$1k, $10k, $100k. Watching this nonsensical hype at every stage left me in disbelief. Funny thing is after all these years I’m finally realizing there’s no reason whatsoever why it couldn’t hit $1M, $1B, or go back to $1.
Anytime we see a dollar symbol we assume something has value like a traditional asset, tied to tangible or measurable things like material costs, a company’s quarterly earnings, etc. But cryptocurrencies are totally different. This thing’s dollar value per unit wildly fluctuates literally hourly, because it’s based purely on human emotion and speculation.
There is an upper limit on the aggregate value of money - somehow related to the amount of stored value in the economy. On the other hand, there is no lower limit on the value of a dollar.
If bitcoin reaches $1B it will be through some combination of dollar depreciation and bitcoin appreciation.
>no reason whatsoever why it couldn’t hit $1M, $1B, or go back to $1
Not entirely true. The value is driven by number of people invested x average amount they have invested. Most of the historic increase has been as the number of people involved increased. Currently that's probably in the 100 - 200 million people range. It could 10x from here to $1M per bitcoin but is unlikely to go to $1B or $1.
What do you think the number of people and average amount they have invested is based on? I’m saying it’s based purely on emotion and speculation. It could be a sunny day so people feel good and put more money into Bitcoin. That’s quite different from egg prices skyrocketing after chickens get bird flu or stock price skyrocketing after an amazing earnings report or the dollar skyrocketing because of a fast growing economy.
The amount of money flowing into it has been a real shock.
I too played with bitcoin many years ago, mining on my CPU. Like a sucker I got rid of it because it clearly was not useful at its stated purpose.
Why have we created an economy where this kind of speculation is rewarded so highly, while it contributes nothing back to society? It's nonsensical.
But once you accept that finance is kind of ridiculous (and completely decoupled from any meaningful work in the real world), you can see that there is no limit to how high it can go.
I'm failing to understand the proposition behind bitcoin.
From what I remember, the amount of BTC is finite, so eventually we will run out of new BTCs, and by then, most will be held by big institutions and some individuals who didn't want to sell, and it will become yet another luxury commodity like diamonds or gold. Hence, the entire premise of "Bitcoin is the future of money" is kind of stupid, unless it's money for the ultrarich/lucky, because it's not available to the common folks.
And even if it was available to the common folks, how do you expect to live in a world where your currency changes value drastically from day to day? Isn't that a characteristic of a defaulted state/currency?
But let's say it's not the money of the future, but rather a speculative investment that is "not tied to greedy institutions". How does one sell 10 BTC and cash it out, bypassing the "greedy banks"? Last time I checked, most reputable exchanges are somewhat regulated, and in any way, getting a sudden $1M won't go unnoticed by the government.
So yes, I am failing to understand the premise of bitcoin. It seems to fail on both as the currency of the future, as well as unregulated investment instrument.
Ok, so let's say you buy 1 Bitcoin today and then we end up in that future.
Now 21 million minus one ultrarich lucky guys hold one Bitcoin and one stupid poor guy (you) holds one bitcoin? Or would it make you part of the ultrarich lucky club?
Sorry, I'm not sure if I understand your question/statement.
What I wanted to say, is that in its current form, bitcoin IS money for some ultrarich people who have enough of it AND are able to access a commerce world where you can actually buy stuff with it without converting it to fiat currencies. Because last time I checked, I can't buy milk with BTC in my local supermarket, but I bet I can buy some luxury/illegal thing that cost absurd amounts of money (for the common folk) with BTC.
Therefor, the mantra of "Bitcoin is the future of money" that's being pushed by BTC/crypto enthusiasts, is false. It MIGHT be a form of money for people who have lots of it, but not the common folk, doing everyday purchases.
Its a tradable financial asset.
You are indeed right that it cannot be money. As finance people were saying from the very start. The whole point of money is that its possible to influence its price.
When I said luck, I meant people who were among the first to either mine or buy (at an affordable price) whole Bitcoins and held them until this day.
