Post: #26

It's worth pointing out that BTC is actually LESS useful as a currency than it was when it was 1/16th of its current price at the beginning of the year. You used to be able to buy things on Steam with it, now you can't.

Something doesn't have to be a currency for its price to go up, though.

BTW,

Quote:Bitcoin after all is unsustainable, as the energy requirements to mine will just keep growing

This isn't actually true. The difficulty can go up as well as down.

Post: #27

BTC is unlike any other bubble in world history. It's a worldwide bubble that anyone can buy into. Who knows how high it will go before the network crashes and burns under the load?

Post: #28

(12-12-2017 07:42 AM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  BTW,

Quote:Bitcoin after all is unsustainable, as the energy requirements to mine will just keep growing

This isn't actually true. The difficulty can go up as well as down.

Agreed. Although I do wonder what'll happen long-term with proof-of-work algorithms.

Although it's complex since there's a few variables,

But very simply put: as BTC prices go up, so does mining profitability. As profitability goes up, more mining rigs come up. As long as (block rewards + transaction fees) > (mining expenses), you'd expect people to keep installing more and more rigs until some equilibrium is achieved.

In terms of transaction fees, if the BTC network doesn't keep pace with growth in transaction #s, you might see an increase in transaction fees. So perhaps making it even more lucrative to mine Bitcoin.

At some point, it may impact electricity prices as BTC mining starts causing a noticeable increase in electricity demand. Not to mention I think GPU prices have skyrocketed. I wouldn't be surprised if ASIC prices follow suit (if they haven't already).

All-in-all, I'm not sure how it'll all evolve and especially if we'll see a consolidation of miners - perhaps in China where their scale of economies gives them an advantage.

But at the rate things are going, it is possible that PoW may guzzle up so much of a nation's electricity that perhaps it's not unsustainable for blockchain technologies, but it could negatively impact a country. Possible electricity blackouts, jacked up household electric bills and making other industries less competitive due to the additional electricity cost.

One thing I've been thinking about: imagine the difficulty increases to an even higher hashrate. And now let's say 80% of mining happens in China. Imagine if there's a massive power outage in China that takes hours and it knocks out that 80% right after the generation of a new block and the difficulty is set for the next block. Your hashrate just dropped by a factor of 5, which in theory would mean your block will take 5x longer to mine.

Granted, the next block will have its difficulty adjusted - though even then it can only be adjusted by a maximum factor of 4.

Now imagine BTC goes up in price so much, there's so much mining that it starts causing power outages in multiple nations, if it happens simultaneously and this would probably be a total black swan event, see your hashrate drop to 1-2% midway through a block.

So yes, energy requirements don't have to go up per se. But if they do, might cause a lot of havoc and unintended consequences.

Post: #29

Wouldn't the price of bitcoin skyrocket if there's electricity blackouts as the supply from mining would grind to a halt?

Post: #30

I recently saw a clip of John Mcafee saying it currently takes him $10k in electricity to mine a single bitcoin. He also had that Guatamalen hooker shit in his mouth though...

Post: #31

This comes from someone who is heavily invested in all kind of coins. What makes Bitcoin and all other coins attractive for all of us it the fact that we know that we can always go on Coinbase, Bitstamp or Kraken and exchange our coins into hard Dollars, Euros, Pounds or whatever. But what will happen if for all of a sudden governments make it impossible to exchange crypto into fiat? Well there are online stores and other shops who accept Bitcoins and other cryptos but at some point these stores need to buy products for US Dollars. What will happen with the crypto world if we can exchange our coins back into fiat?

There is only one answer which is a total crash and the end of crypto investing.

Post: #32

^ It becomes a cash market, as well as understood value for exchange. Sounds like it is difficult, but is very possible if you can get a big enough F the man following.

Post: #33

(12-11-2017 04:33 PM)Roosh Wrote:  Are you a nocoiner?

Clearly he is.

Post: #34

(12-12-2017 02:37 PM)Kid Twist Wrote:  ^ It becomes a cash market, as well as understood value for exchange. Sounds like it is difficult, but is very possible if you can get a big enough F the man following.

Yes it could become a cash market at some point but we are far from there yet. For example the ETH blockchain is totally fucked up at the moment it takes ages to get a transaction confirmed.

