Crypto Currency Thread

[anonymous-user]

5 to 10 year project it has been going for nearly 10 years. BTC price would be higher if it wasn't diluted by the coin forks amongst other things. I personally think a value of 10k per coin us still high.

[CzechItOut]

What makes you think the observations from 2015 are still relevant? Firstly, as that article describes, Bitcoin lost 20% in one 24-hour period, but soon recovered. The current market has lost 50% of it's value over a six month period and shows no sign of recovery.

Secondly, in 2015 Bitcoin was still largely unknown outside of the tech world, whereas the 2017 peak was driven by vast coverage in the mainstream media. Therefore the people who bought in at the end of last year are a very different group to those who were early adopters in 2015.

Drawing parallels to Google and Facebook is misleading. I'm not aware of Google or Facebook losing half of their visitors/market share etc. and then recovering to be the giants they are today.

I'll be honest, the price hasn't fallen as much as I thought it would. There are clearly still people who paid over $10k who are holding out for a price rise, not wanting to crystalise their losses. Eventually those people will lose patience though and the price will fall lower.

As for Bitcoin or indeed any other crypto fulfilling it's potential of becoming an actual currency, there simply isn't enough public confidence for that ever to happen.

[Behemoth]

CzechItOut said:

What makes you think the observations from 2015 are still relevant? Firstly, as that article describes, Bitcoin lost 20% in one 24-hour period, but soon recovered. The current market has lost 50% of it's value over a six month period and shows no sign of recovery.

Secondly, in 2015 Bitcoin was still largely unknown outside of the tech world, whereas the 2017 peak was driven by vast coverage in the mainstream media. Therefore the people who bought in at the end of last year are a very different group to those who were early adopters in 2015.

Drawing parallels to Google and Facebook is misleading. I'm not aware of Google or Facebook losing half of their visitors/market share etc. and then recovering to be the giants they are today.

I'll be honest, the price hasn't fallen as much as I thought it would. There are clearly still people who paid over $10k who are holding out for a price rise, not wanting to crystalise their losses. Eventually those people will lose patience though and the price will fall lower.

As for Bitcoin or indeed any other crypto fulfilling it's potential of becoming an actual currency, there simply isn't enough public confidence for that ever to happen.

The parallels drawn to Google & Facebook are not to do with market price, they are to do with the time it takes to build world-changing applications on top of a protocol rail. Bitcoin is the protocol & second layer applications on it are still very early stage.

If the price action continues to mirror 14/15, BTC certainly has much further to fall. The pattern is clearly there if you care to take a look at it. Of course, there is more going on than these technical patterns, but the majority of traders look at them and react accordingly. It's all self-referential & self-fulfilling and fairly blind to fundamentals.

[anonymous-user]

I like John Oliver's piece on crypto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6iDZspbRMg

[Condi]

Behemoth said:

If the price action continues to mirror 14/15, BTC certainly has much further to fall. The pattern is clearly there if you care to take a look at it. Of course, there is more going on than these technical patterns, but the majority of traders look at them and react accordingly. It's all self-referential & self-fulfilling and fairly blind to fundamentals.

Any trader will always tell you that fundamentals always win in the end. The mere fact that most 'traders' are following patterns tells me that they arnt really traders at all, but amateurs who either dont understand the fundamentals, or are essentially gambling and happy to do so.















That said, all traders will also tell you that the market can remain illogical longer than you can remain solvent, but the point above still applies. If anyone can make a fundamental argument bitcoin has value then I'll listen, but at the moment all I see is the value trending towards 0.

[anonymous-user]

I called it early on the year on downturn, I still September will see upturn.

[anonymous-user]

Condi said:

Any trader will always tell you that fundamentals always win in the end. The mere fact that most 'traders' are following patterns tells me that they arnt really traders at all, but amateurs who either dont understand the fundamentals, or are essentially gambling and happy to do so.

I'd suggest it depends on time frames.

Over the shorter-term, repeating patterns (which are the basis for TA), are better indicators of movement than fundamentals.

[Behemoth]

La Liga said:

'd suggest it depends on time frames.

Over the shorter-term, repeating patterns (which are the basis for TA), are better indicators of movement than fundamentals.

This.

Of course, long term fundamentals prevail. But we're talking years, maybe a decade or even two.

[dimots]

Condi said:

...If anyone can make a fundamental argument bitcoin has value then I'll listen, but at the moment all I see is the value trending towards 0.

For god’s sake read the Nakamoto white paper before commenting with stuff like this.

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

In the first few lines you will learn everything you need to know about the value of bitcoin to society, in itself, and as a medium of exchange. It is still doing just what it was designed to do. It is still building a ledger in public, it is still sitting there, waiting. If you think banks will still exist in a hundred years then maybe you can’t see the value in bitcoin. If you think all banks will be gone in 20 years then you might have an idea.

[JustinF]

coyft said:

Speed and low cost are the main criteria a merchant wants from processing payments.

Consumers want convenience.

Visa and Mastercard already provide that.

buy a car, a house, a ship, a company, none of these rely on 2 second payment processing; guarantees on the payment outweigh the speed.

