(06-11-2017 08:56 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote: Apologies for asking stupid n00b questions, but I was wondering some things when I read your post.
There is nothing wrong with some questions that are kind of n00b questions. There is some self-regulation in this, right? because if you are getting the sense that your questions are too nOOb, then maybe you may need to add something to the mix, such as your experiences and/or logic. If you are both asking and contributing, then we are likely accomplishing our forum objectives to help each other to help ourselves in self-improvement.
(06-11-2017 08:56 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote: (06-11-2017 07:47 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote: I have a hard time disagreeing with almost anything that you say - but there is something that seems off about your ethereum / bitcoin comparison.
I know that I have responded to your posts on this topic before, but should it not seem difficult to suggest that there is something outmoded about bitcoin - when it's continuing to reach ATHs, and not in any kind of slow way.
We have pretty large exponential growth in BTC since $890, and it looks like this week, we have a pretty good chance at the $3300 to $3600 price territory.. Sure, BTC has not reached that $3300 to $3600 price territory, yet, but it's hardly dying or even losing market share to ethereum.
Is the growth in bitcoin due to long-term confidence in the bitcoin community... bitcoin... people? Designers? God I don't even know what kind of language to use for this. Let me try again. Is the growth in bitcoin due to investor's long-term confidence in the ability of bitcoin to remain viable in the face of increasing transaction fees and processing time, or just an increased awareness of cryptocurrency in general?
Guys participating in this thread and forum seem to have all kinds of ideas in regards to this topic, and to some extent we are getting off topic for this thread because you are asking about bitcoin, even though bitcoin does have some relation, in my view, to a combination of confidence in bitcoin and also money that is flowing into all of the crypto space. You cannot just separate out one crypto in order to attempt to describe growth or price appreciation because there is some symbiosis that seems to be going on and even to be able to attempt to predict price direction(s).
There are people who bet in order to attempt to bring one asset down and there are people who bet to bring the asset up and there are spam attacks and disinformation spreading. All of this is taking place simultaneously, and we have to decide which factors to take more seriously in order to attempt to determine how to allocate our investments.
So, yeah, bitcoin and ethereum are offering different products, but sometimes when people are speculating, they don't even necessarily get down to whether there is any actual use case or what that use case is, so long as the price of the asset goes up after they invest into it.
(06-11-2017 08:56 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote: I know if it wasn't for this thread I would've gone into bitcoin because it's the name I know.
Sure, bitcoin does have the most name recognition, so that will likely help in some regards. Developing use cases can also help, so if some folks are learning about various ICOs then they will likely learn about Ethereum, and even Ethereum is becoming more well known by folks who begin to look further into the matter, beyond the name recognition aspect.
(06-11-2017 08:56 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote: Information about the problems it's facing isn't readily available to non-savvy investors, and my impression is that a LOT of nonsavvy investors are pouring into this field.
Yes. You gotta be careful if you conclude too soon about what is the good information and what is the bad information, so yeah, in the end there is a lot of conflicting stories out there. Whether you believe the "low down" about the supposed problems in bitcoin is another question too, regarding the extent that the "problems" might be exaggerated too, even by well meaning folks. So, ultimately, you need to decide for yourself how you want to approach the matter and the extent that you want to continue to look into the matter after you have made your investment choices. I frequently will remind guys that they are not locked into their initial choices, but they can also chose a strategy that allows them a more incremental choice set, rather than betting too much in one direction or another that will possibly cause them to feel locked in, especially if the market moves against their investment choices.
(06-11-2017 08:56 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote: This isn't the stock market, where the majority of investment money is driven by highly educated guys with IQs in the 140+ range, or even computer algorithms.
Exactly, it is the wild, wild west, which can bring some advantages and some disadvantages.
An advantage is that you can structure your own trading and entry points and get into systems quite easily and cheaply.
A disadvantage is that you can be robbed of your coins.
