BITCOIN as an alternative to regular currency

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northbound
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cyxstudio wrote:
Sun Dec 17, 2017 3:00 am
Just wait till the next financial crash and we'll see whos the real bubble.
+1
Copenhagen trader
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Meanwhile in Denmark it is only possible to bet on the Sportsbook when it comes to bitcoin.
I have been tweeting and phoning Betfair for a week now. Yet no answer. When I click on the link to the market you posted Euler I only get a dead link.
So as a trader here, I can only bet against Betfair on a hyped cryptocurrency with no underlying fundamentals. Might as well play Christmas bingo :D
So a better play has to be found somewhere else.
Thanks for a very solid video yesterday, Euler. Nvidia was my original thought as well. Though it has been hammering upwards lately it is oddly down with 9% the last month (Friday close).
steven1976
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Euler wrote:
Fri Dec 15, 2017 7:23 pm
I more or less agree with Jordan Belfort

https://twitter.com/questCNN/status/940363458805039104
Its got to be boiler room heaven at the moment.
Zenyatta
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Most coins will fail, but there has to be one or two long-term winners - but which ones?

Ripple and Ethereum look like they have the best long-term prospects. Both have institutional support , superior technology, and roles beyond just currency. In the case of Ether, it's a token to apps on the blockchain, and Ripple is being used by major banks.

My guess is that Bitcoin crashes down to some minimum value below $US 2 000 and gradually fades away after that.
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Euler
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On my round of reading this morning I found this nice summary: -

The delusion of Bitcoin

“We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first”
– Charles Mackay

With regard to Bitcoin, my view is that the Blockchain algorithm itself is brilliant. Bitcoin itself, however, is just one application of Blockchain, and a rather awkward one. It’s not unique, meaning that other competing “cryptocurrencies” can be established just as easily. It’s not fiat, meaning that no country requires it to be used as legal tender. But beyond anything else, its inefficiency is so mind-boggling that the continued operation of the Bitcoin network could plausibly contribute to global warming. So be careful to distinguish Blockchain from Bitcoin. The Blockchain algorithm will undoubtedly become a useful component of validating transactions, tracking supply chain movements, and all sorts of other applications, but Bitcoin itself is likely to become the same thing to cryptocurrencies as Visicalc was to spreadsheets, or if you’re younger, what MySpace was to social networking.

Bitcoin essentially uses a decentralized network of computers (anyone can join) that “listen” for transactions that are broadcast over the network. Each computer can accept and attempt to validate any “block” of transactions, which is done by discovering a particular “hash” for those transactions. The hash is a long string of ones and zeros corresponding to the input, and has to satisfy the current level of “difficulty” (specifically, a certain number of leading zeros). The difficulty is set so that only one block of transactions is validated every 10 minutes or so, across the entire network. The maximum size of a Bitcoin transaction block is 1MB, which is about 2000 transactions. That’s the total number of Bitcoin transactions that can be processed worldwide in any 10-minute interval.

When you’re trying to validate a block of transactions, an extra transaction is included which designates a reward to your own account if you’re successful. Whoever discovers a hash that validates their block gets a reward, in Bitcoin. That’s what “mining” means. The validated block is added to the Blockchain – essentially a running ledger of every transaction ever made. The header for the next block has to contain the hash of the previously validated block (which is what creates the block “chain”).

But here’s the thing. Every time a block is validated, a single node in the network gets a reward, and everyone else’s computing time is completely wasted. Those required computations already absorb the same amount of energy as the entire country of Denmark. Some people will get mad at that statement, arguing that it may only be half of Denmark. Ok. Ireland, along with more than 150 other countries. We can wait a few months to include Denmark.

So ultimately, the Bitcoin features a combination of breathtaking inefficiency and constrained scalability. The system already features a rather steep cost per transaction, and hardly any of those transactions are for the purchase of goods and services. I’ve regularly observed that the value of a currency is essentially the present value of the stream of “services” that the currency can be expected to deliver over time, either by serving as a means of payment or as a store of value. That depends greatly on the willingness of other individuals to hold it and accept it into the indefinite future. My sense is that, as with all speculative bubbles, buyers are conflating “rising price” with “store of value.” Meanwhile, there’s little evidence to suggest that Bitcoin will ever be an efficient means of payment for ordinary goods and services.

Episodes of speculation can persist for some time, so there may be some speculative profit potential in Bitcoin yet. Looking over the very long-term, it may also be worth something in the future, because value is always ascribed to things that have some combination of scarcity and usefulness. To the extent that Bitcoin is assured to have a limited supply, and is undoubtedly being used for money-laundering already, I doubt that the future value of Bitcoin will be identically zero, assuming governments refrain from any regulatory effort. There will likely be numerous alternative cryptocurrencies launched in the future, each one constructed to first enrich its originator with a large number of units, and then released in the hope that it will catch on. In evaluating these alternatives, efficiency and scalability will be worth considering.
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Orixian
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Euler wrote:
Tue Dec 19, 2017 9:43 am
On my round of reading this morning I found this nice summary: -

The delusion of Bitcoin

“We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first”
– Charles Mackay

With regard to Bitcoin, my view is that the Blockchain algorithm itself is brilliant. Bitcoin itself, however, is just one application of Blockchain, and a rather awkward one.. etc
Yes this is a bang on analysis. I think I speak for most people in the crypto space who have been here for over a year that we are somewhat perplexed at the incredible price rise occuring at the point in btc's history when it is more clearly failing in its aspirations that ever before.

