That is close to an eternity in the cryptocurrency world right now. November is around when the hockey stick up started. The market cap roughly quadrupled in the next month or two after that. All of that is gone now.
Bitcoin is currently the world's reserve cryptocurrency - All cryptocurrencies can be exchanged for Bitcoin. But unfortunately in technical terms, it's not fit for this purpose.
The reserve cryptocurrency of the internet needs to be fast and offer cheap transactions so that it can easily and cheaply be moved between exchanges.
I think it will take some time before another cryptocurrency takes the place of Bitcoin. Part of the problem is that very few people currently have the skills to evaluate a cryptocurrency based on its technical merits. So exchanges are not currently in a position to agree about what the next reserve cryptocurrency should be.
I think that replacing Bitcoin with Ethereum right now would be a mistake. Ethereum has a lot of big scalability hurdles - I think that technically Ethereum actually has more hurdles to overcome than Bitcoin - Their community does seem a lot more motivated though; but I'm not sure that will be enough. Ethereum still needs to switch to Proof-of-Stake and THEN it needs to implement sharding.
Also, I don't think that pruning will be feasible for Ethereum. It wouldn't make sense to prune the Ethereum blockchain because that would entail pruning out smart contracts. Most no-smart-contract cryptocurrencies are not limited in this way.
> The reserve cryptocurrency of the internet needs to be fast and offer cheap transactions
The most important things about any cryptocurrency are decentralization and censorship-resistance. Without those two, you might as well be running a PayPal clone in a datacenter. That way, you get the fastest and cheapest transactions possible.
> so that it can easily and cheaply be moved between exchanges.
Exchanges can set up big payment channels between one another and do instant Bitcoin transfers. However, since they operate in a regulatory environment, this may never happen.
If you don't subscribe to the bitcoin-dev mailing list, then you're missing out on the latest developments toward scalability and privacy, which are really exciting.
At least Ethereum has a roadmap, some consensus on what needs to happen to achieve scale, and a decent track record of getting things done. Yes, I am aware some things are experimental and might not fully work out. But personally I haven't been particularly impressed with the development of Bitcoin in the last 2+ years.
Also , i m not sure how often people use BTC to transfer stuff between exchanges, it's just too slow and expensive. i think ppl use LTC or ETH more often for transfers.
> But unfortunately in technical terms, it's not fit for this purpose.
Can you explain why, in technical terms?
I don't believe any other cryptocurrency has faced anywhere near the same volume of transactions.It looks to me like Etherium maxed out at around 230k transactions per day while Bitcoin has faced nearly 500k transactions.
> The reserve cryptocurrency of the internet needs to be fast and offer cheap transactions so that it can easily and cheaply be moved between exchanges.
Segwit addresses the "fast and cheap" transactions bit and has been seeing more widespread use. Do you have an opinion on it?
I think Nano (https://nano.org -- just rebranded from RaiBlocks) will become one of the biggest arbitrage currencies due to zero fees and its highly scalable architecture (7k+ TPS tested). I've been working my butt off to make sure as many people as possible will be able to build with it as the documentation and ecosystem are currently lacking. See https://www.nanode.co/node-api
I remember balking when bitcoin increased from $20 to $30 as too expensive way back in the day. BTC has come so far and appreciated so fast. I find it pretty wild that people are acting like the price has plummeted. While it literally has fallen a non-trivial percentage from its high on the 3 year basis it would be really hard to find anything that had close to this sort of yield.
BTC crashed from 19k down to 9k. A lot of people lost a lot of money. Why are you discrediting this? Because BTC was even lower before? How is that related?
scalability is being solved by lightning network which is already seeing alpha testing on the Bitcoin main net (production) I am doing what I have done every big drop in Bitcoin and buying a little each week
just because it performed in the past doesn't mean it will in the future but the same reasons I liked it still exist and are getting stronger. the market will lag behind lightning because people don't realize what it is yet and it might take a year or two but it will be back even stronger than $20k (the first time it's bought by a countries reserve bank it's game over cryotos will beat fiat then)
Even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height
That last step is going to be a doozy too. Hopefully this is happening before too many people lose more than they can afford, because of FOMO and the relentless hype.
