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I experience a very similar moment in line waiting to go through TSA a few years back listening to a group of agents (on break, trading w/ Coinbase on their pho

I experience a very similar moment in line waiting to go through TSA a few years back listening to a group of agents (on break, trading w/ Coinbase on their phones) talk about bitcoin going to the moon (one of them said 100K/coin) when it was already hovering at 17K/coin. I knew how unrealistic bitcoin was back then, as it is now, and once I was through security, I promptly liquidated my entire coinbase account someplace near the peak

oleganza 6y ago
isn't talking about 100K/coin in 2017-2020 is as unrealistic as talking about 10K/coin in 2013-2015?
- leetcrew 6y ago
  yes, but the point of the anecdote is who is saying it, not what is being said.
- jakeva 6y ago
  I would say so. Same as talking about 1k/coin in 2011. That said, I wish I had unloaded near the last peak. I would have been positioned to quadruple my stake near the last low.
- gruez 6y ago
  Not really. price going up 10x is much easier when it's around $10, than when it's $1000. The higher the existing price, the more money that's required to pump the price, so it only makes sense that 10k->100k is harder than 1k->10k.
  - IgorPartola 6y ago
    Why? I mean I got $10 in my pocket. You really think it’ll be worth $100-worth any time this year? Ford is currently trading at around $7. Think it can possibly go to $70 any time soon? You have to look at market cap, not individual price. Why would all the BTC that’s around be suddenly 10x the value it was a year ago? What would drive that?
    - gruez 6y ago
      >You have to look at market cap I thought that was implied, but yes you're right.
      - IgorPartola 6y ago
        How is it implied? You basically said going from $1 to $10 is easier than from $10 to $100. They are both a 10x increase in market cap. Why would one be easier than the other, aside from the mild psychological effect on retail buyers?
        gruez 6y ago
        >They are both a 10x increase in market cap. Why would one be easier than the other, aside from the mild psychological effect on retail buyers? Let's imagine we're in the future and bitcoin made up 5% of global wealth. In that case, do you think it would be easier for bitcoin to go up 10x than it was back in the early 2010s?
        IgorPartola 6y ago
        It would be harder. But that would be regardless of the price. Going from $1 to $1.05 is the same as from $1000 to $1050. I am confused by how that’s confusing.
        fluffy87 6y ago
        Because there is more poor ppl than rich ppl, and poor ppl can buy stonks at 1$, but they can’t buy stonks at 1000$. So if some idiot says that stonk X is hot at 1$, the amount of money that is available to buy that stonk and pump it’s price up is much higher than for a stonk that’s at 1000$ and that only 1% of the population can put money in.
        IgorPartola 6y ago
        This isn’t WSB, we spell it stocks :) Lots of places offer the ability to buy partial stocks. Also, BTC and company all allow partial coins. Lastly, idiot retail buyers who can only afford a few bucks of anything won’t move the market.
  - alasdair_ 6y ago
    > Not really. price going up 10x is much easier when it's around $10, than when it's $1000 I’m not sure this line of reasoning applies to altcoins whose maximum quantity can be set by the creator.
  - maest 6y ago
    I think your argument is _almost_ right. You should be applying that logic to the total "market cap" of the asset, not to the unit price. In particular, the huge bull run in crypto happened because mass retail and institutional money came into the market, bidding the price up. Arguably, if TSA agents are already bought into bitcoin (the implication being that TSA agents, as a class of people, are very unsophisticated investors) there isn't a lot more money waiting on the sidelines that could flood the market (not completely true, as there are still untapped pools of institutional money).
- ivalm 6y ago
  In 2013-2015 sitting on my uni’s shuttle I didn’t hear about Bitcoin, in 2017 I did.
jameslevy 6y ago
The thing that really gets me is that even once you hear these conversations, the price might 2x or 3x from there. I felt this way about Bitcoin by the summer of 2017 but obviously it still had some room to run.
BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y ago
You can also look at this from another angle. I bought today $5 iTunes code using a Lightning wallet, which is the new payment layer over bitcoin, think of it as Bitcoin 2.0. 1 second confirmation time and 20 cents fee (compared to 10+minutes wait and $3 fee with Bitcoin 1.0). The seller didn't need my name and address. Nobody knew about my purchase, and I didn't need nobody's permission to trade. This is why Bitcoin is going to $1m, and not because of what TSA agents say.
- BTCOG 6y ago
  People often falsely tout absurdly high fees because they so choose to try to move the money as quickly as possible on a whim and choose to pay such a multi-dollar fee. Those of us who use bitcoin regularly understand that if one plans to send hours or days in advance, it's simple and straightforward to move millions of dollars at once for 25-50 cent fee, flat rate. Just because 1k people say they paid $5-10 fee to move bitcoin, doesn't mean they know what they're doing.
  - BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y ago
    You just haven't been around Bitcoin at FOMO times. I used to pay $50 fees back in 2017.

