Bitcoin - Part 2

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a_unique_person said:
It's always had inherent architectural problems. The car is still around but the Model T Ford is long gone.
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That is a poor analogy. The Model T Ford may have been superseded by newer models but it was never "abandoned" and its value certainly hasn't "dropped to zero". In fact, A model T in good condition would fetch a much higher price than a modern motor vehicle.
 
Rat Poison + Carcinogen = ???

Regulators Begone: Bitcoin Goes on Sale in French Tobacco Shops
In a follow up to its November 2018 announcement, the Parisian FinTech startup has forged a partnership with six ‘tabac’ centers across the French capital. The cooperation would see the tobacco sellers selling bitcoin vouchers – similar to gift cards – that are redeemable for the digital currency via Kepelerk’s crypto wallet.

Adil Zakhar, one of the co-founders of Keplerk, said the total number of bitcoin-selling tobacco outlets would reach 100 by the end of this week. He also confirmed that they were eyeing the enrollment of 6,500 licensed shops by the beginning of February in hopes to offer more doors through which new users can enter the cryptoverse.

“Some people find it complicated to get bitcoins online,” Zakhar told Reuters. “They trust their local tobacco shop owner more than they would trust some remote anonymous website.”
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It boggles the mind to think that anyone would trust someone who is actively trying to kill them with a known carcinogen - and now rat poison too!

Yet again Bitcoin becomes associated with the sleazy world of drug pushers and addicts. Only this time it's Bitcoin itself which is desperately trying to get a fix.
 
psionl0 said:
That is a poor analogy. The Model T Ford may have been superseded by newer models but it was never "abandoned" and its value certainly hasn't "dropped to zero". In fact, A model T in good condition would fetch a much higher price than a modern motor vehicle.
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A prize tulip bulb from 1630 would probably fetch a pretty good price too, if it was 'in good condition'. In reality most surviving Model T's need a lot of work to make them road-worthy, and even then their usefulness is limited. Most people today wouldn't consider buying one at any price.

But hey, perhaps in 50 years time a Bitcoin 'in good condition' might be sought after by collectors of obsolete technology. As a retro computing enthusiast I can understand that desire - though I prefer stuff that is actually functional and has some aesthetic qualities. I think it would be hard to get enthused over a file full of random bits.

BTW I hear that a 100,000,000,000,000 Mark German banknote from 1924 'in good condition' goes for around 10,000 Euro these days. That's way more than it was worth in 1924 (about $100) which proves that any fiat currency will make you rich if you HODL it for long enough!
 
Roger Ramjets said:
BTW I hear that a 100,000,000,000,000 Mark German banknote from 1924 'in good condition' goes for around 10,000 Euro these days. That's way more than it was worth in 1924 (about $100) which proves that any fiat currency will make you rich if you HODL it for long enough!
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And a US Penny minted in 1943 is currently at Auction and the bid is $130,000 with a day to go.


https://coins.ha.com/itm/lincoln-ce...2.s?ic=Home-FeaturedItems-071515#auction-info


Penny for your thoughts?


Norm
 
psionl0 said:
That is a poor analogy. The Model T Ford may have been superseded by newer models but it was never "abandoned" and its value certainly hasn't "dropped to zero". In fact, A model T in good condition would fetch a much higher price than a modern motor vehicle.
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Not so much:

https://www.hemmings.com/classifieds/cars-for-sale/ford/model-t

Collector cars and guitars are fairly good comparison points to bitcoin.

A guitar collector friend of mine was able to pick up a 1961 Gibson ES-335 and a 1957 Les Paul Goldtop last year for the price he would have had to pay for the Les Paul alone two years ago.
 
...but Blockchain is Revolutionary!

Billions Wasted on Blockchain Pilots
McKinsey & Company, the American management consulting firm, has released a report on the state of blockchain technology in business. It found that of the over 100 supposed use cases presented, the vast majority of pilots and proofs of concepts are still stuck in “pioneering mode” or are being shut down while many projects have failed to raise Series C funding rounds...

“Of the many use cases, a large number are still at the idea stage, while others are in development but with no output. The bottom line is that despite billions of dollars of investment, and nearly as many headlines, evidence for a practical scalable use for blockchain is thin on the ground.”

“McKinsey’s work with financial services leaders over the past two years suggests those at the blockchain ‘coalface’ have begun to have doubts,” the report notes. “In fact, as other industries have geared up, the mood music at some levels in financial services has been increasingly of caution (even as senior executives have made confident pronouncements to the contrary). The fact was that billions of dollars had been sunk but hardly any use cases made technological, commercial, and strategic sense or could be delivered at scale.”
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But don't berate businesses for blowing Billions trying to build blockchains - buy into it because Blockchain is bound to become the next Big Thing. But why? The answer is blindingly obvious. Blockchain has one beautiful attribute that will make it go ballistic - the letter B! Just like tulip Bulbs, Beanie Babies, and Bitcoin... Blockchain's future is Bright!
 