It's fine that common folk can buy fractions of BTC, but these amounts won't change their lives. And anyone who can afford to buy >= 1 BTC today, is already wealthy (or stupid).
That's the irony of it all isn't it - since it's bound to traditional currencies for it's valuation, it's essentially the same thing as a traditional currency except you can't inflate it by printing more of it.
The banks are in on it this time. You can buy crypto on Fidelity, starting with as little as $1. Whether that's better or worse than buying SP500 or QQQ or Tbills on their platform is for you to decide. So pay your taxes on $10 million, you'll still have 5 left.
So, the question one has to ask is, why aren't banks and "serious" institutions now behind bitcoin? If it is a scam/fad/etc?
The story of Cryptocurrencies reminds me a bit of Linux: "it was a cancer to society" until it was not. And now everyone is adopting it and corps have fucked it with their "open core" offerings.
I myself think that the use case of "trustless store and transfer of value" has a LOT of more attraction to what detractors see.
BTC was "advertised" as either the money of the future, which it is not, or an investment instrument that allows you to bypass government restrictions, which again, it is not, at least not for the common folks.
At this point, it's just a very volatile investment/speculation instrument.
I remember when people used to first talk about Bitcoin on HN back in early 2011 or so. The price was only $2 then. Congrats to anyone who had some and held onto it this long - personally I sold off mine in 2015 (big mistake in hindsight).
Yep I was here when the whole HN mania was so against BTC. I was firmly bogleheads and was still a broke phd student. In hindsight if I just gambled with little money I have I might be set for life. But Don't know if I could have held till 100K.
If you are feeling regret, don't. Very few people anticipated such a significant increase. Any profit is a good profit. Even investments that seem highly promising can end up in bankruptcy. This is one of the few that managed to succeed.
Naw man not everything is luck. People have been talking about $100k Bitcoin for what feels like forever now. When the stock market rolled back two years of gains and Bitcoin moved similarly, those who understood what they were looking at made big plays. What happens long-term now that it has hit that mythical price point is less clear.
I couldn’t care less about crypto, but just for fun I bought 1 BTC in 2016. Still own it, and likely will never sell, but boy I wish I bought a lot more instead of my index funds, skipping one monthly contribution in VTI back then would have mostly set me up for life instead of just having a nice but inconsequential $100k bonus in my portfolio :-)
Congrats to the people who held through thick and thin, I speculate (my own opinion) that we will likely not see 80% drawdowns anymore due to all the institutional money that flew in, just “standard” 40-50% dips. Fantastic to witness, an asset class out of thin air.
It seems we are truly ducking poor here in the EU. My parents have been running a farm for 40 years in the Netherlands and they’re doing well financially. Still, $100k is not inconsequential for them!
HN is a bubble of very rich folks compared to the vast majority of the global population. It's easy to fall into the trap of how people here talk about money, like a US$ 150k salary is too low, or like having less than US$ 300k in savings makes you poor.
Just remind yourself this place is an extreme outlier whenever you hear someone here treating life-changing sums of money for 90-95% of the global population as "inconsequential".
The world is split into two kids of people: the ones that have managed to take advantage of the massive financialization of the world, and the ones who haven’t.
I cry every time I think about the fact that I managed to CPU-mine 50 btc, and sold it for nothing.
Still, I did get a payout from the mtgox disaster and its a decent amount really, considering I put in less than 100$ from the start. Just far from life-changing amount, more like "ok, this gets us a nice vacation trip!"-money.
I still have the postcard from Japan from the legal proceedings!
There's a ton of things I could regret.
BTC price going up makes the counterfactual very easy to imagine in rough outlines, and thus more and more appealing.
But that's a fool's errand. There's absolutely no guarantee that in all the alternate timelines where you had not sold you would be better off now. Even with all the extra money. Windfalls tend to cause problems for lottery winners for example.
>>Congrats to the people who held through thick and thin, I speculate (my own opinion) that we will likely not see 80% drawdowns anymore due to all the institutional money that flew in, just “standard” 40-50% dips. Fantastic to witness, an asset class out of thin air.