oleganza 6y ago

isn't talking about 100K/coin in 2017-2020 is as unrealistic as talking about 10K/coin in 2013-2015?

leetcrew 6y ago
yes, but the point of the anecdote is who is saying it, not what is being said.
jakeva 6y ago
I would say so. Same as talking about 1k/coin in 2011. That said, I wish I had unloaded near the last peak. I would have been positioned to quadruple my stake near the last low.
gruez 6y ago
Not really. price going up 10x is much easier when it's around $10, than when it's $1000. The higher the existing price, the more money that's required to pump the price, so it only makes sense that 10k->100k is harder than 1k->10k.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  Why? I mean I got $10 in my pocket. You really think it’ll be worth $100-worth any time this year? Ford is currently trading at around $7. Think it can possibly go to $70 any time soon? You have to look at market cap, not individual price. Why would all the BTC that’s around be suddenly 10x the value it was a year ago? What would drive that?
  - gruez 6y ago
    >You have to look at market cap I thought that was implied, but yes you're right.
    - IgorPartola 6y ago
      How is it implied? You basically said going from $1 to $10 is easier than from $10 to $100. They are both a 10x increase in market cap. Why would one be easier than the other, aside from the mild psychological effect on retail buyers?
      - gruez 6y ago
        >They are both a 10x increase in market cap. Why would one be easier than the other, aside from the mild psychological effect on retail buyers? Let's imagine we're in the future and bitcoin made up 5% of global wealth. In that case, do you think it would be easier for bitcoin to go up 10x than it was back in the early 2010s?
        IgorPartola 6y ago
        It would be harder. But that would be regardless of the price. Going from $1 to $1.05 is the same as from $1000 to $1050. I am confused by how that’s confusing.
      - fluffy87 6y ago
        Because there is more poor ppl than rich ppl, and poor ppl can buy stonks at 1$, but they can’t buy stonks at 1000$. So if some idiot says that stonk X is hot at 1$, the amount of money that is available to buy that stonk and pump it’s price up is much higher than for a stonk that’s at 1000$ and that only 1% of the population can put money in.
        IgorPartola 6y ago
        This isn’t WSB, we spell it stocks :) Lots of places offer the ability to buy partial stocks. Also, BTC and company all allow partial coins. Lastly, idiot retail buyers who can only afford a few bucks of anything won’t move the market.
- alasdair_ 6y ago
  > Not really. price going up 10x is much easier when it's around $10, than when it's $1000 I’m not sure this line of reasoning applies to altcoins whose maximum quantity can be set by the creator.
- maest 6y ago
  I think your argument is _almost_ right. You should be applying that logic to the total "market cap" of the asset, not to the unit price. In particular, the huge bull run in crypto happened because mass retail and institutional money came into the market, bidding the price up. Arguably, if TSA agents are already bought into bitcoin (the implication being that TSA agents, as a class of people, are very unsophisticated investors) there isn't a lot more money waiting on the sidelines that could flood the market (not completely true, as there are still untapped pools of institutional money).
ivalm 6y ago
In 2013-2015 sitting on my uni’s shuttle I didn’t hear about Bitcoin, in 2017 I did.

jameslevy 6y ago

The thing that really gets me is that even once you hear these conversations, the price might 2x or 3x from there. I felt this way about Bitcoin by the summer of 2017 but obviously it still had some room to run.

BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y ago

You can also look at this from another angle. I bought today $5 iTunes code using a Lightning wallet, which is the new payment layer over bitcoin, think of it as Bitcoin 2.0. 1 second confirmation time and 20 cents fee (compared to 10+minutes wait and $3 fee with Bitcoin 1.0). The seller didn't need my name and address. Nobody knew about my purchase, and I didn't need nobody's permission to trade. This is why Bitcoin is going to $1m, and not because of what TSA agents say.

BTCOG 6y ago
People often falsely tout absurdly high fees because they so choose to try to move the money as quickly as possible on a whim and choose to pay such a multi-dollar fee. Those of us who use bitcoin regularly understand that if one plans to send hours or days in advance, it's simple and straightforward to move millions of dollars at once for 25-50 cent fee, flat rate. Just because 1k people say they paid $5-10 fee to move bitcoin, doesn't mean they know what they're doing.
- BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y ago
  You just haven't been around Bitcoin at FOMO times. I used to pay $50 fees back in 2017.