I keep seeing all of these articles and none of them touch on the most important point: most people are treating bitcoin like stock and that has artificially inflated its value. That's why the...
I keep seeing all of these articles and none of them touch on the most important point: most people are treating bitcoin like stock and that has artificially inflated its value. That's why the price surged so much and hit such a high peak before completely nosediving.
The real risk here is the sudden disillusionment of what bitcoin actually is and a resulting mass exodus. It may still be able to stick around, but my bet is that the price will sink significantly in the future.
Until it experiences a small rise, and everyone panics that they'll miss out, and then dumps a ton of money into it again, leading to the next of these oh-so-predictable speculation cycles. If...
Until it experiences a small rise, and everyone panics that they'll miss out, and then dumps a ton of money into it again, leading to the next of these oh-so-predictable speculation cycles.
If bitcoin dies it'll be for one and only one reason: someone invents a better cryptocurrency, and it takes over the public's mindshare. At present, bitcoin is crypto in the public's eye. As long as that remains true, the first mover advantage will keep it going. It's had far worse crashes in the past than the current one, and you can practically set your watch to these boom/bust cycles.
I think we'd all be better off without the speculators driving the price's volatility, but that's just the nature of crypto, and markets in general. I'm more interested in the DOJ investigation... this boom/bust cycle is just a bit too regular/predictable and that makes me wonder who/what is driving it. If propaganda can manipulate an election, it can certainly manipulate a market.
I think it's going to take significantly more than a better cryptocurrency to overcome Bitcoin's first-to-market advantage and network effect. There are already countless altcoins out there, some...
I think it's going to take significantly more than a better cryptocurrency to overcome Bitcoin's first-to-market advantage and network effect. There are already countless altcoins out there, some of which are arguably superior for any number of reasons, but none has been able to get enough traction to unseat Bitcoin.
What has really confounded me lately is the rapid adoption of Venmo. How in the world did this big-corporate Paypal-created "solution" gain such a massive userbase so quickly? In my social circle it's almost ubiquitous. It's technically inferior to Bitcoin as a transactional system in a lot of ways. And they skim a fee for themselves off every transaction. That should've been Bitcoin's moment.
Clearly it's not just about the technology under the hood. Most people don't actually care about that, at all.
Very true. I look at it this way: Bitcoin is a first implementation of blockchain technologies the same way that the early World Wide Web was an implementation of Internet technologies. The web...
Clearly it's not just about the technology under the hood. Most people don't actually care about that, at all.
Very true. I look at it this way: Bitcoin is a first implementation of blockchain technologies the same way that the early World Wide Web was an implementation of Internet technologies. The web nowadays (even this website) and all its wonders is something that the early creators of the Internet could only have imagined in their wildest dreams. The way we use the web today is still built on those same core technologies and protocols, but the layperson is only interacting with an abstraction layer that obfuscates the massive tech stack that makes it possible. I see a similar future for blockchain technologies, with perhaps many more layers built on top before it reaches such an appropriate abstraction for the end user that it has mass adoption.
This can be easily solved when you have a large company processing transactions. Just like currencies can be volatile throughout the day a company can be willing to exchange your currency on the...
If we were to try using bitcoin, I would send him .001 or whatever the number of bitcoins is for that trading day. However long later the transaction actually can process and he get the Bitcoin in his wallet. Say next week we want to split another $20 pizza and I put the payment on my card and he agrees to send me back his half of the cost via Bitcoin. Only in that weeks time Bitcoin has lost another $12% of its value and he has to send me back slightly more Bitcoin than I originally sent him. He has ended up losing out because we traded an unstable "currency."
This can be easily solved when you have a large company processing transactions. Just like currencies can be volatile throughout the day a company can be willing to exchange your currency on the spot for a specific rate.
What happens is that you put your money into a service and that service takes money out of somewhere else and gives it to your friend. They absorb the risk of volatility and minimize it by processing a large volume of these transactions each day and likely giving you a slightly worse rate of exchange to accommodate potential up/down cycles.
I keep seeing all of these articles and none of them touch on the most important point: most people are treating bitcoin like stock and that has artificially inflated its value. That's why the price surged so much and hit such a high peak before completely nosediving.
The real risk here is the sudden disillusionment of what bitcoin actually is and a resulting mass exodus. It may still be able to stick around, but my bet is that the price will sink significantly in the future.
Until it experiences a small rise, and everyone panics that they'll miss out, and then dumps a ton of money into it again, leading to the next of these oh-so-predictable speculation cycles.
If bitcoin dies it'll be for one and only one reason: someone invents a better cryptocurrency, and it takes over the public's mindshare. At present, bitcoin is crypto in the public's eye. As long as that remains true, the first mover advantage will keep it going. It's had far worse crashes in the past than the current one, and you can practically set your watch to these boom/bust cycles.
I think we'd all be better off without the speculators driving the price's volatility, but that's just the nature of crypto, and markets in general. I'm more interested in the DOJ investigation... this boom/bust cycle is just a bit too regular/predictable and that makes me wonder who/what is driving it. If propaganda can manipulate an election, it can certainly manipulate a market.
I think it's going to take significantly more than a better cryptocurrency to overcome Bitcoin's first-to-market advantage and network effect. There are already countless altcoins out there, some of which are arguably superior for any number of reasons, but none has been able to get enough traction to unseat Bitcoin.
What has really confounded me lately is the rapid adoption of Venmo. How in the world did this big-corporate Paypal-created "solution" gain such a massive userbase so quickly? In my social circle it's almost ubiquitous. It's technically inferior to Bitcoin as a transactional system in a lot of ways. And they skim a fee for themselves off every transaction. That should've been Bitcoin's moment.
Clearly it's not just about the technology under the hood. Most people don't actually care about that, at all.
Very true. I look at it this way: Bitcoin is a first implementation of blockchain technologies the same way that the early World Wide Web was an implementation of Internet technologies. The web nowadays (even this website) and all its wonders is something that the early creators of the Internet could only have imagined in their wildest dreams. The way we use the web today is still built on those same core technologies and protocols, but the layperson is only interacting with an abstraction layer that obfuscates the massive tech stack that makes it possible. I see a similar future for blockchain technologies, with perhaps many more layers built on top before it reaches such an appropriate abstraction for the end user that it has mass adoption.
Agree. I think until there is a lightning (or similar) app with an on ramp as easy as venmo it won't be adopted, and shouldn't be quite honestly.
Venmo became popular because a) it's super easy to use and b) it's a social network of transactions amongst your friends/contacts.
This can be easily solved when you have a large company processing transactions. Just like currencies can be volatile throughout the day a company can be willing to exchange your currency on the spot for a specific rate.
What happens is that you put your money into a service and that service takes money out of somewhere else and gives it to your friend. They absorb the risk of volatility and minimize it by processing a large volume of these transactions each day and likely giving you a slightly worse rate of exchange to accommodate potential up/down cycles.
But then wouldn't it essentially have the same result as using Venmo?
I didn't say it was a better idea, I'm just explaining the only way a consumer would tolerate it.