At this point virtually everybody I know in the tech space is buying at least one coin to "hedge" against bitcoin achieving "gold 2.0" status.<p>What are the chances that as this message echoes out to virtually any urban-dwelling or internet connected human on the planet we may all, as a human race, wind up accidentally embracing a unified digital currency while in pursuit of what amounts to a lottery ticket?
Forget these 10 reasons. The real 10 reasons are<p>1. The price keeps skyrocketing, so people hoard or buy
2. The price keeps skyrocketing, so people hoard or buy
3. The price keeps skyrocketing, so people hoard or buy
4. The price keeps skyrocketing, so people hoard or buy<p>etc... it all works out until it doesn't... it's long overdue for a major correction
I still think Moldbug has by far the explanation of the increasing moneyness and price of bitcoin:
<a href="http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2013/04/bitcoin-is-money-bitcoin-is-bubble.html" rel="nofollow">http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2013/04/bitcoin...</a><p>So when people say bitcoin is "bubble" they are essentially correct - although the condescension is usually misplaced. All money is a bubble in the sense that its reservation demand is far higher than its use value warrants. This is true for the dollar, and it's also true for gold, which also has a large element of "moneyness".
<i>"The Silk Road shutdown resulted in brief, but shallow sell off and subsequent rebounded within a few days. This event showed the world and governments that illegal activities were a very small fraction of the transactions taking place on the bitcoin network."</i><p>I would say it showed that <i>Silk Road</i> was a small fraction of all BC transactions, but that still doesn't speak to the total amount of illegal activity going on BC.<p>That said, it does imply to me that either:
(1) The total percentage of BC transactions being used for illegal transactions really is low (as the article implies), or:
(2) The remaining entities using BC for illegal purposes are confident that what happened to the Silk Road won't happen to them.
Investment-wise, the prognosis is still the same as it ever was: BTC will either become a huge thing worth a lot, or it will be worth near zero.<p>The only difference is the % of total BTC you can buy given your availabe assets.<p>For some people that % is now close to nil, whereas before it wasn't, so they've missed their opportunity.<p>For others, the % is still significant. Those people should probably still get into BTC if they agree with the premise of this comment.
Anything that goes up fast will come down fast. That simple is that. The sooner you sell your speculative investment the more likely you'll get your money back (at the expense of other people). I sold some leftover coins of mine after 2x in price and that's still phenomenal gains from just some random coins I saved for any next purchase.<p>The value of BTC will slowly rise but naively extrapolating from the last year or so only I'd say the realistic value is still below $100. I'm pretty confident that roughly $50 is a rather stable floor for the years coming.
tl;dr JS_loader == BAD_UX<p>I can't comment on the post because I'm on a train with spotty 3G coverage. Which begs the question. WTF is going on with this trend of JS loaders? If your site takes too much time to load, stop nagging users and just take the time to properly optimize the site.
Just like with every bubble, some people will wait and wait again to invest in... Only once all their friends will have gain some money speculating, once the main media will say it's an easy way to make money, when they'll have the feeling that eveybody else is making money, only then will they invest in... And loose everything the next day, after the bubble collapse.<p>So, if you're planning on speculating with bitcoins, do it <i>right now</i>, or never do it... The chances are it's already too late btw, since people are already mentionning exponential growth.
If goes btc keeps going up like this for 10 years 1 BTC will be worth more than all dollars in the world today.
I think i'll keep hoarding 3 euro coins instead, at least you can make bullets out of them.
What a headache. Just to buy a cup of coffee I need to boot up Linux on a USB disk, input a 500 digit hash, call my brother for the rest of the hash, and my cousin in Sweden for the rest of it, make the transfer an wait for 15 minutes for it to transact, then I get my coffee. Yea. I'd feather have GOLD, SILVER AND COPPER coins. Even digital representations maintained by a bank.<p>Also, I'm glad I didn't agree to pay my mortgage in bit coins when the value was $11. The 70X increase in price would BITRUPT me! :)
TOO MANY BIT COIN QUESTIONS:<p>If they were stolen, who do I call to help me get them back? If I loose the keys to get into my coins, who will help me get access back to my cash. Does the UN have a BitPolice squad hunting down bit theft? If I were to declare bankruptcy would I have to declare my bit coins as a part of my estate? Is there a BITRUPTSY court?
n.b. the article is about why (in the author's eyes) the price of bitcoin skyrocket<i>ed</i>. It's all very much past-tense, observation not prediction.
This Bitcoin rise rases some interesting questions for me, even if it rings alarm bells at the same time.<p>What is the value of a currency? Is it the inscription 'I promise to pay the bearer on demand...', which nowadays will not be fulfilled? Is it the power of the organisation backing it? Perhaps the simplest explanation is best - what can you buy in other goods you might want with this currency? But that leaves you open to manipulation as you are entirely dependent on your <i>perception</i> of what other people think this is worth, which can change in an instant as we have seen with stock markets or indeed government-backed currencies where confidence is lost. So a good confidence trick will be worth as much as or more than a solid currency, until a moment of panic.<p>If you try to base it on the current value of goods in the world divided by the currency in circulation (say 11m coins), Bitcoin has a large climb in value ahead of it <i>if</i> it were to become a world currency, and if no other currency were in use. What is the USD worth if you price it this way though with only 3b in circulation and ?<p>If you say the value of a currency is its ability to buy other goods Bitcoin is currently worth a lot compared to other currencies and prices in it are deflating rapidly, but it has crashed before and will again, because the only measure of value seems to be confidence in its possible future uses, and that makes it very hard to pin down the value. It would be interesting (but I suspect impossible) to try to calculate a value for each Bitcoin based on actual use to buy goods of known value at the present time (as opposed to speculative trading).<p>If you base it on its use value as a medium of exchange, I have hesitations about the utility of Bitcoin, because of its anonymous nature (not tied to verified IDs), lack of regulation, deflationary policy, and lack of backing, and thus hesitations about its value. As a result of the free-floating value and lack of regulation, I suspect Bitcoin prices will behave far more like stock markets (a random walk) than like a normal currency which is pegged to others to some extent, and thus will be difficult to establish as a medium of exchange because of the volatility.<p>I also find it hard to believe if it is successful that it will not be supplanted by some other digital currency which has fewer of its limitations and is more suited to transactions between people who do <i>not</i> value anonymity above all, and wish to be protected from fraud, and the govs and corps that would like to track them. All you have to do to set up a competitor is establish some rules and get people to use it - something which corporations or governments can easily achieve if their monopoly on the money-supply is threatened in a meaningful way.
Bandwagon + Peer effects = a "gold" rush.
btw, the current exchange rate - $600 is making it worthless for everyday payments or small shopping. It is just a mass hysteria.