Topic: 2013-12-06 ZDNet: Bitcoin: It's not just loopy tulip land, it's worse (Read 2867 times)

Central banks usually intervene in the Forex market when their currency are heavily sold. Same, miners are distributed central banks for bitcoin, in order to protect the credit of the money they issue, they will step in the market and buy coins to intervene when coin price is falling hard, this rule out the possibility that coin's value will go to zero

And there are also other players like mining companies and hedge funds, they all have a motivation to support the exchange price of bitcoin to make their business more profitable

Comparing tulips and bitcoins is absurd. They are two completely different things in two completely different ages. Its a flower vs a currency, and you are looking at a time without in-depth price fluctuation analysis and the internet vs constant scrutiny and trading on a global real-time scale. Tulips may be a lesson in the investment craze, but they are not a good comparison to cryptocurrency.

I've been finding myself having debates about "zero sum games" with people who are new to bitcoin.  They seem to think that somehow this is a zero sum game, while I argue that everybody* wins (some obviously more than others). 

Bitcoin is the great middle-man destroyer.  It has the potential to annihilate huge swaths of leaching and waste in the economy.  We are staring at a great opportunity for human progress. 

*Everybody may not include certain dinosaurs in banking and government.  But I do expect banking, government, and even tax authorities to benefit in aggregate.

Nope the real estate bubble wasn't global. Many countries did have a bubble and crash between 2001-2007 e.g. Spain, Ireland, US. On the hand many countries didn't have any bubble e.g. Germany, Italy, Poland, Brazil. In other countries the bubble continues to grow from 2001 e.g. UK, Canada, France.

It looks like Germany might be starting to have a bubble at the moment but I think the point is clear, global real estate markets are not in sync. There's always property rising and falling somewhere in the world.

Unless you have a specific price at which point you are going to cash out, you will be in exactly the same position as those you now scorn. It's not a question of if, just when. BitCoin's cool, but human greed exceeds everything in existence.

Real estate bubble? It was global!
Also , at the time of the tulip bubble , Europe was the world.

With everything collapsing around of course people tend to say that anything that gains value and they don't have a clue about it is a bubble.

Actually I did that , and it feels better than with an euro bill.

Interesting question. It expresses the perceived value of BTC as fiat though, which makes it unanswerable at one level. Within that constraint, what you get out of a BTC is always the same (fungibility, ability to transact quickly with anyone anywhere - all the usual list, minus the ability to exchange for some amount of fiat, which may or may not be important).

That said, you would get to watch the owners of ASICs bring the perceived value of BTC up again as they trade among themselves. I think their sunk costs and the resulting attitudes will ensure that BTC value does not go close to zero even if BTC is abandoned by the fiat speculator community. Whether BTC attains mass adoption or not is a separate issue, I think.

Regardless of fiat exchange rates, we tend to have the same amount of BTC at the end of the day as we had at the start unless we have earned more or exchanged some of it for something that we value. The perceived fiat equivalence fluctuation is the source of the froth - there is no way of knowing how much BTC the now-thriving but doomed fiat is worth at this early stage of fiat collapse.

Judging by typical comments here whenever there is a price drop, and even allowing for spin, there is a buyer for every seller. Someone would want to be a BTC Hunt Brother, no matter how low the price went. Would you take the risk of buying the whole 21 million supply of BTC for a penny? Most people would, I think. After that, we're just dickering about prices.

You can probably guess that I don't give a Continental about the fiat exchange rate fluctuations for BTC, other than for entertainment value.     

Very strangely, the more bubble calls I hear, the sounder I sleep at nights. 

We should be very nervous is nobody calls bitcoin a bubble anymore 

Bubbles are typically very local and specific.

Tulip mania? Netherlands.

South Sea Bubble? England, although events in Spain played a role in unseating this one.

Dot Com Bubble? United States. (Though this fails the true "bubble" test, as the NASDAQ still operates today, and some of the individual stocks are still around at lower valuations.)

You could make a distinction between communication networks and the lack thereof, but the overriding point is, they're very localized. Enter Bitcoin. It is, by its very nature, global. It has also shown resilience in the face of rather volatile price movements. Bubbles don't inflate, pop, then re-inflate. They typically go to a minimal value - either just as good as zero, and/or interest fades completely and it isn't traded anymore.

Bitcoin has experienced multiple events in this regard. It isn't dead, it most certainly IS traded all over the world, and the adoption curve on a longer-term perspective certainly has some headroom. For Bitcoin to be a bubble, every single country in the world would have to been involved already, and every single participant would have to decide to not use it anymore after a period of brief excess.

I consider that probability to be extremely remote. But, it never stops the critics, does it.

Don't I have that with litecoin?  Or I0coin?  or bytecoin? Or did I miss something?

I agree with you there, and I always urge people to check their own financial situation whenever they want to invest and reflect if they can afford to lose it all, they need to prove to me they can use a client proficiently, which they will need for storing coins anyway, I think that makes sense.

The case with Bitcoin is especially unique given the fact that it's trying to liberate us from the powers that control our money, who will very often get in last and hold the bag just like any common sucker yet without risking any bit of their own money. The two most infamous cases are Gordon Brown's liquidation of UK gold reserve right at the gold price bottom and Bernanke's purchase of gold right off the peak, both costed taxpayers billions yet hardly affect those in charge personally, at least when investing in Bitcoin you are responsible for what you have done.

Canard argument.

Choosing an item as a form of money often works very well when the item has no other useful purpose. Think about it: why wouldn't steel or the local grain crop ever become widespread monetary commodities? Because someone would turn the steel into a knife, or eat the grain. In a social context where the question of what should be used as the medium of exchange was a common debate, people really got to grips with the why's and the why not's.

A payment system unmatched reliable and totally immune from a single point of failure. Or did I miss something?

I like your comments; I'll certainly use this.  I guess to bake a cake you gotta break some eggs.

However, I'm guessing the thing that people are worried about is who gets in last may never recover.

I'll agree that it is the people's fault who get in near the end and risk too much.

And everyone wants to time the market, which is why people think they've missed the opportunity.

This is why I try not to talk to people about speculation, but help them find a use for bitcoin, and then buy some to take advantage of that use.

Then if they believe the technology is useful and will keep being adopted (increasing it's valuation) then I'd say they are ready to "invest" some more.

Most people don't have patience for this; they are just looking for the quick buck which is likely why the media feeds off it...for their bottom line.

All makes sense from different perspectives.

good point

That is a very good point! I've never really thought of that before, but you're totally right!

To say the least, everyone talks about the tulip mania, what happened after the mania? Didn't Netherland become a kingdom of tulips, until this day? Everyone talks about the dotcom bubble, what happened after the bubble? Didn't the IT technology transform nearly every aspect of our life? Following the same pattern, Bitcoin would have seen worldwide adoption after the bubble, not bad at all! What's all this doom and gloom about?

Try wiping your ass with a dollar bill and tell me the next day how you feel.....

Exactly!  Try wiping your ass with a bitcoin!