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Old 29th December 2017, 08:25 AM   #1281
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Originally Posted by Samson View Post
I am very sure gold rallies this year, and cryptos go south.
Don't be so sure. I've been long gold and silver for a long time. It's completely rigged, thanks to ETFs, futures, naked short selling, and unlimited manipulation by central banks. Any gains that it's seen in recent history are managed. However, there is one thing you can be very sure of with gold and silver, if you are buying it now, you are buying it at a *huge* discount. The only question is, will it ever come off clearance in our lifetimes? I am betting that it will, but I am beginning to recognize that it will take a paradigm shift and change in the balance of global power.
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Old 29th December 2017, 08:34 AM   #1282
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Originally Posted by Craig B View Post
You won't confront this, will you? It will go up forever? It's the God Bubble. Nobody has to go to the trouble of creating real wealth or value again, if that's correct. We can all simply wait for Bitcoin to rise in price forever ... can you not see the fallacy in that reasoning?

It's a delusion. Like perpetual motion, or "free energy": one of these things touted by swindlers.

But I observe that this has become an ideological issue. So there's nothing to be done except to await the inevitable crash and hope the resulting damage is not too severe, or can be cleaned up effectively.
This thread is really tedious now, mostly because of your inane, repetitive, and mostly content-free posts. It's almost as bad as the Gaetan "money" thread. Almost.

If you've read any Karl Popper, in order for claims to be scientific, they have to be falsifiable. This is not to say that unfalsifiable claims aren't meaningful, they certainly can be (I am a conspiracy theorist, who by nature deals in some hefty and practically (but not absolutely) unfalsifiable claims myself). But clearly unfalsifiable claims cannot be scientific by definition.

At what point do you concede that bitcoin was never really a bubble, but instead a profound paradigm shift in terms of the way that we view money, and wealth? Is there some price that you would concede this, or some level of acceptance? Perhaps $100,000, or maybe the idea that Amazon would accept bitcoin? Can you make a falsifiable claim about bitcoin being in a bubble, or not?
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Old 29th December 2017, 08:43 AM   #1283
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Originally Posted by Craig B View Post
I hope your friend isn't still holding his hundred and eighty millions when the music stops, if indeed any such person exists, and you haven't merely imagined him as a counterweight to the Judaeo-Plutocrat conspiracy to make people accept fiat dollars at gunpoint.

But if your friend does exist, I hope he has got out or gets out in time. Only a fool goes for top dollar at the risk of losing so much.
Oh. Now you're calling me a liar. I suppose you expect me to tell you his name, so you can google him, and then dox myself. Is that it? Sorry, I'm not going to do that for some clown on the internet. It's funny to me that people are incredulous when I tell this story, as if bitcoin multi-millionaires don't exist, and that there aren't some people on a computer forum that don't actually know one.

In fact, I know two, another gentleman on an IRC chat room that I've been frequenting for years, who has around 2000 bitcoin, and other various cryptos including ETH.

I think the big difference between my friend and people like you (and, sadly me, who only owns 0.09 bitcoin that he sent me) is that he is a visionary and a true believer. He sees a paradigm shift, and at this point, I think he might be right. He still hasn't convinced me to buy a single one, especially not at $17,000 when he suggested it. I'm a true believer in precious metals, but I wish I hadn't been so dogmatic.
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Old 29th December 2017, 08:49 AM   #1284
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Psion, are you ever going to address the fallacy that bitcoin isn't viable as a currency now not because it is deflationary, but because of the transaction times and costs? If not, you are really no better than these other bitcoin "skeptics".

Perhaps the subject of why we don't need and shouldn't want inflationary currencies should be it's own thread.
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Old 29th December 2017, 09:17 AM   #1285
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Originally Posted by Tippit View Post
(I am a conspiracy theorist, who by nature deals in some hefty and practically (but not absolutely) unfalsifiable claims myself). But clearly unfalsifiable claims cannot be scientific by definition.

