Bitcoin thoughts?

I think that at some point in the very near future, it will explode to some absurd value, let's call it $20,000, and then all of the sudden will crash, making way for a new crisis

this is just a theory

My theory is the price will drop after the trial from that big dark web bust. They confiscated a lot of bitcoin but can't sell it until the trial is over. Afterwards is when I think it will crash.

Sounds like we are being scammed.

I don't buy it.

This is a pretty ignorant question, but I've never understood this--doesn't the public ledger of transactions make BC less anonymous than cash?

Yes. Anyone can generate their own bitcoin wallet and receive/send bitcoin to/from it without revealing their identity to anyone, but every single valid bitcoin transaction ever is publicly available to anyone by downloading the ledger. That means that if someone is able to tie your bitcoin address to your identity, they can also tie you to any transaction in which your address was ever involved. This fact has already been used as evidence in quite a few court cases.

All of the Bitcoin's worth something like $60billionish.

If someone powerful considered Bitcoin a concern years back, they could easily have started buying it up for $500 or so. That's if they weren't buying it while it was worth $100, and assuming there isn't some massive computer farm that mined them for cheaper.

So if powerful people put $1billion in it when it had already ballooned to $500-- easy enough for Carlos Slim, or JPMorgan, or some government secret budget-- it would be worth about $14billion now, or nearly 1/4th the total value.

The designer of bitcoins is believed to have $7 billion worth of bitcoins.

And as it can be traded for normal money, and normal money can be created from nothing, people who control normal money can buy as many bitcoins as they need until people are no longer willing to trade them for normal money.

So if it ends up the world's currency and it's worth $80trillion, that could be mostly owned by a handful of people.

Satoshi could flood the market with $7billion worth and destroy the value of bitcoins.

A trustless system is not trustworthy.

You put your trust in mathematics when using Bitcoin.

Who wrote the math.

We're talking about cryptography here and Merkle trees and one-way functions and other stuff I never had in high school.

It's all established advanced mathematics and the Bitcoin-protocol is open-source, meaning anyone can read it. There's no surprises in the software itself.

50% of the mining hashrate is in China.

So? When downloading a bitcoin client you can check signatures to see if something messed with it.

And some countries might take a harsh stance on bitcoin but others don't. The mining hashpower in China with a government firewall has no real threat to it. If suddenly all Chinese miners would be blocked from the internet, then the Bitcoin network will still run. It will be slower for about two months, but then the difficulty adjusts to the hashpower that's present in the network.

is this what you're referring to?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSn7Iomisyc

i kick my self all the time when i think about how I could be worth ~$22 billion right now had I invested early on. I considered, but didn't follow through :/ i ponder that a good bit.

I think the same thing, but then I think of the butterfly effect and maybe that one decision we did not make, made bitcoin worth as much as it is today lol

Your "best bet" might be to integrate btc into your portfolio in a day trading strategy. Speculation about a crash and market oblivion are as valid as fringe economists insisting USD will finally fly off a cliff any day, and IMF will fold like the house of cards (that it actually is). If you research the coin options, you will see which are worth adding to your wallet. They are not gold, of course. You may not plan on holding them for any longer than a few days, weeks or months. Going more strategic, you would systematically sell some ethereum one day, and then some lite coin on s differnt day. You can protect yourself against crashes. Religiously record your transactions and performance charts to make sure you understand your profit margins.

so you don't think there's any merit in HODLing BTC longer term?

There is maximum profit to be collected if you hold a significant %, but so far , several cryptocurrency pitfalls have occurred. To minimize exposure to "hiccups", diversifying currency types and also diligent shuffling of the contents of your wallet are an excellent use of time.

Cheers, methinks 'day trading' btc would be a nail biting roller coaster ride. and time consuming, unless you make it your 'job'.

Economy of scale is the phrase that pays. The horse choking gains lately seem to make the effort worthwhile.

Bitcoin is too gangster for this sub anyways

If you want to end a lot of human misery, read the Bitcoin Whitepaper!

Bitcoin thoughts?

To. The. Moon.

Ethereum. It's got more potential from a creative stand point. Smart contracts. DAOs. Ect.

Valuation. For real. Geez. That a wide open debate. How is value assigned to anything. That's a deep and long talk.

I'm interested in assigning physical assets to a blockchain using smart contracting.

Only hope we have

I believe it is being allowed to be implemented by the powers that be in anticipation of the failing dollar.

It's a trap!

From what I've heard, Satoshi wasn't the best programmer. Satoshi discussed his ideas with people like Gavin Andreessen on a crypto mailing list for enthusiasts. Sathoshi definitely needed help in perfecting his coding. So I wouldn't say anyone needs super human programming skills.

Now with hindsight, it's very easy to say when looking at Bitcoin "why didn't I think of that?". Bitcoin is the result of combining different fields of research together in one working protocol. In the end it's not rocket science.

Also, Satoshi might have been smart enough to stay anonymous because he knew that TPTB would come after him. When someone founded e-gold, I believe in the early 2000s, this person was arrested is now spending time in jail.

When Craig Wright falsely claimed he was Satoshi, his house was raided straight away by the Australian authorities.

Informative and it corresponds with what I have read as well.

Think of what the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoti stands to gain from very much proving his real identity. Then think of what some people will do to him if he proves it to everyone. The answer is death.

The real invention behind Bitcoin is the proof-of-work stuff which incorporates the miners. It's like software and people combined. Bitcoin runs on greed.

Like the person above me said, it's not brilliant invention. But it also is. It's very easy to invent a transistor, a wheel or the internet when you use it everyday. Except no one does it, until one man or woman does.