[Laska]

Someone could make a better currency, or possibly outlaw cryptocurrency.

[SamuelBRoberts]

(11-04-2017 09:12 PM)Laska Wrote:  

Someone could make a better currency, or possibly outlaw cryptocurrency.

There are a bunch of better currencies. (Litecoin for instance is technologically much nicer) and bitcoin's first mover advantage has kept it in the lead.

The government seems to have decided against outlawing cryptocurrencies. They've had the chance and said no.

[Foolsgo1d]

These crypto currencies is the reason prices of RAM is going up?

[SamuelBRoberts]

RAM no, Video Cards yes.

[Bill Brasky]

(11-02-2017 08:53 PM)gework Wrote:  

According to a 2016 study by University College London, around $440 million dollars are spent annually on mining Bitcoin, enough money to employ about 14,000 people in the United States. In the same year the largest Bitcoin payment processor, BitPay, was only handling a few millions dollars of transactions per month. If you added up all the real economic transactions (not speculative transactions) it's possible that there was more money invested in securing the network (mining) than in real transactions. Since Bitcoin is billed as a cryptocurrencey and not crypto-store-of-value, this isn't a great advertisement. International bank wires, visa fees etc. are only around 1-2% of the transactions they facilitate. This year BitPay may reach $1 billion in transactions, but this is a figure which again will not stand well against the resources poured into Bitcoin mining. To translate that $440 million estimate for 2016, that meant that an equivalent value of food production, transport, communications, energy, manufacture etc. had to be destroyed to provide for the resources put into the Bitcoin network.

I'd also add that of the people who are using Bitcoin for real, non-speculative transactions, almost all of them are likely to be people who have accrued large gains in purchasing power from Bitcoin's appreciation and don't have national currencies to use so are forced to used Bitcoin. This leads to another problem, which is Bitcoin's epic deflation against assets...

Bitcoin is billed as a cryptocurrencey, but it lacks one of the most important features of a currency - stability.

The affects of a currency losing value against assets (inflation) are well known. The price instability causes assets to require repricing (sometimes daily), which in itself wastes time. In this environment consumers don't want to hold on to money, they want to spend it before it becomes worthless. But more importantly it destroys businesses ability to be able to plan anything as today's investment has an unknown price in the future. People don't know how to react as there is no reliable valuation for anything. It causes people to hold on to assets they can't value, loose their jobs, production to slow and business to go bankrupt.

The affects of a currency gaining value against assets (deflation) are less well known but have occurred. In this instance, you can buy more assets each passing day, week, month, year. This may sound brilliant for consumers, but it has the same affect as inflation: slowing production, bankruptcy and job losses. Productive (rather than speculative) business ventures carry considerable risk. If you invest $100,000 in starting or growing a business, you can not only loose all of it, but end up with less via debt, legal problems etc. When a currency is deflating (it can purchase more assets) the incentive to make such risky investments falls. Why would you invest it and risk it when you can leave it to go up in value?

An example of deflation of a currency against an asset is when there is a stock market crash - the currency buys more stock. This causes the economic turmoil above, where no one has a good measure of fair value and few want to make investment risks in such an environment. According to perennial Bitcoin bulls, Bitcoin will always be in this state of deflation against assets. The more people buy and hold Bitcoin the more assets Bitcoin will be exchangeable for. If Bitcoin were a de facto currency it would cause a deflationary depression that would never end, as Bitcoin is inherently deflationary with it's 21 million cap.

The purpose of a currency is to be a reliable medium of exchange. In itself it doesn't need any value, it just represents the value of what it is agreed it can be exchanged for. If the currency has a backing, like gold, it then becomes at risk to the deflationary nature of gold's limited supply. A currency should not make people incredibly wealthy for sitting at home doing nothing, producing nothing on the virtue of buying it before other people. If the whole world did this, there wouldn't be an economy. A genuine and usable cryptocurrency must have a mechanism for price stability to be able to compete as a usable currency against national currencies.

