It’s difficult to compare equity ownership to bitcoin ownership. To own equities or most financial instruments you need a bank or brokerage. Billions of people do not have access to these institutions. Our current situation is based on trust, and although many of us in developed nations do not have to think twice about our money being secure, there are swaths of people that have to live in fear of their government seizing their assets or taking money off the top of their savings to pay for their mistakes.
Bitcoin could serve as a beneficial payment system to so many due to the fact that its secure, does not involve a third party (think VISA, PayPal, Venmo), and will have minimal transaction fees. I understand the thought behind your argument Matt, and agree that until a larger adoption rate becomes achieved, the risk/return profile of bitcoin may lean heavy on risk. But I see a future with Bitcoin used as either a store of value or (more optimistically) a payment system.
A good friend of mine works at Deutsche Bank in Germany and says that she gets numerous calls from her clients asking her to buy bitcoin for them which may suggest YoungMan24 may be onto something about people seeing bitcoin serving as a store of wealth. If people see bitcoin serving as a store of wealth, then at what point do they begin to add it to their portfolio instead of holding a small % in cash/gold? When this becomes more widespread, we would definitely see a more equal amount of people owning bitcoin as we currently see with stocks. Maybe that’s far out and I’m wrong.
Meh. Doesn’t make sense because 1) tech is not a store of value, it is transitory, and 2) the USD value of bitcoin flying all over the place isn’t something people who are interested in transactions (not gambling) want.
The USG should just incorporate the useful aspects of blockchain into the USD, put bitcon out of business!
lol. waht you think will happens when a majority of the bitcoin is issued?
watch the transaction costs rape u.
if i manufacture a limited number of nerdy pens should the value go up just cuz its limited and central banks keep printing money? nah.
the value is the utility, bitcoin has 0 utility as transaction costs rise. plus the pens can be easily substituted for other shit, via other pens, or new tech. anyways, dont follow the crowd. my friend who made millies on bitcoin is getting out. he cant even liquidate it at the max limits faster than it can grow.
Probably like other tech we’ve seen. At first it’s all “oh look at this free service that will save you from those evil corporate people”, and then after they have everyone on board they lock the doors and screw you!
the problem with bitcoin and other cryptos is they rely on the incumbent currencies remaining incredibly inefficient. every single person i’ve talked to about bitcoin thinks that it cannot be made obsolete, as pa keeps hinting at. the thing is that you don’t even need innovation to beat bitcoin and cryptos, you just need a shift in financial institution marketing strategy. this is already occurring.
as blockchain works through the system and as financial institutions lower fees on transactions to zero, which we are already seeing, cryptos will be the inefficient ones. there is advertising value in being a financial social network that entices people to use their system. bitcoin does not capture this network effect. one day, financial institutions may pay us to use their payment processing systems as a way to get their claws in us and provide us with other services. we are already well paid to use credit cards. a similar thing will occur with other transactions. why would i switch from by 2% cash back VISA which provides me with a 2% discount instantly and a 30 day delay in payment to bitcoin that gives me neither? nothing can survive when every institution is against it. institutions reflect public will. ask pa about corporatism. it is powerful and it is what almost everybody wants. to reiterate, cryptos will remain fringe and will die when it is clear they are not as efficient as incumbent currencies with a touch of technology attached.
edit: maybe as a canadian, i have a good understanding about how people view non-domestic currencies. people have a hard enough time with how the CAD/USD currency relationship works and when and where they can use CAD and USD. introducing something invisible that is used nowhere and at a higher cost to the consumer, in every possible transaction type, is unlikely to ever be adopted. this might be why most governments and corporations don’t care because it will have no impact on them in the long-run.
i wish you luck but you need to think about it rationally. only gamblers will buy bitcoin as an “investment” and nobody will use it because it cannot stand up against the profit machine.
Why do people insist that digital paper money does not exist?
The only advantage that cyrptos have is that it’s not impacted by government (directly) and the entire transaction ledger should settle faster than what occurs in the existing clearing systems (+3 days).
BTW those systems are incredibly old and outdated. Don’t we think we should just upgrade that process, with blockchain, and continue with our USD/CAD/JPY etc currencies instead? This whole hype around bitcoin is troubling to say the least.