At what point do you concede that bitcoin was never really a bubble, but instead a profound paradigm shift in terms of the way that we view money, and wealth? Is there some price that you would concede this, or some level of acceptance? Perhaps $100,000, or maybe the idea that Amazon would accept bitcoin? Can you make a falsifiable claim about bitcoin being in a bubble, or not?
Do you understand the meaning of the expression falsifiable? I have stated that Psion's notion that the price of Bitcoin will go up for years to come, and totally dwarf the recent peak of $20k, if wrong will be evidently mistaken. It will therefore be falsified. Is the recent peak the last before the collapse? Very possibly, but I don't know. Let me say, however, that if it goes up all the way to €100,000, I will admit I was wrong about its prospects. Today it has fluctuated in the range $13,825 to $15,131.

I have already in this thread mentioned what you call paradigm shifts. Bubbles often take place in response to real paradigm shifts. Railways were a transport paradigm shift in 1845, joint stock companies engaged in intercontinental trade were one in 1720, and the internet in 1999. So that has nothing to do with the issue. This is a bubble, paradigm shift or not.

I'm glad to hear that your friend with the $180m Bitcoin profit is not imaginary, but you still haven't told me if he has converted his winnings into cash. I hope he has, or that he will do so in time.
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Old 29th December 2017, 09:34 AM   #1286
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Originally Posted by Tippit View Post
Perhaps the subject of why we don't need and shouldn't want inflationary currencies should be it's own thread.
That sounds like an interesting idea for a thread. If you have an OP in mind, I think you should indeed go ahead and start it.
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Old 29th December 2017, 02:24 PM   #1287
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Originally Posted by Tippit View Post
Don't be so sure. I've been long gold and silver for a long time. It's completely rigged, thanks to ETFs, futures, naked short selling, and unlimited manipulation by central banks. Any gains that it's seen in recent history are managed. However, there is one thing you can be very sure of with gold and silver, if you are buying it now, you are buying it at a *huge* discount. The only question is, will it ever come off clearance in our lifetimes? I am betting that it will, but I am beginning to recognize that it will take a paradigm shift and change in the balance of global power.
I make forecasts based on a technical algorithm as a business sideline. There are two big threads where I proved beyond doubt that direction can be forecast from price history alone, psion2 is one of a bevy of naysayers who completely ignored the specific forecasts and results to revel in a preconceived nonsense.
Bitcoin trades at all time parameters like all other freely traded markets.
Gold is a buy on a very rare monthly iteration of the algorithm. This is your year if you are a long time holder.
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Old 29th December 2017, 02:31 PM   #1288
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Originally Posted by Tippit View Post
Oh. Now you're calling me a liar. I suppose you expect me to tell you his name, so you can google him, and then dox myself. Is that it? Sorry, I'm not going to do that for some clown on the internet. It's funny to me that people are incredulous when I tell this story, as if bitcoin multi-millionaires don't exist, and that there aren't some people on a computer forum that don't actually know one.

In fact, I know two, another gentleman on an IRC chat room that I've been frequenting for years, who has around 2000 bitcoin, and other various cryptos including ETH.

I think the big difference between my friend and people like you (and, sadly me, who only owns 0.09 bitcoin that he sent me) is that he is a visionary and a true believer. He sees a paradigm shift, and at this point, I think he might be right. He still hasn't convinced me to buy a single one, especially not at $17,000 when he suggested it. I'm a true believer in precious metals, but I wish I hadn't been so dogmatic.
So any fraction of a bitcoin can be freely traded?
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Old 29th December 2017, 03:20 PM   #1289
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Originally Posted by Thabiguy View Post
That sounds like an interesting idea for a thread. If you have an OP in mind, I think you should indeed go ahead and start it.
Yup, I concur.
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Old 29th December 2017, 05:35 PM   #1290
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Bitcoin is trading at 14092

Multiple iterations of a simple algorithm over various time periods suggest the curiosity is about to go into freefall.
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Old 29th December 2017, 07:30 PM   #1291
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Originally Posted by Tippit View Post
Psion, are you ever going to address the fallacy that bitcoin isn't viable as a currency now not because it is deflationary, but because of the transaction times and costs? If not, you are really no better than these other bitcoin "skeptics".
I examined the issue of transaction costs in post #1200 (http://www.internationalskeptics.com...postcount=1200). I found that at current prices, each transaction costs around $50.