At writing, the coin market cap is $192 billion. Presumably a similar amount of money has entered the market. That's $192 billion (roughly equal to the GDP of Portugal) that has exited the economy which provides things people need and want, that provides jobs and the basis for future economic growth. These people are investing in something that is producing no physical value, little measurable value and is the most inefficiently powered transaction method available.

Bitcoin can't produce any wealth (assets) in the future to warrant it's $117 billion market cap and it can't be a stable medium of exchange. This has led some Bitcoin bulls to promote it as a store of value; that it should be a safe place to park your purchasing power for the future. But an asset is only a store of value in certain circumstances. Bitcoin has been an incredible store of value since 2009, while silver (also called a store of value) has lost more than half its value since 2011. An asset is only a store of value in certain circumstances. Silver and other precious metals have earned the title "store of value" over a long history in which they tend to have been stores of value over a lifetime. It became a store of value on the back of having real economic value which the speculative investment market causes an unproductive bubble on top of.

Bitcoin is often touted as being valued, because it is rare. Yet there are billions of other tokens that have virtually the same properties, sometimes better. They are not so well adopted, but neither is Bitcoin itself. If BitPay do $1 billion of transactions this year, I am assuming the economy of real Bitcoin transactions amounts to $2 billion dollars, roughly equivalent to the GDP of Greenland with a population of 56,000. The internet was doing much better with real users by this point and the uses of the internet were much more obvious.

Bitcoin does have interesting and useful properties and it has opened avenues which may be useful in the future, but are you buying Bitcoin for that? Are you paying 1% to covert your national currency to Bitcoin to pay a merchant so they can pay 1% to convert it to their national currency? Probably not, you are likely buying it because you think it will go up in value while you and no one else produces anything or does anything to back that value. That increase in value comes from people doing productive jobs, getting paid and pumping up the Bitcoin price with that value.

With that said, if you want to increase your purchasing power via speculation my guess is that the crypto markets will continue to grow until someone develops a crypto that can attach itself to the real, productive economy. So far no crypto has done so to an extent that would make it anything approaching a sound investment. Bitcoin isn't particularly appealing as it would take maybe something in the region of a $100 billion inflow for you to double your money and pull backs don't take much volume to shave off huge percentages of the market cap. There's quite a lot of coins that have slipped a lot and occasionally these get a good pump. But a better method would be to go with what drives a lot of the market, which is buzz. In that case I would go with EOS, which has just gone up about 100% on volumes that would barely affect Bitcoin. Another angle is to buy small caps. Some of the older ones get heady pumps and some of the newer ones often get better. As an example, ETP, was recently added to BitFinex. It was at ~$40M, fell to ~$20M before shooting up to ~$140M. So that's one you could have made 7X on in a week or so. In this category I am looking at three that are below $15M: EDO, SAN and AVT. I consider all of these to be junk, which no one will remember in a few years, but they will likely have their pump(s).

If you want real value, invest in where you think the most real wealth will be produced or where people will spend their excess wealth on luxury items (that destroy real wealth). For the former I am looking at tech and science areas that will open new grounds or save considerable time, as a dual example companies that produce automation robots. For the latter the main area I am looking at is marijuana stocks in Canada, where lealisation is seemingly around the corner. These have already gone up a few hundred percent and could sink their teeth into a very large untapped market.

The biggest refutation to the cost of electricity argument is that the indirect costs of maintaining the primacy of the USD are in the trillions. Spending trillions on war to ensure that the petro dollar is used for global oil transactions makes half a billion for electricity makes BTC costs a drop in the bucket.

[h3ltrsk3ltr]

What if my computer explodes because you buy bitcoins and my RAM card overheats!?

Trying to dissuade early adopters from adopting early is like trying to tell your immune system to ignore germs.

[kuros]

Now there are over 1277 cryptocurrencies listed on coinmarketcap.

The troubling thing with them is that they all go up when bitcoin goes up.

And they all crash if and when Bitcoin crashes

[Biz]

(11-09-2017 10:46 AM)kuros Wrote:  

Now there are over 1277 cryptocurrencies listed on coinmarketcap.

