Topic: BTC $140+ RISK FACTOR ANALYSIS (Read 1273 times)

agreed, people have been taking cyprus waaaay too seriously. oh well, i've made some decent money from it

Cyprus was a consequence of upcoming elections in Germany. A bunch of politicians playing to local audiences for re-election, without looking beyond that at all. The EU needs to eventually decide if it is one country or many, with that decision having big consequences both in and beyond it.

I don't think that you can _necessarily_ imply anything regarding global fiat currency management from this though.

When I made this thread it was not to talk about long term bitcoin valuation. THAT is impossible.
As you all said, there is no reference point, no fixing, bitcoin is worth only what people are willing to pay for it. And that's enough.


There are many risks involved in the long term future - even criminalization of BTC usage and death sentences for using - we can speculate about such things, but that's pointless (while being fun =D)

Nonetheless we can still estimate the short term risks - in the current situation, which stands like this:
* media is getting hot on BTC (slowly yet)
* banks/brokers are getting questions about BTC drawing their attention
* BTC market value around $1.000.000.000 is very small. Using leverage even a small company could buy the whole BTC supply (theoretically). Practically it's impossible due to hoarders.. BUT you don't have to buy them all to make the price shake. When you trade for $50M that's enough. $50M is what, 50 lots (in forex terminology). Many individual FX clients do indeed trade in such nominals on daily basis.


Please do remember that Bitcoin disables government's immortal idea of "getting funds from nowhere" when they need them.
Like: gold confiscation, printing money, taxing everything. If you're interested in economic history, check out what had governments done in times of need (war).

This & this alone can pose a threat so serious to the governments & banks, that they might set on a mission to discredit & destroy BTC.
They fear what they don't understand. They fear what they can't control. They might try to control BTC, they will fail, they will try to destroy it then.

It's just my opinion, but regarding #Cyprus - it seems that the Governors Of The World are stupid, dumb and relentless.


That's kind of an OffTopic - because there's not enough global attention on BTC. The current threats are small-scale. Like DDOS, like fake publications, like Twitter panic, etc.

That might solve the issue for Cyprus.

The problem is that the issue of levying a tax on bank account holdings is now on the table.

Even assuming that the whole world suddenly switches to virtual anonymous (in theory) currencies, it is no longer the realm of fantasy for your property (i.e. physical property like your house, or your bank account, or anything else for that matter) to be taxed on a one-off basis whenever your government of record requires.

Historically that was actually pretty common, but the world isn't used to this notion any more.

I hear they are talking about an "Iceland" solution.  Really that's what everyone needs to do pull the tape off and move on. 

Cyprus was very very bad for Cypriots, and potentially set a bad precedent for elsewhere. Ripple effects could take a while to play out.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/my-bank-accounts-got-robbed-by-european-commission-over-700k-is-lost-160292

Didn't realise Cyprus was that bad. 

There will be sellers when the price is right.
Hopefully the price being 'right' isn't a 15 minute period where the price drops by $20/min.

I only know of a small number of really large holdings. There's a fund out of Gibraltar that claims to have a big holding, and there's that infamous one at MtGox that might be mafia-related.

The big question is how many people are using BTC. My guess is that its roughly 1 million people at this point, with a median holding that's less than $100 USD. So there's a bit of concentration at the top of the pyramid, and a lot of little accounts (like mine - I originally obtained some BTC from the free fountain back in 2011).

No one in this thread has mentioned how much all the toal bitcoins are worth; $1.25 billion or €1 billion euro

someone who buys €10 million worth takes up 1% of total bitcoin worth. that's a massive stake for a small amount of money thats used to buy any currency/commodity available worldwide.

Yes Bitcoin has risen astronomically (from 20c in July 2011 to a massive $130+ today)
In my opinion, the bubble is only beginning to rise. Why? More people are finding out about bitcoin whether they be millionaire criminals looking to statsh their money somehwere or everyday people looking to do something with a few hundred. On top of this, more retailers are accepting bitcoin, bu that still doesn't mean that bitcoins are easy to spend.

I can't see the price collapsing in the next three months because even with more people aware of bitcoin, still a very small percentage actually know about it. The people sitting on hundreds or thousands of bitcoins know this and will sit tight because as more people find out, more people will buy, and more the bitcoin will go up in price.

LTC is a bubble for sure, no one uses it for purposes other than speculation.

I honestly don't know if BTC or LTC is a bubble that is going to pop. The more people who accept it and use it, the more it is worth. There may be times when it falls very low, but it will always rise, and soon enough, I think it will find a spot to stabalize at.

There was a poll on the LinkedIn BitCoin group regarding potential risks. The responses made for some interesting reading.

Nobody really knows how the economics of this will play out long term.

There's (hypothetically speaking) a built-in deflationary curve to BTC and many other virtual currencies, which hasn't really been proven to work in practice. Most of the current run-up is due to the "fear index" effect, combined with plain old greed.

