The common man is what drives success. Uber would be dead without customers using it. I'm not saying the technology won't be adopted, I'm just saying unless the efficiency and savings is passed onto the consumer then it will die. I think you are vastly overestimating the amount of people that are investing in Bitcoin just to invest in Bitcoin. The majority of people I've seen buying Bitcoin are the ones that want to flip it just before the next bubble peaks and crashes.
really Apples and oranges here. Bitcoin protocol can offer use to financial services and investment funds first and foremost whereas uber needs regular consumers for success.
The ones with the most, the ones with the most products and services being built. The only ones who matter.
Maybe we get rate hikes in 2016 but I would be doubtful for this year. Even if the fed funds rate does go up the treasury rates are still very low. This indicates tepid economic growth going forward. Either way I don't see how your points relate back to bitcoin. There is no reason why a utility like bitcoin would be less useful in a higher rate and higher growth economic environment.
You do understand the venture capital regularly flows to failed companies and concepts, right? That's why it's venture capital. There's no need for a high market cap to use it for all the various purposes you suggest. None of it involves holding onto bitcoins, so all the increased demand comes with increased supply. Just the same as Overstock accepting Bitcoins does nothing to increase their value, because all they do is dump them right back onto the market.
if a million services are constantly buying and selling bitcoins with high value amounts the market cap has to increase to allow for this increased liquidity. VC does fail. thanks captain obvious. Want to go in circles all over again so I can repeat myself for the millionth time? To speculate on a technological marvel with the idea of being wealthy eventually.. to spend, to wipe your ass with (paper wallets) whatever reason you want man. Governments like it for the visible ledger
That's not really the case unless all the transactions are happening simultaneously. The marketcap only has to be enough to accommodate the value of all the transactions at a given frozen moment in time - because after that moment, all those BTC are available again for the next transaction. And since the actual valuation is irrelevant to transfers, you could just as easily use some Bitcoin clone to do the same things if you needed higher market cap. The supply of bitcoins is limited, but the supply of bitcoin clones is not. What creates sustainable valuation is people wanting to actually hold onto these things. So why do you keep pointing to various VC interest as evidence that Bitcoin is successful?
I would point out that if you go back through this thread, you'll find numerous cases of you thinking Bitcoin values are bottoming out and about to go up, and being wrong. You've consistently claimed that things like Overstock using it and the like would create demand that would cause prices to go up - but they have gone the opposite direction. What I'm arguing is not that the BTC system is not useful - just that it doesn't necessarily make buying BTCs a good or bad investment. Usage like that is price agnostic because these new users like Overstock are only using it as a method of transfer as opposed to having any interest in holding the coins. As you've pointed out, BTC can be useful to transfer money from one country to another - but it's only used as a method of transfer. No one on either side actually wants to end up with BTC - they want Dollars or Pesos or whatever. That kind of thing just isn't going to drive up price.
Major posted the points I was going to make better than I could have. Bitcoin doesn't need to be held in order for someone to make a transfer with it. That's why I asked why do people need to own bitcoin. People want the money they are transferring in their local currency and not in bitcoins.
a lot of ppl do. Investors are looking at it as such. As for the price going down over the past year, yeah you can pick an arbitrarily chosen time period and point to it as lack of success. Bitcoin clones don't have the massive decentralized infrastructure No one owns the network.
Money needs to be 1) a medium of exchange 2) a unit of account 3) a store of value Bitcoin is too volatile atm to achieve (2) (i.e. you can't price anything in bitcoin), but money transfers are an example of (1) and people needing to obtain bitcoin to perform the transfer increases the demand for bitcoin, which increases the price of bitcoin, which makes it more appealing as (3)
I'm not pointing to its lack of success. I'm pointing to the fact that you claimed things that repeatedly turned out to be wrong. If you're not sure if it would go up or down in the short term, why make the claim? Why should someone believe you the next time you make the same argument?
I think this is a good summary. The last sentence is where I tend to disagree. I think that if BTC is primarily used as a medium of exchange - ie, people aren't holding on to it - then bitcoin as it's currently valued has plenty of liquidity. With 20 million coins at $200 a coin, that's a $4 billion market cap. If a transaction takes 1 second to buy, move, and sell the bitcoins, you could move $345 trillion in wealth in a given day. That makes a lot of crazy assumptions like having all the transactions evenly distributed and all 20 million coins being available to buy and sell, so the real amount is far lower - but that's still plenty of capacity at the current valuation to handle a whole hell of a lot of money movement. There's nothing to really require valuation to go up unless BTC are taken out of the system (people want to hold them). None of the recent new use cases or the suggested theoretical ones really involve storing BTC though.
We all know that Bitcoin is a good store of wealth --- well the bolded part is arguable. But, with scarcity (only 21 million bitcoins can be mined) it is basically digital gold. Which makes it a good backbone currency. However, Bitcoin is a not a good cryptocurrency for micro transactions. First of all, it takes an average of 10 minutes to find a block. Then, you will need at least six confirmations to ensure double spending won't happen --- which could take up to an hour. But, that issue can be solve with the upcoming Bitcoin side chains. A currency that is good for micro transaction could be built on top of the current network. A currency that will remain on par with the $1 could be supported as well. Anything that is currently missing in the current protocol could be created on top of the network.
You sound like somebody from 2013 before bitcoin collapsed. Bit coin is a fine little speculative investment. So is betting on sports or lottery tickets. Otherwise, lol, I'll let the bit coin fanatics who are now rather self selected preach on.
FWIW the VCs are investing in companies that profit from bitcoin transactions. As more companies "accept" bitcoin they earn more on the market making since the vast majority of companies that accept bitcoin never receive or hold it. They accept it in the same way they accept foreign credit cards....getting immediate conversion to their home currency. VCs are not stockpiling bitcoins themselves. Their intent is to make money as bitcoins are spent. And although there's theoretically no transaction cost on a bitcoin transaction, there is absolutely a transaction cost on a bitcoin to dollars transactions -- which usually accompanies a purchase or sale a third party. And it's interesting that greater spending means greater liquidity (since most recipients immediately convert to conventional currency) which puts downward pressure on the bitcoin price. I think bitcoin will survive....but I've no idea where the value will end up.