The troubling thing with them is that they all go up when bitcoin goes up.

And they all crash if and when Bitcoin crashes

Seriously? I've read several of your threads or comments, you're either a troll or a complete crypto hater. In which you should probably just stay out of this section because you have no clue what you're talking about.

Get Rekt maybe?

[SamuelBRoberts]

(11-09-2017 10:46 AM)kuros Wrote:  

Now there are over 1277 cryptocurrencies listed on coinmarketcap.

The troubling thing with them is that they all go up when bitcoin goes up.

And they all crash if and when Bitcoin crashes

Can you explain why this is troubling?

[kuros]

(11-04-2017 04:23 PM)bgbusiness Wrote:  

However, I don't see it as different than just investing in a currency of a country such as WON in Korea or Pesos in Mexico. At the end of the day, I think it's still speculation. I would usually invest in something when it produces some kind of dividend or something valueable like passive cashflow. In finance, most of the assets are valued by the amount of the future cash flow meaning how much revenue/profit/money it can produce.

Bitcoin doesn't produce anything.

If anything I would say that it's just like holding gold or other currencies like I said.

99% of people in the cryptocurrencies world are not using the cryptocurrencies at all.

They are useful for close to nothing if you are being honest about it.

Not even Amazon does not accept any of them.

Everyone is just trading / speculating them, accumulating them and expecting them to go sky-high.

Basically it is just speculation, and so many people are all in, and they hold, so
that is why the prices don't crash yet.

And we will become all SJW who supress free speech if any opinion against Bitcoin is quickly witch-burned

But the truth is what you see: Over 1297 cryptocurrencies exist at this moment,
and everyday are created few new cryptocurrencies.

They have the intrinsic value of air , re-sold for hard cash after being branded "AirCash" or "AirCoin"

[balybary]

It's not only speculation.

One of the benefits of cryptocurrency:

E-commerces can benefit from cryptocurrency if they don't want to depend on Paypal or other payment gateway like Stripe.

For example, here is the list of prohibited businesses with Stripe : https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses

Some type of business are prohibited, and also a payment gateway can close their service to a website anytime for a lot of reasons, or lock their money for a long period of time, etc.

[semibaron]

(11-13-2017 08:34 AM)kuros Wrote:  

(11-04-2017 04:23 PM)bgbusiness Wrote:  

However, I don't see it as different than just investing in a currency of a country such as WON in Korea or Pesos in Mexico. At the end of the day, I think it's still speculation. I would usually invest in something when it produces some kind of dividend or something valueable like passive cashflow. In finance, most of the assets are valued by the amount of the future cash flow meaning how much revenue/profit/money it can produce.

Bitcoin doesn't produce anything.

If anything I would say that it's just like holding gold or other currencies like I said.

99% of people in the cryptocurrencies world are not using the cryptocurrencies at all.

They are useful for close to nothing if you are being honest about it.

Not even Amazon does not accept any of them.

Everyone is just trading / speculating them, accumulating them and expecting them to go sky-high.

Basically it is just speculation, and so many people are all in, and they hold, so
that is why the prices don't crash yet.

And we will become all SJW who supress free speech if any opinion against Bitcoin is quickly witch-burned

But the truth is what you see: Over 1297 cryptocurrencies exist at this moment,
and everyday are created few new cryptocurrencies.

They have the intrinsic value of air , re-sold for hard cash after being branded "AirCash" or "AirCoin"

I still think cryptos are among the best investments currently out there. However, we all should admit that 99% of coins out there have one and only one use case: speculation.

[[email protected]]

You can still trade the following with bitcoin:

-fiat
-gold (europacificcapital)
-lambo
-house (sometimes)

The more money is printed the more it goes up in value. Cannot be controlled by the government. If that's not value, I'm not sure what is.

Intrinsically worthless? You mean like fiat? None of these arguments are stacking up.

1297 cryptocurrencies. So what ? Only the best ones remain competitive and have value. The stock market has countless different stocks, you just have to pick the right one.