Transaction times has been dealt with many times.

Originally Posted by Tippit View Post
Perhaps the subject of why we don't need and shouldn't want inflationary currencies should be it's own thread.
That subject too has been dealt with many times (not necessarily in this thread). I would only add that a shortage of currency is no better than a shortage of food, or a shortage of petrol, or a shortage of labour, or a ...........
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Old 29th December 2017, 09:34 PM   #1292
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Governments have cause for concern. If one is not into crime then why the need to be anonymous?

Quote:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitco...124148422.html

“Cryptocurrency speculation has been irrationally overheated in Korea,” the government said in the statement, which comes little more than a week after the bankruptcy filing of one South Korean exchange. “The government can’t leave the abnormal situation of speculation any longer.”

As Yonhap adds, South Korea’s Office for Government Policy Coordination will require real-name cryptocurrency transactions and impose a ban on the offering of virtual accounts by banks to crypto-exchanges. Policy makers will review measures including the closure of crypto-exchanges suggested by the Ministry of Justice and take proper measures swiftly and firmly while monitoring the trend of the speculation.

And while there’s no immediate indication Asia’s No. 4 economy will shutter exchanges that have accounted by some measures for more than fifth of global trading, the news poses a warning as regulators the world over express concerns about private digital currencies.

And if a person is not a criminal why break the law and risk prosecution?
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Old 29th December 2017, 10:50 PM   #1293
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Originally Posted by Samson View Post
So any fraction of a bitcoin can be freely traded?
Any fraction down to 0.00000001 btc - also known as a "satoshi".
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Old 29th December 2017, 10:52 PM   #1294
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Originally Posted by PartSkeptic View Post
Governments have cause for concern. If one is not into crime then why the need to be anonymous?

And if a person is not a criminal why break the law and risk prosecution?
And if you have nothing to hide then you shouldn't mind the government having all your banking passwords or having the government install surveillance cameras and microphones in your house.
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Old 30th December 2017, 12:08 AM   #1295
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Originally Posted by Samson View Post
So any fraction of a bitcoin can be freely traded?
Yes... the smallest unit of a bitcoin is called a satoshi, which represents one hundred millionth of a bitcoin. Does anyone actually read this thread?
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Old 30th December 2017, 12:11 AM   #1296
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Originally Posted by Samson View Post
Bitcoin is trading at 14092

Multiple iterations of a simple algorithm over various time periods suggest the curiosity is about to go into freefall.
It's now at 13,300, back up in the last few minutes from 13,140. But still not quite in "free fall".

I'm glad for Tippit that he didn't buy at $17,000 as suggested by his friend. That might have been risky.

Last edited by Craig B; 30th December 2017 at 12:12 AM.
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Old 30th December 2017, 12:23 AM   #1297
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Originally Posted by Craig B View Post
It's now at 13,300, back up in the last few minutes from 13,140. But still not quite in "free fall".

I'm glad for Tippit that he didn't buy at $17,000 as suggested by his friend. That might have been risky.
No one likes a clever dick but I notice it declined 10% within 2 hours of that call.
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Old 30th December 2017, 12:31 AM   #1298
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Originally Posted by Craig B View Post
It's now at 13,300, back up in the last few minutes from 13,140. But still not quite in "free fall".