Also you might be able to buy a coffee for BTC at some point but the owner of your coffee shop down the road might need still to buy the coffee from his supplier in USD.

I get the point that crypto might become a cash currency but I do not see this happening within the next five years. And as soon as governments disallow to exchange crypto into fiat there is hardly any argument for investors to keep on investing in crypto for now.

Post: #35

(12-11-2017 04:49 PM)xxx Wrote:  

(12-11-2017 04:33 PM)Roosh Wrote:  Are you a nocoiner?

I bought some in may 2016 and sold them at the end of this summer. No regrets, I followed my rules, and got a very good return.

I will definitely be looking into shorting Bitcoin or selling a futures contract in the somewhat near future.

It's a guarantee to crash, it's only about being patient and timing it right; it may after all still blow up a little more before it crashes.

So, you basicly came late to the party and checked out before it started. You did yourself a big disservice and you'll be kicking yourself for a long time. Don't be hating on those of us who saw the writing on the wall years ago and HODL strong. While BTC gets bubbly, it always recovers, and it will again.

Truth is: underlying tech and ecosystem have never been better. Segwit, Rootstock, Lightning, MimbleWimble, Confidential Transactions, Sidechains & Drivechains, and so many, many more. I'm not even speculating on the coming of ETF's, big tech companies who will start accepting bitcoin for payments or China opening up again.

Also, before it crashes, and I agree it will correct, bitcoin will go up much more than 17K. We'll get to 20-25K easily. After that, I'm not so sure, but I'm not betting against it.

But go ahead, go short. Go short bitcoin, get a good taste of it.

Post: #36

(12-12-2017 02:20 PM)superschalk Wrote:  This comes from someone who is heavily invested in all kind of coins. What makes Bitcoin and all other coins attractive for all of us it the fact that we know that we can always go on Coinbase, Bitstamp or Kraken and exchange our coins into hard Dollars, Euros, Pounds or whatever. But what will happen if for all of a sudden governments make it impossible to exchange crypto into fiat? Well there are online stores and other shops who accept Bitcoins and other cryptos but at some point these stores need to buy products for US Dollars. What will happen with the crypto world if we can exchange our coins back into fiat?

There is only one answer which is a total crash and the end of crypto investing.

This is a good point, but it`s really a race between fiat and crypto,
and maybe also gold etc. as too which currency best provides the essential functions of any currency, which is being a safe store of value and a practical means of transaction. I think that the latter is cryptos strong point.
There is little delay and no cost involved with shifting cryptos around.
The security part is a weakness that might be fixed in the future.
(Or maybe not?)

It might be that at one point in the not so distant future, Chinese factory owners etc. will prefer bitcoins to dollars as payment. Particularly with the dollar and other fiat loosing their value as a consequence of central banks and Governments pursuing inflationary policies.

I guess the big question is if we will reach some threshold, or point of no return,
when Crypto is what people want as supposed to fiat.
If that does not happen at some stage, crypto will go to zero.
But if it does happen though, the sky is the limit.

Post: #37

(12-12-2017 01:53 PM)Jack Of All Trades Wrote:  Wouldn't the price of bitcoin skyrocket if there's electricity blackouts as the supply from mining would grind to a halt?

I don't know if the mining block rewards and transaction fees are a large enough percentage of the total amount of Bitcoin to cause a price spike.

Block reward is 12.5 BTC per block. Total BTC is 16million. The more worrisome thing is if blocks take significantly longer to mine than normal (average of 10 minutes) - it may cause some people to lose faith in BTC.

But this is all speculation - I really don't know what'll happen with the network and the price as mining ramps up.

Post: #38

(12-12-2017 03:11 PM)superschalk Wrote:  

(12-12-2017 02:37 PM)Kid Twist Wrote:  ^ It becomes a cash market, as well as understood value for exchange. Sounds like it is difficult, but is very possible if you can get a big enough F the man following.

Yes it could become a cash market at some point but we are far from there yet. For example the ETH blockchain is totally fucked up at the moment it takes ages to get a transaction confirmed.

Also you might be able to buy a coffee for BTC at some point but the owner of your coffee shop down the road might need still to buy the coffee from his supplier in USD.