In July we couldnt get beyond 3k a coin because bitcoin core team couldn't solve the scailing issue. They failed to solve the scailing issue, the transaction times and costs are now ludicrous and bitcoin cash forked off causing a bitcoin civil war. Yet somehow all this means we are at circa 17k a coin. Any one who was using BTC for its underlying use case of currency has stoped using it, there are hundreds of better currency coins out there. Whenever I transfer between exchanges I never use btc and no one in with any knowledge in the space does. Many coins are already transitioning to proof of stake algorithms to cut out the energy wasteage associated with proof of work. My understanding is this only minimally impinges on decetralization. There are also many coins with various different solutions to scalling such as proof of stake, sharding, delegated proof of stake etc Instead of all of this being valued accordingly we have an asset bubble we are all having to deal with.
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gazuty
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Another very good analysis.

https://www.garynorth.com/public/11857.cfm
Zenyatta
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CRAAAAAASH..... :twisted:

And DOWN it plunges, falling faster than a plane in a nose-dive....passing 19K...18K....17K...16K...

https://www.coindesk.com/price/

The supply of fools finally ran dry.
Samo154
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Because coinbase added bitcoincash
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Dallas
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I dont think it will be much more than a short term pull back/breather from almost hitting 20K, I think it will eventually push through with far higher still to come

Then again im not involved so haven't been following all the news details etc
Zenyatta
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Well lets see who's right Dallas- I think it's crashing all the way down to the cost of mining (2K or less), and never recovering after that.

Bitcoin was an early experiment that didn't work, there's now far better coins out there, and people have realized that.

There's a huge opportunity here. Look at Peter's video, it's a good one I thought:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkQN335biiQ

If we can pick what is going to replace Bitcoin at the market bottom (when we'll be able to get the coins cheaply), we can get a massive green-up (a green so big it can set us up for life as multi-millionaires). Huge opportunity...
Atho55
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Samo154
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Zenyatta wrote:
Wed Dec 20, 2017 1:40 am
Well lets see who's right Dallas- I think it's crashing all the way down to the cost of mining (2K or less), and never recovering after that.

Bitcoin was an early experiment that didn't work, there's now far better coins out there, and people have realized that.

There's a huge opportunity here. Look at Peter's video, it's a good one I thought:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkQN335biiQ

If we can pick what is going to replace Bitcoin at the market bottom (when we'll be able to get the coins cheaply), we can get a massive green-up (a green so big it can set us up for life as multi-millionaires). Huge opportunity...
Your view on potential next one?
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northbound
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Right now, most newbies buy crypto through Coinbase, so it’s no surprise that the more popular and hyped up coins are the ones sold there (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, etc).

However there are countless other projects, tokens and blockchain platforms that are superior to Bitcoin and that most newbies don’t even know.

These will only get traction once there’s an app that expands on what Coinbase does and gives newbies easy access to a bigger range of coins and tokens. In fact one is in development now, it’s called Ethos, and many supporters see it as a potential Coinbase killer as it will also give users full control of their private keys (unlike Coinbase, which acts as a custodian).

Then there’s Waves, a brilliant Ethereum competitor, which in 48 hours’ time will implement an algo that will make it one of the faster blockchain platforms around, with a capacity of 100 transactions per second compared to Bitcoin / Ethereum’s 5-10.

1 Waves is currently $16 (100m total supply, similar to Ethereum).

1 Ethos is currently $1.80 (200m total supply).
spreadbetting
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Dallas wrote:
Wed Dec 20, 2017 1:28 am
I dont think it will be much more than a short term pull back/breather from almost hitting 20K, I think it will eventually push through with far higher still to come

Then again im not involved so haven't been following all the news details etc
Yep a drop of 15% or so is hardly a crash especially as it's been triggered by the likes of Bitcoin Cash on coinbase and Bitcoin's debut into the futures markets. Given the hassle it is to buy/sell or even buy much with Bitcoin they'll always be blips in price when any larger deals are done. People have been predicting the crash of Bitcoin on a regular basis since this thread started in 2013 in the hope they'll get it right :)

Obviously history tells us bubbles burst but I reckon there's still alot of mileage in Bitcoin until something comes along to replace it, if anything it's own inherent flaws protect it somewhat from crashing. Throw in it's first mover advantage and much like Betfair it's in a hard position to topple right now. Although with the bankers jumping on board to cash in, it's demise may come quicker than if if it was left to the 'nerds'.
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