Topic: Watching amateur finance types flail - page 14. (Read 35339 times)

People are so stupid. No one cares about your pathetic analysis. You know nothing about this technology, and the reason for the speculation and market bumps is because people like YOU.AKA People who don't understand what this is, and will probably never will. Just keep "speculating", god knows that's what you do best.    

There a couple of other "values" to bitcoin as well... it's naturally deflationary, uncounterfeitable, decentralised...

We can all predict bubbles that have already happened. Few of us can predict them before they do.

sorry but bitcoins have a use.  Because of bitcoins I have a capability I did not have before. I can easily send money to someone in a random location on earth with NO logistics troubles other than getting their address.  If you don't think that this marks a major turning point you are simply small minded.

Bitcoin is still an infant, there are big things to come.

This comic could not have a better timing:



On a more serious note, how do you explain that TradeHill has been trading for days after the MtGox hack, and both volume and price are rising.

I see you have the ability to post a candlestick chart, any other analysis besides the usual newbie - "It's a bubble"?

You'd think you were just parroting people in the forums, honestly. I look forward to your next post filled with fundamental and/or technical analysis.

I agree for the most part: yes I think bitcoins are overvalued, they will go back down in price, most of the recent increase is speculation, etc.  However, I think you fail to take into account the rabbid 'fanboy' nature of many people involved in bitcoin.  They are so zealous about seeing bitcoin succeed, they often do irrational things to try to 'keep bitcoin alive', eg. mining at a loss, holding bitcoins to artificially reduce supply, buying bitcoins to keep the price afloat, accepting bitcoins for items at less than market value, etc.  So while I think the price will come down perhaps significantly, I think there is a core of fanatics that will keep bitcoin afloat to some degree despite any rational reason for doing so as compared to stocks, etc. where people are merely in it to make money.

I'm going with 'It sure looks like some profit taking after each substantial run-up.
Looks like standard hard asset trading to me.

BUT what do i know. I'm just a miner.  Keep loosing them in your lost wallets. I'll mine more for ya.

John, I agree with most of your points.  The only point I would question is if Bitcoin is truly a zero-sum game.  While it does appear that way, I think the aspect of mining or creating ("minting") bitcoins means it is not a zero-sum game.  It will be once all Bitcoins are mined, but not in the meantime.  

why does everyone make this mistake when it's clearly a

I'm John Nagle, the person behind Downside. Over the last decade, we predicted, well in advance, the dot-com crash (company by company), the oil spike, and the mortgage crisis. We've also explored some financial scams - Enron, Madoff, and their ilk. Downside was written up in Business Week, CNN, Fortune, etc. Our track record speaks for itself.

I've been looking at the Bitcoin world. It's amusing watching the classic forms of financial trouble happen in miniature. I have no financial position in Bitcoins, so I'm looking at this neutrally.

So what's wrong in the Bitcoin world?

First, it looks like a bubble. Here's Bitcoin before the Mt. Gox debacle:



That just screams "bubble" to anyone who's seen one. Bear in mind that the Bitcoin system generates no revenue. All funds must come from new investors. This is not like a startup company. This is a zero-sum game. If you've been in the game for half an hour and you don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy.

Second, Bitcoin is supposed to be a currency, but it's actually a speculative vehicle. If Bitcoin were a successful currency, there would be many merchants using it for small transactions, with perhaps some speculation on the side. In practice, the speculation dominates.  This is the real problem with Bitcoin. If it had been launched as the payment system for something like music tracks or smartphone apps, it might have worked out better.  Or not; "Digicash" and "Beenz", the two previous rounds of this idea, also tanked.

Third, the organizations in Bitcoin's ecology are very flaky. Mt. Gox is two guys in Tokyo who are in way over their heads. We don't know much about Tradehill, which is somewhere in Chile. Neither of these "exchanges" has a published business address, a Dun and Bradstreet rating, published audits, or regulation as a bank or money transfer firm. Yet they're acting as depository institutions for sizable funds belonging to others.

It's amusing watching the Bitcoin community flail around. Most of the classic financial disasters are being re-enacted in miniature. We have pyramid schemes, tulipomania, bucket shops, pump and dump... This would be fun if it were an MMORPG.