What are your thoughts on BitCoin?

[Archbob]

BTC will be a holder of value like Gold. It will never be used as a medium of exchange, the supply is too low and the network sucks, please Blockstream sucks big time. Litecoin will probably be like bitcoin. I think something like Ripple will be the candidate to be an actual medium of exchange in the future. Crypto is here to stay and I think in the next 2 years, there's a good chance of making cash out of it. I bought into litecoin, ethers, and bitcoin a week ago at $600, it is now over $1300 and I just bought in for $1900 more. I'm not going to just stand by and not take easy money.

 

[innonimatu]

Bitcoin cannot be a holder of value in any medium or long term. Just look at history. The great fire of London happened and gold was still there afterwards, it melted but didn't disappear. The WTC was demolished but gold was recovered from the wreck.

Same with land: it remains through catastrophe (barring nuclear meltdowns, I guess).

Even printed cash, though it may get evaluated, usually endures trough disruptions.

Almost the same with securities, provided they were duly registered. You still have some perpetual bonds from centuries ago being paid. Now a portion of those instruments are entirely dependent on databases, so granted there they're getting frail.

Bitcoin, unlike those, is an utterly fragile instrument dependent on an extremely complex set of technologies and institutions being kept going. It cannot endure. It is unusable without power, computers and networks. It cannot be verified and traded except within very controlled systems. It cannot fall back on any set of accumulated jurisprudence to solve conflicts. Its supposedly decentralized registry of ownership has been shown unusable and thrown away for the sake of speed of trade, and its speculative "owners" have the worse of all worlds: no control over the digital tokens (they depend on dealers to hold them) representing ownership, and no hard assets to claim ownership on in the event of catastrophe.

 

[Archbob]

Its just like Fiat money in most cases in that respect. Most of our dollars aren't actually backed by anything. The whole world is going digital, so I don't think being dependent on databases and such is such a downfall.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Its just like Fiat money in most cases in that respect. Most of our dollars aren't actually backed by anything. The whole world is going digital, so I don't think being dependent on databases and such is such a downfall.

In the event of a failure of civic services a convenient medium of exchange will still be needed. There is a fair chance that paper currency notes will fill that need, at least for some significant amount of time even though they aren't, and won't be, "backed by anything." Bitcoins, on the other hand, would just cease to exist.

 

[Zkribbler]

Its just like Fiat money in most cases in that respect. Most of our dollars aren't actually backed by anything.

...except the full faith and credit of the US.
Bitcoin is just a massive game of Let's Pretend.

 

[Archbob]

...except the full faith and credit of the US.
Bitcoin is just a massive game of Let's Pretend.

It'll always be used to buy drugs and illegal stuff so I think it will always hold some value. I mean I thought it was a joke a few years ago as well, but I've stopped laughing now. I need to get in on this action before it either dies or stabilizes. And you are still betting on the complete collapse of society which I'm not banking on yet for the vanishing of these Crypto coins.

 

[Cutlass]

BTC will be a holder of value like Gold. It will never be used as a medium of exchange, the supply is too low and the network sucks, please Blockstream sucks big time. Litecoin will probably be like bitcoin. I think something like Ripple will be the candidate to be an actual medium of exchange in the future. Crypto is here to stay and I think in the next 2 years, there's a good chance of making cash out of it. I bought into litecoin, ethers, and bitcoin a week ago at $600, it is now over $1300 and I just bought in for $1900 more. I'm not going to just stand by and not take easy money.

The opposite is more likely true. Bitcoin has some use as a medium of exchange. It's not a great one, but it can do the job, more or less.

The job it cannot do is a store of value. And that is because its value changes separate from the value of other things.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

...except the full faith and credit of the US.
Bitcoin is just a massive game of Let's Pretend.

Where the board and pieces can be folded up and put away at any time.

 

[Ajidica]

Its just like Fiat money in most cases in that respect. Most of our dollars aren't actually backed by anything.

Our dollars are backed by the fact the US government requires me to pay taxes in USD, creating a built-in demand, and thus value.

 

[Lexicus]

Its just like Fiat money in most cases in that respect. Most of our dollars aren't actually backed by anything. The whole world is going digital, so I don't think being dependent on databases and such is such a downfall.