[yaku]

You can convert your bitcoin instantly (within half an hour) into cash/debit with the Bitpay debit card, at market rates. So saying you can't buy anything with them means you are uninformed.

And sure, most people are holding onto their bitcoin. Why would you sell unless you had to? The supply is limited, and the demand is only increasing. When banks and government show the ability to rescind the laws of supply and demand, then I'll start to worry.

[fenetre]

(11-13-2017 08:34 AM)kuros Wrote:  

(11-04-2017 04:23 PM)bgbusiness Wrote:  

However, I don't see it as different than just investing in a currency of a country such as WON in Korea or Pesos in Mexico. At the end of the day, I think it's still speculation. I would usually invest in something when it produces some kind of dividend or something valueable like passive cashflow. In finance, most of the assets are valued by the amount of the future cash flow meaning how much revenue/profit/money it can produce.

Bitcoin doesn't produce anything.

If anything I would say that it's just like holding gold or other currencies like I said.

99% of people in the cryptocurrencies world are not using the cryptocurrencies at all.

They are useful for close to nothing if you are being honest about it.

Not even Amazon does not accept any of them.

Everyone is just trading / speculating them, accumulating them and expecting them to go sky-high.

Basically it is just speculation, and so many people are all in, and they hold, so
that is why the prices don't crash yet.

And we will become all SJW who supress free speech if any opinion against Bitcoin is quickly witch-burned

But the truth is what you see: Over 1297 cryptocurrencies exist at this moment,
and everyday are created few new cryptocurrencies.

They have the intrinsic value of air , re-sold for hard cash after being branded "AirCash" or "AirCoin"

I would generally agree with you with regard to alt coins (bitcoin being the only non alt coin in my opinion).

The coins that will be around in the years to come won't be ones that obsess over fast transactions or cheap transactions, like bitcoin cash, dash, etc. Visa and MasterCard are massive entrenched entities that are likely to launch their own crypto with full government approval, and cash cryptos will be nerd side projects that never take off.

The store of value cryptos like Bitcoin that are slow to change, decentralised, tried and tested after years of attacks (seems like Bitcoin is the only one) are the ones that will fill a gap in the market for a digital form of gold.

People don't need a debit card replacement. That's not a problem needing to be solved in the world.
And why would anyone use them in this day-to-day cash role? It's so stupid. If you expect its value to appreciate why would you use your crypto for coffee? It's retarded. If you expect its value to remain in line with fiat value, why bother going to the hassle of buying crypto? If you expect it to depreciate, well, you know the answer. So these cash cryptos are stupid.

So yes, you're right that the cryptos trying to fill this role are foolish.

But there is a real need for a Gold 2.0 like bitcoin. A store of value, an appreciating asset (like stocks perform in relation to inflation), low (or no) storage costs, easy to transport, etc. And you don't trust it to a third party like many of the gold debit card options people use as a get around.

And speculators play a valuable role. How else will anybody know what the price should be? I don't get the animosity towards speculators. The successful ones predict the future and we all benefit as a result.

The volatility will subside once the market matures. The next 12 months will be interesting. Remember, if bitcoin attracts only 1% of the money in gold and silver each bitcoin will be worth $50,000. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for short-term supernormal returns and I'm all in.

[infinitejest]

I'm not drinking the 'store of value,' 'digital gold' kool-aid that seems to be the go-to talking point every BTC maximalist uses nowadays to argue for Bitcoin. It's funny how bitcoin has changed from its initial inception as a "purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash" in the original whitepaper to 'digital gold!'. The best part is these same maximalists will tell you that BTC is the only real coin and that every ALT is shit, especially the 'centralized' ones like ETH, while they completely ignore the centralized nature of Blockstream and the Bitcoin Core devs who say "1 MB is the best thing for BTC, enjoy your BTC that no one uses with its huge transaction backlog and exponentially growing fees!"

(11-14-2017 01:02 AM)fenetre Wrote:  

But there is a real need for a Gold 2.0 like bitcoin. A store of value, an appreciating asset (like stocks perform in relation to inflation), low (or no) storage costs, easy to transport, etc.

