$5k in 2019, let's not get ahead of ourselves. And the reason for 2x from 2019 to 2020 is the reward will halven again.

For what it's worth, it may not be bitcoin, but if you use the same market cap for that time period, 19m x $10,000 = $190,000,000,000 is imo a reasonable cap for the top crypto in the space in 2020. I'd be shocked if it's anything but Bitcoin, Ethereum or Tezos.

I don't necessarily agree with this. Everyone - the smartest, most knowledgeable people in the world, including experts in this very instrument - missed the subprime mortgage crash. Which was actually inevitable, and noticeable to a guy with 110 IQ and a high school education who actually read the CDOs himself.

The big money imo is to be made noticing things that aren't readily quantifiable. For example, if you had the sense to notice that Bitcoin could fill a growing illegal payments niche, which could get very large thanks to the dark web, you could have made 1000x your money. Simple, correct observations like these are how you get rich. And not many of these traders you mention did that. I certainly didn't. I was somewhat aware of Bitcoin back when it was $1.

No one has really put forward a credible even long shot bull case for a 100 bagger at this point. I wish someone would. I'd load up if one existed.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/artic...oo-many-shares

Tooth

What are your views on blockchain technology generally and how would you gain exposure to it?

Very good reply Toothslayer btw, even though I kinda have different opinions on some stuff.

There's also a lot of crap fiat currencies and crap stocks, but you don't call all fiat currencies and the stock market "crap." Why is the crypto space different?

I am not asking whether Bitcoin is in speculative bubble. I would be surprised if it isn't, to be honest.. What I am asking about is the long term viability of a scarce digital asset such as, but not necessarily, Bitcoin to serve as a store of value.

What properties of gold make it a good store of value? Do you think the current price of gold is reflective of its industrial usage, or that people invest in gold to preserve wealth against fiat inflation and oppressive governments?

Gold's value is 99% due to it being a store of value, 1% due to any actual usage it has.

The stock market consists of companies that own machines and talent which can produce stuff to be sold for cash, reliably returning 10% on capital every year. They're basically a gold/bitcoin/USD printing machine. That's why they have value. There would be no stock market otherwise.

Fiat currencies are backed by the full economies and legal systems of the countries that put them out. They're promissory notes which cannot be refused if you want to exchange them for goods. They can be used to extinguish taxation debt. You have the full power of the US police force and judicial system to force someone to give you goods in exchange for the worthless paper you're holding.

That makes a $50 note reliably worth the value of any $50-equivalent good in the US.

Because it could be shut down overnight.
Because it doesn't scale
Because there could be unknown flaws
Because it can be changed at any time
Because it doesn't have the backing of an economy, a police force, or a judicial system. You cannot force someone to exchange your dogecoin for a product.

Lots of other reasons.

Bitcoin isn't scarce like USD. Anyone can make a new BlockChain, and, if people like it, Bitcoin has been diluted 50% or 80% or 99% depending on how much of the new coin gets bought up. Do you think if Trump made a TrumpCoin, based on the blockchain, it wouldn't do well? Or Amazon an AmazonCoin? With discounts for anyone who uses AmazonCoin, like someone else suggested?

The BlockChain is not scarce. Just like paper isn't scarce (anyone could print their own currency, on paper, and call it DogeDollars). What makes USD scarce is laws that prohibit anything else from being used as tender. Laws that may one day be applied to Bitcoin, by the way.

Gold is a good store of value because it has a pleasing yellow metallic color that's unique and unforgable and connotes wealth. Its value is because people are reliably prepared to spend a decent percentage of their salary in order to adorn themselves and their house and their women with the shiny metallic substance. People like to buy it for jewelry and adornment. That's why it has value. No other reason.
I disagree. It's valuable because something in people's brains makes them love gold and want to wear it and use it for adornment. The amount that people want for that purpose vs the amount their is is why gold is valuable. Yes there's some speculation on top of that, but that's the core of it.

Same with Bitcoin. Some small percentage of people want to be able to illegally anonymously transact. Bitcoin allowed them to do that. Any other use cases are unproven as yet, and run into stiff competition with better alternatives, yet you need those use cases to explode to have a non-speculative/non-bubble upside from here.

Beanie babies, tickle me elmos and baseball cards had the same use case. It's not a good one.

Baseball cards are an excellent analogy for Bitcoin, or at least the claims of "limited supply". Thanks for the idea.

They're all fads. Human love of gold as an adornment is not at all faddish.

There are 21mm bitcoin. It is limited. Your point that another blockchain can come and dilute bitcoin is generally bad. The extreme hashing power behind bitcoin is what gives it its security and therefore value.

Your supposed TrumpCoin (already exists actually) or ToothSayerCoin will likely have very weak security. If you want to invest billions to secure the TS blockchain, and others do as well, so the security is decentralized (insert argument about bitcoin mining not being decentralized here) then maybe your new coin would have some value and dilute bitcoin a little.

If it was so easy to make another valuable blockchain to take a significant portion of bitcoins market share you'd think that would have happened.