It looks like Ethereum has plans to outdo Bitcoin in energy efficiency. Why stick with the coin that harms the environment?

From IEEE Spectrum: Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Absurd Energy Consumption by 99 Percent

Ethereum mining consumes a quarter to half of what Bitcoin mining does, but that still means that for most of 2018 it was using roughly as much electricity as Iceland. Indeed, the typical Ethereum transaction gobbles more power than an average U.S. household uses in a day.

“That’s just a huge waste of resources, even if you don’t believe that pollution and carbon dioxide are an issue. There are real consumers—real people—whose need for electricity is being displaced by this stuff,” says Vitalik Buterin, the 24-year-old Russian-Canadian computer scientist who invented Ethereum when he was just 18.

Buterin plans to finally start undoing his brainchild’s energy waste in 2019. This year Buterin, the Ethereum Foundation he cofounded, and the broader open-source movement advancing the cryptocurrency all plan to field-test a long-promised overhaul of Ethereum’s code. If these developers are right, by the end of 2019 Ethereum’s new code could complete transactions using just 1 percent of the energy consumed today.
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jrhowell said:
It looks like Ethereum has plans to outdo Bitcoin in energy efficiency. Why stick with the coin that harms the environment?

From IEEE Spectrum: Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Absurd Energy Consumption by 99 Percent...by the end of 2019 Ethereum’s new code could complete transactions using just 1 percent of the energy consumed today.
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But the only reason Bitcoin consumes so much electricity is that the 'difficulty level' is artificially increased as more 'coins' are produced. So wouldn't reducing electricity use slash the cost of production, and so make the 'digital currency' almost worthless? Who will be interested in it then?

And if the cost is low then miners can afford to do more 'work'. But why might this be a problem?

Ethereum Classic 51% Attack — The Reality of Proof-of-Work
An attack on a blockchain that uses a PoW algorithm for consensus is possible if the attackers have over 50 percent control of the network hash rate.

If this is the case, the controlling CPU power will allow an attacker to create a separate chain from any previous block in the blockchain. Given that it has the majority of computing power, its new chain will eventually overtake the accepted chain by the network, thereby defining a new transaction history...

Coinbase had identified a “deep chain reorganization” of the ETC blockchain which included a double spend on Saturday, Jan. 5. By the evening of Jan. 7, the company had taken stock of multiple double spends on the network:... totaling 219,500 ETC (~$1.1M)
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This is what happens when you have lots of powerful machines laying idle because Bitcoin mining is not profitable. Let's hope Ethereum’s new code fixes this flaw.
 
Belz... said:
<scoff> yeah, how could the most important creation in the history of man ever fail?
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Come off it! The death of bitcoin has been pronounced nearly every other post since 2011.

Do you really think that these idiots have had the slightest clue about what they are talking about?
 
psionl0 said:
Come off it! The death of bitcoin has been pronounced nearly every other post since 2011.

Do you really think that these idiots have had the slightest clue about what they are talking about?
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The issue I have is when an asset can drop from $4,000 to as low as $3,500 in a few hours, as Bitcoin did today, and go up from $3,600 to $4,100 (apparently from one big purchase) as it did last week, it is little more than a speculative tool which can be manipulated by a handful of the bigger players, and not the sort of thing your average person should be convinced to dabble in.


And, of course, we still have people who perhaps bought in at $20,000 whose investment has contracted by 80%. Any suggestions as to when they might get a positive return? After all, as you have said before, nobody ever lost money on bitcoin.


And do you seriously think that the Bitcoin Bear who said Bitcoin would recover to $25,000 by the end of 2018 is not an idiot for sticking to that prediction as late as November last year? To be fair, he did cut it back to $15,000 in December which was still wrong by a fair order of magnitude.



Norm
 
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psionl0 said:
Come off it! The death of bitcoin has been pronounced nearly every other post since 2011.

Do you really think that these idiots have had the slightest clue about what they are talking about?
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Any more of a clue that the guy who says it's trending exactly the same as last time, and therefore will bounce back to new highs forever? Yes.

I'm not one of them though. I think Bitcoin will suffer a slow lingering death, with many smaller bounces before it eventually expires. As to exactly when that will happen, we may never know. There are already at least two forks that claim to be the 'real' Bitcoin, so eventually it could become Bitcoin in name only.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
Any more of a clue that the guy who says it's trending exactly the same as last time, and therefore will bounce back to new highs forever?
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I don't know who that guy is. No doubt you would like to attribute that to me because facts don't matter to you.