I'm not convinced that there is. A store of value is a store of value until it isn't. Yeah, it's been an amazing store of value the last 9 years, but 9 years is nothing compared to the history that precious metals have as a store of value. And at least you can actually use gold to make jewelry and stick in your teeth and what not. It is a REAL, tangible object. Bitcoin is nothing more than some data on a blockchain that you hold the private keys to. What can you use it for besides selling it to someone else? It's a store of speculation and nothing else right now.

I'm of the thought that bitcoin and cryptocurrency is in a bubble, but we've got a ways to go before this all crashes and most everyone is bagholding useless coins. But when it does crash, what will survive is the tech and the blockchains that can eventually bring some real, tangible value to the market outside of speculation. Me personally, I'm betting that ETH is the blockchain that will eventually bring that real world value through one of it's decentralized apps.

But if there's anything I've learned in the last 6 months, it's also to not entirely bet against bitcoin if you are already in the crypto market. I think there's a very good chance that bitcoin does keep soaring to 50k+ in the next few years, and by 2020 at the next block halvening we will see a further decrease in supply. So I'll hold a little bitcoin just in case we're in the timeline where Bitcoin goes 500k+ and McAfee doesn't have to eat his own dick.

It's hard for me to just buy the r/bitcoin narrative that bitcoin is working perfectly fine and as intended. I just can't imagine the future like this: the year is 2025, bitcoin is still number 1, and the rest of the ALT shitcoin ecosystem has died out. We are still on 1 MB blocks, fees are $100 plus for anything faster than a day's confirmation, and the only thing people are doing with bitcoin is day-trading it and holding it as 'muh store of value.' We never found a better use-case for blockchain than digital gold and every decentralized APP failed to penetrate the market. Can you imagine this future?

[semibaron]

infinitejest, best comment so far on this thread!

[churros]

Actually, gold stores value precisely because it lacks use. Its decorative aspect merely exhibits this storage function, i.e. that it is inherently valuable. But this "inherent value" is just convention.

Gold has the weight of history behind it, but history can change. So digital currency could perfectly well replace gold in theory. Might not happen in the near future, or indeed ever, but there is no theoretical reason why not.

Bitcoin's ability to store value is also by no means free, as another poster claimed. Mining utilises an astonishing amount of energy to solve a deliberately pointless mathematical problem.

My suspicion is that bitcoin will eventually crash, but that another form will take over.

[fenetre]

(11-14-2017 10:19 AM)infinitejest Wrote:  

I'm not drinking the 'store of value,' 'digital gold' kool-aid that seems to be the go-to talking point every BTC maximalist uses nowadays to argue for Bitcoin. It's funny how bitcoin has changed from its initial inception as a "purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash" in the original whitepaper to 'digital gold!'. The best part is these same maximalists will tell you that BTC is the only real coin and that every ALT is shit, especially the 'centralized' ones like ETH, while they completely ignore the centralized nature of Blockstream and the Bitcoin Core devs who say "1 MB is the best thing for BTC, enjoy your BTC that no one uses with its huge transaction backlog and exponentially growing fees!"

(11-14-2017 01:02 AM)fenetre Wrote:  

But there is a real need for a Gold 2.0 like bitcoin. A store of value, an appreciating asset (like stocks perform in relation to inflation), low (or no) storage costs, easy to transport, etc.

I'm not convinced that there is. A store of value is a store of value until it isn't. Yeah, it's been an amazing store of value the last 9 years, but 9 years is nothing compared to the history that precious metals have as a store of value. And at least you can actually use gold to make jewelry and stick in your teeth and what not. It is a REAL, tangible object. Bitcoin is nothing more than some data on a blockchain that you hold the private keys to. What can you use it for besides selling it to someone else? It's a store of speculation and nothing else right now.

I'm of the thought that bitcoin and cryptocurrency is in a bubble, but we've got a ways to go before this all crashes and most everyone is bagholding useless coins. But when it does crash, what will survive is the tech and the blockchains that can eventually bring some real, tangible value to the market outside of speculation. Me personally, I'm betting that ETH is the blockchain that will eventually bring that real world value through one of it's decentralized apps.