If any crypto currency ever makes it and becomes mainstream, then I am pretty sure it will not be Bitcoin, to many unsolved or even unsolvable problems. If that turns out to be true, then the question becomes whether we already reached the final decline or whether the speculation will continue. Personally I don't think we have reached the final decline just yet but at the same time I find it hard to imagine that Bitcoin will ever reach $100k or so, people are probably slowly becoming sane again. If you hope to make as much money as some did by getting in at $0.10 and exiting at $10k, I think the chances are pretty much zero. Maybe you can double your money or get 500% if you catch the bottom of a correction but you may as well lose everything.
In the previous 3 bubbles bitcoin stabilized after the crash around 2-3 times the top of the previous bubble.
So applying this logic, the bottom of this bubble should be around $2-4k. For a couple of reasons however this bubble is different - lots of finance guys participating. Because they are experienced they will buy ahead of that to make sure they don't miss the bottom. So I see this bubble bottoming at $5k. This has the nice property that most of the "dumb money" who entered in Nov-Dec without any idea about trading or cryptos will lose money (markets tend to make sure that people who entered during a frenzy lose).
I would buy more at 1k even though I don't really believe in it. Just because of the volume of people and brainpower being devoted to it. Basically I would be hedging in case I'm wrong (which is is a frequent occurance).
Before I begin, I'm not going to tell you what to do with your money. But when I see questions like this, I often think that there may be some inexperience with investing. So here's how I look at investments. This is not advice -- you do what you want.
If I'm investing in a company, the first thing I do is read the quarterly and year end reports. I take a look at how the money is being used. I look for things that might be fishy. You need to be careful, even with blue chip stocks -- often the numbers don't add up. I look at how well the company is executing. What kind of margin are they getting? How are they using that money? If for growth, then what are the investing in and how well is it paying off? If for profit, how much profit are they making and what are they doing with the profits? That kind of thing. I look at the products they make. I read reviews. I look at the competition. After I've done all that, I decide how fairly the company is valued. Often they are over valued. Sometimes they have about the right value. Rarely they are undervalued. I try to buy the latter stocks and hold them for a long time.
Just because of how I do my job (I am a internationally remote contractor), I am forced to speculate on currency. Note the subtle change in vocabulary. I am not investing in currency. I don't expect a rate of return over time on currency. Instead, I look at geo-political situations and I guess how it might affect the price of a currency against another currency. At the moment, I live off the Japanese yen (I'm in Japan), but I get paid in Great British pounds. I need to have some insurance that my revenue stream is relatively constant, so when GBP is very low (it was down to just over 120 JPY last year!) I try to hold it. When it is very high, I try to sell it. Sometimes it makes sense for me to even buy it when it is low. When I am looking at this, I look at both the British and Japanese economic policies. I look at elections that might change that policy. I look at the (complete lack of) progress wrt Brexit, etc, etc. But this is not an investment. My goal is to hedge against the changes as much as I can, because otherwise sometimes I'm working for 60% of the wage that I normally make (and it's hard to ask your clients to double their payments just because something like Brexit happens).
Now, let's look at Bitcoin. What economic factors influence Bitcoin? It would be tempting to say "none", but this is not strictly true. First, we have to look at the likelihood that bitcoin will become viable as a general currency. It's pretty unlikely, but the chance is not actually 0 (Much to my surprise, I can actually buy things with Bitcoin from mainstream shops in Japan -- even a local pizza restaurant takes them). However, it's clear that changes to the protocol need to happen for it to scale. To understand the implications, you have to understand the chances for various proposals to succeed (both technically and politically).
When you look at trading currencies, often you look at indicators like interest rates because the change of interest rates encourages (and sometimes outright forces) trading of the currency. With bitcoin there are precious few outside influences like that. There are things like "tethers", but since they are a complete scam you have to figure out what it's likely to do to the price (will it force people to buy BTC, or will it tank the price).
Having said all that, I hope you can see a kind of gradation in the "investment" type. When I buy stock, I can reason about the performance of the company by looking at their past performance, their execution, their product, the oppositions performance, etc. When I engage in FOREX (which I try to avoid, but alas am unable to), I am stuck with the politics and economic policies. I have to kind of guess what countries are going to do and how that will result in changes to the price. I try my best to stick to hedging strategies, because otherwise you might as well be laying bets at the bookie wrt economic policy. With Bitcoin, it's just gambling. The price swings are generally due to hype, scams, and bad actors -- with only a little bit related to potential viability. And I would say the the long term viability of BTC as a whole is pretty long odds (remember, this is not advice -- decide for yourself).
