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But why...? > When this [rally to near $20,000] happened in 2017, there was a real lack of products for the new converts to experience, whereas today there are

But why...? > When this [rally to near $20,000] happened in 2017, there was a real lack of products for the new converts to experience, whereas today there are endless uses, protocols, services across farming, lending, standard trading, etc Is this really true though? My first instinct isn’t at all to go to blockchain/cryptocurrency for farming.

vmception 6y ago
they are referring to yield farming. people earn interest by putting their assets up as liquidity. making the markets deeper. this is one of the things that banks do with customer deposits except now there is no bank. anyway, it makes digital assets and cryptocurrencies yield producing instruments and it is predictably popular. along side that there is a fast growing autonomous insurance sector too.
mantenpanther 6y ago
Excessive worldwide money printing?
tempsy 6y ago
i don’t think it has anything to do with more use cases institutions are now buying bitcoin as a diversified asset class
- JoshTko 6y ago
  This is the single most important use case that most people miss. Bitcoin doesn't need to do anything else.
  - mrlala 6y ago
    Sigh. I 100% understand what you are saying but I also 100% disagree with it. This is all greed with no substance. Wealthy people and those who desire to be wealthy are doing everything they can to arbitrarily prop up something which does not really have value. And they seem to be winning- which is everything that is wrong with the world right now.
    - agumonkey 6y ago
      You don't think "bitcoin as an inflation resistant storage" is a good theory ?
      - ordinaryradical 6y ago
        It doesn't matter if it's priced incorrectly and because of the scale of manipulation being carried out by Tether and probably other large actors cooperating to influence price, btc cannot be priced correctly. The pricing mechanism for crypto is always going to be screwed by PoW, I think, because it naturally concentrates power into the hands of a few that can coordinate relatively easily.
      - mrlala 6y ago
        Not at all, you know why? Because everyone talks about BTC relative to some other currency. The very topic of this post "Bitcoin breaks above $20k or $20,000 USD / BTC". How can something that can only be quoted in terms of another currency be inflation resistant?
        cwkoss 6y ago
        Can't USD only be quoted in terms of other currencies/assets? (At least since we left the gold standard?)
    - tempsy 6y ago
      you can say the same thing about gold - it’s just a shiny rock. it’s an inflation protected asset, perhaps even more so than gold since there’s a known quantity of it that will never change.
      - iforgottherest 6y ago
        When the price of gold crashes, at least you have a piece of gold. When bitcoin crashes, what do you have?
        6y ago
- beezle 6y ago
  Institutions are in bitcoin because there is far too much free cash to soley invest in equities, bonds or money markets. Institutions are also in bitcoin because it is a market that is easily moved so they can make significant trading profits.
imaginenore 6y ago
Why? Because huge companies started investing huge amounts of money in it. Greyscale, MicroStrategy, JP Morgan, etc. Also more and more people recognize that it's better to store money in a deflationary currency, not in your USD or EUR, which are regularly printed in huge amounts and are guaranteed to lose purchasing power long-term.
josh_carterPDX 6y ago
The main difference is that the feds as well as other mainstream institutions are beginning to buy cryptocurrencies. That didn't happen in 2017. There are a number of analysts that are predicting it will get much higher than $20,000 because many governments are trying to print their way out of trouble.
RedditKon 6y ago
It's definitely true on the DeFi / lending front. Check out BlockFi for example. But I wouldn't say these are the _main_ reason why Bitcoin is going up. More likely reasons: - Inflation concerns from the massive QE efforts in 2020 - Equities market are very overvalued right now, people are looking for alternate asset classes and fiat isn't a great option (see point #1) - Institutional (more risk adverse) names are getting in. Ex: Mass Mutual bought $100M of BTC last week. Because this was for their general account it needed Fed approval, which is a big milestone. - The idea of BTC as a true alternate store of value to gold is becoming more widely accepted. Specifically in regard to the point around Bitcoin as an alternative to gold, the market cap of gold is around $9T. If even half of that moves to BTC we'd hit about $130k/BTC.
Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
Yield farming, not actual farming lol
- isuckatcoding 6y ago
  Lol well that makes more sense

vmception 6y ago

they are referring to yield farming. people earn interest by putting their assets up as liquidity. making the markets deeper. this is one of the things that banks do with customer deposits except now there is no bank. anyway, it makes digital assets and cryptocurrencies yield producing instruments and it is predictably popular. along side that there is a fast growing autonomous insurance sector too.