But if there's anything I've learned in the last 6 months, it's also to not entirely bet against bitcoin if you are already in the crypto market. I think there's a very good chance that bitcoin does keep soaring to 50k+ in the next few years, and by 2020 at the next block halvening we will see a further decrease in supply. So I'll hold a little bitcoin just in case we're in the timeline where Bitcoin goes 500k+ and McAfee doesn't have to eat his own dick.

It's hard for me to just buy the r/bitcoin narrative that bitcoin is working perfectly fine and as intended. I just can't imagine the future like this: the year is 2025, bitcoin is still number 1, and the rest of the ALT shitcoin ecosystem has died out. We are still on 1 MB blocks, fees are $100 plus for anything faster than a day's confirmation, and the only thing people are doing with bitcoin is day-trading it and holding it as 'muh store of value.' We never found a better use-case for blockchain than digital gold and every decentralized APP failed to penetrate the market. Can you imagine this future?

Yes, Bitcoin has evolved to meet the demands of the market. There is more of a need for a store of value coin than a Visa/Mastercard replacement.

Using your logic then computer code is worthless? You can't get your hands on that either. What on earth are you going on about. smh

Clearly bitcoin will continue to upgrade and improve its infrastructure. Your claim of $100 fees is a lie. Even anti-bitcoin ideologues only exaggerate fee levels at $20/30 so that's telling.

Just last night I made a significant $ transaction and paid $4. The transaction was confirmed in 11 minutes.

Anybody who knows anything about bitcoin knows that increasing the block size is only a temporary fix. It doesn't solve the structural issue. Unless you're talking about increasing the size to something like 1GB but that would have the effect of centralising the network.

The slow and decentralised pace of change with bitcoin is a plus. It's pretty much as decentralised as major cryptos go. But I'm repeating myself.

Your tone is inflammatory which indicates you know everything already and dialogue is pointless. Good luck

[infinitejest]

(11-15-2017 03:13 AM)fenetre Wrote:  

Yes, Bitcoin has evolved to meet the demands of the market. There is more of a need for a store of value coin than a Visa/Mastercard replacement.

Using your logic then computer code is worthless? You can't get your hands on that either. What on earth are you going on about. smh

Clearly bitcoin will continue to upgrade and improve its infrastructure. Your claim of $100 fees is a lie. Even anti-bitcoin ideologues only exaggerate fee levels at $20/30 so that's telling.

Just last night I made a significant $ transaction and paid $4. The transaction was confirmed in 11 minutes.

Anybody who knows anything about bitcoin knows that increasing the block size is only a temporary fix. It doesn't solve the structural issue. Unless you're talking about increasing the size to something like 1GB but that would have the effect of centralising the network.

The slow and decentralised pace of change with bitcoin is a plus. It's pretty much as decentralised as major cryptos go. But I'm repeating myself.

Your tone is inflammatory which indicates you know everything already and dialogue is pointless. Good luck

Well, if by demands of the market you mean it's the most accessible fiat on-ramp to this get-rich-quick just HODL trust me™ world that is the current cryptocurrency market, due to its first-mover advantage, then yes I do agree with you that Bitcoin is meeting the demands of the market.

Since you seemed to have some trouble understanding my post at various points throughout, I'll try to help make my point clearer. Like some others in this thread, I feel that cryptocurrencies in their present state are intrinsically worthless. Your entire argument for bitcoin right now as I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that there is a need for a digital store of value, a 'digital gold' as we call it now. I argue that in its current state, bitcoin isn't a viable store of value, primarily due to its inherent volatility and dwindling viability as a currency. Generally, we want our store of value to retain some purchasing power in the future. If there is a future where no one uses bitcoin anymore to buy anything because the blockchain is so slow and everyone is just holding bitcoin storing their value, what's gonna happen when the buyers inevitably dry up one bear season and the house of cards comes tumbling down?