Roger Ramjets said:
I think Bitcoin will suffer a slow lingering death, with many smaller bounces before it eventually expires.
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One of many possiblities.
 
psionl0 said:
One of many possiblities.
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A real investment, AKA one with predictable future earnings, would have only a single future path. The may be some noise along the way but it’s ultimate path is predetermined and won't change unless the underlying earnings do.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
Billions Wasted on Blockchain PilotsBut don't berate businesses for blowing Billions trying to build blockchains - buy into it because Blockchain is bound to become the next Big Thing. But why? The answer is blindingly obvious. Blockchain has one beautiful attribute that will make it go ballistic - the letter B! Just like tulip Bulbs, Beanie Babies, and Bitcoin... Blockchain's future is Bright!
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I have it on good authority that blockchain has nothing to do with the thread.

Speaking of authority...

psionl0 said:
Come off it!
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As soon as you stop treating BTC like the second coming.

The death of bitcoin has been pronounced nearly every other post since 2011.
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Indeed, and erroneously. So?
 
Belz... said:
As soon as you stop treating BTC like the second coming.
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I get it. Anybody who doesn't say "BITCOIN BAD" believes that bitcoin is the most wonderful thing in the world and sacred to boot. :rolleyes:

Belz... said:
Indeed, and erroneously. So?
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So anybody sprouting the same nonsense today is not deserving of respect.
 
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psionl0 said:
Perhaps if you actually read my posts instead of making them up you would see that this is already the case.
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I think I've read enough of them to come to my own conclusion, thanks.

Just because you think you're being rational doesn't mean the rest of the world will see it that way, and it doesn't mean they haven't read your material.
 
Belz... said:
I think I've read enough of them to come to my own conclusion, thanks.
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If you think that I am promoting bitcoin or saying that bitcoin is wonderful and will never fail then you clearly haven't.

When I am not dealing with the uncritical thinking in this thread I put my own views forward such as in posts #3373 or #3416.
 
The technical picture presents as a pending attempt on 3000.
Base camp is established, just watching the weather.
 
psionl0 said:
The highlighted bit is a typical strawman argument leveled against me at every opportunity. It is a LIE. I have never said that "past performance is all you need" or that a future profit is guaranteed.
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If that doesn't represent your thinking then great! But the reason I associate it with you is your previous statements including "...history shows that buyers fare better than sellers." post # 3143,

psionl0 said:
What I have said is that based on past performance, the odds favour another price cycle. (If that happens then another profit can be made). Do you have a problem with a statement like that?
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Yes, I do. It's like saying because I flipped a coin 5 times and it came up heads each time, the odds favor it comming up heads on the sixth time. The odds are still even.

psionl0 said:
I might point out that a "pump and dump" is virtually impossible with bitcoin. Sure there are many trying to talk up the price of bitcoin with glowing recommendations (I am not one of them) but the historical price chart is out there for anybody to see and make their own conclusions. Nobody can get away with lying about bitcoin's performance (an essential component of pump and dump schemes).
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You don't need truth to "pump". All that's required is to build hype. I see an awful lot of statements designed to promote hype rather than critical thinking.

psionl0 said:
In case you haven't guessed it, I am not promoting bitcoin. I am trying to counter all of the ridiculous arguments we see being repeated ad-nauseum.
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You don't counter ridiculous arguments from one end of the spectrum with ridiculous arguments from the other end.
 
jrhowell said:
Reality malfunction. Is this TA or mountain climbing?
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It is TA, the proposition that price history alone confers information that is measurably better than a coin toss. I realise it is a little confusing talking climbing when a descent to purgatory is expected, so simply turn the chart upside down, but don't make the mistake Warren Buffet did.
 
Samson said:
It is TA, the proposition that price history alone confers information that is measurably better than a coin toss.
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Price history alone is no better than a coin toss. It only has predictive power when combined with other observations and knowledge of the market.

Straight technical analysis gives you nonsense like this:-

December 20 2018: Bitcoin [BTC] possible take-over by bulls indicated by the technicals
Bitcoin seems to have found the long needed respite it was looking for, as the prices are climbing higher than expected... currently trading at $3,900... it will be testing resistance points at $4,345, $4,750, and $5,545.

The MACD indicator shows a positive and a bullish crossover that has over-reached its stay. It shows a clear bullish sign.

The same goes for Stochastic indicator as it has risen above and reached the over-bought zone.

The Chaikin Money Flow shows an influx of money into the Bitcoin market as the CMF indicator has risen from the depths of the abyss.

The Parabolic SAR markers have formed below the price candles indicating a bullish trend.

The Relative Strength Index is also showing a dramatic increase as it has crossed the 50-line indicating an impending over-bought position for Bitcoin.

