Is Bitcoin the Next Big Thing?

[jbworldwide]

A 70% weekly increase in insane, great news for bagholders (good chance to convert a bit into cash), but I think its suicidal for the people who jumped in at $16k / $17k, especially if they went in with all their cash reserves and will be panicking and selling again at $11k.

Genuinely happy for the winners, but we always hear more about those who win and little about those who lose - and there will be plenty of those, too many inexperienced investors who act on short term emotions.

That said, I may invest a little after the next correction.... when it goes back down to $9k or $10k which I'm sure it will, and then I'll wait for the next wave of mania to make myself a few quid.

I'll only be in for a couple of grand though, not enough to have to tell my wife

Feels very much like the LLLL.com craziness that we saw a couple of years ago, fueled by the Chinese middle class.... quite a few people got stuck with loads of those when that died out, same will happen with Bitcoin. And that's the risk element isn't it, never know whether you are buying at the top or the new bottom.

Mania is the right description. I think if you are looking to take a risk now, it might be worth in mining (which is a long burn) or in other crypto currencies. If Bitcoin goes out of reach of the casual investor then they may look elsewhere. I was thinking about this earlier and the lack of sexy company IPOs recently and this reaction to Bitcoin might be a showing of pent up demand to take some risk. Perhaps now is a good time to float as there is clearly money flying around.

 

[Admin]

I love Bitcoin and how it has exploded, and I have never even bought any or owned any - which is something which I am actually glad of.

Why?

Imagine buying 500 @ $2 each in December 2011 and then selling them for $25 each in February 2013 and you made $11,500 profit - at the time you would be elated and think you done very well. Today those same Bitcoins would be worth over 600x more and $8,000,000 and I imagine you would be feeling you sold at the wrong time and beat yourself up for the rest of your life for it.

The problem with hindsight is it is always 20/20, and me personally would rather not have been involved in something altogether than beat myself up over selling WAY too early.

There are so many people walking around saying "I wish I had bought Bitcoin back when they were $1, as I would be a multi millionaire now" when in all reality they are kicking themselves about a situation which never really would have happened, as 99.9% of people would have sold LONG before they hit anywhere near today's values, but they base their regret on not buying them on today's knowledge and therefore a false scenario.

I feel the only people who have made GENUINE huge returns from Bitcoin are the people who literally had 1000+ back in the early days and have held on for the long term. Of course, I still think there is still money to be made on Bitcoin except the risk is far higher and the startup cost vs. potential reward is a risk which is now 16,000 greater and has a much higher barrier to entry.

Love reading the posts and the excitement though, and well done to anyone who has made some good money from it

I bought 2 years ago, Im still hodling lol

 

[Admin]

I was reading a prediction earlier that Bitcoin could go to $1,000,000 by 2020.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/james-altucher-predicts-bitcoin-will-reach-1-million-by-2020.html

Apart from the sheer hubristic absurdity of the prediction, it also (by implication) means that 15% of the world's total wealth would have to be accumulated in Bitcoin at that point.

It doesn't take 10 seconds of casual pondering to realise just how daft that sounds!

Fair point and some great posts in this thread. But Edwin, 1.5% sounds not too silly and that would land us at 100,000 per BTC

 

[martin-s]

Is this a bubble, or is this growing adoption? We'll only know after the fact.

 

[dee]

Is this a bubble, or is this growing adoption? We'll only know after the fact.

i think its well overbought at the moment. Has been for a while now. I suspect it will correct quite heavily sometime soon when theres a bigger panic sale than the little one last time, then carry on.

 

[Edwin]

Here’s the thing: I can see that blockchain technology in general has the potential to change many business models and unlock new ones.

I still after all this time have no clue at all where Bitcoin is supposed to come into it. It’s not as adapted to other uses as custom, purpose-built models. It’s rubbish as a currency because it fluctuates insanely. It’s also rubbish for ecommerce because transactions take hours to clear and a minimum of several dollars to process in any meaningful length of time.

So from my POV it’s like one of the earliest search engines (take your pick). Set up a lot of the core stuff germaine to all search engines (crawlers, meta tags etc) but deader than a dodo once a truly better search engine came along (hello, Google!)

In other words, Bitcoin is the pioneer that unlocked the concept but it has no particular utility or benefit now.

 

[Systreg]

Are any of you doing any actual mining?

