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"If you'd like to hold BTC for 10-20 years, they may be quite cheap at the moment, as most of them have already been made." That fact that most have already be
by betterunix 14y ago
"If you'd like to hold BTC for 10-20 years, they may be quite cheap at the moment, as most of them have already been made."
That fact that most have already been computed has little bearing on the future price of BTC. What matters in the future is whether or not people will actually use Bitcoin as a currency (it has no other use); I am still not convinced that it will ever become mainstream. I hear about all sorts of places that accept Bitcoin payments, but I have yet to see anything that matters -- I cannot buy diesel with it, I cannot pay rent with it, I cannot pay utility bills with it, my local supermarket does not take it, and I cannot pay taxes with it. Even for black market transactions (drugs, guns, etc.) Bitcoin is obscure; even with all the sales that happen on Silk Road, you are looking at a tiny fraction of the market for illegal drugs.
Bitcoin is in a very precarious position. Most of the cost of buying in is the result of speculation about its future use, which is fueled by the media coverage it receives on tech news sites. A lot of the hype is based on questionable assumptions about Bitcoin's security and about the lack of authorities in the system. Bitcoin's ability to survive when the hype dies down and the assumptions are challenged is doubtful, at least from where I sit.
- rockyleal 14y agoRome wasn't built in a day
- ISL 14y agoThe day the assumptions get challenged, especially when the Man steps in, is the critical one. Something like BTC, however, just seems convenient. In a thread yesterday, I needed to express the price of tools in a country-independent way. For giggles, I expressed it in BTC instead of USD; afterward, it felt right. A country-invariant store of value has real value on its own. It might not be BTC, but I don't think cryptocurrency is going away.
- jdotjdot 14y agoIt may have felt right, but by tomorrow it will be inaccurate, since BTC/USD will have continued to shoot up. There really is no country-independent way yo express price, even those with the same currency have different prices for the same basket of goods based on a myriad of conditions. That's what Happy Meals don't cost the same everywhere.