I get the point that crypto might become a cash currency but I do not see this happening within the next five years. And as soon as governments disallow to exchange crypto into fiat there is hardly any argument for investors to keep on investing in crypto for now.

This argument assumes all governments will act in unison. It's not an unreasonable assumption to make, but I'm not sure that governments will act as such.

Already, Japan has thousands of stores that accept Bitcoin.
Russia (Putin) is looking into Ethereum.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see a future where some governments try to ban cryptocurrencies, others welcome it in hopes of economic investment and financial gains, and in the end it becomes either you accept crypto (in some form or another) or you lose out economically to countries that do.

Note: here my assumption is that blockchain technology ends up providing a powerful enough economic benefit to nations that they can't ignore it.

Post: #39

(12-12-2017 03:33 PM)Genghis Khan Wrote:  

(12-12-2017 03:11 PM)superschalk Wrote:  

(12-12-2017 02:37 PM)Kid Twist Wrote:  ^ It becomes a cash market, as well as understood value for exchange. Sounds like it is difficult, but is very possible if you can get a big enough F the man following.

Yes it could become a cash market at some point but we are far from there yet. For example the ETH blockchain is totally fucked up at the moment it takes ages to get a transaction confirmed.

Also you might be able to buy a coffee for BTC at some point but the owner of your coffee shop down the road might need still to buy the coffee from his supplier in USD.

I get the point that crypto might become a cash currency but I do not see this happening within the next five years. And as soon as governments disallow to exchange crypto into fiat there is hardly any argument for investors to keep on investing in crypto for now.

This argument assumes all governments will act in unison. It's not an unreasonable assumption to make, but I'm not sure that governments will act as such.

Already, Japan has thousands of stores that accept Bitcoin.
Russia (Putin) is looking into Ethereum.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see a future where some governments try to ban cryptocurrencies, others welcome it in hopes of economic investment and financial gains, and in the end it becomes either you accept crypto (in some form or another) or you lose out economically to countries that do.

Note: here my assumption is that blockchain technology ends up providing a powerful enough economic benefit to nations that they can't ignore it.

Apparently the Bulgarian Government is sitting on seized bitcoins that have appreciated to a point where they could pay of 1/5 of their national debt. Must be quite tempting for them to sell if the price increase is such that they can pay off all their debts. If so it would give cryptocurrency in general a lot more legitimacy.
https://www.coindesk.com/bulgarian-gover...n-bitcoin/

Post: #40

Anyone who compares this to the Tulip Mania is a fucking idiot.

Were you able to buy drugs on the black market with only tulips in 1500s?

Why is Bitcoin revolutionary? It lets you exchange money without revealing your identity. For this reason it is unrivalled.,

Compare it to the dot com bubble fine, compare it to the Japanese Asset bubble fine, but tulip mania?

Yes it might be a bubble, but tulip mania was not a bubble, it was a scam.

I hold 0 bitcoin, was an idiot not to buy it in the 250$ range when I was about to.

Imagine this, there is a guy out there who is sitting on bitcoin valued at over 20 billliion dollars, and no one knows his identity.


Blockchain is here to stay..

Bitcoin might be a bubble, and replaced by another crypto currency.

Remember the first search engine was not google, the first browser was not chrome.

It's best to diversify against multiple cryptos.
Imagine this for a second, there is a guy out there who is sitting on bitcoins worth 20bn dollars. (Satoshi)

Imagine you are worth 20bn, and no one knows you are worth that much.

This is what blockchain is baby.

And for one second imagine this, lets say bitcoin is 100k in the future, that guy will be the richest man in the world with a net worth of 100bn $ , and yet no one will know who he is.

Forbes will list him as a billionare with his nickname.

Post: #41

We will see the real value of bitcoin when reputable banks start accepting it as a deposit. It will take sometime for the regulation laws to pass as we are ruled by 50-60 year old bureaucrats.

Right now everything is a speculation.

But here are some basic metrics,.

Total value of all the gold mined so far = 7 trillion $

Total value of all cryptocurrencies = $300bn.

Total value of physical money = 31 trillion


Total wealth of the world = 250 trillion usd(Credit suisee wealth report)

Imagine cryptocurrency like a stock market, there are hundreds of coins. The ranking might change next year, bitcoin might crash, ether might go up.