There was some person who invested $30 everyday in BTC since 2017, and has $1 million right now.
The tweet had gone viral on Twitter.
BTC bull/bear cycles have taught a lot of people many things about regular investing.
Like what this person did is called DCA(Dollar Cost Averaging).
>>>>Cheers to the next 10X in 8 years, $1M in 2032!
Seems like showing up everyday is all there is to success. Mostly. Every once in a while, someone makes it big due to luck/help. But showing up everything is all.
Congrats to the people who held through thick and thin, I speculate (my own opinion) that we will likely not see 80% drawdowns anymore due to all the institutional money that flew in, just “standard” 40-50% dips. Fantastic to witness, an asset class out of thin air.
they said exactly that in 2018, 2021, and 2022 too
It’s way higher than I ever thought it’d be. I sold mine at $800 so maybe I’ve got some sour grapes here, but all this reminds me of the book “Devil Take The Hindmost.”
I got something like 30k XRP for free. Then I traded that for one BTC and got 300. I could now have 100k, but oh well I never was true believer. And I am still too sceptical even with stock market...
You're talking about mania that lasted, at the very most, three years.
Is it really that intellectually honest to compare tulips, which can be grown everywhere, by anyone, with "something" that has been designed, on purpose, to have a diminishing issuance rate?
Satoshi made it very clear, in the very first Bitcoin block, that Bitcoin was a middle finger to politicians ever printing more money to bail out the banks.
Housing went up for a long time and then what happened in 2008? That wasn’t a 2-3 year mania. Everyone thought houses were “safe as houses.” The stock market rally in the 90s went up until it didn’t in the .com crash. I’m not comparing btc to tulips, I’m comparing it to things that went up a lot and then went down fast. And if you come back with “btc is different” I’ll respond with “that’s what everyone says about everything else before it crashes.”
Readit News
Anytime we see a dollar symbol we assume something has value like a traditional asset, tied to tangible or measurable things like material costs, a company’s quarterly earnings, etc. But cryptocurrencies are totally different. This thing’s dollar value per unit wildly fluctuates literally hourly, because it’s based purely on human emotion and speculation.
If bitcoin reaches $1B it will be through some combination of dollar depreciation and bitcoin appreciation.
https://www.fiatmarketcap.comhttps://assetmarketcap.com
Not entirely true. The value is driven by number of people invested x average amount they have invested. Most of the historic increase has been as the number of people involved increased. Currently that's probably in the 100 - 200 million people range. It could 10x from here to $1M per bitcoin but is unlikely to go to $1B or $1.
I too played with bitcoin many years ago, mining on my CPU. Like a sucker I got rid of it because it clearly was not useful at its stated purpose.
Why have we created an economy where this kind of speculation is rewarded so highly, while it contributes nothing back to society? It's nonsensical.
But once you accept that finance is kind of ridiculous (and completely decoupled from any meaningful work in the real world), you can see that there is no limit to how high it can go.
From what I remember, the amount of BTC is finite, so eventually we will run out of new BTCs, and by then, most will be held by big institutions and some individuals who didn't want to sell, and it will become yet another luxury commodity like diamonds or gold. Hence, the entire premise of "Bitcoin is the future of money" is kind of stupid, unless it's money for the ultrarich/lucky, because it's not available to the common folks.
And even if it was available to the common folks, how do you expect to live in a world where your currency changes value drastically from day to day? Isn't that a characteristic of a defaulted state/currency?
But let's say it's not the money of the future, but rather a speculative investment that is "not tied to greedy institutions". How does one sell 10 BTC and cash it out, bypassing the "greedy banks"? Last time I checked, most reputable exchanges are somewhat regulated, and in any way, getting a sudden $1M won't go unnoticed by the government.
So yes, I am failing to understand the premise of bitcoin. It seems to fail on both as the currency of the future, as well as unregulated investment instrument.
Now 21 million minus one ultrarich lucky guys hold one Bitcoin and one stupid poor guy (you) holds one bitcoin? Or would it make you part of the ultrarich lucky club?