I read that you should use a high performance graphics card and have a high CPU on your machine, or a custom mining machine with those sort of graphics/CPU set up. It did say somewhere that you can mine on a normal laptop, although the mining would be slow, does anyone do this?

 

[dee]

Are any of you doing any actual mining?

I read that you should use a high performance graphics card and have a high CPU on your machine, or a custom mining machine with those sort of graphics/CPU set up. It did say somewhere that you can mine on a normal laptop, although the mining would be slow, does anyone do this?

I think its past the point now where it's profitable on the average laptop. You need serious custom hardware. The time/processing power required now uses more electricity to mine than the average return on a home computer.

Could be wrong...but think thats the state of play.

 

[Admin]

Here’s the thing: I can see that blockchain technology in general has the potential to change many business models and unlock new ones.

I still after all this time have no clue at all where Bitcoin is supposed to come into it. It’s not as adapted to other uses as custom, purpose-built models. It’s rubbish as a currency because it fluctuates insanely. It’s also rubbish for ecommerce because transactions take hours to clear and a minimum of several dollars to process in any meaningful length of time.

So from my POV it’s like one of the earliest search engines (take your pick). Set up a lot of the core stuff germaine to all search engines (crawlers, meta tags etc) but deader than a dodo once a truly better search engine came along (hello, Google!)

In other words, Bitcoin is the pioneer that unlocked the concept but it has no particular utility or benefit now.

I have to disagree with you here, it has a lot of utility. You forget it can be linked to a VISA card, I've been spending bitcoin for 2 years on meals, petrol, groceries, hotels, ...you name it. So it IS useful as a currency because it can convert to fiat on the fly. Meanwhile, it's fluctuations you refer to are just part of an upward curve and so its an 'appreciating currency'. Spending it directly is a different matter and its current limitations in terms of speed and transaction cost could be dramatically removed in a matter of weeks with the lightning network upgrade.

 

[Admin]

I meant to add its also useful because it is a 'peer to peer store of wealth' and that is very useful regardless of ecommerce.

 

[boxerdog]

Are any of you doing any actual mining?

I read that you should use a high performance graphics card and have a high CPU on your machine, or a custom mining machine with those sort of graphics/CPU set up. It did say somewhere that you can mine on a normal laptop, although the mining would be slow, does anyone do this?

I wouldn't bother mining on a regular laptop/pc unless you just want to have a play around with some altcoins.
If you have sites with good traffic you can get your visitors to mine Monero for you by implementing something like coinhive (that`s what i do and get a few friends to leave their pcs running on my site for me) this uses their CPU, it does slow the PCs down quite a bit though

 

[dee]

I meant to add its also useful because it is a 'peer to peer store of wealth' and that is very useful regardless of ecommerce.

Agreed. In fact I know Ive mentioned this before, but a large part of this run up is due to the fact thats its now being used as a safe haven along with gold. The recent situation with Mugabe had the whole country looking for assets to buy as currency tanking. HUGE swathes of the countries cash went into bitcoin. I believe it absoloutely run of the mill to pay for coffees/food/whatever on bitcoin card in asia.

Between that and the bitcoin funds starting I think its got a way to go upwards yet. Whether it will last long term is another question.

 

[ian]

Are any of you doing any actual mining?

I read that you should use a high performance graphics card and have a high CPU on your machine, or a custom mining machine with those sort of graphics/CPU set up. It did say somewhere that you can mine on a normal laptop, although the mining would be slow, does anyone do this?

From a laptop, no, you'd burn through more power usage than you'd gain; unless using free energy. On high power PC's, it is still possible to make some nice profits; most coins require GPU power but most powerful isn't always best, as they use more power; for example, my 1080TI powers through but is greedy on electricity versus my mates bank of 1070's and 1060's. Don't expect to mine Bitcoin though, that is CPU intensive and for that, the hardware costs are significantly higher. The other way is as mentioned previously, cloud mining, though in most cases, you take the risk of money you inputting actually coming out the other end long term.

 

[ian]

Most won't like me saying this, but the references of Bitcoin being the next generation gold doesn't wash with me. Bitcoin is an idea that many buy in to, and trade from, it is a nightmare to handle from a retail perspective. Yes it can evolve, but actually think it is a platform in which coins based perhaps around its concept and platform will see mainstream use. At that point, I'm not sure what becomes of Bitcoin itself. The alternative is Bitcoin acquire a few alt coins capable of promising a retail solution with more controllable volatility (if that is possible).

 

[Edwin]

Why is Bitcoin a sensible store of wealth in a world with a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand competing cryptocoin systems?