I don't think you can put an inherent value on BTC any more than you can on fiat currencies or gold. It isn't like a stock, say, where you can decide to buy or sell based on a price multiple of earnings - and even that is a questionable basis for inherent valuation.

Told ya. Exponential user base growth = MtGox down.

"Database access error, please retry later"

Thoughts - for risk enlarging factors 1,2,3, I think they all have possible positive flip sides.

1. More people buying coins when supply is finite - will increase value

2. If the banks and wall street felt like bitcoin was going to spread massively and threaten their profits and control of the economic system, they will either try to find a way of destroying it or perhaps try to work with it and find a way to profit from it, which could seriously increase its adoption, raising value.

3. People who have started using bitcoin due to media coverage should mostly remain bitcoin users because its the best way to store money anonymously, with all the attractions that brings and I think as long as it remains the best at this its growth will not slow, the trend for the past few years has been steadily building higher and higher media coverage, and I believe this might be the moment its use skyrockets worldwide and in within two years matching their volume then balancing out.


on A -

Lots of bad thefts have happened that has not stopped people being scared away ---




Thoughts - for risk enlarging factors 1,2,3, I think they all have possible positive flip sides.

1. More people buying coins when supply is finite - will increase value

2. If the banks and wall street felt like bitcoin was going to spread massively and threaten their profits and control of the economic system, they will either try to find a way of destroying it or perhaps try to work with it and find a way to profit from it, which could seriously increase its adoption, raising value.

3. People who have started using bitcoin due to media coverage should mostly remain bitcoin users because its the best way to store money anonymously, with all the attractions that brings and I think as long as it remains the best at this its growth will not slow, the trend for the past few years has been steadily building higher and higher media coverage, and I believe this might be the moment its use skyrockets worldwide and in within two years matching their volume then balancing out.


on A -

 Large negative events have happened regularly but its usage has continued to grow anyway, future bad news may likely only decrease the userbase minimally and not effect the upward growth.

--- some examples



    On 19 June 2011, a security breach of the Mt.Gox bitcoin exchange caused the nominal price of a bitcoin to fraudulently drop to one cent on the Mt.Gox exchange, after a hacker allegedly used credentials from a Mt.Gox auditor's compromised computer to illegally transfer a large number of bitcoins to himself. He used the exchange's software to nominally sell them all, creating a massive "ask" order at any price. Within minutes the price corrected to its correct user-traded value.[77][78][79][80][81][82] Accounts with the equivalent of more than USD 8,750,000 were affected.[79]

    In July 2011, the operator of Bitomat, the third largest bitcoin exchange, announced that he lost access to his wallet.dat file with about 17,000 bitcoins (roughly equivalent to 220,000 USD at that time). He announced that he would sell the service for the missing amount, aiming to use funds from the sale to refund his customers.[83]

    In August 2011, MyBitcoin, a now defunct bitcoin transaction processor, declared that it was hacked, which resulted in it being shut down, with paying 49% on customer deposits, leaving more than 78,000 bitcoins (roughly equivalent to 800,000 USD at that time) unaccounted for.[84][85]

    In early August 2012, a lawsuit was filed in San Francisco court against Bitcoinica — a bitcoin trading venue — claiming about 460,000 USD from the company. Bitcoinica was hacked twice in 2012, which led to allegations of neglecting the safety of customers' money and cheating them out of withdrawal requests.[86][87]

    In late August 2012, an operation titled Bitcoin Savings and Trust was shut down by the owner, allegedly leaving around $5.6 million in bitcoin-based debts; this led to allegations of the operation being a Ponzi scheme.[88][89][90][91] In September 2012, it was reported that U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has started an investigation on the case.[92]

    In September 2012, Bitfloor, a bitcoin exchange, also reported being hacked, with 24,000 bitcoins (roughly equivalent to 250,000 USD) stolen. As a result, Bitfloor suspended operations.[93][94] The same month, Bitfloor resumed operations, with its founder saying that he reported the theft to FBI, and that he is planning to repay the victims, though the time frame for such repayment is unclear.[95]


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As long as there is a growing number of exchangers it will become harder to slow the market if there are more sites to use


Lastly I think MTGOX will do everything it can to stay the number one exchanger and it should be straightforward for a big company with large amounts of money to be able to upgrade their systems/software quickly and properly if ianything was a significant threat to their revenues.

Oh man, that sentence is always true for all goods. In a supply-demand economy "if people keep buying, the price grows"!

if people keep buying I don't think they will go down anytime soon.

So your buying things with Bitcoins now?
No ofcourse not, everybody is hoarding right now since where in a rally. Thats why almost nobody is selling and the price is rising like a mad man.
This price risiing is pure speculation and nothing more.
If Bitcoin becomes stable for a couple of months around this price the statement above is wrong though.

don't know about shill, but yes, long time BTC user, first post in forums.

New shill account?