But you may say, well that's false because bitcoin is deflationary and the longterm trend is always up, therefore in the future I will have even greater purchasing power because bitcoin will be worth more compared to fiat. But here's what I can't wrap my head around. If bitcoin never becomes digital cash and is only used as a store of value that no one uses besides selling to others, then is this purchasing power not entirely an illusion? You literally own nothing. And as much as BTC hodlers like to dig their heads in the sand and pretend otherwise...

Fees and transaction times ARE a problem

I would agree that there is some need for people to be able to store value securely and privately away from oppressive governments and the like in a completely decentralized manner. 'Banking for the unbanked' is the buzzword phrase we like here. But is bitcoin fulfilling this? The average transaction fee has been over $5 the last 2 weeks as you can see here: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bit...fees.html. 80% of the world's population lives on less than $10 a day. So much for storing my value if I'm stuck in some third-world country I guess.

And while it's clear you barely bothered to read through my post, as I don't think I could have been more clear that I was presenting a hypothetical scenario in the future where transaction fees are $100+, what's more clear is that you are the one likely exaggerating your claims about transaction fees and confirmation times. The bitinfo chart I linked above shows that the average fee has been well over $5 and nearly $15 the last couple days. You can also see here that the average confirmation time for a transaction has been over an hour the last week: https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation-time

And you know what the best part is? You could have used any number of other chains to send your money much cheaper and much quicker. Since Metropolis, using ETH has been super smooth and quick. Have your transaction confirmed in under a minute and pay a few cents as your fee. This is the other problem that makes me wary of bitcoin as a long-term store of value. Yes, blockchain tech is revolutionary and here to stay. But if there are blockchains with better tech, that can do everything bitcoin can do as a store of value while also providing other use-cases (i.e. smart contracts, better anonymity, etc.), then what is the eventual need that bitcoin will provide down the line?

Now this issue with scaling is a crypto-wide problem, and if another blockchain were in Bitcoin's position there'd be the same issues. But even now, can you tell me, what are Core's plans to scale bitcoin? I'll preface this by saying that for the vast majority of us in crypto (myself included) we can't truly understand the complicated technical aspects behind blockchains and scaling. So we mostly have to stick to the buzz words the devs throw us. So for Bitcoin we've got Segwit and Lightning Network which I've been hearing about forever. But what after that? Now I know BTC maximalists usually just ignore PoS as another 'dangerous, unproven' aspect to ETH, but there at least there is a roadmap in place. We the investor know that the dev team sees it as a key problem and are actively working on scaling the platform. With Core? Segwit, LN, 1 MB blocks forever?? No one cares while the price is going uppity and they can hold their digital gold, but as always I'm curious to see how this plays out in the coming years.

Anyway, I do my best to not come off as a closed-minded 'know-it-all.' I have only been following bitcoin and crypto for a year and a half or so, and come to this forum to discuss crypto because I think some of the best open-minds and discussions to be had online are found on this forum. I make no pretensions about knowing the market or what will happen; hell I've pretty much been wrong about everything regarding BTC/ETH price these last 6 months. But it's hard not to see projection on your part when you close your post by saying my tone is 'inflammatory' and then shut down any further dialogue before ending with a snarky 'good luck.' So whatever man, good luck to you too I guess. At the end of the day we are all just on here sharing ideas, trying to help each other make money. I figured that sort of ego and tribalism regarding coin holdings was best left for reddit and rvf's own btc echo chamber thread.

I'll close with a simple thought experiment to hopefully sum up my point well. Let's imagine that you are presented with only two options of a similar property for a long-term investment. You know nothing about the invesment opportunity except what the broker tells you and that you should look at this as a long-term deal.

Option A:
-oldest, slowest one, but the most liquid
-minimal adoption/use as a medium of exchange
-primary use-case is a 'store of value' that will provide great returns down the line
-however, these returns are only guaranteed if there is future demand. Thus, buyers are encouraged to hold and encourage others to buy and simply hold. Set it and forget it.
-Of course the more it rises in value the riskier it is to buy in and hold. It's easy for Chad who bought 1000 of these back when they were $300 to sit back and hold. He doesn't give a shit if this crashes because he can still get out with a huge profit. He's playing with house money
-But poor Bobby who bought the most recent ATH at 10k can't be so sure that he hasn't ruined his life. He went all-in and it's dipped 30% but everyone is saying just hold it always goes back up right...