There are hundreds of coins out there. Most of them are complete crap. Very few have any noteworthy value.

I have no positions. Im bullish cryptos long term.

Maybe a noob Q but Why is 21M a "limit"?; cant we just deal in fractions of a coin at POS?

Once AppleCoin or AmazonCoin type Corporate funded Coins emerge i imagine we will see a nice boom there.

Seems like all these marketcaps are infantile even at 2017 prices.

Looking forward to the AmazonCoin bubble that is going to be at the complete peril of a government decision

No cryptocurrency will ever scale and decentralized distributed systems can be shut down overnight. Exhibit A: Bittorrent. Riight

Most people invest in gold because its backed by adornment value. Riight. Who knew adornment value could skyrocket this much in the past decade.

I can't even

??
Bitcoin was launched in 2008. Ethereum was launched in 2015. Compare:



Ethereum is crushing the crap out of Bitcoin.

I mean, Bitcoin has first mover advantage of many years, and mindshare/PR share/idiot share, yet two alternative coins are almost equal when put together.

Your claim that Bitcoin won't be diluted by other blockchains seems contradicted by the evidence. It's being diluted faster than anyone imagined, I would say. Nor are large amounts of money are needed for security. Security grows naturally with the value of the coin. All you need is a use case and people to buy in/incentives. Idiots will always chase bubble pushed by PR - that's why a whole penny stock industry exists.
It has happened!! Look at the graph above. Two coins many years behind have nearly caught up. Alt coins overall are worth more than Bitcoin. I mean, precisely what you describe is happening!!

You're a smart guy. What you must have here is pure bubble blindness. Because Bitcoin is going up, it can't be getting diluted! Or something. I really don't understand your comment at all.

Bitcoin just reached less than half the market cap of all coins, for the first time. With many years of lead time and far greater press. I would say being more valuable than Bitcoin in aggregate means something.

What has you so bullish on Tezos? .... in terms of product characteristics

Any concerns with either the pushed back ico or that the ico is uncapped?

Last few pages of this thread has made me realize it's time to buy more bitcoin.

You know you want to. Why not put your life savings in it? Everything you have. To the moon!

I'll just leave this here:



You must be trolling or something with that comment. It can't be sincere.

Please toothsayer, do explain how you shut down a massive decentralized, distributed system overnight.

The quality of thought in this thread is so horrible. Bittorrent is very decentralized. Tens of millions of widely distributed nodes. Bitcoin is not decentralized due to ASICs and power costs. It is concentrated in a few spots. If Bitcoin could still be competitively mined on GPUs, you would be correct.

As for "shut down overnight"? Sure. Governments in China & the US decide that Bitcoin is a threat to their power and the stability of their countries, or their friends in the banking system. They raid the main Bitcoin farms under the pretext of illegal currency creation, or laundering, and control 65% of the mining power overnight. They make possession of mining ASICs illegal under the same existing laws. Bitcoin is finished overnight. It's $xx billion market cap evaporates like mist.

Bitcoin is fundamentally flawed like that, because it's not actually decentralized.

The fact that you don't even think that is theoretically possible, or that Bitcoin is decentralized (lolwtf??), shows you haven't thought about this at all.

Anyway. I wasn't talking about the above scenario. I was talking about the US banning trading in Bitcoins through the financial system. Mainstream adoption is gone. Your bull is gone. It'll survive on the fringes, for a long time, but the market cap will decline.
Adornment provides the base value. Speculation sits on top of that. Just like the illegal economy provides the base value for Bitcoin, and speculation is what spikes it above that (before it crashes back to illegal economy value when the speculation ponzi dies its natural death).

In a meeting, may have worded that poorly. Well aware of the btc vs other crypto market share.

In fact I like when others, namely platforms, such as ethereum gain more.

So yes, bitcoin total share is diluted, but the overall market is still growing by leaps and bounds.

After the ETF was denied bitcoin was $900 and had probably 80% total market share. Now it's worth double that and has 50% share. That's a good thing.

You keep reverting the argument back to the current state of Bitcoin. I've already acknowledged and everyone knows Bitcoin centralization is a huge problem. But your assumption that no cryptocurrency will solve the problem of centralization is absurd.

This is the Bitcoin thread. I was discussing the state of Bitcoin and its future when you entered the convo.
Your assumption that it's probable to be solved is also absurd.

Some things are unsolvable. And if a currency comes along that can solve the centralization problem, Bitcoin is done. Your "investment" so far in Bitcoin/alts is wiped out. If you believe in the blockchain, that's a very good reason to not buy into what's out there right now for too much of your stack.

Take Ethereum. It came out years later than Bitcoin, and has nearly caught up in that little bit of time. Why? It does some stuff better than Bitcoin does. Includes other uses no one had explored before. You think that process is finished? How many coins are you going to buy, how much will your investment be diluted, before you get the big one? And when will it come? Next year or decades from now?

Even if you're right on Blockchain tech, there is still zero guarantee you can make money out of it.

Anyway, have your thread back...I feel like I'm walking into a cult meeting here.

I'll be back when it's $300