Not disputing it but where's this # taken from

This is dodgy reasoning. Few are putting all their liquid money into bitcoin while there are many other alternatives. Therefore it's a tiny fraction of that. Maybe $3000 if 1% of the world put 10% of their wealth in bitcoin.

It doesn't work like this.

lol? You're factoring in inflation? Do I get to factor in bond returns vs gold when holding USD (bonds have crushed gold).

Nope, your analysis misses the mark imo. 1% taking on bitcoin for 10% of their wealth (a high estimate, for most people this is nothing but a lark), gives a 50% loss.

But the main way it misses the mark is that supply/demand dynamics are what matter. Pyramid get-rich/pump and dumps tend to have huge inflated run ups that bear little relationship to a stable value (which is far far lower). We're certainly in one now.

Godson do you have 100% of your liquid wealth in bitcoin?

@housenuts: bitcoin users at most / world population (21,915,935 / 7,600,000,000)

@Toothsayer: Yeah there is a lot of flaws with my stuff. I whipped this up before bed. I will look into this later, but I have to go to work. So I'll look at this more later.

@OmgGlutten: No, I invested somewhere around 12.5%ish and it has grown to like 33%ish.

I agree and disagree. A lot of the money coming into the market is doing what you're suggesting, but there's still a lot of teams which are full of innovators who are actually trying to advance crypto.

I think that there's likely to be a major problem with altcoins, even the ones that actually provide something innovative, because the majority of their coins will be held by investors who have no plan to actually use the coin. BTC has a big advantage here because the early users actually used the coin; we've all heard the story about million dollar pizzas etc. and that spread the coin around. I have no figures about how spread out BTC is, but anecdotal stuff like the Winklevii owning 1% and that being a huge amount suggest that it's pretty spread out and therefore once it's easier for BTC to be used to purchase things, it will actually be used for that purpose.

That 25,000 bitcoin pizza is a $180 million pizza today.

[QUOTE=TheGodson;53079789
There are 21,915,936 bitcoin addresses
There are 21,915,936 bitcoin users at most (certainly it is much lower than this)
[/QUOTE]

I'm curious about this. I'd say majority of ppl just hodl coins on exchange and haven't spun up their own address.

That being said I've likely spun up over 500. So I guess it's probably true.

It was two Papa John's pizzas for a total of 10,000 Bitcoins. 70.6 million.

Let's say someone recreated bitcoin from the beginning tomorrow. Why is old bitcoin #1 better than new bitcoin #2?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

And he could have bought back the 10,000 BTC for about $40 at the time. There are plenty of early posts of people arranging trades on bitcointalk.org for a few dollars per 1000.

It's the network of miners, users, exchanges, merchants, websites, forums, etc. That's what makes bitcoin more useful than other coins, and usefulness is what gives anything value.

Because $120 billion in equity doesn't want to lose their position and people are trying to do that, and they are getting laughed at. And you would never get the all star team that bitcoin has for development.

I currently use coinbase and blockchain. I have looked on the bitcoin gold site a few times now, and still don't see either of these supported (if "supported" is the correct word to use). I don't understand how I am supposed to claim my bitcoin gold. I'm sorry if this has been asked/covered before. could anyone point me to instructions or give advice on this?

I am assuming that I wont have to do anything for the upcoming fork. both of the sites I use will support the coming fork, correct?

Technologically, no difference. It's very easy to clone the current bitcoin protocol.

Hash power (+ sunken costs) + users -wise? Big difference.

Bitcoin's only real use case is to deliver censorship resistance, and new bitcoin #2 won't have enough decentralized hash power to achieve that.

You can do it right now. It's easy.

You'll have no mining support and easily susceptible to being 51 percented.

You'll have no value thus no one will want to mine your coin to give you security.

You'll have no network effect or users that want to use your coin.

I think the same could be said for making a new USD (assuming it was legal).

It would be lower quality and much more susceptible to forgery.

No one would accept it or use it so it would have no value.

This is wrong. For your first 5ish years maybe it is true, but somewhere around that point (it varies for people, some figure it out a lot faster, but I am one of the dullest knives in the drawer) you sit back and think to yourself:

Damn. All that BTC I sold for stupid fiat would have been worth a lot more if I had just held it. I don't think I wanna sell BTC for fiat anymore. I think I want to earn BTC and hold it. Let's see what plays out.

I realize my error with not acknowledging that people won't be 100% invested in bitcoin. It certainly would be lower. However, if it is lower at one point for earlier buyers it could be higher at another. Some people may buy 5% of their wealth in bitcoin, but after some time it ends up becoming 40% of their wealth.

I've been googling how to determine the price of bitcoin's true value. I found a cool article that some of you crypto fans may like. Basically the Winklevoss brothers (the ones who sued facebook) valuate bitcoin at roughly the same price I picked. Of course, their reasoning is a bit more in depth. Still though.

https://www.investopedia.com/article...00-billion.asp


Toothsayer, what would you evaluate bitcoin's true value at and how would you come to this conclusion?

I think a thing to consider about bitcoin is this. Do you guys think there is more than a 50% chance that bitcoins value could double yet again? I think so. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me that much if it shot up to over 20k some time next year. If you think about the probabilities for bitcoin to succeed it doesn't seem too awful of an idea to buy even if there is a greater probability of it collapsing. As long as the payout is +EV then it is a good idea.

At some point people could be wanting bitcoin more for actual bitcoin than the $ evaluation of it. I actually find myself feeling this way sometimes. Bitcoin is just so damn cool. It just is and everyone knows it.

I understand, you do, but most people are in it to make more FIAT.
They really don't care about the use etc..

do you mean buying and holding to the point that FIAT doesn't matter anymore?

this guy thinks the folks behind Tether are printing millions in fake money and using the fake money to fund their own fake long positions on Bitfinex.

https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/are-f...x-5de9dd80f330

BitCoin and cryptocurrencies is perhaps one of the most confusing topics I've ever encountered. If you look at the graphs, and some of the news, you'd see the "deflationary currency" (not truly deflationary, but putting that aside) as undercutting the dollar. Except, I don't understand how that can be, because why would one directly trade a good or service for crypto in the first place? I have read a plausible explanation that people offer bitcoins for the same reason they offer coupons. But, it's hard to wrap my head around it. For these reasons I do not know how to evaluate the worth of cryptocurrencies though I accept they are worth something. It appears to me that it is undercutting currencies, but it is unclear as to why.

On the surface the word "BitCoin" sounds like "magical realism". Bitmagic combined with currency. So, it's a big WTF???

leaves, what is your definition of deflationary?

All of bitcoins value is its store of wealth. We are living in a society where property value, stock market value, and gold value are considered by many extremely high. Bitcoin offers more diversification and room for growth. Bitcoin also offers liquidity and a very low barrier for investment. It’s the safest most main stream crypto to get into. If you think it’s overvalued you need to consider the risk vs reward for where it’s been to where it can go.

Nobody really knows whats going on with Tether except that it's sketchy as ****. All new USDT gets deposited to Bitfinex and mostly gets parked on Bittrex and Polo, so whoever is buying the USDT is probably looking to wash them through altcoins. Given that the CSO (possibly CEO) of Tether/Finex lives in NY, this operation is a ticking timebomb.

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pi...er/000685.html

I was just reading that Noose. crazy.

Also, Haralabob made CoinDesk's Top 5 Traders
https://www.coindesk.com/coindesks-t...analysts-2017/