This all sounds like what I would call a "bubble," at least in the short term. I don't pretend to be an expert so maybe my terminology is off.

bitcoin is not a company. don't try to value it as a company. bitcoin is a network. Metcalfe's law is a more appropriate way to value it.

Again even IF we are in a bubble there are 3 very obvious ways to make money assuming your hypothesis is correct:

1)Daytrade
2)Try and ride the bubble up from here
3)Find a way to short and hold on for dear life

Sitting around calling something a bubble prior to the burst is kind of worthless. You might be right but it does nothing for you unless you actually act on it. Those of you guys thinking this is FINALLY the end of crypto are in for a rude awakening(again).

I suspect many of the “bears” aren’t truly bears and are simply looking for free investment advice (like Trolly did earlier, was pretty obvious imo) or for knowledgeable people to spoon feed them information they could parlay into a trade.

Nobody who has made $0 in the space can truly believe that they have it all figured out and the guys making tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands are just playing bad and getting there. And if they REALLY did believe that, they would have taken a position. But they don’t. You’re a better man than I am for even engaging with these people.

When extreme divergence of opinion on future value exists, one will see whipsaw moves on price, primarily because there are few in the middle that can moderate market action. This divergence becomes evident simply by reading this thread.

This volatility does not necessarily invalidate any individual's view on what future value will be. When adoption of more likely scenarios takes hold, then volatility will decline.

It doesn’t matter if adoption ever takes place. Bitcoin has already gone to the moon despite the nearly complete lack of adoption. There is no due date. It’s the greatest designed pyramid scheme of all time.

People who invest in it all start at the end. The end is they get rich. Then they fill in the dots of how they get there, such and such is going to happen. But it doesn’t matter. Demand itself begets more demand.

Scoreboard, *****.

It’s the only argument you will ever need.

You must be too young to remember the dot.com bubble. It's either that, or you learned absolutely nothing from it.

Tech companies have to report earnings. Bitcoin doesn’t.

Lol

I'm super bullish on bitcoin if that's not clear.

I agree with you that with further adoption (which I think is happening and will continuously keep happening) and a fixed amount of total supply and the network effects that bitcoin has in it's network. Each additional user in the network will increase the value of everyone's bitcoin in the network as it grows.

to me it's superior to gold in every way possible and gold is a $6-8 trillion dollar market cap.

Speaking as a lurking sort-of-bear, I'm definitely bitter that I'm not super rich from bitcoinz. I knew about it early enough to be :P

I'm not really looking for free investment advice though. It's just interesting to follow. As far as being bearish, I think some of the questions about where the value of bitcoin really comes from are meaningful. I understand the tech well enough (I work in tech, I have some background in cryptology, blah blah blah), and it's definitely intriguing. It's definitely cool. If coolness were a reliable measure of value, that would be enough. But when trolly asks about adoption, or about what bitcoin is ultimately going to be useful for, I think those are fairly reasonable questions. I find it difficult to take seriously claims that cryptocurrencies are going to replace banks. Not that anyone has to answer these questions or justify the value. But "how much money have you made?" isn't really a particularly compelling argument as far as figuring out the future of BTC. Although I take the point that in the mid-short term those questions may not really matter as far as opportunities to make money? But I'm mostly interested in what the long-term value of the tech really is. I can understand why the Big Ideas (for lack of a better term) capture people's imaginations, but I'm still a bit skeptical that it's really going to change the world in the way that the "HODL TO THE MOON" perspective claims.

On the other hand, I doubt that it's worthless too. I just don't know what the actual value is.

How does bitcoin solve the underlying causes of the financial crisis?

I consistently dislike arguments like this. It implies that everyone around the world stores their wealth in cash form under their mattress or something rather than investing it in inflation-beating risky assets. Furthermore it implies that a currency is better if it is either deflationary or constant supply which is very wrong in the former and unproven in the latter imo.

