Of course there's a demand for a way to move money around without interference from governments. The problem is, this won't always be the case. I don't think the money is going to disappear, but it will certainly plummet the price of bitcoin. Anyway, the fact that it was under $1000 a coin a year ago, and now almost 10x that, scares me a ton. I cashed out at $6000/coin only like a month ago. When has a rise in price this fast ever been a good sign?
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Bitcoin Price Tops $9,000 in Historic First
- Thread starter Megalith
- Start date
Of course there's a demand for a way to move money around without interference from governments. The problem is, this won't always be the case. I don't think the money is going to disappear, but it will certainly plummet the price of bitcoin. Anyway, the fact that it was under $1000 a coin a year ago, and now almost 10x that, scares me a ton. I cashed out at $6000/coin only like a month ago. When has a rise in price this fast ever been a good sign?
It's the sort of situation where it's kind of unknown territory. On one hand, the rapid increase of bitcoin exceeds even the biggest bubbles of the past, so therefore it must be due to crash. On the other hand, unlike tulip bulbs or the dot coms, there really is a finite supply of bitcoin. Nobody can create more bitcoin, they can only make different cryptocurrencies So currency or not, it's still deflationary. For all we know, maybe the stabilized price is around 100,000 a coin, in which case it's still undervalued IF it remains in adoption. I just think the demand for some sort of cryptocurrency both as a normal currency AND for one as an investment medium, regardless of how things play out. Currently bitcoin is in the lead for the latter, without obvious contenders to dethrone it.
BinarySynapse
[H]F Junkie
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This part isn't true. For one not all Bitcoins have been created yet, but there's also nothing technically stopping developers from introducing a BIP to alter the reward schedule to increase, decrease, or even remove the limit on the total number of Bitcoins. A hundred years is a long time; a lot will change.
AliceCooper
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Same, my buddy told me to take my play money and buy some BTC when it was 200 a pop coming up on 3 years ago. Then i decided to just sit and watch as it played at 1000 and 2000. I finally bit the bullet and glad I did, for now lol.
Mchart
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I think the biggest problem is that at some point likely soon you won't have a way of converting Bitcoin to a standard currency like USD unless you pay a massive overhead. Once this happens not only will the price of Bitcoin plummit, but the exchange rate will be crap as it is.
At the end of the day I don't see how a deflationary cryptocurrency will replace the USD. Sure, companies honor it right now for exchanges but as soon as world governments basically outlaw it (Which is only a matter of time since they can't track/tax it properly) it'll be for functional purposes worthless in the real world.
This is why I think those that have made a healthy profit off of Bitcoin should sell/stay out and take the money and run. That and/or leave a little in if your initial investment was almost nothing in USD anyways, but I can't see it be advisable for anyone to buy in at this point unless they have nothing better to do with their money.
My final opinion on Bitcoin is that if it does keep rising in value it'll be no different then if you owned a bunch of rare coins. Sure, you can extract value from these rare coins but ultimately you've got to find a buyer and pay all sorts of other feeds to exchange actual currency. But again, at least a rare coin is a rare coin and has collectors value. The problem with a cryptocurrency is that it doesn't have the type of notional value an antiquity might have as it's not a physical object. Once people consider it worthless as a form of monetary exchange - It's 100% worthless. It's like a hat in TF2. My stupid Day 1 Cowboy hat in TF2 was worth like $300 at some point. Now it's only worth $3, and in 10 years it'll be worth absolutely nothing because no one will care about it anymore as TF2 hats aren't a recognized form of currency by a lasting government. Unless Bitcoin is recognized as a legit currency by a large government (Which will never happen) it'll never hold it's value in the long run.
I'll also throw out there that folks who believe BTC (Or a similar non-government sponsored cryptocurrency) can replace the USD as the world recognized currency are insane. Just think about the scenario that would happen for this to happen. The US government would have to completely fail to the point that the global economy would largely have to be reset. For this scenario in itself to happen you would see mass chaos, rioting, looting, etc. The only people who come out in top in a scenario like this are those that have wealth in the right debt and/or gold. See the US after WW2 and Europe being completely torn apart. We took most of the gold from Europe back to the US and also held substantial debts on all of Europe. If this same scenario ever happens to the US no one is going to give a shit about bitcoin anyways and you'll be lucky if the internet even exists. The internet itself is 100% reliant on large stable countries keeping it going and if you have to resort to 'trading' bitcoin by passing USB sticks the fact that it is a cryptocurrency becomes completely irrelevant and you'd been better off buying guns/ammo/food/gold/whatever or at the very least storing historical/important data that someone may find useful after the world governments/internet collapse besides a stupid BTC hash.
At the end of the day I don't see how a deflationary cryptocurrency will replace the USD. Sure, companies honor it right now for exchanges but as soon as world governments basically outlaw it (Which is only a matter of time since they can't track/tax it properly) it'll be for functional purposes worthless in the real world.
This is why I think those that have made a healthy profit off of Bitcoin should sell/stay out and take the money and run. That and/or leave a little in if your initial investment was almost nothing in USD anyways, but I can't see it be advisable for anyone to buy in at this point unless they have nothing better to do with their money.
My final opinion on Bitcoin is that if it does keep rising in value it'll be no different then if you owned a bunch of rare coins. Sure, you can extract value from these rare coins but ultimately you've got to find a buyer and pay all sorts of other feeds to exchange actual currency. But again, at least a rare coin is a rare coin and has collectors value. The problem with a cryptocurrency is that it doesn't have the type of notional value an antiquity might have as it's not a physical object. Once people consider it worthless as a form of monetary exchange - It's 100% worthless. It's like a hat in TF2. My stupid Day 1 Cowboy hat in TF2 was worth like $300 at some point. Now it's only worth $3, and in 10 years it'll be worth absolutely nothing because no one will care about it anymore as TF2 hats aren't a recognized form of currency by a lasting government. Unless Bitcoin is recognized as a legit currency by a large government (Which will never happen) it'll never hold it's value in the long run.
I'll also throw out there that folks who believe BTC (Or a similar non-government sponsored cryptocurrency) can replace the USD as the world recognized currency are insane. Just think about the scenario that would happen for this to happen. The US government would have to completely fail to the point that the global economy would largely have to be reset. For this scenario in itself to happen you would see mass chaos, rioting, looting, etc. The only people who come out in top in a scenario like this are those that have wealth in the right debt and/or gold. See the US after WW2 and Europe being completely torn apart. We took most of the gold from Europe back to the US and also held substantial debts on all of Europe. If this same scenario ever happens to the US no one is going to give a shit about bitcoin anyways and you'll be lucky if the internet even exists. The internet itself is 100% reliant on large stable countries keeping it going and if you have to resort to 'trading' bitcoin by passing USB sticks the fact that it is a cryptocurrency becomes completely irrelevant and you'd been better off buying guns/ammo/food/gold/whatever or at the very least storing historical/important data that someone may find useful after the world governments/internet collapse besides a stupid BTC hash.
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