What I wanted to say, is that in its current form, bitcoin IS money for some ultrarich people who have enough of it AND are able to access a commerce world where you can actually buy stuff with it without converting it to fiat currencies. Because last time I checked, I can't buy milk with BTC in my local supermarket, but I bet I can buy some luxury/illegal thing that cost absurd amounts of money (for the common folk) with BTC.
Therefor, the mantra of "Bitcoin is the future of money" that's being pushed by BTC/crypto enthusiasts, is false. It MIGHT be a form of money for people who have lots of it, but not the common folk, doing everyday purchases.
I run one of the early Bitcoin exchanges in 2013.
We had users from 200 countries, mostly common folks with small amounts.
Everyone had a change to make 1000x. Bitcoin has been mostly widely available asset in the world.
It's fine that common folk can buy fractions of BTC, but these amounts won't change their lives. And anyone who can afford to buy >= 1 BTC today, is already wealthy (or stupid).
It is "digital gold" at this point.
The story of Cryptocurrencies reminds me a bit of Linux: "it was a cancer to society" until it was not. And now everyone is adopting it and corps have fucked it with their "open core" offerings.
I myself think that the use case of "trustless store and transfer of value" has a LOT of more attraction to what detractors see.
BTC was "advertised" as either the money of the future, which it is not, or an investment instrument that allows you to bypass government restrictions, which again, it is not, at least not for the common folks.
At this point, it's just a very volatile investment/speculation instrument.
If this price was truely guaranteed, then investors would have bought in as soon as the information became available.
Dead Comment
Congrats to the people who held through thick and thin, I speculate (my own opinion) that we will likely not see 80% drawdowns anymore due to all the institutional money that flew in, just “standard” 40-50% dips. Fantastic to witness, an asset class out of thin air.
Cheers to the next 10X in 8 years, $1M in 2032!
It seems we are truly ducking poor here in the EU. My parents have been running a farm for 40 years in the Netherlands and they’re doing well financially. Still, $100k is not inconsequential for them!
Just remind yourself this place is an extreme outlier whenever you hear someone here treating life-changing sums of money for 90-95% of the global population as "inconsequential".
https://www.bankrate.com/banking/savings/emergency-savings-r...
One fourth have no savings at all. European stats are similar:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1221416/households-witho...
Still, I did get a payout from the mtgox disaster and its a decent amount really, considering I put in less than 100$ from the start. Just far from life-changing amount, more like "ok, this gets us a nice vacation trip!"-money.
There's a ton of things I could regret.
BTC price going up makes the counterfactual very easy to imagine in rough outlines, and thus more and more appealing.
But that's a fool's errand. There's absolutely no guarantee that in all the alternate timelines where you had not sold you would be better off now. Even with all the extra money. Windfalls tend to cause problems for lottery winners for example.
If I had saved them, I could pay off my mortgage now.
There was some person who invested $30 everyday in BTC since 2017, and has $1 million right now.
The tweet had gone viral on Twitter.
BTC bull/bear cycles have taught a lot of people many things about regular investing.
Like what this person did is called DCA(Dollar Cost Averaging).
>>>>Cheers to the next 10X in 8 years, $1M in 2032!
Seems like showing up everyday is all there is to success. Mostly. Every once in a while, someone makes it big due to luck/help. But showing up everything is all.
"Invested" is a generous way to put it.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/basics/09/compare-inve...
they said exactly that in 2018, 2021, and 2022 too
Dead Comment
Feb 2024: +50%. Approval of Bitcoin ETFs in the United States
Nov 2024: +50%. US election results
??? ????: ???%. ????
Dead Comment
Is it really that intellectually honest to compare tulips, which can be grown everywhere, by anyone, with "something" that has been designed, on purpose, to have a diminishing issuance rate?
Satoshi made it very clear, in the very first Bitcoin block, that Bitcoin was a middle finger to politicians ever printing more money to bail out the banks.
I see Bitcoin has the "anti tulip".