Topic: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion - page 21923. (Read 26610072 times)

Eligible $GBTC shareholders are in receipt of instructions on how to deposit their shares into their investment accounts.

https://twitter.com/GrayscaleInvest/status/591713454400139265

so gbtc seems to start according to twitter post

Coin
Explanation

Coin
Explanation

I'd say down and sideways until June, 1 (or whenever bit-license goes live); and then we see some interesting moves... I think we will continue to have downward pressure to help facilitate accumulation.

"In the future I don't expect to buy foreign currency and take cash with me."

This is what is especially exciting; foreign settlements for business transfers. Instead of wiring money to different departments, you just click 'send'. I think the biggest hurdle is regulatory uncertainty and fluctuating market spreads and that will be addressed overtime. The market IS STILL too immature to support actual business to business of any significant real volume. I think once the Bitlicense takes effect you will begin to see more groundwork. Wall street will cannibalize itself and their existing markets to be the biggest vampire in this new market. It will be a race to the bottom in terms of cutting costs and will be very disruptive. FINTECH is dangerous to the status quo of finance. Big sharks will get eaten by tiny minnows. I think September will be exciting.

Sooo any thoughts on how this is going to resolve: 

Sideways

Are we going up or nowhere but down?

Only these keywords get much response :
Bears, Bulls, Whales, Moon, Rocket, Train, Bottom (single, double, triple)

Pictures count as keywords.

If someone posts "Bear whales sending us to the next triple bottom" with a pic of 3 girls bottoms then we're all doomed and nobody else's post will get any notice (especially my last one with lots of words in it & no girls).

A consistent problem I see is that the general public as well as some academics keep trying to equate bitcoin to something they already know.  This is human nature but it just doesn't work because this is something new. Yes there are similarities which existing systems but these quickly break when you look at the bigger picture.
The value of a company can be determined through analysis of the products they offer along with current and future profits.  The value of a fiat currency can be determined through analysis of a countries productivity.

Bitcoin is not a company and it is not a currency.

Personally I see it and talk about it as a network with utility and it is only as valuable as what you can do with the network.

Many other people can see this too and have bought in, spending $$ in anticipation of what you might be able to do with bitcoin (& the network) in the future and this has driven the price.  This has also resulted in some people using bitcoin as an asset class for speculation (which it can be) but ultimately only increased utility will drive the adoption (& the value) long term.

We very nearly had a "killer app" for bitcoin only recently.  The Neteller announcement that they were accepting deposits with bitcoin at no fee was the key but it was hobbled my Mastercard.  
The initial promise was that you could spend say EUR to buy bitcoin at say a 2% fee then deposit to Neteller in AUD for free and finally spend your AUD balance using the Mastercard for no fees.  This would have undercut all current currency transfers and currency purchases where Bitpay will pay Neteller in the same currency as the account (AUD, USD, EUR or GBP) since the only fee is the cost to buy bitcoin.

This example is in the terms of the same user (eg holiday money) but equally this could be user A in say the US and user B in say France.  This is an idealised scenario but say user A buys bitcoin using Coinbase (1% fee) and then sends the bitcoin to user B in France (tiny fee) who then deposits the bitcoin in their EUR Neteller account (possibly currency fluctuation) and finally moves EUR to their Neteller Mastercard.  Overall (with some hassle) USD has now moved from the states to France as EUR with little friction and little cost compared to a traditional international currency transfer.
(idealised because Neteller blocked US bitcoin deposits from the outset)

I believe Mastercard saw this and that's why they blocked bitcoin balances being moved to their pre-paid card.

This is the future utility I see.
In the future I don't expect to buy foreign currency and take cash with me.
I expect to buy bitcoin and either spend bitcoin directly or use a Debit card which deducts bitcoin from an account balance as I spend.

Finally it's been pointed out that many people talking up bitcoin own bitcoin.
The straight forward reason for this is that once someone starts to see the utility and they become a "believer" then they buy.

Everyone here will be hoarding at $1 just for the lols.

IMHO i dont think that btc price can goto 0.

even at the worst scenario where mining become unprofitable either because halving or price drop, then big miner will either create some foundation to buy coin and create stability (in effect they become crypto bank which supply coin when price go up and buy back when price go down) or they can go elsewhere with their money.

