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Could you give an example of some of that evidence? As a contrarian, I'm interested in anything that goes against the narrative.

roenxi 6y ago
Take the Madoff scam that fell apart back in '08. Everyone believed they were making money from 1999 up until it turned out in 08 they had none. And that was in an environment that was considered well regulated. Financial scams and collapses frequently go 3-5 years looking like a gravy train of wealth creation. And those are actual scams with people lying. Let alone a new phenomenon like Bitcoin where there is a plausibility to the whole thing. That is enough evidence that Bitcoin might just be a fad. In terms of Bitcoin's actual fundamentals if you want an argument to mull over: 1) There is a slight incentive against new buyers to entering the market - they are pretending that someone who bought Bitcoin for $500 did useful work which is trivially not true. The more the Bitcoin price rises the more true that is. 2) The brand name "Bitcoin" is meaningless long term - look at how the meaning of words shift when it is convenient. Traders don't care about dictionary definitions. At some point mining ceases and people don't trade enough to sustain the mining network. At that point, the miners all switch to some new ByteCoin. With a powerful hashing network providing a cheap alternative crypto and with incentives against new entrants into the market people stop accepting Bitcoin. The value collapses. The basic argument is there is no technical difference between Bitcoin and any other crypto. At some point, the miners stop making money and leave; then Bitcoin gets outcompeted. The value retained by crypto tends towards the marginal cost to create new crypto which is 0. This stands in contrast to the argument that the only cryptocurrency that matters is Bitcoin - which I don't think holds true long term. I can see why sellers of Bitcoin would believe that but I don't see why the buyers will cooperate. Cryptocurrencies are completely fungible from a buyer perspective - they can't actually distinguish between them unless the words matter. Or one has a massive hashing network behind it. Compare to gold - doesn't matter what word is used; gold is still gold. I can go to almost any major civilisation, not speak a word, but wave some gold around and they will recognise it. Words don't matter. Hope that ramble is of interest.

roenxi 6y ago

Take the Madoff scam that fell apart back in '08. Everyone believed they were making money from 1999 up until it turned out in 08 they had none. And that was in an environment that was considered well regulated. Financial scams and collapses frequently go 3-5 years looking like a gravy train of wealth creation. And those are actual scams with people lying. Let alone a new phenomenon like Bitcoin where there is a plausibility to the whole thing. That is enough evidence that Bitcoin might just be a fad. In terms of Bitcoin's actual fundamentals if you want an argument to mull over: 1) There is a slight incentive against new buyers to entering the market - they are pretending that someone who bought Bitcoin for $500 did useful work which is trivially not true. The more the Bitcoin price rises the more true that is. 2) The brand name "Bitcoin" is meaningless long term - look at how the meaning of words shift when it is convenient. Traders don't care about dictionary definitions. At some point mining ceases and people don't trade enough to sustain the mining network. At that point, the miners all switch to some new ByteCoin. With a powerful hashing network providing a cheap alternative crypto and with incentives against new entrants into the market people stop accepting Bitcoin. The value collapses. The basic argument is there is no technical difference between Bitcoin and any other crypto. At some point, the miners stop making money and leave; then Bitcoin gets outcompeted. The value retained by crypto tends towards the marginal cost to create new crypto which is 0. This stands in contrast to the argument that the only cryptocurrency that matters is Bitcoin - which I don't think holds true long term. I can see why sellers of Bitcoin would believe that but I don't see why the buyers will cooperate. Cryptocurrencies are completely fungible from a buyer perspective - they can't actually distinguish between them unless the words matter. Or one has a massive hashing network behind it. Compare to gold - doesn't matter what word is used; gold is still gold. I can go to almost any major civilisation, not speak a word, but wave some gold around and they will recognise it. Words don't matter. Hope that ramble is of interest.