I'm glad for Tippit that he didn't buy at $17,000 as suggested by his friend. That might have been risky.
I have a friend who is the general manager of a Hooters restaurant. Not only was bitcoin featured virtually all day long on CNBC when the futures trading began and it was around $17,000, my GM friend called me up and told me that his Hooter's girls were sharing tips about bitcoin. I don't know what the long term prospects are, but it seems to me that when waitresses are talking about it, it's a clear sell. If you see it on the cover of TIME magazine, look out below. $17,000 is chump change to my bitcoin whale friend, but it isn't to me, and I'm not buying. I will note that he bought and recommended that I buy bitcoin at prices of $10-11 (i contemplated investing only $10,000 at this point, and decided not to, sadly), ~$900, and at ~$17,000. The whole thing has made me sick. I'm the one who told him about the Federal Reserve scam, and how fiat money works, yet he is the one who got the big payoff. He sent me 5 bitcoin as a token just to get me interested back in 2011ish, and I literally deleted the email. That email would have been worth about $70,000 today. This also makes me sick, but a part of me thinks I deserve it for being so ungrateful.

The lesson I've learned is that if you have a feeling that something could end up being a paradigm shifting investment, just throw anything at it, whatever you can afford to lose, and then sit back and wait. Sure wish I had been wise enough to do this, I could afford the Bugatti Veyron I've always wanted.
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Old 30th December 2017, 12:39 AM   #1299
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Originally Posted by Tippit View Post
The lesson I've learned is that if you have a feeling that something could end up being a paradigm shifting investment, just throw anything at it, whatever you can afford to lose, and then sit back and wait. Sure wish I had been wise enough to do this, I could afford the Bugatti Veyron I've always wanted.
what does the hilited expression mean? What "paradigm"?
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Old 30th December 2017, 01:09 AM   #1300
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Originally Posted by Craig B;12129006 in 2011
I'm glad for Tippit that he didn't buy at $17 as suggested by his friend. That might have been risky.
Not exactly a ftfy but that is the argument ever since these threads began.
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Old 30th December 2017, 01:12 AM   #1301
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Originally Posted by Tippit View Post
... it seems to me that when waitresses are talking about it, it's a clear sell.
That's the Joe Jennedy shoe shine boy principle from 1929, that I've already referred to. It worked for Joe (if it is a genuine event).
Joe Kennedy decided to stop to have his shoes shined before he started his day's work at the office. When the boy finished, he offered Kennedy a stock tip: "Buy Hindenburg." Kennedy soon sold off his stocks, thinking:
"You know it's time to sell when shoeshine boys give you stock tips. This bull market is over."
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Old 30th December 2017, 02:21 AM   #1302
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Originally Posted by psionl0 View Post
Not exactly a ftfy but that is the argument ever since these threads began.
What do you mean? Buying something of unknown intrinsic value at $17 isn't quite the same thing as buying it at $17,000. If you get in early you may well make money. Where does that profit come from? Regular income generated by the asset, or "greater fools" willing to pay higher and higher prices? When the supply of such fools runs out, the bubble will go pop. The price has changed since these threads began, so buying has become more risky.

Again I ask you: are you saying this is going to go up forever, so the price you pay doesn't matter? Is this the God Bubble? The eternal cornucopia? Well if it isn't, $17,000 is a risky price. And now it's at around $13,200.

Last edited by Craig B; 30th December 2017 at 02:22 AM.
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Old 30th December 2017, 03:47 AM   #1303
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Originally Posted by Craig B View Post
What do you mean? Buying something of unknown intrinsic value at $17 isn't quite the same thing as buying it at $17,000.
Somebody else who doesn't understand the concept of price x quantity.
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Old 30th December 2017, 04:22 AM   #1304
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Originally Posted by psionl0 View Post
Somebody else who doesn't understand the concept of price x quantity.
I understand it perfectly well. What you don't understand - seemingly refuse to permit access to your brain - is the concept of maximum price - purchase price. That is the figure that requires to be multiplied by the quantity purchased, in order to calculate potential maximum capital gain.

I say this again in the vain hope that your mind may at last be receptive to it.

Unless the price increase is without end, there is a potential maximum price. To make a profit your buying price needs to be less than that maximum. That is, price difference. There is more space for that price difference to fit into when the asset is bought at $17 than when it is bought at $17,000 unless the maximum is infinity. So buying at the higher price is more risky. Please tell me you comprehend this.

