Topic: If you are waiting for the "despair phase" to buy like in 2011 consider this - page 4. (Read 10298 times)

^^^^^

You two didn't get the point of the thread.
Too bad.

   Unless you consider google or amazon, but then bitcoin is not a company, bitcoin is the innovation. Another such technology based speculative boom would be railway or telecommunication, but honestly, bitcoin has the potential to add more value to the global economy than railroads or cellphones when the full extent of the inefficency of fiat is considered. Not to mention lost opportunities due to politically motivated embargoes that benefit only a few elite who happen to bankroll some influential governments...

Example:


The internet was an amazing invention that changed the world.
The dotcom bubble was just that, a bubble.

[3] - that this year's drop in valuation represents the cost of a "rights of passage" phase. Bitcoin has been chewed up by the media, kicked in the groins by MtGox, goaded by rumour such as the 'malliability episode', taken a hammering in the markets and yet come out of all of this without a scratch technically. The fact that it's still "alive" at all and still floating well above most of 2013's all time high is not going to go unnoticed in years to come. This year's experience gives Bitcoin massive stock value in terms of trust because no other coin has gone through this experiment and taken the hammering that Bitcoin has. They only way that could happen is if Bitcoin went to zero and we started all over again with a new 'leader'. Whatever the markets say, that still looks extremely unlikely to happen right now

When studying the anatomy of a bubble, a linear chart tells you a lot more than a log one

In the case of BTC, the "previous bubbles" like the 2011 one was done when market cap and price were RIDICULOUSLY lower and all it took to pump it was a little injection of fiat (aka, one or two deep pocket entities simply buying in).
What happened in 2011 is basically noise in the grand scheme of things.

"Massive amount" in venture capital? Less than a billion is not a massive amount, and venture capital is by definition something that can all fail miserably, like the insanely high number of bitcoin related start-ups that already failed. I am sure I don't need to show you a list of that...

"Infrastructure" in the bitcoin space is mostly smokescreen, and "adoption" is basically merchants accepting USD from a bitcoin dump through Bitpay (from people that probably ALREADY OWN BTC) and people wanting to gamble with the speculation aspect of bitcoin.

More than a year of bear market and being down more than 70% from the ATH and still being there with no signs of recovery is not a "healthy correction" in a "healthy market".
Especially considering that today a lot more people are aware of BTC (compared to 2011 when pretty much nobody was even aware of its existence, BIG DIFFERENCE).

Sure has  

Bitcoin has attracted a lulzy menagerie of self-important attention whores

The "blockchain technology" (the concept of a distributed ledger) has potential, sure, but:

1. Being forced to adopt a currency full of limitations and problems just because of the ledger is not gonna work.
2. the bitcoin blockchain is just an example of a distributed ledger, other protocols already exists today (and will of course exist in the future) that don't have the ridiculous limitations of bitcoin the currency and the bitcoin blockchain (and I don't want to go through that again, already discussed to death).

...
[1] - the overbought condition in December 2013 given the state of the infrastructure development at the time. This was driven largely by the month long panic buy in China

[2] - the massive amount of VC capital and infrastructure development that's gone on in 2014 which is all "uphill work" that won't start to bear fruit till later this year. While that's all going on, most of the trading in Bitcoin is speculative - both the rises AND the falls. They don't remotely represent an actual reduction in adoption, technology development, service evolution, security consolidation or any other real world aspects on which a classic commercial valuation would be based

[3] - that this year's drop in valuation represents the cost of a "rights of passage" phase. Bitcoin has been chewed up by the media, kicked in the groins by MtGox, goaded by rumour such as the 'malliability episode', taken a hammering in the markets and yet come out of all of this without a scratch technically. The fact that it's still "alive" at all and still floating well above most of 2013's all time high is not going to go unnoticed in years to come. This year's experience gives Bitcoin massive stock value in terms of trust because no other coin has gone through this experiment and taken the hammering that Bitcoin has. They only way that could happen is if Bitcoin went to zero and we started all over again with a new 'leader'. Whatever the markets say, that still looks extremely unlikely to happen right now
...

These arguments are superfluous. Clearly, both points of view apply in some respect.

12 months ago, Bitcoin was overvalued as an investment but undervalued as a technology.

As an investment it lost value this year. But as a technology there isn't much disagreement - even amongst the most hardened media trolls - that it is the future and it isn't hard to see why.

