People should only invest in Bitcoin for 1 of 2 reasons.
1) you understand
these intellectuals position of how money functions and can directly relate it to Bitcoin.
I think I understand how money works. I understand in particular that issuing new money transfers real wealth from the society that uses it (not just those
individuals who own or use it) to those who issue it (and "of course" keep some of it for themselves).
Today governments don't issue the money it's created by Fractional reserve banking and a government promise to pay interest on the Money the central bank creates. If this idea works, everything is good in the world and we'll flourish. I'm not convinced it works at all, or TPTB know either the link I provided illustrates how it should work not how it works. Gold never became money because it was evenly distributed, it has a past more corrupt and distorted than Bitcoin.
You are overlooking Bitcoin as a " risk distribution virus" it is a distributed socialized voluntary p2p wealth preservation system.
It will hardly "perserve wealth". It will transfer a lot of wealth from some people to other people. Who will be the winners and who will be the losers depends on whether it will succeed or fail.
I think you over estimate the wealth transfer, to me the value is in the protocol, if I was to take maximum utility out of the protocol, (Bitcoin becomes the default world currency) then the utility it provides is worth somewhere in the realm of 3- 6% of my total social contribution (salary)per year. (The utility ascribed to inflation and bank service charges of my total wage) other benefits aside. From there I can estimate how much to risk and how much benefit it provided based on my total social contribution.
I withdraw my investment deflating the Bitcoin price and buy Bitcoin to keep the price up, all the while maintaining a steady growth, (nothing out of the ordinary in the typical housing or investment industry today ) there is more wealth transfer in miscalculated government funds and fines paid by banks for laundering drug cartel funds, that is happening in Bitcoin.
If I speculate and hold Bitcoin, I have no guarantee that the utility will ever manifest, I take risk that future adopters won't mind giving me this disproportionate benefit in wealth (you are correct that will be problematic) we have seen that it isn't as big a problem as one may think as $5 in investment today equates to $500,000 and people are still ok with that. (Either investors are the greater fool or see value) but Bitcoin only grows if new users find utility in the protocol, if we are all greater fools the value falls to the base utility, for the average user.
I believe the people who hold large balances of Bitcoin have figured out they risk collapsing the system by holding out for two long. They have to let it flow, if any large balance cashed out at the price today it would fall, there are a lot of people can crash it to $100 today, they know because there isn't enough energy for a huge transfer of wealth unless the price is fixed, or the network grows.
[Bitcoin] it isn't destructive it's like choosing to live in civilization as opposed to living like a self sufficient cave man under the control of the dinosaurs, once you try it the benefits are obvious.
Terrible analogy. "Civilization" means government, taxes, laws, police, and, yes, banks. Those inventions are basically good, although they can break down and get corrupted, and we must constantly struggle to try to keep them working as intended.
In contrast, the anarchic pipedream of an unregulated global economy without banks and outside the reach of governments, laws and police is not only impossible to succeed, but would be a barbaric nightmare if it did. How many MtGOXes will have to pass before bitcoiners understand that?
I don't define civilization as "government, taxes, laws, police, and, banks" those may be functional or dysfunctional institutions used to make a civilisation robust, but a civilisation is more a "revolution consisted in the development of the domestication of plants and animals and the development of new sedentary lifestyles which allowed
economies of scale and productive surpluses"
You make the claim "impossible to succeed" with no justification or consideration for the end goal of cooperation to produce surpluses for the benefits of all members.
DinosaursAnimals from the Cretaceous Period are on the verge of extinction and higher levels of consciousness is about to evolve in smaller mammals.
Dinosaurs did not become extinct, they are called "birds" now. Considering that dinosaurs can fly faster, better, higher and longer than any mammal, one could argue that they just left the inferior parts of the environment to the inferior life forms.
It is not clear yet what killed all the other non-flying dinosaurs, and why the ancestors of the mammals (which were smaller than mice, AFAIK) survived. I am not aware of any evidence that they were more intelligent. Perhaps it was a multi-year cold spell that killed the non-flying dinosaurs, and the pre-mammals survived only because they had better body temperature regulation (oops, sorry for the dirty word
) and lived off insects which lived off fungi that lived off the corpses of the dinosaurs. Or whatever.
Just replace my use of Dinosaurs with large animals from the Cretaceous Period, I'm not saying early mammals were intelligent, being small they were just more adaptable and evolved into beings that are now more conscious (and I still see lacking evidence of intelligence) The big Animals from the Cretaceous Period could not adapt, only those whose evolutionary path shrunk them in size and gave up dominating the ecosystem survived.
Dont worry TERA. Have we not been waiting for the bearish sentiment? It's really coming out at the moment, especially after a convincing medium term reversal. Bull trap this, flash crash that. everyone wants $300 bitcoin.