Option B
-newer, more experimental tech. much more use cases than a simple store of value (note: it can also store value)
-less liquidity, but growing adoption in the space
-Potential returns as a store of value, but primary value lies outside this. The project intends to create value as either a digital currency, a platform for developers to create apps on, etc.

Which one looks like a decent investment and which one sounds like a Ponzi scheme? I'm holding a little BTC so I'm happy to eat crow and watch this megamoon if it does, but so much has changed in a year in the crypto world, yet the BTC scaling debate hasn't nudged. A year ago all the talk was about getting Segwit out to scale, as if that was gonna fix everything. Now, a couple forks later and there's no progress on the scaling debate, but everyone's happy cuz bitcoin's at $7k now so who gives a shit anymore it's digital gold now baby!

Meanwhile the BTC maximalists are still shouting down every ALT as a shitcoin, despite Bitcoin having already crossed the Rubicon imo in terms of marketcap dominance. You can argue that the alts were always going to make their way into the market, but BTC dropping from 85% to 50% dominance this year was absolutely a sign of failure on the Core dev team and the community as a whole to make bitcoin THE crypto coin.

I only wish I hadn't listened to all the FUD and shitcoin talk when I was first looking into ETH back in January...but that's why now I try to keep an open mind about these things.

[yaku]

I believe the scaling solution for bitcoin is going to come from outside of bitcoin. OMG, for example, is almost ready to go with their system. You'll be able to use bitcoin for your coffee then...OMG will instantly convert that bitcoin into the currency the coffee vendor demands.

[Kid Twist]

^OMG?

[doc holliday]

(11-15-2017 07:40 PM)Kid Twist Wrote:  

^OMG?

OmiseGo. It's an Ethereum based network which is meant to enable fast movement of various cryptos. P2P, business payments etc. A lot of people are pretty bullish on it.

[yaku]

https://omisego.network/
https://twitter.com/omise_go

Omise is a payment processing company in Southeast Asia, and one of the initial funders of the Ethereum product. They are in the process of building a blockchain to handle those transactions. Great company, with some rock-stars in the crypto world involved. I'm pretty high on OMG as a way to generate passive income once it gets going, which should be happening over the next few months. The criticism about bitcoin (no real world use) doesn't apply; the value of the token will be determined by the amount of transactions handled by the blockchain.

[HardcoreSexpatMotherfucker]

(11-01-2017 11:23 AM)PolymathGuru Wrote:  

Cryptocurrencies are only valuable as a storage of value. When people are financing finance such as the Wall Street Crash of 1929, 2007 financial crisis or Tulip Mania or the south sea company, you tend to see busts.

It does well for storing value. However, it isn't well used as a medium of exchange. With the exception of a few vendors, most people do not buy stuff in cryptocurrencies.

That's the thing. The time will come soon when the cryptos that are actually designed for real life use will see a surge (I won't mention them, otherwise there is always someone that will accuse me of "shilling") and the Bitcoin bubble will burst. All that Bitcoin money will flow overnight in the cryptos that have usable POS, usable interface, lowest fees and instant (less than 5 seconds) settlement.

Crypto has tremendous value in that it can potentially bypass the whole financial system based on bank accounts, fixed addresses, expiring debit/credit cards, cranky ATMs, incredible delays and fees, etc.

Cryptos are the Internet of Value. Once a global protocol emerges and enables real-time conversion of one value token into another with very low fees, we will be able to exchange any kind of value: fiat, airline miles, amazon gift cards, any kinds of coupons from all the companies in the world... The possibilities are endless.

And no, Bitcoin is not like gold. Anyone could create a blockchain, providing they get the following and adoption. Blockchain is a protocol for value, not a commodity.