Coin
Explanation

I guess he can't be bothered with figuring out how the spam folder works when he has all this trolling to do. If someone ever asks you what's wrong with the Brazilian education system, Jorge Stolfi should be on the top of that list.

Sry for making fun of Sao Paolo. Stolfi is such a dick that there's bound to be some collateral damage.

Well technically you can "email him" some gold. You could send him gold IOUs using ripple. And yes you can send him that via e-mail (if you use GateHub, a Bitstamp related gateway) without him having to open an account before. If you do that you can effectively send him "gold via e-mail".  

It's pretty cool.

You can he receive such overwhelming amount of spam?

Only way I can think is put his true email in porn sites, lots of them.

Don't forget to call him first, otherwise your gold is lost forever in his SPAM folder. E-mail is very dangerous (see: http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/NoEMail.html). Emails actually make little sense. Been telling it for years now to people, I'm completely stocked up on pigeons for the day that email dies. Better try to send a fax with the gold attached in the meantime. It's a bit heavy for my pigeons.

but fairly possible in may

Another pullback in the difficulty ? Too early to tell now but any big increase doesn´t seem likely at least.

Estimated Next Difficulty:   47,035,039,678 (-1.21%)
Adjust time:   After 1292 Blocks, About 9.0 days

I think (he thinks) he did: by saying that crypto only serves malicious ("drug dealers") or trivial ("Overstock.com") purposes, while tacitly assuming further that there will never be any usage cases for crypto other than the above.

I appreciate your post, by the way, even if it'll hardly convince Jorge. It runs down to the question if you can see anything of value in a distributed value transfer & registration mechanism or not, now or in the future. Jorge doesn't (and in fact, he mainly seems to think of it as detrimental to the public good), while most in here happen to disagree. I don't see a major problem with that fundamental disagreement though - it would be rather boring if we would all agree on everything, all the time.

All throughout history, there were times were it was necessary to be "visionary", even in the face of strong opposition. Existence of opposition is of course not sufficient justification that your vision is beneficial (I'll avoid Godwin here) -  some basic morality 'test' is probably necessary, something along the lines of "Does your invention/social reform/plan to change the world undeniably cause more harm than (potential) good?"

Jorge et al.'s cynicism aside, the answer in the case of Bitcoin is quite clearly: no, the harm does not outweigh the (potential) good it can do - in the worst case, the "failure" of crypto will leave the world mostly as it was before.  Here's why:

The defrauding investors argument is silly. Satoshi didn't cash out the vast majority of his coins (we know that for sure), and neither did the other original "megawhales". So, the pyramid notion can be dismissed. As to the possibility of investing, and losing, money when dealing with Bitcoin/crypto: such is the nature of investment. The dotcom bubble was a major disaster for many investors - I'd like to see the resulting claim that we should therefore abandon the entire Internet economy. Risk/reward are intrinsically linked in a market-based economy like ours, so a criticism of this aspect can only come from a broader criticism of capitalism as a whole.

The wasted energy argument by itself is incredibly weak, and can be debunked immediately. For example, how about PC or console gaming? Scorn it as well, as "frivolous waste of energy"? How about traveling to places, for recreation? Vast amounts of energy used for that, no benefit other than enjoying life, getting to know the world. There is no "justified" use of energy in absolute terms, otherwise, everything except hospitals, schools and heating would need to be shut down.

The drug economy argument is minimally stronger, but not much. Currently, perhaps illegal goods make up a large chunk of the total network economy (other than the "circular" aspects of mining). There's no reason that has to stay like this however, and in absolute terms, the drug economy did mighty fine before Bitcoin (and will continue to do so in case crypto would "fail"). Airplane travel wasn't "a waste of time and human effort" just because, say, in the beginning, only the super rich could afford it.

The political repercussions argument is perhaps only one I can consider valid: in case Bitcoin/crypto would succeed, on a large scale, it might change the way national governments work. You can be against that, on reasons of principle - as in, I don't consider every non-libertarian standpoint inconsistent automatically. That said, of all the available cryptos, the world's governments could do much worse than with Bitcoin: because of its trackable nature, in case of success, Bitcoin transactions merely represent a (in my terminology) reversal of the rule/permission cycle , not a way to completely and universally change the laws and rules of nations as is.