This is the biggest risk. Is there some kind of index fund for this shit so we can diversify risk? I'm all for crypto, but not bitcoin. It's not wise to put all eggs in one basket.

Post: #42

(12-12-2017 06:47 AM)Bill Brasky Wrote:  

(12-11-2017 06:00 PM)Spaniard88 Wrote:  You can't criticize bitcoin, the forum is pro-bitcoin, a lot of people have already bought in and now they need to convince other people to buy in in order to be able to cash out later at a higher price. The behavior is very similar to a cult, look at the social media feeds of your friends before and after they bought bitcoin and you'll see how it affects the mind. The more bitcoin grows, the more benefits/perks the members that joined right before other members get, so the urge to proselytize is very strong.

We're not there yet, but at some point you'll be risking getting banned by pointing out negatives, stick to neutral or positive comments on it.

Shorting bitcoin would be delusional, there's no way to tell the price direction with certainty, but if past trends are indicative of the future, shorting is a horrible idea. Plus your upside on a short is limited to 100%, as opposed to unlimited upside on a long position, so if you're going to use it as a gambling vehicle, going long is the way to go.

Also, if a group of nerds and libertarians brought bitcoin to close to 20k, can you imagine where it will go once the popular kids get on board, once it gets its first celebrity endorsements?

If I was into gambling, which is the only one of bitcoin's use cases I would have a use for at the moment, and is also a very common use case for many, many people buying bitcoin right now, I would be doing everything I can to get celebrity endorsements. Even just getting hot girls on instagram to say a few words would work. Let's say you have $100,000 in bitcoin or whatnot, it wouldn't be a bad idea to give a tiny amount of bitcoin to some mega-influencer young women on instagram or other social apps. Every person that buys has a vested interest in getting more people to buy in, so if you can get social media influencers (as in, hot girls) to buy in, this thing could go all the way to $1,000,000 a coin or more.

Think of a campaign hashtag like #raiseAwarenessBTC or something more catchy, I'm sure some of the forum members with a stronger marketing background could come up with something that works. Give bitcoins, even if only a small amount, whatever, to social media influencers, imagine what happens to the price if someone like The Rock mentions he's bought in? The Rock would be hard to get because he's already rich, so he doesn't need your bitcoin, but look for people with not too much money, but lots of followers to bring onboard, they'll be more likely to jump on for a smaller amount. If you have a larger amount to give, then by all means, sign up a whale.

You could even give it a cute Christmas theme, disguise the self-interest in the spirit of Christmas, say, #ChristmasBTC or whatnot, with Santa Claus images attached and cute reindeer.

Nonstop mentions, nonstop articles, take over everyone's mindspace until you get as many people onboard as possible.

There is an entire thread called "Why you shouldn't invest in cryptocurrencies." There are also members who are blatant cynics of crypto and tokens in general and are respected.

Give it time.

Post: #43

Blockchain will revolutionize financial markets and associated technologies.

Cryptocurrencies, however,are a fad, plain and simple. The big institutional players will want their cut with futures and won't get it, sour grapes will close that door for any long term viability.

It won't become a cash market because world governments want their taxes paid in their fiat. Japan and South Korea are the strange exceptions, but very few are as avante garde as them.

Let's also not forget the concept of counterfeit coins. So far BTC has held onto not being duplicated. What happens when someone realizes that a quantum computer can crunch out fake coins? That's a whole 'nother nightmare brewing in the crpytography world which not only affects cryptocurrencies but cyber security products.

Post: #44

(12-12-2017 06:47 PM)The Beast1 Wrote:  Blockchain will revolutionize financial markets and associated technologies.

Cryptocurrencies, however,are a fad, plain and simple. The big institutional players will want their cut with futures and won't get it, sour grapes will close that door for any long term viability.

It won't become a cash market because world governments want their taxes paid in their fiat. Japan and South Korea are the strange exceptions, but very few are as avante garde as them.

Let's also not forget the concept of counterfeit coins. So far BTC has held onto not being duplicated. What happens when someone realizes that a quantum computer can crunch out fake coins? That's a whole 'nother nightmare brewing in the crpytography world which not only affects cryptocurrencies but cyber security products.

"When someone realizes that a quantum computer can..."