What makes it valuable and the others not? Why can’t Doge or Etherium or any other alt-coin be used as an equally useful/useless store of wealth (or indeed “Edwincoin” if I decided to roll my own)?

If it’s only first mover advantage, that’s extraordinarily thin ice to rely on, and with every increase in price that ice gets thinner and thinner still.

Again, the answer cannot be convertibility. There are already several other cryptocurrencies that can be moved in and out of credit and debit cards, and there’s no fundamental barrier to future entrants being similarly enabled.

It’s not like Facebook, where genuine network effects come into play. All probably 99.9% of Bitcoin buyers are doing in this rageing price ramp-up is buying and flipping, or buying and holding. They’re not “using” Bitcoin so the utility of Bitcoin isn’t increasing as more participants enter the Bitcoin market.

In fact, its utility is decreasing because it takes longer and longer to validate blocks, and the cost of doing so keeps rising. So evolution in exactly the wrong direction.

It’s also worth noting that Ponzi schemes tend to seem at their most “credible” just before they collapse, because that’s when they’ve got the highest mindshare and the largest market penetration.

 

[Admin]

Did you not pick up on the 'lightning network' pointer for upgrading the network? It's a nascent industry, of course its not perfect. IMO it will get a lot better and very soon - faster transactions and lower costs. Don't underestimate first mover advantage, there are countless examples of 'not the best' product being the winner.

I agree utility is low, again...its a nascent industry, there's no reason it won't come.

Supply and demand makes it valuable, period. There are over a 1000 alt coins, I think most will vanish into thin air...reminiscent of the tech boom.

Time to get this out for you Edwin

 

[Edwin]

Here’s the thing: if something’s only worth a billion dollars it needs to be far less robust and able to withstand far less scrutiny than something worth fifty or a hundred billion.

And now Bitcoin’s dancing around a quarter of a trillion dollars in total market cap. As the price ramps up, the questions are only going to get louder and more pointed.

So it may still go up. It might even go up a lot. Who knows? But unless there’s a diamond-tipped, rock-solid fundamental reason for Bitcoin - and only Bitcoin - to emerge the victor of the cryptocurrency wars, its long-term failure is all but assured.

Plus isn’t the underlying concept pretty much open source at this point, which is why we already have over 1,000 cryptocurrencies?

 

[Edwin]

Of course none of this matters except in the abstract if you’re fast enough and fortunate enough to be able to get in and get out at a profit before the value of BTC turns inexorably downward.

 

[Edwin]

Here’s a related question that seems superficially interesting but is probably impossible to answer:

How much will the price of Bitcoin move for every dollar invested in Bitcoin?

In other words, how close to a perfect or imperfect store of value is it? If $1,000,000 worth of Bitcoin are purchased, does the price of Bitcoin go up by an amount that makes the sum total of all Bitcoin worth $1,000,000 more? Does it go up by more? Does it go up by less?

The elusive answer to this question would give some indication of how much “real” money is vanishing into Bitcoin.

Clearly if it takes a $100,000 purchase (on average) to move the total BTC market cap by $1,000,000 then a total Bitcoin collapse would be far less damaging than if it had taken say a $5,000,000 purchase to increase that total market cap by $1,000,000 because the amount of sunk real money would be 50x less.

(From the investor’s perspective, it may look like a good deal in both the $100,000 and $5,000,000 scenarios because in both instances the BTC price rose as a result of the investment - but from the POV of the whole market, one is much much more dangerous than the other)

 

[Systreg]

@dee and @ian and @boxerdog, seems the consensus is not to bother with mining, that's a shame, because I read an article about a week ago that suggested that it's possible to mine Ethereum on a normal laptop.

The article included a long list of codes/instructions to type in to command prompt to set it up for mining, it did seem a bit techy but I was thinking of giving it a go, then read in that sites comments section where a couple of people said it wasn't working properly, or worked but then stopped and gave errors, so I'd need to find a different set of code to input if I decided to try it.

I wouldn't bother with cloudy stuff, I did look at pools but not interested in paying fees to sites to be able to mine.

@boxerdog, I don't have a site that could be used in that way, shame, because that sounds interesting. I used to have a tool similar to that which was used to drain the bandwidth of scammer websites, which could be run from your desktop, or by other scambaiters all visiting a certain site, and leaving that page running whilst it loaded multiple images from the scam site, to get it to go over it's bandwidth limit.