The current price of $13,100 would entail a substantial gain for a purchaser who paid $17, but a significant loss to someone who bought at the maximum past level of $19,666. That fact of gain or loss is not in any way altered by the volume purchased, although the total gained or lost is a function of volume.

Last edited by Craig B; 30th December 2017 at 04:37 AM.
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Old 30th December 2017, 05:16 AM   #1305
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Originally Posted by Craig B View Post
Unless the price increase is without end, there is a potential maximum price.
The maximum price will may cease increasing when the market reaches saturation level. When will that be?
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Old 30th December 2017, 06:21 AM   #1306
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Old 30th December 2017, 06:22 AM   #1307
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Originally Posted by psionl0 View Post
The maximum price will may cease increasing when the market reaches saturation level. When will that be?
It may will cease increasing when the supply of greater fools or the supply of these fools' spare cash is finally exhausted. That is what saturation level means in a bubble, as there is no limit to propensity to purchase; because the motive for purchase is capital gain, not usufruct which may become less desirable or appetite for consumption which might be satiated. Pure capital gain. There is no saturation level for that. Only exhaustion of funds available to be invested, by ever-increasingly ill-advised punters.

Now here is the interesting bit. If something is being held only for capital gain, and otherwise yields no or no significant income, and provides no function to its holder, what happens when the price stops rising? The holders sell. Because they have no prospect of further gain. Or if they are leveraged they are forced to sell by their creditors. There is no stable price level. The bubble pops.

But we can't know in advance when that will happen. It depends on what people think will happen, which introduces random elements into the calculation. Here's why. Suppose I have a magic algorithm (in principle it would be available to everyone), and I feed in the data and they tell me, Bitcoin is going to fall by forty percent on the tenth of January 2018. Then it wouldn't, because people would sell in advance of that date before the price was predicted to fall. So it would fall at a different time and by a different amount, from the time predicted mathematically, even if the maths gave a correct forecast in the first place.

The knowledge and predictions of the investors randomise the future, making it unpredictable in practice, even if you could devise a way of predicting it in principle. If a prediction has an effect on the system whose behaviour is being predicted then that future is in practice inscrutable in detail. But if the system is inherently unstable then its future behaviour, whether predictable or not, will be unstable. And if it is finite in principle, as bubbles are, its future will be limited in time.

Last edited by Craig B; 30th December 2017 at 06:24 AM.
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Old 30th December 2017, 08:44 AM   #1308
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Originally Posted by Craig B View Post
It may will cease increasing when the supply of greater fools or the supply of these fools' spare cash is finally exhausted.
This argument is identical to the one used in 2011 and every year since. So far the only "greater fools" are the ones who cashed out and there is absolutely no sign that this situation is going to change for many years to come.

You are so unoriginal that you are boring.
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Old 30th December 2017, 09:14 AM   #1309
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Originally Posted by psionl0 View Post
This argument is identical to the one used in 2011 and every year since. So far the only "greater fools" are the ones who cashed out and there is absolutely no sign that this situation is going to change for many years to come.

You are so unoriginal that you are boring.
psion, I don't think we are getting anywhere here.

Even if the argument is the same, it doesn't mean the argument is incorrect.

It might be true that people who cashed out earlier are kicking themselves for not buying more and waiting until...now? But we have no reason for thinking they are the greater fools. The greater fools could be those waiting for the price to get to 100,000 dollars a Bitcoin and hoping to sell the Bitcoins they went into debt to buy.

Or it could be those who didn't sell at 19,000 dollars and who are waiting for it to get back to that level.

We don't know.

But that doesn't alter the fact that the argument is Bitcoin is only priced so highly because of speculation and not because it has any actual value beyond that.

Here's a question. Say if I had a spare 40,000 dollars on me, would you advise me to buy two Bitcoins so that I could make loads of guaranteed money if I just wait a few years?
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Old 30th December 2017, 09:29 AM   #1310
Craig B
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Originally Posted by psionl0 View Post
This argument is identical to the one used in 2011 and every year since. So far the only "greater fools" are the ones who cashed out and there is absolutely no sign that this situation is going to change for many years to come.

