The onchain fees are so uninteresting to me.

It is a highly sort after means of transaction.

Should every transaction that everyone on Earth makes every day of their life be stored on one secure, immutable & public ledger for the rest of time? No.

I wonder how long before exchanges just balk at supporting these forks. I guess its just another thing that can be traded....which they like but the effort to support them offsets that.

I imagine the weaker forks will be a tough sell soon as exchanges just tell them to fly a kite

Is it?

Anytime anyone questions this "fact" they get shouted down and told that there's really no way of knowing if it's actually being used for non speculation transactions. Most anecdotal evidence suggests it's not a highly sought after means of transaction but that it's a highly sought after means of speculation.

Use your brain. Fees = supply versus demand. 'Supply' is currently capped at 1mb + improvement via SegWit.

If it wasn't highly demanded > nobody would use it > fees would be minimal.

See: almost every other coin.

Sending bitcoin from one address to another, regardless of purpose, is apparently a highly valued thing to do. If it were not, there would be no backlog at these fees.

The demand is driven by the speculation not utility.

What happens once bitcoin reaches the moon and the price levels out at one million dollars and stabilizes? Once the price stabilizes speculation will fall off of a cliff. What will drive the transaction demand then?

ITs funny...high fees make it more desirable to hold, because is its costly to reacquire. zero fees like iota make it easier to flip at the last minute, so there isnt as much demand on the float. In the longer term this reverses as high fees eventually screw over the coin, but it is interesting that in the short to medium term high fees cause more holding

Please cite proof.

Speculation largely done on exchanges, not onchain.

If your thesis is correct and speculation dies down, then fees will become minimal again and I'm sure you will find something else to FUD about.

it will settle into a risk adjusted rate of return somewhere between stocks and bonds. all assets have risk and the returns eventually fall in line with the level of risk. bitcoin isnt that risky. right now its volatile because its being adopted...but eventually it will be pretty boring. IT could hit the moon but then it might settle into an orbit giving a boring 6-8%. it must be so eventually, unless the theories behind risk adjusted rate of return are flawed

I could care less about fees. I was simply addressing your assertion that "it is a highly sought after means of transaction". Myself, and many others have asked repeatedly what it's being used for besides speculation and no answer is ever forthcoming. All anecdotal evidence suggests that it's being used less and less for any transactions not related to speculation.

As far as my thesis about speculation dyeing down, do you disagree? The only way I can see for speculation not to die down is if the price continues to skyrocket in perpetuity. I don't see how it's possible for the price to continue increasing dramatically forever so at some point the price will necessarily have to stabilize. Do you think there will still be as many people speculating on btc using their credit cards once the price stabilizes?


Surely the number of speculators will drop dramatically once that happens? My question is what else is it going to be used for then or will it no longer be "a highly sought after means of transactions" once the speculators leave?

I give up.

You are right, despite no evidence and being highly inefficient compared to using an exchange, every single transaction that happens on the blockchain is people speculating on the price of BTC.

We are all doomed, exit all of the crypto markets.

Where is the event horizon. is it tomorrow? is it the next day?

predicting eventual demise is worthless...you cant make any money at it. you need to have a solid feel on the if and when. The perpertual doom and gloomer will eventually be right, but they will lose thier shirt, pants house car and swimming pool if they bet that way. then when they are broke will they fistpump and say. bitcoin crashed. knew it

fyp

You're totally missing the point. I'm simply asking the very simple question of what's it's utility? The answer I repeatedly get is that it's utility is you buy it and the price goes up. I don't see that as a utility, let alone a sustainable one.

the biggest uuse of BTc outside of gambling/drugs that I've seen is as a use to buy other coins that actually have a utility

Every page of this thread has people advising that you don't leave your coins on an exchange due to their risky nature. All of the advise is that you should move them to a private wallet for safekeeping and then move them back to the exchange to sell them. Doesn't that create a lot of on chain transactions purely for speculative purposes?

Wonder if this had anything to do with ETH jump today:

https://twitter.com/RussHarben/statu...34821643034625

Whats the minimum you can transfer to Bittrex? Eth, LTC, or BTC

Why would this fork have any value? Cash has value because of the backing of chinese miners and possibly chinese gov't. I don't know anything about Garzik's fork, but I assume it would command the same or less market value as a fork like Diamond, for which the futures are trading at ~$30.

This has nothing to do with the ETH price

More likely is that legions of newbs/rubes are piling into crypto now and are intimidated by the price of bitcoin, and as such are turning to LTC and ETH. These coins are easily available via coinbase and as such are seeing a surge in price

If that quote of Diamond price is per BTCdiamond.... multiply it by 8 or 10 (I forget which) since each BTC gets 8 or 10 of them dropped.

First time poster, long time reader.

Last week my associate was convinced that bitcoin would reach min. 20k by the new year.

Thoughts on this happening?

Thanks. I'll hang up and listen now.

There are plenty of good answers itt. You aren’t the 1st person to come up with this question and you won’t be the last. If you really want to know try reading the thread before you demand answers.

Enjoyed this recent podcast from Peter Schiff on Bitcoin. I think he analyzes the current market with sound logic and an open mind and brings up some very reasonable concerns regarding the future of bitcoin. I'd be curious if some of the long term bulls on here could give their analysis on his take on bitcoin at the moment and maybe share their thoughts on why they feel he is off point.

In one breath he admits that crypto has a market cap of half a trillion and then in another he says bitcoin is useless/worthless. Somehow the coin that is the backbone of the entire market is useless. He also acts like bitcoin can never be upgraded or have conventional banking tech implemented.

He is right that bitcoin could be usurped but the crypto tech as a whole still has a long lot of room to grow. Old people like Peter thought it was insane to buy things on the internet with your credit card 15 years ago.

Skimmed a bit through it to get a general idea of his arguments and heard him say "Bitcoin was introduced on the scene having never had any value whatsoever, there was never anything backing up Bitcoin from day one and so that's why I didn't think it was going to work". After hearing that hot take I just closed it and stopped wasting my time.

I'm so tired of morons who haven't done the slightest research on the subject giving their "expert" opinions. I have to assume they are either utterly incompetent or just plain malicious.

Just because someone made a fortune working in radio doesn't mean you should believe what they have to say about television.