Up till now it's been impossible to create a monetary token that is electronic without being reproducible. It's simply the nature of electronic media that "copy & paste" rules and that has made it a huge challenge to create any kind of token that could be considered as tradable in such a way that it could not be counterfeited. The so called "electronic money" we use on a day to day basis isn't money. it's just a counterparty held balance that changes according to the instructions of other authoritative counterparties ("banks" to me & you).

With the invention of blockchain technology, the counterparty is no longer needed in the loop. This solves two problems that "tulips" never had a hope in hell of solving:

[1] - it provides the basis for an unbacked, unlevered electronic monetary base which, given that most of the worlds markets have moved from a physical to an electronic platform over the last century, is an inevitable consequence of modern technology

[2] - in principle, it makes the counterparty system redundant (I say in 'principle' because email didn't make the post office redundant, it just created a whole new medium where the post office was non existent)

Make no mistake. A technology which solves both those problems at once is of immense value - both practical and financial. Just look at the pain and anguish that was the common currency known as the Euro. And yet a couple of decades later we have a common currency that is self managing, doesn't require agonising years of debate between states and that is not enforced on anybody yet freely available to everybody.

Whether you think Bitcoin is "IT" or not, the technology is out of the bag and here to stay. As it happens, I think Bitcoin is now far enough down the line that it isn't now going to ever go away. The current valuation is fine - it's 300% to 400% what it was 18 months ago but what most people don't see if huge amount of infrastructure development that's gone on this year which will start to bear fruit now. It may not be some huge explosion - email wasn't, it just crept up on everyone until we were all using it.

To compare Bitcoin with tulips is a bit like comparing a modern aeroplane wing with a plank of wood. Yes - in some respects the comparison holds, but the only people who cite it as being significant are those with no clue of what makes one fly and the other not.

Cryptocurrencies will fly because they solve a huge problem - one that most people don't even realise they have yet because they've lived with it for so long. It  requires the supporting infrastructure to be advanced enough for mass adoption to take place, but take place it will.

Actually, "frankly", it does matter - quite a lot because the log scale is concerned with correctly representing proportional changes which the linear scale does not.

The reason you are so dismissive of is it because it doesn't happen to suit your little tirade in trying to convince people that they are wasting their time with Bitcoin. Despite that, the log scale is wholly appropriate when making an appraisal of the long term growth of an asset as opposed to short term trading of that asset.

What the analysis posted by poncho shows is that this year's trend is nothing like as alarming as you've been desperately trying to paint it. That applies in particular when you take three things into account:

[1] - the overbought condition in December 2013 given the state of the infrastructure development at the time. This was driven largely by the month long panic buy in China

[2] - the massive amount of VC capital and infrastructure development that's gone on in 2014 which is all "uphill work" that won't start to bear fruit till later this year. While that's all going on, most of the trading in Bitcoin is speculative - both the rises AND the falls. They don't remotely represent an actual reduction in adoption, technology development, service evolution, security consolidation or any other real world aspects on which a classic commercial valuation would be based

[3] - that this year's drop in valuation represents the cost of a "rights of passage" phase. Bitcoin has been chewed up by the media, kicked in the groins by MtGox, goaded by rumour such as the 'malliability episode', taken a hammering in the markets and yet come out of all of this without a scratch technically. The fact that it's still "alive" at all and still floating well above most of 2013's all time high is not going to go unnoticed in years to come. This year's experience gives Bitcoin massive stock value in terms of trust because no other coin has gone through this experiment and taken the hammering that Bitcoin has. They only way that could happen is if Bitcoin went to zero and we started all over again with a new 'leader'. Whatever the markets say, that still looks extremely unlikely to happen right now

So all in all, your superficial dismissal of what is a very important analytical perspective on this whole game just about sums up the depth of your commentary. I don't really know if you have a clue what your talking about or if your just trolling because your nose is out of joint but either way you're a broken record that's in need of changing.

Also, the chart you posted is the same I posted, only in log scale. Same thing. Sorry but I don't have a tulip bubble log scale for the comparison. And frankly, it doesn't even matter.

First transaction ever was a Pizza for 10,000 BTC.  If we assume it was $20 then Bitcoin has appreciated 9 Million Percent on any price over about $180

Quick!  Dump all your coins!  Bitcoin is only up 9 Million Percent since 5 years ago  

#bitcoin #pizza