Who are "they"? Does not sound to me like the free-of-central control/manipulation currency it was sold as.
I realize that this is a serious question. The increase from a low of 800 in Jan to 8,000 just two weeks ago did not surprise us bitcoin believers. But to have more than doubled that 8,000 to 17,000 in the last two weeks is a bit of a surprise even to us. This is a long thread but in my post #344 on page 35 I explained why Bitcoin is NOT in a bubble. It looks like this is the breakout of acceptance of Bitcoin by the "investment class" people and going beyond just us bitcoin nerds. It has such a long way to go as evidenced by the sampling of the ET population. As I count it there are only 4 of us who have believed in Bitcoin for a while now. The rest on this thread are having fun with us with their tulip mania talk and the whole of ET are not even interested in what is being said here. In truth they know nothing of why and how the blockchain technology will be changing our world much like the internet did in its adoption phase and why bitcoin will continue to increase in value as it is just beginning its adoption phase as a store of wealth. The more dire the world becomes the more it will flock to Bitcoin. The investment opportunity of a lifetime is passing most of ET by. The amazing thing is this: It is still not too late, don't wait until bitcoin hits 6 figures.
Yea, I agree with this big time. People saying it's a bubble, middle-school children's parents buying (yea, sure, you believe this 3rd/4th hand anecdote from a friend of the teacher), etc, etc, but here on ET, the best of the best investment speculators (/s), we are clearly outnumbered by the nay-sayers. I have bitcoins in my local wallets so they are not available in any exchange, how many bitcoins are out there (minus the lost keys, minus the Satoshi bitcoins) and how many people worldwide are wanting to own 1 full bitcoin? I think only 12-13M bitcoins are out there. Coinbase/GDAX shows price is $17,000+ for each bitcoin but Bithumb (S. Korea), they are paying over $21,000 per bitcoin and bigger volume than GDAX. There's just not enough supply as (imo) majority of the holders don't have their bitcoins on the exchanges. When the wall street $ (i.e. Institutional investors who have been bugging the heck out of their brokers) wanna buy in, they will pay much, much higher prices for this new, uncorrelated investment asset to hedge their wealth valued in fiat that is constantly being debased by central bankers worldwide. Not even physical gold offers that hedge.
neke, with all due respect, what was the price of bitcoin when you first posted (<$10K, I believe)? Had you done your research and not be swayed by the majority experts calling bitcoin bubble, bubble, bubble, you would be sitting on a position that can withstand a big correction. I'm just saying. Those other currencies are called fork coins (of bitcoin). They are "free". This thread, however, is only about the bitcoin price. The one that CME, CBOE, Nasdaq, futures will be based on. The one that is currently priced at over $17,000 each on Coinbase/GDAX. Don't let the misdirection being perpetuated by the other naysayers influence your research. I do believe we've lost you as the price has gotten away from you. Perhaps if bitcoin will go back to less than $10K when the futures open. Or perhaps you'll be on the shorts side of the trade. Good luck all the same.
Accompanying lyrics (feel free to sing along!): Oh (Hold on) hold on (Hold on) hold on Ooh, aah, bitcoin hold on (Hold on) ooh ooh aah The only way is up, bitcoin For you and me now The only way is up, bitcoin For you and me now
Yes, 10K to 17K. That will withstand the correction? Just laughing. You think bitcoin is a Microsoft, that a 40% correction is abnormal. What about 99.9% correction on the way to extinction? - no I am not saying this week, or next.
I have resisted replying in this thread for a long time because frankly, nobody knows anything. Those guys calling for tops are clearly not taking into account mass hysteria, but the perma bulls are also I think very ignorant to the fact of how much can go wrong with this. All you really need is regulation in the US to shut it down, or even some major hiccup by one of these big exchanges. Seriously, anything can go wrong at any time and given the fragmented nature of all of this, there will be no rescue, unlike more traditional investments or holdings. I also wonder how any of this can have mass appeal when I read about the amount of computer power and electricity that is needed in order to facilitate these transactions. Its a total joke to assume there will be any large scale adoption given these technical issues, and its also a joke to think that governments around the world will not one day come down hard. Clearly, until something happens, it can keep going up to the moon because all you need is some sucker to pay more, so there could be lots of money still to be made on this parabolic rise, but those guys who sit there with their coins on their computers and not in their wallets might one day find they have something with absolutely no value in the blink of an eye. I find it quite ironic that in order to trade this, you need to have your coins in a wallet, but while they are in a wallet, they aren't all that safe. There will be lots of people screwed in the end, the guys holding to the very bottom, so the only true winners will be the ones who are lucky to get out. I never hear of anyone selling though. I only hear people excited cause the price is going up, but until you sell and get cold hard cash in your hand, you really don't have anything and shouldn't be excited. Too many exchanges have problems when activity heats up, and during the down move when people want to get out, that's exactly when you want to log in to sell. So it seems to me that this thing is going up only because the long side is the only way to trade this. But once enough people want to take profits, which you clearly have to do at some point, there is no telling how this will end. To assume that this wont end, to assume that this thing will be mass adopted despite the technical challenges, and to assume that the governments wont do anything about this is really like hoping your lottery numbers come up. The blockchain technology is separate from BTC, and really, I don't see that much use for it when you need shit loads of computer power to get it done. Besides, even if the blockchain technology takes off, there is no guarantee that BTC will go along for the ride. Back when the internet was new and hot, Netscape and AOL were major players, but where are they now? BTC can also be finished, even if the technology gets adopted in some other form. So in the mean time, I'm not calling for a top, but I'd like to hear after it all ends where the perma bulls stand. Maybe they will be lucky and cash out at 100k, but if they are hanging on for 1 million and it crashes and disappears before then, I hope we get that update too. Not everyone will be a BTC winner.