Topic: How to avoid BTC booming too fast? (like the housing bubble?) - page 2. (Read 6341 times)

Well colored coins and mastercoins will come so we can deal with it for now
Mind you that improves over the Fiat system by adding a new level

Exactly, Bitcoin needs to avoid huge booms and busts.

Bitcoin doesn't have huge booms and busts. It has huge booms, followed by "profit taking". The thing is going to $10K. Its not going to get there in a straight line, this is a market we are talking about here folks - people play markets

A hard fork already happened in March last year. Didn't cause too much problems.

http://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2013-03-11-chain-fork

How would you propose steady growth? through a regulation that forces people to adopt bitcoin at a steady rate? that would cause a boom because people would want to be the first to get in while the price is low, and subsequent bust

your asking the impossible, its the nature of this type of growth, core transactors and enthusiasts increase the value, outside forces see a ridiculously quick rising store of value with almost limitless potential, jump in, hyper inflate price, market goes to unstable value, bad news of some sort hits, market crashes and investors panic sell, left with core transactors, enthusiasts and steely nerved investors, market re stabilizes, rinse and repeat

but the booms and busts are in some ways a GOOD thing, better that than a drawn out stagnation

Exactly, Bitcoin needs to avoid huge booms and busts.

Not a bubble development is consistent with the creation of the digital economy if anything the stability is just increasing as more people use it.

Of course this is not inconsistent with rapid price pops and crashes
I'm arguing about the underlying infrastructure being built to support the network and utility of the asset class  ;
Growing developing tech has adoption curves and growth spurts and for now this is to be expected from a developing system so expect pops till we stabilize

Right, but housing was also fueled by bad lending practices, and housing is apples and oranges compared to bitcoin, a more apt comparison is dutch tulips if you wanted to make it, of course BTC will bubble, its not the top you should look at for BTC health, its the floor, and the floor seems to be doing great by all accounts, the last crash saw the floor at 400+


the lower we can get the fees, the better and more useful microtransactions are as a medium, and the more value that particular coin has, its the market that decides what is needed, and it usually chooses the most efficient route

We can already handle micro transactions using Bitcoin as the backbone, no ALT currency needed.

Some Alt coins are slightly better technically in some ways but more often they are just different, or their advantages also pose disadvantages aswell, SHA-256 could be broken, but so could Scrypt, given enough of a warning it might be possible to switch the community to a different algorithm, but certainly if SHA-256 is cracked not only bitcoin but all Alt coins will suffer horrible PR and marketplace distrust

A niche for micropayments could also certainly open up, Id say it just depends on future fee price progression, how the bitcoin infrastructure is built and how 3rd party service learn to implement functions within those structures, but if a more serious and ready contender for micropayments was currently around we would probably be talking about them and not BTC

Micro transactions is just a short-term problem for Bitcoin.

It will be solved in the future by Bitcoin processors.

Bitcoin is always way more universal than most people believe, it can and will always keep up with any "Alt currency" -- forever.

Alt coins will all die out, along with government/banking currency.

Yes, brand and network effect always seem like the 'strongest' arguments. I agree to some extent, but not fully agree. Some altcoins are better technically than bitcoin. The better they are, the more market share they will gain. Most will die though. Only a few will survive, most likely those that offer some innovation. Litecoin is sort of backup for bitcoin, in case sha-256 is ever broken, which cannot be ruled out.

So there'll always be at least people diversifying on the basis of a different than sha-256 algo. It's simply not wise to keep all eggs in one basket. There are many encryption algos, and that's for a reason. No reason to believe sha-256 is the best one, just because it's not been broken yet.

Besides, Bitcoin is becoming less and less suited for micropayments, which can be a big market, especially if more merchants start accepting it. Something else has to take over that niche.

Yes, it boomed too fast, bubbled.

Bitcoin can follow the same path/events.

the housing bubble was pure speculation and the increase of demand was artificial.. that's why it fizzled out, not because it boomed so fast.

Bitcoin wont be the only game in town, but its still the best game, when someone (Zynga, Overstock) wants to begin accepting a digital currency, they dont use dogecoin, they will start with BTC, LTC probably transacts a tiny fraction of what bitcoin does, the media knows BTC, it has a brand value now

Will LTC survive the long run, even flourish? yes, and maybe a 3rd coin, like peercoin, but is it different enough to overtake bitcoin, I'd say no, eventually it will fall by the wayside, because even more than BTC, LTC is currently only a store of value, a hedge with much less base support, propped up more by the success of its competitor than its own use, which is not to say BTC cant be toppled, there just isnt a scheme with clear enough advantages over BTC to take from its momentum

And just because humans have had differing currencies so far doesnt mean things dont change, people didnt have near universal access to free knowledge 100 years ago (internet), we have only just gone to space and got down being able to be anywhere on earth within a day, change is the only constant, fiscal revolution has happened many times before and it will happen more after digital currencies have their reign, being able to use the same money at a starbucks in california and a starbucks in shanghai is a logical progression of advancement

Because governments have limited time to enact regulation. They weren't interested in bitcoin 2 years ago because bitcoin was irrelevant in terms of revenue. Its no coincidence government regulation started happening in 2013 when the price skyrocketed

Why would governments take notice until something becomes valuable to them. It's natural that regulation will come.

That's an interesting statement because it's basically what happened.  No government, basically anywhere in the world, took notice of Bitcoin until it's value increased greatly in price.  Now that is has a market cap of ~$10B, governments care because of what it is and what it may become.  It will threaten some of them and they have taken notice.  As it becomes more mainstream, and increases in value, you'll see more governments taking action, some positive, some negative.

Once it gets very big, it forces governments to regulate, rather than "gets more difficult" IMHO

Bitcoin at 10k would be ~120B market cap if my high school math still works, it may not.   Not many companies, stocks, etc, have a market cap that large.  Not if its a currency...that's a whole different story on currency market cap...