Random addendum: I enjoy Fred Wilson's blog and he just posted about this topic here, although he kind of avoids making many predictions. But he points to the same questions, and I think his high-level conclusion makes sense: "I don’t believe that the recent selloff is a massive buying opportunity, but I also don’t think that anything has really changed in the fundamental analysis of the sector in the past month. I remain long term bullish and short term cautious."

If you believe that your best estimate of the future value of a Bitcoin is the current value of a Bitcoin (which is the sensible thing to do when you believe that you don't actually have any edge in out-predicting anybody else) then all of these are dumb things to do.

About the only argument for any of these would be (2) on non-linear "utility of money" grounds, but then the same could be said to justify buying lotto tickets, etc.

Everything else in recent history that has looked like a huge bubble has actually turned out to be... a huge bubble! So we're supposed to believe it's all going to be different this time because of ...?

IMO, the fact that there is no intrinsic value (and thus the price is only rising because people are hoping to finding an even bigger sucker to sell to later...) makes this look like the bubbliest bubble in human history.

'The Emperor's New Clothes' by Hans Christian Andersen

Juk

But it has popped before...and recovered.
and it will Pop again....and probably recover.

I was a skeptic at first as well...but the fact that the damn thing never dies really forced me to deep-dive read.

What is the value of something that allows you to store 100% of your entire net-worth IN YOUR MIND, or on a usb drive, or on a piece of paper, or in the Cloud, AND cross every any border in the world without fear of having a single penny of your wealth stripped?

What is the value of something that has 0 barriers to entry and allows you to flee a hyper-inflationary environment and is then transportable across the earth?

What do millennials, and especially the generations to come, love? Digital ****.
What else do they love? rare, collective ****? What is Bitcoin?...digital, rare, collectible(if you have the stomach).

This was a very common argument on 2p2 during the silver bubble.

sweet ****ing jesus

I really can't tell who the more delusional group is, the turbo bears or turbo bulls.

Probably the turbo bears...the turbo bulls (I'm not one...yet ;] ) at least bring up thought/discussion provoking arguments supporting Bitcoin.
The turbo bears argument hasn't changed since BTC 30$. Nothing backing it, it's a bubble, no one uses it(except to buy drugs, sex-toys, gamble).

Thread is great lately! What do all you bitcoin bulls think of ETH?

The common argument is basically everyone will use bitcoin and the evil banks will die. But of course this doesn't attend to any serious inquiry into the future implications of bitcoin. Right now bitcoin is volatile, among other reasons we are waiting for exchange stability. Bitcoin's price skyrockets and the exchange "break". There needs to be a robust decentralized international price created.

Then bitcoin will arise to the level of gold (ie a few trillion dollar cap. At that point it will begin to affect monetary policy, banks will face a crisis because they will lose customers if they create too much inflation.

Think of Venezuela, the higher the inflation the fast the price goes up comparatively versus the rest of the world. The only response will be to inflation target bitcoin itself and this will put the world on a digital gold standard removing the role of the usd as the de facto reserve currency.

At the same the higher market cap allows larger and larger players to use it, make economic embargoes impossible.

No, it's a bubble, nothing backs it, nobody uses it.

Being "backed" is not a requirement of a sound money. And those that want to permissionlessly transfer millions or even billions of dollars worth near instantly and for very little cost are finding it increasingly more valuable. This is why speculation is a fine driver of the value. There are higher value players waiting for the market cap to get big enough for it to be useful for higher value transfers.

Let's just dispel this myth of people moving millions or billions of dollars of money. They're moving crypto. To acquire crypto you have to buy it with money. To liquidate crypto you have to find someone who will buy your crypto for real money. Last time I checked my coinbase deposit limit was $250 a week. Even if I could get my limits on all exchanges as high as possible and buy coins from LBC etc it would take months to move even a million real dollars let alone a billion. And then the guy on the other end has to liquidate his!

No. Those big transactions you see on the blockchain are for the most part not actual money transactions. They're exchanges of crypto.

You just answered why we aren't in the trillions of dollars total market cap for crypto yet...liquidity is not yet there for the big players....but exchanges are actively working on this every-day.