Classic example of a feedback loop, it’s going up because it’s gone up so it must keep going up.
There is already a company that has spent the better part of the last 5 plus years addressing the pre-internet ledger problem. For whatever reason, banks themselves saw no reason to take initiative to solve this issue , and I think those who believe BB banks will “start their own digital currency” are short sighted in their view because barriers to entry are too high at this point and will only become higher. Fiat currency will never become extinct but merely co-exist with cryptos that will be able to be exchanged with greater speed, efficiency, and utility (ie illiquid currency pairs).
but if blockchain currencies run alongside inefficient fiat currencies, what is the point of a redundant blockchain currency? if blockchain cannot be used with current fiat, then there is no benefit to blockchain. i’m also unclear about the “barriers to entry” given that government policy is a “barrier to existence” for all outstanding cryptocurrencies. there is no entry for the banks. either they create their own system and make blockchain useful or blockchain dies. the only hope bitcoiners have is that the banks adopt bitcoin but this is unlikely given the volatility and bitcoin’s silk road tainted past.
I am referring to a specific network that moves BOTH fiat and cryptos efficiently. The benefit is to transact in a faster settled and moving crypto, IE (Digital Intermediary Asset). For Instance like this:
Liquid currency (USD) to Digital Intermediary Asset to Illiquid currency (Some small random African currency). I think the issue is that I am not referring to Bitcoin and you may think I am. Bitcoin has the name recognition and is becoming viewed more as a store of value since it is now considered “slow”, “costly”, etc.
In regards to barriers to entry, govt officials, in the US anyway, have commented several times that regulating Bitcoin and other cryptos really isn’t a fish they are looking to fry, but I am personally invested in one that is working with banks and regulators anyway so that is a moot point in terms of risk for me. I was more referring to the technological learning curve being a barrier to entry.
Market cap of all crypto currency is at just over half a trillion yet I do not see a JPM coin, or BOACoin, Wellscoin out right now. It will be difficult for them to compete, IMHO. Too far behind.
i think banks and the government don’t really care about cryptos because they know they’ll all end up dead. if you can’t use them anywhere and they are cost prohibitive to use, why would they ever displace currency? if you’re talking about a store of value, why invest in a store of value that disappears to nothing if the worst occurs? blockchain is a great idea but the idea of an unregulated libertarian style currency detached from government is a fairy tale.
my view is that there is no reason for Bitcoin to “go to zero”. if it “crashed” 40% to $10,000 that would be a massive buying opportunity with lots of institutional money looking to get in at that point… I doubt it trades below $10k ever again…
i think it could stay around the current range for some time (years) as the “float” consolidates $15,000-$25,000… if your not Bitcoin rich now… you probably missed the boat.
The token is currently on a ETH20, but as soon as main net goes live in 1Q18, this thing is going to go wild. It will sit on DAG tech, so no heavy energy mining of PoW. This will be the Cardano or IOTA of 2018. You can check out the reddit forum, there are more and more people getting interested in this every day.
It has a market cap of cUS$93m, all the other DAG coins are at $bn valuation…so you could get c100x you investment here.
Full disclosure; i exited my ETH at US$790 and bought 1100 QRL tokens the other day.
The other futures, the CME ones launched, but those are 5X so $91K each. Why do we need two futures? Hmm, does IB allow shorting on these? It says the margin requirement to short one, is $200K. Who wants to try and see if the order goes thru?
" One of the biggest issues when it comes to investing institutionally in digital assets is banks and larger institutions can’t hold an unregulated instrument in their balance sheet, and a futures contract is something they can hold,” said Gabor Gurbacs, director of digital-asset strategy at VanEck Associates Corp. With futures, “you don’t hold the physical bitcoin, which solves custody issues and counterparty risks with these less-regulated exchanges.” "
Yeah all the analysts at the bank I worked at in 2013 in Alts research said Bitcoin was garbage also, yet they are still working 7-11, 6 days a week when they could have been retired by now. Bitcoin is becoming more widely accepted as a transactional currency every day and it is slow and outdated when compared to other alt coins. Eventually others will take over.
I understand your position, but I disagree with you if you think that digital currencies are going to just go poof and disappear one day. Only time will tell I guess.