The Awesome Oscillator shows receding green lines transitioning from red lines, which indicates a possibility of an impending bullish cross-over.
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December 26 2018: prices collapse as Christmas rally comes to an end
The Bollinger Bands are seen closing in on the prices as the volatility in the market is reducing. The prices have dropped below the simple moving average, which indicates a bearish trend for Bitcoin...

The Aroon indicator also shows a bullish move for Bitcoin prices as the Aroon green line has hit the 100-line indicating that the uptrend has gained momentum.
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What does all that gobbledygook even mean?

"The coin just 'unexpectedly' came up Heads. The next 3 tosses will 'test resistance levels' to either come up Heads or Tails."

Later...

"The last two tosses came up Tails, indicating a 'bearish trend' - unless it comes up Heads next time!"
 

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Mycroft said:
If that doesn't represent your thinking then great! But the reason I associate it with you is your previous statements including "...history shows that buyers fare better than sellers." post # 3143,
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And you think that a simple statement of fact (that is true btw) is no different to saying that "profits from bitcoin in the future are absolutely guaranteed?

That is some serious strawman right there!

Mycroft said:
Yes, I do. It's like saying because I flipped a coin 5 times and it came up heads each time, the odds favor it comming up heads on the sixth time. The odds are still even.
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Or the coin is biased. Either way, it is ridiculous to compare bitcoin to tossing coins. Bitcoin would not be at the price it is today if a rise or fall in its price was merely a coin toss.

Mycroft said:
You don't need truth to "pump".
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Of course not. As I said, you need lies. Preferably the lies can't be countered with the truth unlike the case with bitcoin.

Mycroft said:
You don't counter ridiculous arguments from one end of the spectrum with ridiculous arguments from the other end.
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No, that seems to be more your style. Your problem is that my statements aren't ridiculous enough so you try to counter strawman arguments with ridiculous arguments from the other end.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
Price history alone is no better than a coin toss. It only has predictive power when combined with other observations and knowledge of the market.

Straight technical analysis gives you nonsense like this:-

December 20 2018: Bitcoin [BTC] possible take-over by bulls indicated by the technicals


December 26 2018: prices collapse as Christmas rally comes to an endWhat does all that gobbledygook even mean?

"The coin just 'unexpectedly' came up Heads. The next 3 tosses will 'test resistance levels' to either come up Heads or Tails."

Later...

"The last two tosses came up Tails, indicating a 'bearish trend' - unless it comes up Heads next time!"
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I actually agree with most of that.

Except that the odds of a price rise or fall are not exactly 50/50. Based on the shorter price history, the odds favour a fall while based on a longer history, the odds are at least even or even favour a price rise.
 
psionl0 said:
I actually agree with most of that.

Except that the odds of a price rise or fall are not exactly 50/50. Based on the shorter price history, the odds favour a fall while based on a longer history, the odds are at least even or even favour a price rise.
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Trends don’t “just happen” they are caused by underlying forces. Over the long term gold tracks with inflation. Over the long term stocks/bonds track with the value of their earnings.

What underlying pressure does bitcoin track with? It’s not a commodity like gold, nor does it have earnings like stocks/bonds. It’s not even useful for paying taxes and helping to maintain balance of payments like a fiat currency. Bitcoin has very limited underlying utility and has significant economic costs to maintain. This makes it overvalued at any price, so it’s ultimate destination, as I suggested above is zero or close enough to make no difference. There may be a lot of completely random movement between now and then, but unless it acquires some significant utility that’s where the long term trend will take it
 
lomiller said:
Trends don’t “just happen” they are caused by underlying forces. Over the long term gold tracks with inflation. Over the long term stocks/bonds track with the value of their earnings.

What underlying pressure does bitcoin track with? It’s not a commodity like gold, nor does it have earnings like stocks/bonds. It’s not even useful for paying taxes and helping to maintain balance of payments like a fiat currency. Bitcoin has very limited underlying utility and has significant economic costs to maintain. This makes it overvalued at any price, so it’s ultimate destination, as I suggested above is zero or close enough to make no difference. There may be a lot of completely random movement between now and then, but unless it acquires some significant utility that’s where the long term trend will take it
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That is just meaningless crap from 2011 copied and reposted.
 
psionl0 said:
That is just meaningless crap...
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Talk about meaningless...

Bitcoin price: ‘no reason’ for falling cryptocurrency values
Mati Greenspan, Mati Greenspan, told the Daily Express that the cryptocurrency market is seeing a “reversal” of the trend that pushed bitcoin above the $4,000 (£3,120) mark at the beginning of the year.

But he added that “there doesn’t seem to be any real reason for this drop, neither technical nor fundamental”.
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You see, the Bitcoin price goes up and down as it feels like, with no discernible relationship to the 'technicals' or 'fundamentals'. So any talk about what the 'technicals' say it will do is meaningless, and while it's fundamental value probably is close to zero, that isn't affecting the current price.
 
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