You are so unoriginal that you are boring.
That's a prediction. Anyone who cashes out for many years into the future is foolish. Fine. That is precise, and if it is false, it will be visibly so. OK.
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Old 30th December 2017, 09:32 AM   #1311
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Originally Posted by Craig B View Post
That's a prediction.
Only to people who don't understand words like "probability" or phrases like "no sign of".
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Old 30th December 2017, 10:26 AM   #1312
Craig B
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Originally Posted by psionl0 View Post
Only to people who don't understand words like "probability" or phrases like "no sign of".
I can't find these expressions here.
Originally Posted by psionl0 View Post
This argument is identical to the one used in 2011 and every year since. So far the only "greater fools" are the ones who cashed out and there is absolutely no sign that this situation is going to change for many years to come.
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Old 30th December 2017, 10:38 AM   #1313
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Originally Posted by Craig B View Post
I can't find pretend that these expressions are not here.
Originally Posted by psionl0 View Post
What I can say with a high degree of probability is that at some point in the not too far distant future, bitcoin prices will be such that whenever you remember the posts you are making now you will blush with embarrassment.
Originally Posted by psionl0 View Post
This argument is identical to the one used in 2011 and every year since. So far the only "greater fools" are the ones who cashed out and there is absolutely no sign that this situation is going to change for many years to come.
ftfy.
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Old 30th December 2017, 11:25 AM   #1314
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Originally Posted by psionl0 View Post
And if you have nothing to hide then you shouldn't mind the government having all your banking passwords or having the government install surveillance cameras and microphones in your house.

Personal privacy and public privacy are two entirely different issues.

Example you can take a picture of a person standing on the street and post it on a neighborhood watch. You cannot do that if the person is standing on their private property.
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Old 30th December 2017, 11:43 AM   #1315
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Not too long ago, a person I knew bought some bitcoin. At the time it was starting to skyrocket. I told him it was a bubble and to get out. Luckily he did - and made a slight profit. If he had stayed in, he would have lost a lot.

Some predictions are easy. I saw the 1987 crash and the 2008 crash just months before they happened. The signs were there.

With the 2008 crash, a website had been saying since 2003 the crash would come. In 2007 they gave up, saying that they could not believe they had been wrong every year. And yet it took just one more year. When the fundamentals are giving strong warning signs, there WILL be problems ahead.

The thing with a Ponzi scheme is that the early buy-ins will make a ton of money. That money will come from those hoping to get in soon enough to make a killing, but misjudging when and how quickly the end will happen. And then we have all the exchanges and miners who will have reaped their own piece of the pie - all from the late losers.
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Old 30th December 2017, 11:53 AM   #1316
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Today a person asked if they should buy some Steinhoff shares now that they have dropped from R6,000 a share to about R500 a share with most of the drop being very rapid.

They said that the assets of the company were greater than the share valuation. My argument was that they should not trust the statement of assets if there was so much fraud in the accounting. If one bought at R4,000 then holding the share in the hope it would rise is reasonable - selling would lock in the loss.

Market value of an asset on the books is not the same as a forced real asset fire-sale.

What assets does bitcoin have?
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Old 30th December 2017, 11:59 AM   #1317
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Sorry, I am tired. The Steinhoff graph was in ZAC (cents) not Rands.
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Old 30th December 2017, 06:17 PM   #1318
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Originally Posted by PartSkeptic View Post
The thing with a Ponzi scheme .........
Why would you call the stock market a "ponzi scheme"?

Key features of a <insert bad name> scheme are that the must be run by somebody and a false belief must be created about whatever is being marketed. Individual stocks (especially the lesser known ones) can indeed be the subject of any number of fraudulent schemes. But the stock market as a whole can not be gamed. There are just too many players.

Likewise bitcoin is wholly decentralized and can not be gamed. Shysters might be able to get you to part with your bitcoins for nothing or promise bitcoins for something and not deliver. However, this is true of currencies as well so it is a case of "nothing new".