(06-11-2017 08:56 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote: The "bitcoin is outmoded" argument seems to stem from underlying technology issues, and because of the nonsavvy investor community I don't think they'd be properly priced into the coin's value. Given this fact, do the ATHs prove anything about BTC? Am I misreading the nature of bitcoin investors?
I think that you might be misreading the nature of bitcoin investors and maybe even trying to simplify too much. I doubt that you are doing this on purpose, but there is a lot of conflicting information out there, and bigger players try to manipulate various markets in order to move regular people to do certain things, but sometimes even the manipulators lose control over the price and they cannot keep the price down, for example so they are forced to go with the trend, which currently is up.
Yes, a correction can happen at any time, and then there can be a variety of narratives that describe why the correction happened or assert that bitcoin is dying. Several of those narratives have been hot and heavy in bitcoinlandia since the price was at $250, so just from that you gotta realize to take some of that spin with a grain of salt, and understand that some players (big or small) are going to see value in spite of the narrative. Furthermore, from time to time, the narrative is going ot play in such a way to exacerbate a situation, so in that regard, bitcoin has a tendency to overshoot expectations, so if the price is dropping the drop could be longer and lower than expected and the same is true about upwards price movements. But sometimes, you expect more price drop and it does not happen because there is an inability to manipulate the price any lower or a variety of other related reasons.
(06-11-2017 08:56 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote: Quote:Yes, I understand that the market share argument is made a lot, and even suggestions that ethereum can do everything that bitcoin can do (but better), and the same arguments can be made about bitcoin allowing for sidechains. In the end, it seems that Ethereum cannot be denied as a prominent player, and surely it is coming very close to surpassing bitcoin's market cap, but these trends cannot be called as inevitable or foregone - because they have to play out, and fair enough that you are projecting Ethereum to surpass bitcoin's market share -
Now, if we talk about downside, instead of upside, I really doubt that bitcoin has a downside that is greater than Ethereum - but I can understand that some guys have already come to that conclusion, and it is fair enough for them to make their bets and their investment plans according to their views about both upside and downside possibilities as they see them.
It could be possible that we each understand the symbiosis that is going on in this space, even though we are using different words to describe what we see and different words to describe upwards and downwards potentials and whether we believe that there is some zero sum game competition going on - however, in the end, even if Ethereum goes 5x bitcoin, bitcoin can continue to have strong use cases and several use cases that overlap with Ethereum. The same is true with the opposite, even though you seem to recognize that there are some potentially serious security flaws with Ethereum - and you seem to almost assume that Ethereum is going to be able to weather some of its security vulnerabilities (like it did with the DAO). Sure, it could be true that Ethereum is going to be able to weather any potential upcoming security vulnerability(ies), but since we have not had sufficient examples of those, besides the DAO, we are going to have to see how that plays out - because it seems that the more that the value of the assets on the chain and the better liquidity of off loading it, the more it becomes a target for a large variety of economical attack.
In the end, we have to be really careful to the extent that our discussion might be either assuming too much about the future or downplaying serious matters, such as security vulnerabilities of any of the assets, whether that is bitcoin, ethereum or any of the coins or blockchains built upon them
What specific security vulnerabilities are you referring to? I found and read this article, and wasn't overly impressed. The same author came back here and said that many of his concerns had been addressed.
Yes, if Ethereum prices are going up and does another 50% increase in a week from $220 to $350, then any guy can start to feel a bit more comfortable with Ethereum.
I am not a coder, so a lot of that I read is second hand in regards to Ethereum vulnerabilities. I guess that the essence of my understanding is that it is well known that Ethereum is much more easy to get the adoption of code into ethereum or to get programs or code to run on ethereum, and so in that regard, it is logically more vulnerable to attacks or bugs or scams because the code is easier to get onto the platform or embedded into the platform. Also, a lot of this is new (less than a couple of years and in some cases there are programs being implemented on ethereum on an ongoing basis, several weekly). bitcoin has been tested for more than 8 years, and there are fewer new additions, and just those practices cause the possibility of more vulnerabilities in ethereum as compared with bitcoin.