So if you want to gamble, then gamble. I'm not going to stop you. But I don't think you will get any useful advice on "investment" in Bitcoin. It's just not that kind of vehicle.
I've discussed this with some analysts who are looking at the cost of mining hardware and also power consumption/costs. They concluded that around $5k is the appropriate target price right now.
price can be irrelevant. i have mates that buy on one exchange and sell on another right away. they make weekly on the difference. some cap you at what you can buy/sell and increase what you're allowed each time. with a few $k you can make $150 a week. i.e buy on coinbase if that's cheapest. transfer to another another exchange and sell. bingo. few of them been doing it for months.
Ethereum has the most trading pairs after Bitcoin, and a pretty comprehensive multi-pronged scaling plan. It's the most likely successor to Bitcoin as the reserve cryptocurrency.
[+] [-] Zaskoda|8 years ago|reply
...November... I think it was just last November.
[+] [-] RKearney|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mdeeks|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ransom1538|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bby|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jondubois|8 years ago|reply
The reserve cryptocurrency of the internet needs to be fast and offer cheap transactions so that it can easily and cheaply be moved between exchanges.
I think it will take some time before another cryptocurrency takes the place of Bitcoin. Part of the problem is that very few people currently have the skills to evaluate a cryptocurrency based on its technical merits. So exchanges are not currently in a position to agree about what the next reserve cryptocurrency should be.
I think that replacing Bitcoin with Ethereum right now would be a mistake. Ethereum has a lot of big scalability hurdles - I think that technically Ethereum actually has more hurdles to overcome than Bitcoin - Their community does seem a lot more motivated though; but I'm not sure that will be enough. Ethereum still needs to switch to Proof-of-Stake and THEN it needs to implement sharding.
Also, I don't think that pruning will be feasible for Ethereum. It wouldn't make sense to prune the Ethereum blockchain because that would entail pruning out smart contracts. Most no-smart-contract cryptocurrencies are not limited in this way.
[+] [-] clarkmoody|8 years ago|reply
The most important things about any cryptocurrency are decentralization and censorship-resistance. Without those two, you might as well be running a PayPal clone in a datacenter. That way, you get the fastest and cheapest transactions possible.
> so that it can easily and cheaply be moved between exchanges.
Exchanges can set up big payment channels between one another and do instant Bitcoin transfers. However, since they operate in a regulatory environment, this may never happen.
If you don't subscribe to the bitcoin-dev mailing list, then you're missing out on the latest developments toward scalability and privacy, which are really exciting.
[+] [-] charlesdm|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tlrobinson|8 years ago|reply
Is there a cryptocurrency that is? A linear scaling factor like larger block sizes or faster block times doesn't count.
[+] [-] zerostar07|8 years ago|reply
Also , i m not sure how often people use BTC to transfer stuff between exchanges, it's just too slow and expensive. i think ppl use LTC or ETH more often for transfers.
[+] [-] Zaskoda|8 years ago|reply
Can you explain why, in technical terms?
I don't believe any other cryptocurrency has faced anywhere near the same volume of transactions.It looks to me like Etherium maxed out at around 230k transactions per day while Bitcoin has faced nearly 500k transactions.
[+] [-] sdrothrock|8 years ago|reply
Segwit addresses the "fast and cheap" transactions bit and has been seeing more widespread use. Do you have an opinion on it?
[+] [-] drexlspivey|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rawrmaan|8 years ago|reply
Prunability included.
[+] [-] wand3r|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twiceaday|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] everdev|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] solotronics|8 years ago|reply
just because it performed in the past doesn't mean it will in the future but the same reasons I liked it still exist and are getting stronger. the market will lag behind lightning because people don't realize what it is yet and it might take a year or two but it will be back even stronger than $20k (the first time it's bought by a countries reserve bank it's game over cryotos will beat fiat then)
[+] [-] lern_too_spel|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yashksagar|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tromp|8 years ago|reply
https://i.imgur.com/cjnwruL.jpg
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15987623
[+] [-] starpilot|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m1sta_|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IntronExon|8 years ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_bounce
Even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height
That last step is going to be a doozy too. Hopefully this is happening before too many people lose more than they can afford, because of FOMO and the relentless hype.