[bongtom]

And we’re back where we started.
Groundhog Day anyone?

[bongtom]

coyft said:

bongtom said:

And we’re back where we started.
Groundhog Day anyone?

Sorry, I haven't followed the thread from the beginning.

Forgive me if I'm asking questions already covered and I'll understand if no one bothers to reply.

I can see that blockchain has tremendous potential and can revolutionise some industries like insurance through smart contracts. I just can't see how the currency is going to revolutionise the payment industry.

It wasn’t necessarily directed exclusively towards your comment but people saying it’s got no value, won’t replace fiat anytime soon etc.

Then the usual crowd come in passive aggressively defending it.

[Bluedot]

coyft said:

Sorry, I haven't followed the thread from the beginning.

Forgive me if I'm asking questions already covered and I'll understand if no one bothers to reply.

It's all about opinions and no one will know who is right till well into the future.
There's decent debate from both sides on here though, it normally follows after a boom or crash in the BTC price

[Behemoth]

coyft said:

Speed and low cost are the main criteria a merchant wants from processing payments.

Consumers want convenience.

Visa and Mastercard already provide that.

Yes, you're absolutely right. And PayPal & similar layers over the underlying transaction systems have added hugely to the convenience, too, over the past dozen years.

But the disruptive aspect of bitcoin isn't convenient merchant payment processing. That'll happen and is being built on the upper layers over the protocol innovation.

Immutability on an open decentralised network to attain distributed trust in order to store and transfer value by consensus without the use of a third party is the innovation at the base layer that is Bitcoin.

[skinnyman]

Bitcoin also may be the father of crypto, and the one that hits all the headlines, but it has many flaws, and other projects have appeared to address those. Nano for example, transaction times alot faster, and fee free transfer of value.

[Behemoth]

coyft said:

I can see that blockchain has tremendous potential and can revolutionise some industries like insurance through smart contracts.

Most industries really don't need a blockchain. It is a very expensive, very slow and very ungainly way to process data. Centralised traditional databases are far more efficient for the vast majority of use cases. Businesses are leaping onto the blockchain bandwagon because their boards are naive and it opens up budgets for IT Directors.

Smart contracts are not very smart at all. They are dangerous, difficult to secure, difficult to make trustless and would rely on far too many external variables to work for things like insurance.

Spend 10 minutes to stop using an in-vogue buzzword & learn the essence of smart contracts with this succinct overview written yesterday: https://medium.com/@jimmysong/the-truth-about-smar...

[Behemoth]

skinnyman said:

Bitcoin also may be the father of crypto, and the one that hits all the headlines, but it has many flaws, and other projects have appeared to address those. Nano for example, transaction times alot faster, and fee free transfer of value.

"Hi, I'm new to Bitcoin and I'm here to fix it" is not a surprising message for alt coins to carry.

The minimalism of Bitcoin is its strength. Features belong on secondary layers, not the protocol layer. For example, Lightning Network transaction times are almost instantaneous.

Whilst Nano is admirable for a single sense of purpose, Lightning Network (which is not exclusive to Bitcoin) will put it in the rear view mirror pretty quickly. Nano uses DAG which is interesting, but hasn't been tested at scale. DAG (directed acyclic graph) is actually a much older technology idea than Bitcoin. Nano also uses delegated proof of stake (DPoS, created by Dan Larimer for BitShares, Steem, EOS) which means trust becomes centralised to achieve efficiencies. The delegates never get paid in Nano (hence your fee-free situation), so there's no incentive to keep it all going. Why would you do it & continue being honest? It's cheap to be a delegate now, but it certainly won't be at scale. Additionally, the system is open to a sybil attack because it's easy to fire up a lot of representative nodes & take over. It's all untested and I can't see it scaling well.

[Behemoth]

coyft said:

I can see the benefit in that if we lived in a world where third parties weren’t trusted. So are we waiting for the financial system to collapse before it’s value is realised?

Or do you have some examples where this has benefits in the current system?

There are many examples of AML/KYC failures and gross transgressions that have impacted individuals in developed countries ( eg recently: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/02/us/ohio-us-cust... ). There are many examples of autocratic jurisdictions that have meddled with their citizen's lawful ownership of money (eg India banning a high value rupee note with little warning, affecting neighbouring states using it as store of value ( eg https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSL3N1K82... ) There is a very clear use case for a sound world money.

In the UK, I'd certainly rather have money in BTC than TSB

Edited by Behemoth on Tuesday 12th June 11:59

Edited by Behemoth on Tuesday 12th June 12:00

[NickCQ]

Behemoth said:

In the UK, I'd certainly rather have money in BTC than TSB

What was the magnitude of TSB depositors' uninsured losses?

[Behemoth]

NickCQ said:

What was the magnitude of TSB depositors' uninsured losses?

No idea. That said, I certainly wouldn't want to run a business or a household reliant on cashflow that TSB broke, insured or otherwise. I wouldn't dismiss catastrophic failures like the TSB IT upgrade just because customers will get their money back, eventually.