People already know this. The issue isn't so much that quantum algorithms could do it, the issue is that quantum computers that can pull it off are a long way from being in existence:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/amycastor/2...g-way-off/

Post: #45

^^Google has already developed a 49 cubit computer this year and IBM intends to top that in 2018.

Moon's law very much applies to quantum computing. A long way isn't decades, but a few years.

This guy presumes a 1500 cubit machine would topple BTC https://www.quora.com/How-easy-would-it-...ele-Righes

1500 isn't a number that that's far out considering the exponential growth of quantum computing.

I already made my cash in this bubble awhile ago and I don't intend to get back in even with all the normies piling on. If a drop causes a contagion outside of the bitcoin market all bets are off as to what the future cryptocurrencies will be.

Post: #46

Well, when quantum computers become a thing there will be huge amounts of fraud and stealing outside of cryptocurrency, there is a reason why every big org and government wants a quantum computer. Quantum computation can become a problem for many things, not just crypto.

Post: #47

(12-12-2017 07:55 PM)The Beast1 Wrote:  ^^Google has already developed a 49 cubit computer this year and IBM intends to top that in 2018.

Moon's law very much applies to quantum computing. A long way isn't decades, but a few years.

This guy presumes a 1500 cubit machine would topple BTC https://www.quora.com/How-easy-would-it-...ele-Righes

1500 isn't a number that that's far out considering the exponential growth of quantum computing.

Exponential growth? I don't know about that.

5-6 years ago they were at 4-6 qubit range. So they've gained an order of magnitude in half a decade. Ok, to be fair, they were stuck at that range until about a year ago. Still I wouldn't say it's exponential growth as there hasn't really been a real trend of sorts. More like academic research for decades, stuck on single digits qubit systems. Industry gets involved, scale by an order of magnitude. Whether they can keep doing that remains to be seen.

They still got a long way to go and as for scaling from 49-qubit to a 1500-qubit computer, it remains to be seen if they can keep up the error correction.

As for Moore's Law, it's based on reducing the dimensions (factor of ~0.7 in length and width, to get a total reduction factor of (0.7*0.7)=0.5) of CMOS devices.

Moore's Law is a trend of doubling number of devices on a chip as you reduce the size of the devices in half.

That doesn't apply to quantum computing, you don't scale qubits like that. Partly because qubits don't have to be made of semiconducting materials, there are other approaches. If they wanted to, they could stack 1500 qubits together today. The problem is with quantum error correction. Every time you add another qubit, you increase the probability of decoherence, which means your qubit loses its information due to external interference (sometimes from other qubits).

So going from 50 to 51 qubits is a whole lot harder than going from 49 to 50. Going from 49 to 1500 isn't just a few doublings, it's orders of magnitudes more challenging to do.

Also, just to emphasize the Forbes link I post, as it directly quotes a Google QC guy:

Quote:But Google’s quantum computing expert John Martinis wants to put their minds at ease.

At a major crypto event at University of California Santa Barbara this week, Martinis talked about why it could take a decade or more to build a quantum computer. “This is really, really hard, way harder than building a classical computer,” he said.

He went on to explain to the packed room at Crypto 2017, a four-day conference sponsored by the International Association for Cryptographic Research, that the main reason building a quantum computer is so tough is because qubits (quantum bits), the counterpart of bits in classical computers, are unstable. And that creates extra work for physicists trying to solve the problem.

So even the QC guy at Google is saying it's a long way from happening.

And finally, cryptography has always been an arms race. Whatever algorithm you have has a shelf life. You're meant to upgrade it as technology catches up and makes a certain algorithm easy to break.

Andreas Antonopoulos talks a bit about how governments actually go about using their advanced cryptography skills - if a government knows a way to crack current algorithms, they don't use it nilly-willy, but wait for opportunities that warrant it, e.g. breaking another country's nuclear codes. You get one shot at it, after that you basically lose your advantage:

https://youtu.be/dkXKpMku5QY

Cryptography is a constant arms race, people are working on cryptographic algorithms that'll make SHA-256 pale in comparison.