[+] [-] poster123|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danbruc|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 21|8 years ago|reply
So applying this logic, the bottom of this bubble should be around $2-4k. For a couple of reasons however this bubble is different - lots of finance guys participating. Because they are experienced they will buy ahead of that to make sure they don't miss the bottom. So I see this bubble bottoming at $5k. This has the nice property that most of the "dumb money" who entered in Nov-Dec without any idea about trading or cryptos will lose money (markets tend to make sure that people who entered during a frenzy lose).
[+] [-] lern_too_spel|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fullshark|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikekchar|8 years ago|reply
If I'm investing in a company, the first thing I do is read the quarterly and year end reports. I take a look at how the money is being used. I look for things that might be fishy. You need to be careful, even with blue chip stocks -- often the numbers don't add up. I look at how well the company is executing. What kind of margin are they getting? How are they using that money? If for growth, then what are the investing in and how well is it paying off? If for profit, how much profit are they making and what are they doing with the profits? That kind of thing. I look at the products they make. I read reviews. I look at the competition. After I've done all that, I decide how fairly the company is valued. Often they are over valued. Sometimes they have about the right value. Rarely they are undervalued. I try to buy the latter stocks and hold them for a long time.
Just because of how I do my job (I am a internationally remote contractor), I am forced to speculate on currency. Note the subtle change in vocabulary. I am not investing in currency. I don't expect a rate of return over time on currency. Instead, I look at geo-political situations and I guess how it might affect the price of a currency against another currency. At the moment, I live off the Japanese yen (I'm in Japan), but I get paid in Great British pounds. I need to have some insurance that my revenue stream is relatively constant, so when GBP is very low (it was down to just over 120 JPY last year!) I try to hold it. When it is very high, I try to sell it. Sometimes it makes sense for me to even buy it when it is low. When I am looking at this, I look at both the British and Japanese economic policies. I look at elections that might change that policy. I look at the (complete lack of) progress wrt Brexit, etc, etc. But this is not an investment. My goal is to hedge against the changes as much as I can, because otherwise sometimes I'm working for 60% of the wage that I normally make (and it's hard to ask your clients to double their payments just because something like Brexit happens).
Now, let's look at Bitcoin. What economic factors influence Bitcoin? It would be tempting to say "none", but this is not strictly true. First, we have to look at the likelihood that bitcoin will become viable as a general currency. It's pretty unlikely, but the chance is not actually 0 (Much to my surprise, I can actually buy things with Bitcoin from mainstream shops in Japan -- even a local pizza restaurant takes them). However, it's clear that changes to the protocol need to happen for it to scale. To understand the implications, you have to understand the chances for various proposals to succeed (both technically and politically).
When you look at trading currencies, often you look at indicators like interest rates because the change of interest rates encourages (and sometimes outright forces) trading of the currency. With bitcoin there are precious few outside influences like that. There are things like "tethers", but since they are a complete scam you have to figure out what it's likely to do to the price (will it force people to buy BTC, or will it tank the price).
Having said all that, I hope you can see a kind of gradation in the "investment" type. When I buy stock, I can reason about the performance of the company by looking at their past performance, their execution, their product, the oppositions performance, etc. When I engage in FOREX (which I try to avoid, but alas am unable to), I am stuck with the politics and economic policies. I have to kind of guess what countries are going to do and how that will result in changes to the price. I try my best to stick to hedging strategies, because otherwise you might as well be laying bets at the bookie wrt economic policy. With Bitcoin, it's just gambling. The price swings are generally due to hype, scams, and bad actors -- with only a little bit related to potential viability. And I would say the the long term viability of BTC as a whole is pretty long odds (remember, this is not advice -- decide for yourself).
So if you want to gamble, then gamble. I'm not going to stop you. But I don't think you will get any useful advice on "investment" in Bitcoin. It's just not that kind of vehicle.
[+] [-] davidw|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uptown|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] byteface|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkbkn|8 years ago|reply
https://www.cryptoground.com/article/btc-price-4000-usd-indi...
[+] [-] pramodzion|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dismal2|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beefsack|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amriksohata|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perseusprime11|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quickthrower2|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thesmallestcat|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Taniwha|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KasianFranks|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] fullshark|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orthecreedence|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] themigeo|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] CryptoPunk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] siruncledrew|8 years ago|reply