You should have read a little longer to understand his point. If someone steals my gold bar there is a good chance I will get it back. But with stolen bitcoins.. not so much.

Do you have any stats on "new people" who bought at the peak? I haven't seen any.

Sure there is anecdotal "omg my grandma lost her house" and "that guy on reddit who took a 300k loan to buy crypto at 15k" but other than that I find it hard to believe that "most people who have invested in crypto are down"

There were a lotttt of new people in the run from $200 -> $5000 who are still up significantly. Hell a ton of new people bought after the famous Silk Road gizmodo article when bitcoin was $8 and started a bull run:

http://gawker.com/the-underground-we...-imag-30818160

Every single buyer for 8 years is way up, if they held any all all even through this "collapse" - that gets overlooked in this collapse narrative. And it's not even the worst bear market since bitcoin started, or the 2nd.

Of course, you say you stopped reading right before the rest of the sentence, where I said: "that have essentially zero chance of being returned to the rightful owner".

You don't understand. With crypto, even if you know who stole it, and where it is, you still cannot get it back. I read last week where a valuable painting had been stolen from a museum in the 1980's. This painting was now worth over one hundred million. Guess what? The thieves, and seemingly modest husband and wife, both died within a few years. The nephew who inherited the house and belongings went through it, and sold the painting for 2K to an antiques dealer at an estate sale. Now, if the two thieves had stolen one hundred million in crypto in the last few years, and the nephew was given the password/keys., etc., the rightful owner has no chance of getting it back, and the nephew gets it all.So, what would you want to have right now, even you, a bitcoin pumper? Would you rather have 100 million in dollars, or 100 million worth of bitcoin....right now...in an account. How about 100 million in dollars at Wells Fargo, or 100 million in bitcoin, but you had to hold both in an account for two years? Easy questions.

Antiques dealer puts the painting up in his shop, has multiple customers comment that it may be a valuable stolen piece. The museum now has it back. If your crytpo gets stolen, you are doomed, even if you know who stole it. That is the "system" that you wanted, and you go it. So, you will have to deal with that undeniable reality.

Gold coins and bars are fungible. A famous painting is not. Try harder, not close to the same thing.

Of course i'd take the crypto. Trezor or hardware wallet with worldlist backup is safer than Wells Fargo. Your FDIC insurance isn't going to cover that when they go down either. Not possible? ask the people who had money with Lehman Brothers.

Basically what happened in the case you linked is that the guy had his money stolen from COINBASE - essentially a bitcoin bank. They were fooled cause his login credentials were stolenvia ATT.

Had he used a hardware wallet he would have been fine. It's just amazing that you don't see the irony of trying to prove your case by using a bitcoin bank like Coinbase as your example of being unsafe.

I dont have stats, but there has to be a lot of new investors for the hype and bubble to get that big. Also, housewives started to talk about investing in cryptos.. That is the time to bolt.

EDIT: Also, according to blockchain number of wallets doubled in 2017. https://www.blockchain.com/charts/my...s?timespan=all

And, there are a lot of newcomers who stored their coins in exchanges because the whole wallet thing baffled them.

EDIT2: https://cointelegraph.com/news/expon...-users-per-day

That also pretty much proves my statement to be true. That most who have been in crypto are down. It got absolutely insane at the end of 2017 and beginning of 2018.

Ok, I haven't seen any stats either. It's hard to say if it was housewives or hedge funds/tether/bitfinex house trading that drove the price. Of course there were lots of new users, but I think it's really hard to quantify vs the "group of people" that drove btc from 0 -$1000.

See my previous post about thin seller liquidity. There wasnt enough btc for sale to satisfy demand.

Tether didn't have **** to do with the runup. The usdt exchanged were selling at huge discounts the entire time. I can't believe people still buy into the muh tether narrative

The "new accounts" statistics provided by Coinbase are exaggerated. Coinbase manipulated the statistics by running $10 refer a friend promotion which was credited even if the new account didn't deposit or get verified. Throughout the rally, the Coinbase compliance department experienced massive delays in account verification, because they were completely unprepared for the increased demand.

The fact is, AFAIK, there is no concrete estimate in regards to the real number of new people and fresh fiat responsible for the rally. What we do have is little evidence that institutional or retail money was involved. When the ask side of an order book is thin, and arbitrage is extremely difficult, small purchases make big impacts on price.

So these early holders must have already dumped all their coins at $1...or maybe they didn't and dumped them all at $30....or maybe they continued to hold and dumped them all at $1,200 or $20,000. What is the price point when early holders dump, because the price has gone up exponentially many times.

If I got in at 5 cents, and I was only in it for $ based profits, bet your ass I'd have dumped at $1.

It's the easiest way to compare purchasing power. You could never convert it to $ but you might buy a house, a car, and a speedboat with it. At this early stage it's just easiest to compare it to $.

Sorry housenuts, you're not allowed to argue that crypto has outperformed USD badly by noting its price compared to USD. That would mean you're secretly in love with USD and want to marry USD.

Chrissakes you're condescending. You have accomplished nothing to earn the right to be so, so we can deduce it's a crippling personality flaw.

I wouldn't waste my time arguing with the Dunning/Kruger victims in this thread who have no ability to make actual money from this market as either bull or bear. Consider the situation objectively from first principles, develop actionable theses and profit.

Some of us make our investment decisions based on what we can reasonably believe will make money rather than by following whoever we think has earned the right to be condescending

Non-responsive. You're rude and condescending, you don't offer any particularly compelling arguments of your own as to your superior investment reasoning and you almost certainly haven't made all that much money in the grand scheme of things. Interestingly, those who have earned the most are typically also the most humble, which all but precludes you from ever having real financial success.

Cool story bro

Good laydown.

The reality is hardly anybody gets rich by being humble, and the ones who do would likely get much richer if they weren't humble. You're far more likely to get rich by overestimating your edge and getting lucky.

And if you're not familiar with the first law of the universe: people who throw around claims of superiority referencing Dunning Kruger are never ever ever ever successful

How exactly do you know this?

I have no direct evidence of this on hand, but the highest earners are most likely all extreme narcissists who had an overbearing confidence in themselves while believing those around them were nothing more than a means to an end.

I'm fairly certain there are documentaries, books, and other studies that directly support this.

(not a bitcoin comment)
Good God bro, no, just no. You have this ass-backwards. Psychological measures of narcissism, machiavellianism, psychopathy, combativeness and aggressiveness are all moderately to extremely strongly correlated with financial and career success.

The underlined is freakin hilarious in how completely ass-backwards you have things. You're claiming a near certainty from something which is not only not nearly certain, but in fact less than 30%. That's just wow.

Who gives a ****? Seriously this subforum is turning into aids... Has nothing to do with Bitcoin, you guys are just being douchebags.

If the bulls didn't resort to personal attacks every time someone smart says something that isn't HODLMOOOOOOOOON there'd be no issue

Come for the price concern-trolling (thinly veiled schadenfreude from missing the massive run up over 8 years), stay for the pop-psychology game theory.

We need a new thread to discuss the technology itself.