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Great analysis. Although, I have to chuckle when I hear about people buying fractions of a Bitcoin, expecting to become multi-millionaires in a few years. Bitc

Great analysis. Although, I have to chuckle when I hear about people buying fractions of a Bitcoin, expecting to become multi-millionaires in a few years. Bitcoin has had a great run and the exponential growth it has experienced is extremely unlikely to repeat again. It's an issue of scalability and you don't just go from $1K to $1M the way you did from $1 to $1K, simply because the large scale implications are different. The implications of $1 to $1K were pretty insignificant, whereas to get to one million, entire governments would have to abandon their currencies in favor of Bitcoin or something else really drastic would have to happen. I personally own BTC and hope to see it succeed, but some of these people are delusional, plain and simple.

deleted 13y ago
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rallison 13y ago
Indeed. If bitcoin were to go from $1K to $1M in the near future, we would be talking a 12 trillion USD market cap - roughly on par with the US GDP. Not to say it is an impossible scenario, but like you said, the implications are much greater. The other interesting aspect is the existence of other alt currencies. For example, the so called "silver" Litecoin (as compared to the "gold" bitcoin), has increased almost 1000% in the last two weeks. Litecoin itself is up to a $1 billion market cap. Basically, we now have an alt currency at 10% of bitcoin's already impressive market cap. I do wonder if some of these alt currencies will be where some of the big gains will next be seen. If crypto currencies become widely established, I imagine the environment would support multiple currencies.
- judk 13y ago
  Wow. I haven't seen one news item or mention of anyone using litecoin, except comments like this that mention the existence of litecoin when folks discuss bitcoin. As always, though, market cap isn't really the current share price times number number of shares. It is the accumulated sum of all the buy offers over the top N share bids (N = number of shares in existence), not all of which are max price.
  - rallison 13y ago
    It seems the media is just starting to notice the non-bitcoin crypto currencies: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/litecoin-heres-everything-know-digital-193238685.html http://finance.yahoo.com/news/litecoin-heres-everything-know... Although, to be fair, Wired noticed it back in June: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/16/litecoin http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/16/litecoin Litecoin is still minor news, but with more exchanges starting to support it [1], it might actually amount to something. As for my own bias: I own a very trivial number of litecoins and bitcoins (most from a small amount of mining), so I wouldn't mind these increasing even more. That said, I am still skeptical, but I am enjoying watching this all play out. [1] https://www.okpay.com/en/company/news/okpay-now-supports-litecoin-currency.html https://www.okpay.com/en/company/news/okpay-now-supports-lit... Edit: And yes, agreed on your mark cap point. Still a useful benchmark, but not without some caveats.
baddox 13y ago
Your claim makes sense to me, but at the same time, how many people would have said similar things five years ago about Bitcoin? I suspect a lot would make essentially the same analysis and conclude that no one could possibly become a millionaire from Bitcoin holdings because of how extreme and unlikely the necessary series of events would be.

deleted 13y ago

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rallison 13y ago

Indeed. If bitcoin were to go from $1K to $1M in the near future, we would be talking a 12 trillion USD market cap - roughly on par with the US GDP. Not to say it is an impossible scenario, but like you said, the implications are much greater. The other interesting aspect is the existence of other alt currencies. For example, the so called "silver" Litecoin (as compared to the "gold" bitcoin), has increased almost 1000% in the last two weeks. Litecoin itself is up to a $1 billion market cap. Basically, we now have an alt currency at 10% of bitcoin's already impressive market cap. I do wonder if some of these alt currencies will be where some of the big gains will next be seen. If crypto currencies become widely established, I imagine the environment would support multiple currencies.

judk 13y ago
Wow. I haven't seen one news item or mention of anyone using litecoin, except comments like this that mention the existence of litecoin when folks discuss bitcoin. As always, though, market cap isn't really the current share price times number number of shares. It is the accumulated sum of all the buy offers over the top N share bids (N = number of shares in existence), not all of which are max price.
- rallison 13y ago
  It seems the media is just starting to notice the non-bitcoin crypto currencies: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/litecoin-heres-everything-know-digital-193238685.html http://finance.yahoo.com/news/litecoin-heres-everything-know... Although, to be fair, Wired noticed it back in June: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/16/litecoin http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/16/litecoin Litecoin is still minor news, but with more exchanges starting to support it [1], it might actually amount to something. As for my own bias: I own a very trivial number of litecoins and bitcoins (most from a small amount of mining), so I wouldn't mind these increasing even more. That said, I am still skeptical, but I am enjoying watching this all play out. [1] https://www.okpay.com/en/company/news/okpay-now-supports-litecoin-currency.html https://www.okpay.com/en/company/news/okpay-now-supports-lit... Edit: And yes, agreed on your mark cap point. Still a useful benchmark, but not without some caveats.

baddox 13y ago

Your claim makes sense to me, but at the same time, how many people would have said similar things five years ago about Bitcoin? I suspect a lot would make essentially the same analysis and conclude that no one could possibly become a millionaire from Bitcoin holdings because of how extreme and unlikely the necessary series of events would be.