The real world has out satired me. Truly this must be the end of history.
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Bitcoin / Litecoin / Ethereum / alts discussion
- Thread starter mattsk42
- Start date
The real world has out satired me. Truly this must be the end of history.
Alkali Ike
Gold Supporting Member
- Jan 1, 2011
- 2,855
- 15,666
- Disclosures
- I never actually learned to play very well
Coinbase Goes Down as Bitcoin Plunges
The digital currency markets are in turmoil. On Friday morning the price of bitcoin dropped below $12,000, which is around 40% off its recent high, while other crypto-currencies are falling as much or further.
Meanwhile, the mass sell-off appears to have forced the popular digital currency exchange, Coinbase, to go down for short stretches on Friday. Customers who visited the exchange around 9:30 a.m. ET saw a message the site is currently offline.
The digital currency markets are in turmoil. On Friday morning the price of bitcoin dropped below $12,000, which is around 40% off its recent high, while other crypto-currencies are falling as much or further.
Meanwhile, the mass sell-off appears to have forced the popular digital currency exchange, Coinbase, to go down for short stretches on Friday. Customers who visited the exchange around 9:30 a.m. ET saw a message the site is currently offline.
So the guy whose hard drive with $120 million in bitcoins is buried in a landfill in England, is now out only $72 million. That must be some consolation.
It's bearish this weekend but, in general, the trends are always upward. A few weeks ago I was kicking myself for buying at $9K because it went down from there. Now I'd be ecstatic to be able to buy in at that price again.
Perspective is everything.
Perspective is everything.
Alkali Ike
Gold Supporting Member
- Jan 1, 2011
- 2,855
- 15,666
- Disclosures
- I never actually learned to play very well
Haggling over the price of a new car using bitcoin:
Dealer: Your price for the next 3 seconds is 2.000 bitcoin.
Customer: I’ll give you 1.980 bitcoin.
Dealer: Oops, the price just changed. 1.9905 bitcoin.
Customer: I’ll give you 1.970 bitcoin.
Dealer: Wait, the price is now 2.250 bitcoin.
Customer: I’ll pay 2.150 bitcoin.
Dealer: The price is now 2.45 bitcoin.
And so on.
Dealer: Your price for the next 3 seconds is 2.000 bitcoin.
Customer: I’ll give you 1.980 bitcoin.
Dealer: Oops, the price just changed. 1.9905 bitcoin.
Customer: I’ll give you 1.970 bitcoin.
Dealer: Wait, the price is now 2.250 bitcoin.
Customer: I’ll pay 2.150 bitcoin.
Dealer: The price is now 2.45 bitcoin.
And so on.
I once met a guy who ran a factory in Brazil during a period of very high inflation. His contract with his workers specified their wages in terms of a price index, meaning that he was effectively paying them in dollars. He literally didn't know what their pay rate would be until payday when the banks announced the value of the index for that day.
That's what people do in countries with unstable currency. The car transaction would go like this:
Dealer: The price is $25000. You figure out how many bitcoin you need to bring me.
That's what people do in countries with unstable currency. The car transaction would go like this:
Dealer: The price is $25000. You figure out how many bitcoin you need to bring me.
All you can say is that the long term trend has been, to this date, upwards. It's likely to remain upwards from 2010, but from the start of 2017? No idea. Whilst I have a background in the use of machine learning for time series analysis, that was for power generation companies, with some solid training data, there's nothing I could do with bitcoin.
A bubble usually lasts anything from 3 to 7 years. The US economy seems to be the only thing that doesn't fit this bill.
Depending on where one sees the beginning of the bubble, you can calculate. Looking at the charts, I figure we got about a year, maybe 2 left. One thing that does bug me is the precious metal cycles. They seem to be pointing up from 2018 onward. How this affect world economy and finance is pure speculation.
If the world goes into some kind of turmoil, we still don't have enough data on crypto to make any guess, as to how people will react.
Venezuela supposedly is benefitting from crypto since their recent downfall but that could be an isolated incidence that just happens to coincide with the recent uptrend in bitcoin. So this can't be too trusted.
Really, I figure one year before we see some kind of real action. At that point, we'll see how things develop with crypto.
Those guys hacked a currency exchange earlier this year in South Korea. Long story short, supposedly they walked away with quite a bit of coins.
That's their line of business. Kidnapping, stealing and extortion.
I from Japan, and my god..... we've had to deal with those goons for the last...... I don't know...... like 60 years? it's awful. It's like having a crazy, calculating neighbor, with a gun living next to you. And guess what, we have people living in Japan funneling money to those goons.
It's really bad.
Long term? Not really, because of the dependencies on external factors and the complexities of interactions. You can fairly safely characterise a bubble, but not long term timing. And yes, I have talked to economists trying to model trends and market volatility. It's like telling someone they are terminally ill: predicting when the patient will die is difficult even if the typical progress is well known.
Just take the average. It's something like 3 years if I remember correctly. Just go by that. The problem arises when people think that the market will push higher and higher. If you don't chase the bubble till the very end, practically anyone can make money in it.
But this is not an average bubble. As I type this, Bitcoin is up more than 18X just this year, even after the decline. The Nasdaq went up 6X between 1994 and 2000. Real estate prices in the US went up less than that in the mid-2000s.
I’m not saying it’s all downhill from here for Bitcoin, I don’t know. But history may not be a good guide.
Crypto in general is in rather uncharted territory. It's not that often that a new currency of any kind pops up, let alone ones that are unregulated. Add in the fact that with the exchanges, playing it as an investment is very accessible to a very large number of people and... it could go anywhere.
My personal thoughts on it are that BTC in its present form is not usable as a currency. Some of the other cryptos are much better off in that regard. As a day trade, volatile gamble it's fun to play with, and I've used house money to pay for somewhat expensive things along the way. But, I've divested myself of BTC and LTC and moved onto some of the other smaller coins for now.
My personal thoughts on it are that BTC in its present form is not usable as a currency. Some of the other cryptos are much better off in that regard. As a day trade, volatile gamble it's fun to play with, and I've used house money to pay for somewhat expensive things along the way. But, I've divested myself of BTC and LTC and moved onto some of the other smaller coins for now.
what I am trying to say is this: long story short, you don't have enough data so you use old data from other bubbles. Make educated guesses. Burn brighter and shorter, now this is the law of nature. You figure it has had a meteoric rise. So just take that into consideration and invest not only in crypto but in other areas. And always have dry powder in your keg because bubbles in investment happens pretty frequently.
Saxon bank makes yearly predictions and these guys, although not that accurate all the time is predicting that bitcoin will reach 60,000 and then crash to 1000 because of government intervention.
Their prediction for the JPY is 150 then crashing to 100. Part of this prediction goes hand in hand with other cyclical analysis that I read. And I am reading paid news. Not some cheap ones but expensive ones that people count on to make lots of money.
Saxon may not be too far off or totally crazy, they make money through investments. If bitcoin goes up , so will the attack of the hackers. Electricity consumption will go up and eco warriors will start to raise serious concerns, as well as governments around the world. All this and many more issues could be brought up that might force governments to intervene.
For now as many others have stated, it can not be treated as a currency. More like digital gold. It is just too volatile. Keeping that in mind, it is a gamble. For now its too dangerous to be considered a currency. so take it as that. Many haters of crypto don't understand anything about crypto and blockchain. Treat it as any investment and you don't have to worry if its in a bubble or not.
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