by jeremyleach on 11/27/17, 12:34 PM with 73 comments
by cs702 on 11/27/17, 1:47 PM
Current market capitalization in US dollars:
Global M2 money supply over $90.0 trillion [a]
US dollar M2 money supply $13.8 trillion [b]
Euro M2 money supply $13.2 trillion [c]
All coins and banknotes in circulation $7.6 trillion [d]
All gold ever mined $7.1 trillion [e]
Bitcoin under $0.2 trillion [f]
Bitcoin has very different, unique characteristics compared to the other money-like assets on the list. For example, like gold, Bitcoin's continued existence doesn't depend on the good management of any national economy; however, unlike gold, bitcoins are digital so they can be encrypted, backed up, emailed, etc. Bitcoin is truly a new kind of money-like asset.
The trillion-dollar question is, to what extent does the world need a money-like asset with Bitcoin's unique characteristics to function in the 21st century?
[a] http://money.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-money-markets-one-v...
[b] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2
[c] http://sdw.ecb.europa.eu/reports.do?node=1000003501
[d] http://money.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-money-markets-one-v...
[e] https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/17/how-does-bitcoins-...
by shp0ngle on 11/27/17, 1:30 PM
There is more or less the same places where to spend it as there was 4, 5 years ago. And they all have about the same traffic, which is nearly zero.
Most people only use it for speculation. This can't end well.
by down on 11/27/17, 1:23 PM
Bitcoin market is still minuscule comparative to gold, and while most will point out that it doesn't work amazing as a currency, if it gets to like 50% of the current gold market, it is going to be worth a lot.
by kompiuter on 11/27/17, 1:24 PM
Am I missing something or is the hacking part nonsense?
by zipwitch on 11/27/17, 2:02 PM
Yes, bitcoin has uses. (Including some cool, elegant and potentially very significant ones.) But despite the troubled state of the world, it does not appear to me that anything has happened that would justify the current ongoing explosion in price.
For an example of a mania in action, take a look at the price spike in tulip bulbs in the early 1800s: http://www.thebubblebubble.com/tulip-mania/
by paulus_magnus2 on 11/27/17, 3:52 PM
by wimagguc on 11/27/17, 1:43 PM
Do we have anything new to add at each 1K step announcement?
by sreyaNotfilc on 11/27/17, 1:51 PM
3 years later and it looked like I made the wrong choice. I don't have $10,000 just hanging around to buy into one whole coin.
Oh well...
by Geenirvana on 11/27/17, 2:00 PM
A few years ago I brought a little bit of altcoin and 'believed' in it. I only put a small amount but I still was nervous spending money on some 'pretend' digital asset. Within a few days it was worth half what I started with. Thinking I was in a low point of the chart, I invested a little bit more.
It then dropped again, so much I lost around 80% of the value within a week.
I then declared the money lost and saved my private keys.
Fast forward to the beginning of this year, I randomly picked up my private key from a backup drive that I was going to wipe and decided to check it's value.. around £15
As it was such a little amount I decided just to cash it out, buy a pizza and continue with my life. However, as it wasn't so straight forward to just 'cash out' I left it.
A few months later I hear the news that bitcoin is rising so checked on my altcoin (because the altcoin charts followed closely to the bitcoin charts), and there you go, I tripled my initial investment. I still declared the coins 'dead' so wasn't worried about losing it, but converted them into bitcoin as that felt most secure to me. The conversion lost me some percent but I stuck it out and have had 0.1BTC in my wallet since.
It's nice watching my little amount go up. It's not a deal breaker if I lost it, but it's now more 'alive' than 'dead' to a point I have started thinking about converting it into fiat and enjoy a good Christmas. But there is that little bit inside me now, that refuses to listen to my 'the coins are dead, and I wouldn't really lose anything' mentality which is unfortunate because I feel as the price goes up that feeling will cement harder to a point I would never cash it out.
by sensecall on 11/27/17, 1:52 PM
Other than buying purely for speculation, does Bitcoin really have any purpose right now, at scale? Geniunely curious.
by tomconte on 11/27/17, 1:32 PM
by 189723234 on 11/27/17, 1:45 PM
It offers massive, tangible benefits. Money that is not controlled by corrupt institutions completely changes the game.
There is an entire industry being built around it. Thousands of engineers are creating new businesses as we speak.
It has different properties to stocks. The more people that convert their money to bitcoin, the more use it has. This is a basic property of currency. While people will say you can't buy much with it now, the very fact that massive amounts of people are now acquiring bitcoin gives incentive to people to start accepting bitcoin as a form of payment.
Most governments can now no longer make it illegal. The horse has bolted. By the time it is made illegal, millions of people will have bitcoin and you will be committing political suicide. They will try to regulate it in a way that benefits large corporations though.
I believe the transfer of money away from questionable stocks like facebook, into something based on real value like bitcoin, will crash the share market.