mantenpanther 6y ago

Excessive worldwide money printing?

tempsy 6y ago

i don’t think it has anything to do with more use cases institutions are now buying bitcoin as a diversified asset class

JoshTko 6y ago
This is the single most important use case that most people miss. Bitcoin doesn't need to do anything else.
- mrlala 6y ago
  Sigh. I 100% understand what you are saying but I also 100% disagree with it. This is all greed with no substance. Wealthy people and those who desire to be wealthy are doing everything they can to arbitrarily prop up something which does not really have value. And they seem to be winning- which is everything that is wrong with the world right now.
  - agumonkey 6y ago
    You don't think "bitcoin as an inflation resistant storage" is a good theory ?
    - ordinaryradical 6y ago
      It doesn't matter if it's priced incorrectly and because of the scale of manipulation being carried out by Tether and probably other large actors cooperating to influence price, btc cannot be priced correctly. The pricing mechanism for crypto is always going to be screwed by PoW, I think, because it naturally concentrates power into the hands of a few that can coordinate relatively easily.
    - mrlala 6y ago
      Not at all, you know why? Because everyone talks about BTC relative to some other currency. The very topic of this post "Bitcoin breaks above $20k or $20,000 USD / BTC". How can something that can only be quoted in terms of another currency be inflation resistant?
      - cwkoss 6y ago
        Can't USD only be quoted in terms of other currencies/assets? (At least since we left the gold standard?)
  - tempsy 6y ago
    you can say the same thing about gold - it’s just a shiny rock. it’s an inflation protected asset, perhaps even more so than gold since there’s a known quantity of it that will never change.
    - iforgottherest 6y ago
      When the price of gold crashes, at least you have a piece of gold. When bitcoin crashes, what do you have?
      - 6y ago
beezle 6y ago
Institutions are in bitcoin because there is far too much free cash to soley invest in equities, bonds or money markets. Institutions are also in bitcoin because it is a market that is easily moved so they can make significant trading profits.

imaginenore 6y ago

Why? Because huge companies started investing huge amounts of money in it. Greyscale, MicroStrategy, JP Morgan, etc. Also more and more people recognize that it's better to store money in a deflationary currency, not in your USD or EUR, which are regularly printed in huge amounts and are guaranteed to lose purchasing power long-term.

josh_carterPDX 6y ago

The main difference is that the feds as well as other mainstream institutions are beginning to buy cryptocurrencies. That didn't happen in 2017. There are a number of analysts that are predicting it will get much higher than $20,000 because many governments are trying to print their way out of trouble.

RedditKon 6y ago

It's definitely true on the DeFi / lending front. Check out BlockFi for example. But I wouldn't say these are the _main_ reason why Bitcoin is going up. More likely reasons: - Inflation concerns from the massive QE efforts in 2020 - Equities market are very overvalued right now, people are looking for alternate asset classes and fiat isn't a great option (see point #1) - Institutional (more risk adverse) names are getting in. Ex: Mass Mutual bought $100M of BTC last week. Because this was for their general account it needed Fed approval, which is a big milestone. - The idea of BTC as a true alternate store of value to gold is becoming more widely accepted. Specifically in regard to the point around Bitcoin as an alternative to gold, the market cap of gold is around $9T. If even half of that moves to BTC we'd hit about $130k/BTC.

Acrobatic_Road 6y ago

Yield farming, not actual farming lol

isuckatcoding 6y ago
Lol well that makes more sense