On the contrary, the dollar is backed by the armed strength of the US government. The US government is probably the institution likeliest to survive some kind of catastrophe.

 

[rah]

I used to laugh at it but it's getting harder, especially now that they're actually trading futures in it on the CBOE

 

[Archbob]

Should have held on the litecoin instead of switching to BTC and ETH. This litecoin rally is ludicris.

 

[civvver]

I mean do it, take the easy money. If I had free cash I would throw a few grand at it. I'm just saying you need to pick a spot and get out fast, not expect to keep riding this wave for years. It could crash 10 years from now, it could crash tomorrow.

The us stock market always recovers. The length of time is variable and individual companies may go belly up like bear sterns. But if you are in mutual funds or indexes you'll come out ok if you hold. When bit coin crashes I don't think it's ever coming back.

The block chain increases in complexity exponentially which actually hurts it. As more bitcoins are added and value goes up it gets harder to move it around, eventually people will want in on easier money like you're seeing with litecoin. Like gold comparison, I can't make gold. It exists and it's just there and always limited. But what's to stop a thousand other crypto currencies from popping up and flooding the market? Same with USD, I can't print a competing currency. Well I can but no one would use it cus it's not backed by anything.

Google could tomorrow just decide they're making their own crypto currency and put bit coin out of business if they really wanted too, if they were willing to invest in a bunch of servers to host it.

 

[Lexicus]

Yesterday when I went to get my hair cut the barbers were all talking enthusiastically about their investments in litecoin and other cryptocurrencies. I didn't want to hurt their feelings, so I just advised them not to bet the farm on that stuff and they seemed to think that was funny.

 

[innonimatu]

Yesterday when I went to get my hair cut the barbers were all talking enthusiastically about their investments in litecoin and other cryptocurrencies. I didn't want to hurt their feelings, so I just advised them not to bet the farm on that stuff and they seemed to think that was funny.

Never offer financial advice to someone whom you know personally. They'll find a way to blame you for some failure later on.

 

[rah]

If you don't like the guy, it's a win win.
Either it works and he must admit you knew what you're talking about or it doesn't and you can laugh and make fun of him for listening to you.

 

[Kozmos]

It'll always be used to buy drugs and illegal stuff so I think it will always hold some value.

That's Monero and Zcash to a lesser extent now. Bitcoins tracks too much for illegal use and the fees have made it unusable.

That said, I made a nice chunk of change on the recent surges. I wouldn't advise anyone to go in right now, unless they are prepared for the coming crash and waiting 5-10 years for the lesser known technologies to mature.

 

[Hygro]

I feel like with an ability to short the bitcoin market there's gonna be a too many people shorting it too early, but not enough to stop it from going up, and banks and other large institutions and can keep prices rising for much longer than people can hold their short positions.

 

[Archbob]

I wouldn't advise anyone to go in right now, unless they are prepared for the coming crash and waiting 5-10 years for the lesser known technologies to mature.

That just what someone told me 3 years ago.

 

[Narz]

Best of luck to you.

Thanks

No dude thank your lucky stars you made so much so quickly. Most people lose their shirts in stuff like this.

Not really luck, it was a calculated risk.

Is what you sold converted back into usd and sitting in a bank account now? Just curious how this happens. Cus a ton of people are pointing to guys like the winklevoss twins saying hey look they are billionaires now but the problem is they can't actually cash out that amount of bitcoins without crashing the market and the mechanisms to convert it to usd may not even exist, since of course the government and banks aren't buying bitcoins off you right now.

Yeah unfortunately I cashed out most of my coins too early & now they're in the form of crappy deflating US dollars. With Coinbase it's pretty easy to buy & sell. I don't like Coinbase tho because they take a cute each time you buy & sell.

I still have about $20k worth, up almost double in the last few days (thanks to crash spikes in Litecoin price)

You basically can only sell to other investors.

Fortunately everyone is tripping over themselves to get in.

So it's a currency that functions more like a commodity which is ok in theory except that it has no intrinsic value unlike something like idk pork bellies or oil barrels cus they can be consumed, or even gold which is used in some electronics manufacturing.

No intrinsic value in gold or 'regular' currency either.