From the Quora link you posted:

Quote:Public-key crypto that is secure against QC does exist, however. Currently, Bitcoin experts tend to favor a cryptosystem based on Lamport signatures. Lamport signatures are very fast to compute, but they have two major downsides:

The signature would be quite large, around 11 kB (169 times larger than now). This would be very bad for Bitcoin's overall scalability, since bandwidth is one of the main limiting factors to Bitcoin's scaling. Advances in scalability such as Segregated Witness (the 11 kB is part of the witness) and Lightning would help.

Both Bitcoin and Ethereum are working hard on the scalability problem. I'll focus on Ethereum for the time being since I know their development a bit better: in the next 2-3 years you'll see several scalability solutions come online, which should enable Lamport signatures to be feasible.

This will be LONG before QCs come into existence as a real risk to cryptocurrencies.

Overall, I'm far from convinced QC is a genuine threat in the next 2-3, 5 and maybe even 10 years or beyond.

I'm open to changing my mind though, especially in the next few years as QC develops. But not worried at the moment.

Post: #48

(12-12-2017 08:19 PM)Heart Break Kid Wrote:  Well, when quantum computers become a thing there will be huge amounts of fraud and stealing outside of cryptocurrency, there is a reason why every big org and government wants a quantum computer. Quantum computation can become a problem for many things, not just crypto.

Guys, people are ACTIVELY working on quantum-resistant algorithms. Some algorithms supposedly already are quantum-resistant (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-qua...tography).

Nothing is a guarantee either way - it remains to be seen whether both QCs actually develop to a mature enough stage and whether the quantum-resistant algorithms fail:

Post: #49

Sure its a bubble. Sure there will be a crash. Who knows when it will happen or what will cause it. If you participate buy responsibly. Only put in what you are comfortable with never getting back. I would recommend at a minimum getting your initial investment out if you have profits. I would not short this for other than a short term trade while there remains no way to safely do it. Many are sitting on huge paper profits. Some people will get rich, some people who buy high will lose it all, some people will lose huge paper profits. That's just the nature of every bubble. So long as there is a human element to markets your warning will most definitely fall on deaf ears.

Post: #50

(12-12-2017 04:43 PM)Blancpain Wrote:  Anyone who compares this to the Tulip Mania is a fucking idiot.

Were you able to buy drugs on the black market with only tulips in 1500s?

Why is Bitcoin revolutionary? It lets you exchange money without revealing your identity. For this reason it is unrivalled.,

Compare it to the dot com bubble fine, compare it to the Japanese Asset bubble fine, but tulip mania?

Yes it might be a bubble, but tulip mania was not a bubble, it was a scam.

I hold 0 bitcoin, was an idiot not to buy it in the 250$ range when I was about to.

Imagine this, there is a guy out there who is sitting on bitcoin valued at over 20 billliion dollars, and no one knows his identity.


Blockchain is here to stay..

Bitcoin might be a bubble, and replaced by another crypto currency.

Remember the first search engine was not google, the first browser was not chrome.

It's best to diversify against multiple cryptos.
Imagine this for a second, there is a guy out there who is sitting on bitcoins worth 20bn dollars. (Satoshi)

Imagine you are worth 20bn, and no one knows you are worth that much.

This is what blockchain is baby.

And for one second imagine this, lets say bitcoin is 100k in the future, that guy will be the richest man in the world with a net worth of 100bn $ , and yet no one will know who he is.

Forbes will list him as a billionare with his nickname.

See the problem is you don't own the blockchain technology when you own bitcoin. Sure there can be blockchain applications that others could develop you could buy into but the use case for bitcoin on a world scale is actually pretty poor. Some type of cryptocurrency is probably the future, but you are just gambling if you are trying to pick specific winners and losers in this space right now. I have little doubt most of these coins will be comparatively worthless within a few years at least relative to the prices they are trading at now. The easy money pre-hype has already been made. If you buy now you are assuming all the risk going forward with the hype becoming a reality for specific coins.

My perception is that people were in the past way too trusting of governments but now the sentiment has swung too far to the other side of being completely untrusting. For what it's worth, the dollar will be the last paper currency to go. There is no proof you can point to of an imminent crisis happening with the dollar. If anything, I can see the rapid rise of these cryptocurrencies to lead ECB and BOJ to abandon QE prematurely in a huge surprise to try to restore some psychological confidence of the public in their currencies, which would crush the stocks and bonds and deflate the interest in cryptocurrencies as well.