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Bitcoin may be following this classic bubble stages chart.

17 points by teawithcarl 13y ago

ozh 13y ago
My feeling everytime I read a paper about btc: everybody watches with interest but nobody has the slightest clue of what this will become in the mid & long run
- BrokenPipe 13y ago
  We kind of do. The tendency is to say that it either incorporates a lot and becomes very valuable and the de-facto international store of value and currency (as well as representing a number of assets such as stock or estate property) or it goes to zero. It's volatility is certainly decreasing as times goes by and the big picture is certainly positive as things stand although I agree that it would take a simple coordinated move to ban it in the western world to take it down. Yet this has not happened yet and I can't stop but wonder why given what it has happened to Liberty Reserve and we have seen coordinated moves for far less (Kim Domcom with Mega for instance). It would be enough for it to be regulated such that tax or vat needs to be added and bitcoin would immediately be heavily affected. Furthermore we do not know who created bitcoin and their real motive. In my view it is much better than the current central bank situation but it seems there is a side of it that means it has no one accountable. Should mining ever get compromised (if it is not already) it is not really clear to me that we would even notice.
dmk23 13y ago
But, THIS time everything is going to be different! Because of Bitcoin's paradigm-shifting, gravity-defying, game-changing properties, the normal rules of bubble economics and financial regulation no longer apply! The Brave New World has arrived! /sarcasm Seriously though, Bitcoin is going to enjoy its glorious rise for only as long as the politicians/regulators/law enforcement fail to realize the true extent of the threat to their power, IF Bitcoin's intended properties are allowed to continue unrestricted. Once all these players wake up, the crackdown will be a lot fiercer than anything ever done against P2P file-sharers. Napster threatened just one industry, Bitcoin is taking a swing at our entire political and economic system. It is just a matter of time before every Bitcoin exchange is forced to turn in all their records to IRS, the transaction histories are fully outed and the main benefits of using Bitcoin are minimized. The regulators have no reason to leave alternative currencies alone vs. crack down like they've done to the likes of the Liberty Dollar ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Dollar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Dollar ) At the end of the day, any currency is only as viable as the enforcement power behind it, which ultimately means "people with guns". Bitcoin has none of it and US Dollar has the largest world power behind it...
aw3c2 13y ago
I can't flag anymore but please don't give this clickbait Forbes rubbish any traffic.
- philhippus 13y ago
  How else would I have seen the correlating bubble graph to the bitcoin chart if not for this Forbes link today?
SuperChihuahua 13y ago
The Bitcoin 40,000 comment by the Winklevoss twin (http://mashable.com/2013/12/16/cameron-winklevoss-bitcoin/ http://mashable.com/2013/12/16/cameron-winklevoss-bitcoin/) is actually similar to the 1999 book "Dow 40,000: Strategies for Profiting from the Greatest Bull Market in History"
Grue3 13y ago
Last time it bubbled, it followed this exact chart, but on a smaller scale.
boon 13y ago
This is because I don't know anything about reading the tea leaves in a market graph like this... but does the (somewhat) significant dip near the top (where it bounced twice to $1200+) make this different from what the author is trying to fit?

17 points by teawithcarl 13y ago

ozh 13y ago

My feeling everytime I read a paper about btc: everybody watches with interest but nobody has the slightest clue of what this will become in the mid & long run

BrokenPipe 13y ago
We kind of do. The tendency is to say that it either incorporates a lot and becomes very valuable and the de-facto international store of value and currency (as well as representing a number of assets such as stock or estate property) or it goes to zero. It's volatility is certainly decreasing as times goes by and the big picture is certainly positive as things stand although I agree that it would take a simple coordinated move to ban it in the western world to take it down. Yet this has not happened yet and I can't stop but wonder why given what it has happened to Liberty Reserve and we have seen coordinated moves for far less (Kim Domcom with Mega for instance). It would be enough for it to be regulated such that tax or vat needs to be added and bitcoin would immediately be heavily affected. Furthermore we do not know who created bitcoin and their real motive. In my view it is much better than the current central bank situation but it seems there is a side of it that means it has no one accountable. Should mining ever get compromised (if it is not already) it is not really clear to me that we would even notice.

dmk23 13y ago

But, THIS time everything is going to be different! Because of Bitcoin's paradigm-shifting, gravity-defying, game-changing properties, the normal rules of bubble economics and financial regulation no longer apply! The Brave New World has arrived! /sarcasm Seriously though, Bitcoin is going to enjoy its glorious rise for only as long as the politicians/regulators/law enforcement fail to realize the true extent of the threat to their power, IF Bitcoin's intended properties are allowed to continue unrestricted. Once all these players wake up, the crackdown will be a lot fiercer than anything ever done against P2P file-sharers. Napster threatened just one industry, Bitcoin is taking a swing at our entire political and economic system. It is just a matter of time before every Bitcoin exchange is forced to turn in all their records to IRS, the transaction histories are fully outed and the main benefits of using Bitcoin are minimized. The regulators have no reason to leave alternative currencies alone vs. crack down like they've done to the likes of the Liberty Dollar ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Dollar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Dollar ) At the end of the day, any currency is only as viable as the enforcement power behind it, which ultimately means "people with guns". Bitcoin has none of it and US Dollar has the largest world power behind it...

aw3c2 13y ago

I can't flag anymore but please don't give this clickbait Forbes rubbish any traffic.

philhippus 13y ago
How else would I have seen the correlating bubble graph to the bitcoin chart if not for this Forbes link today?

SuperChihuahua 13y ago

The Bitcoin 40,000 comment by the Winklevoss twin (http://mashable.com/2013/12/16/cameron-winklevoss-bitcoin/ http://mashable.com/2013/12/16/cameron-winklevoss-bitcoin/) is actually similar to the 1999 book "Dow 40,000: Strategies for Profiting from the Greatest Bull Market in History"

Grue3 13y ago

Last time it bubbled, it followed this exact chart, but on a smaller scale.

boon 13y ago

This is because I don't know anything about reading the tea leaves in a market graph like this... but does the (somewhat) significant dip near the top (where it bounced twice to $1200+) make this different from what the author is trying to fit?