Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I mostly just kick myself for not investing in it early. I knew about it early, had the money, but was too risk adverse. Could be retired right now.
Same here. Considered investing when it was just $600. However, just couldn't justify investing in something that is not tangible, only exists as 0s and 1s in cyberspace.
At least gold/silver is an actual physical commodity.
We are quite close to that limit but it's somewhat like a marathon that gets additional miles added on at the end. It is MUCH harder (and more energy and computer intensive) to mine bitcoins as you go along. So the mining naturally becomes harder....
Soon only a Chinese or Russia sitting next to a Hydro dam and bribing the management for free power will be able to be profitable in creating new coins.
It doesn't seem that there would ever be an oversupply due to that.
18 Million of 21 Million are harvested.
It would seem that, with that limited supply, they would become more valuable? When you consider just the underground trading the "value" is in the billions for all the parties involved. That is, if willing sellers and buyers agree on a 20K each price that would probably hold.
21 Million times 20K is what?
20K x 1 million is 20 Billion.
So we'd be talking only 420 Billion in total value? Am I doing this right????
Ok, now let's just start with the world trade in all illicit drugs.
"a turnover of around $400 billion per annum is considered realistic."
Well, there you go. Not to say all drugs will be bitcoin or all bitcoin will be drugs, but you can at least see the potential scales involved. Weapons and such...and information....and even lots of legal drugs (viagra) and regular goods (many online stores take BC).....are in the mix.
I am definitely not pushing Bitcoin (or I'd be invested myself)....but just noting that if it remains the market leader there is plenty of trade out there for the value to stay high.
Put another way - since we know credit cards, PayPal and other such things are all perfect traceable, what would be an alternative to Bitcoin for the large part of the world economy which is underground?
The US underground economy is estimated at over one trillion per year. Other countries like Russia and Greece, etc. have a MUCH larger percentage of GDP as underground.
Of course....I think Coinbase and some other banks are already reporting Bitcoin to authorities (??)....so the dream of untraceable wealth transfers may still be a pipe dream (with dark web opium in the pipe).
Yea I understood the recursive diminishing returns aspect of it. I'm saying that tech paradigm shifts will make those previous diminishing returns less relevant because it will be much easier to just brute force your way through most complex algorithms when you can calculate in more "dimensions" <(not really the right word) using superposition. Your point about total potential market cap makes sense though, and we are further into the diminishing returns than I thought so looking at a probably small short term drop as the last coins get mined out then a long term increase.
The same thing that backs pretty much all world currencies, consumer faith. Coupled with guaranteed scarcity through the intrinsic functionality of the mathematical algorithms used to generate the currency as a control against inflation.
The same thing that backs pretty much all world currencies, consumer faith. Coupled with guaranteed scarcity through the intrinsic functionality of the mathematical algorithms used to generate the currency as a control against inflation.
Not for me.
I hold physical gold. Nothing can beat the intrinsic value of that.
I hold physical gold. Nothing can beat the intrinsic value of that.
Its just a metal, its price is a function of its relative rarity relevant to the demand for its use just like any other commodity including bit coin. You could put your all your money in construction grade sand and it would hold value the same way just less practical from a storage perspective, gold just happens to be one commodity that is highly fetishized. Given the way the future looks, you'd be better off stockpiling rare earth elements.
Many things could beat the intrinsic value of gold. If I have $5000 worth of gold and someone offers me $6000 dollars worth of bit coin for it they just beat it. I can sell the gold, then buy more gold than I had before with the bitcoin. Or more construction grade sand.
Steve Bannon and Patrick Byrne are big proponents if bitcoin. On youtube there are a lot of Byrne's lectures and presentations over the years. Just search for "Patrick Byrne bitcoin"
Wall Street hates bitcoin so it must be worthwhile.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.