  Give it another 15-20 years and let's see what happens: Ethereum, golem, decentraland, storj, ICONOMI,steemit, Basic Attention Token funded buy bitcoin.
  - dragontamer 9y ago
    How is it "funded by" bitcoin? Tell me. If all the money in BTC markets dried up tomorrow, would the cryptocurrency innovation stop? I argue that innovation would continue, even if BTC crashes to $5 tomorrow. Because cryptocurrencies, as they are currently implemented, don't require money for people to improve them. The entire concept of "equity" and "market cap" is completely, and utterly devoid of meaning in this space. If you buy up Google or TSLA stock, those companies have more money to actually make factories, data-centers, or buy computers. This happens through a mechanism called stock offerings. Ex: https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/20/tesla-raises-146b-in-stock-sale-at-a-lower-price-than-its-august-2015-sale-ifr.html https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/20/tesla-raises-146b-in-stock-s... If you buy up BTC, the innovators do NOT get money. Only the miners do. Its way better to just Paypal the money directly to BTC foundation or directly to Etherium developers if you actually care about "funding" those projects. ------------ As it stands right now, the Winklevoss Twins are getting more BTC money than the BTC core developers. The "investment" scheme of the BTC world is broken. BTC "market cap" does NOT benefit the devs. https://cointelegraph.com/news/winklevoss-twins-become-first-official-bitcoin-billionaires https://cointelegraph.com/news/winklevoss-twins-become-first...
    - sharemywin 9y ago
      if google, facebook etc get disintermediated by blockchain than the stock is worthless too. The value is in the network. Not the code. Should devs get paid? yes. why should a dev get any premium over any other early adopter that contributed value to a network? In my opinion the work(dev, qa, docs etc) of a network should be put out for bid with a minimal as possible funded by trx fees. Bitcoin already served it's purpose to get money into the crypto ecosystem.
econner 9y ago
To a degree the internet bubble was sad. Many people lost their shirt in the dotcom crash when they took on debt to exercise stock options or mortgaged their homes to buy dotcom stocks that failed. But, of course, the internet bubble allowed all the fiber to be laid that formed the backbone of the internet & that gave rise to the great internet companies. I'm long cryptocurrencies and I believe the technology is going to persist. It would be nice though to be able to do it without a whole bunch of people losing their life savings in a bubble, but perhaps that's wishful thinking.