It is bad enough that we have to deal with yet another doomsday prophet who has no facts. Don't tell me that we have to go through pages of posts debunking the "bitcoin is a scam" meme yet again!
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Old 30th December 2017, 09:50 PM   #1319
Craig B
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Originally Posted by psionl0 View Post
Why would you call the stock market a "ponzi scheme"? <snip for space> ... It is bad enough that we have to deal with yet another doomsday prophet who has no facts. Don't tell me that we have to go through pages of posts debunking the "bitcoin is a scam" meme yet again!
what was stated was this
The thing with a Ponzi scheme is that the early buy-ins will make a ton of money. That money will come from those hoping to get in soon enough to make a killing, but misjudging when and how quickly the end will happen.And then we have all the exchanges and miners who will have reaped their own piece of the pie - all from the late losers.
That is true. It applies to Ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes and speculative bubbles. Any process in which the only value entering the system is people buying for capital gain. For every penny gained, another is lost in the final liquidation. They are zero sum games. The stock market as a whole is not a Ponzi scheme, and nobody is saying that it is, because certificates of ownership in a real enterprise engaged in production or service provision have a real value and generate real income for their owners. They have a "price to earnings ratio". May I ask, what is bitcoin's P-E ratio?

Like tulip bulbs, they can get caught up in a bubble, and the price loses all contact with the real value, but that happens only from time to time. May I ask, what is bitcoin's real value?

Between 2003 and 2008 there was even a house price bubble in the U.K. Are houses a scam? Of course not, but they can get caught up in speculative mania.

ETA Bitcoin is now at about $12,900. Day's range 12,166 to 13,399. Will it perform a turnaround and rise again? Maybe. Rise to $100,000? I would be very surprised indeed.

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Old 30th December 2017, 09:56 PM   #1320
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Originally Posted by psionl0 View Post
Why would you call the stock market a "ponzi scheme"?

Key features of a <insert bad name> scheme are that the must be run by somebody and a false belief must be created about whatever is being marketed. Individual stocks (especially the lesser known ones) can indeed be the subject of any number of fraudulent schemes. But the stock market as a whole can not be gamed. There are just too many players.

Likewise bitcoin is wholly decentralized and can not be gamed. Shysters might be able to get you to part with your bitcoins for nothing or promise bitcoins for something and not deliver. However, this is true of currencies as well so it is a case of "nothing new".

It is bad enough that we have to deal with yet another doomsday prophet who has no facts. Don't tell me that we have to go through pages of posts debunking the "bitcoin is a scam" meme yet again!

I did not call the stock market a Ponzi scheme. I called bitcoin a Ponzi scheme.

A Ponzi scheme is one in which no value is created with which to pay out the winners. The winnings are transferred from the losers to the winners and then the whole scheme collapses.

In the stock market, if one buys a stock through a broker who invests in a portfolio of his preferred picks, one gets a return on investment due to the profits and growth of the companies in the portfolio. When the market is doing well, the returns are good, and when the market is bad the returns drop.

Bernie Madoff ran a Ponzi scheme in which his returns were consistently high (about 12 per cent per year I think). No matter how clever he was this was impossible. He himself said his clients knew he was running a fraud because the returns were not possible. They bought in anyway. Such is greed (and a lack of morals).

People are buying bitcoin as an investment hoping the value will go up, and they can sell at a profit. Where does that profit come from? New buyers. Not from a performing asset. That is a key aspect of a Ponzi scheme. When new buyers dry up because of concerns about the underlying principles and the exposing of the scheme, the value will start dropping. As it drops, people will sell because either they have to, or they want to mitigate their losses.

A key weakness are the nodes on which the public ledger is kept. There is no profit motive to do so. As nodes close, the scheme must also fail.

In this case I am no doomsday prophet - just analytical. Others are telling you the same thing.

I see the second dead cat bounce is starting. Its peak will be less than the previous dead cat bounce peak. The trend is downward. The roller coaster ride will end where it began - at zero.
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