Bitcoin Gold is so interesting because it shows how kinda irrelevant 51% attacks are in Bitcoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_Gold It has had many attacks, most exchanges require a huge amount of confirmations in order to credit BTG. Binance require 70 confirmations, and this is a fork of BTC So, let me try to use different models to see if they explain why this is still worth $1.2B (more than the value of entire companies) -The currency model In the currency model, the better the currency the more valuable it is. Well, BTG has almost zero uses as a currency due the huge amount of confirmations it require. The amount of time of have to wait before you are use you really have the coin makes it worse than just about anything out there. No one is developing a lightning network for this one. So, in this model, it makes no sense for it to be worth $1.2B forcing the person guided by this model to say 'its a bubble'. And somehow these "bubbles" keep lasting forever, https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/bitcoin-gold -The technology model The technology is complete garbage and its attacked constantly. Its not secure, transactions can be censored, miners can double spend if the recepients are not careful enough. There are plenty of better technologies out there that are similar (Bitcoin, Bitcoin cash, Litecoin) but that have stood the test of time and are more robust So, this model is also useless, it does not explain the market cap and its enduring value forcing the person to say 'its a bubble' and once again the bubble model will fail as these things have enduring value time and time again -The bubble model Its useless at making predictions about the future because it wrong so often, it resembles astrology more than anything else -The colectible model Bitcoin gold is a collectible for people that liked Satoshi's idea of 'one CPU one vote', and that dislike Bitcoin and Bitcoin cash as a result. All of the sudden everything is explained. Its not about transactions, no one uses Bitcoin for real purchases (but only to try to make a point), its about the ledger. As a long as you are part of the ledger, you are part of the hoarding of this collectible. 51% attacks cannot undo more than 50-100 blocks so it might take a while for people to get in the ledger (to be able to hoard their collectible) but after that, its really difficult for these attacks to have an effect. There is only so much money that attackers are willing to throw at this. Plus, lots own through exchanges, so they can hoard it without ever having to make a transaction and wait for confirmations. So people can buy, hoard it and feel like they are continuing the legacy of Satoshi. That they are special and are part of history I'm finding this model so much more useful than the models I was using before. Now all of the sudden things look a lot clearer
"The NFT boom witnessed in the first and second quarter of 2021 saw about 60,000 new wallets interacting with NFTs, data on NunFungible.com shows." https://cointelegraph.com/news/opensea-trading-volume-explodes-76-240-ytd-amid-nft-boom NFT are still SO niche, this is all still so early. When Pokemon, Disney, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, etc realize what they can do with NFTs, millions will on-board The key thing they have not realized yet are royalties. If Pokemon sells a card, they profit but they have no stake in the future appreaciation of that card. With NFTs, you own X% (usually 5%) of the royalties FOREVER. All sales in the future, you get a cut. The profitability of their intelectual property explodes
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/13/mar...strongest-crypto-as-a-medium-of-exchange.html This is actually the problem of DOGE as an investment. Most people that own it, only own a little and they have no problems getting rid of it, sending to other people for the fun of it. It doesnt feel scarce like Bitcoin. The total supply is over 100 billion and there is no inflation cap In the mean time, no one prices (or will price) anything in DOGE (and if they do, they will update the price hourly) because it has no anchors to the real value. Unlike Ether, which has anchors in NFTs, DeFi and more to come. Top cryptokitties have had a similar price in Ether for years. One day, skins of major games will be priced in Ether So Doge only hope to rise is to continue to become a few percent of crypto investors that love memes and dogs, presumably, it has room to grow there but it will never be an institutional crypto so its a waste of portfolio value for those looking for returns
I actually like Litecoin way more than Doge. Under my collectible model, Litecoin is essentially Bitcoin with a bigger float and snappier transactions. Charlie Lee had a brillant idea of increasing the float by 4x. This makes it be priced lower than Bitcoin, similar to a stock split. As a result, retail can accumulate lots of coins and feel like owners, unlike with Bitcoin where most cannot purchase even one unit which violates their entire financial privacy when they disclose the size of their stake. It feels scarcier unlike Doge Mike Novogratz criticized Litecoin a while back and was hit with an army of retail investors attacking him on twitter. No surprise there, he is rich and cannot understand the issues of retail investors. These issues are no more irrational than wanting to wear a rolex to show off. What is the value of feeling like an owner (instead of feeling diminished) and having more financial privacy? Lots of retail investors are voting with their money This is not to say that Litecoin will outperform Bitcoin or Ether, it most likely wont, but it will have enduring have, it will pretty much never go away, even if it gets 51% attacked. Bitcoin Gold shows that its not about transactions, its about the ledger and being able to hoard it
I just realized that there is another major flaw in Taleb's anti-BTC argument. He says because the value of Bitcoin depends on miners being active, that is different from gold and one day people might not mine it so the present value of a future $0 is $0. However, the same thing can be said about Action Comics #1(The first appearance of Superman), the Monalisa, and lots of other collectibles "Conservation of comics To preserve comics, which are a printed medium, it is prescribed that they be stored in cool, dark places, as sunlight can bleach the pages, and heat and moisture can also damage them. Sunlight can also react with the paper, causing it to "yellow", as well as having a bleaching effect on the inks used within the comic. Some collectors advise against storing comics in cardboard boxes, or using backing boards, as these are both sources of acid which can react with the fibers of the paper of comics, eventually destroying a comic. If these products are used to store comics, these collectors advise using products marked as acid free.[17] PET film, polyethylene or polypropylene storage bags are popular, and allow a comic to be "bagged" in a contained environment, and have become the traditional way of storing comics. Some comic shops now sell comics already in bags, although the quality of the bag can vary. These types of bags are not considered "archival safe" because various plastic compositions may contain elements or have other properties that could harm the comic in years to come. Mylars are the only bags available that are archival safe. Corrugated plastic boxes, preferred by some collectors, offer greater protection against acid while also offering better protection against moisture damage and vermin damage.[citation needed]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_book_collecting#Conservation_of_comics Most museums spend a fortune taking care of their paintings and objects in order not to damage them, you cant touch them, cant take photos with flash, etc, etc. One big mistake and the entire collectible could be worthless. If every Action Comics #1 (they are worth $3M) collector would stop taking care of their comic book, they would all be worthless in 10-20 years as the paper would be severely damaged. But they have a vested interest in conserving them, just like Bitcoin whales have a vested interest in running Bitcoin full nodes and mining operations. Is it any surprise that Marathon Digital Holdings and Galaxy Digital (both big holders of Bitcoin) also run mining operations? Only to Taleb that is a surprise. They are taking care of their Action Comics #1, and so they should Gold does have the advantage of not deteriorating quickly and not requiring mining in order to be conserved but it does require proper physical custody (just like comics, and art). So from that point of view, it has an advantage over Bitcoin. But what about all the other disadvantages? The requirement of mining doesnt prevent it from suceeding, just like art and comics can suceed despite the needs they require. But Bitcoin does have advantages like being digital, its more easily transferable, its easier to custody and hide, and its more censorship resistant. So it has more maintance cost in terms of mining, but whats the big deal? Its not like its easy to take care of a Picasso painting and if a dictatorship were to knock on my door asking for my BTC, I bet I will able to hide it a lot better than bars of gold
To be honest, I think this is an excellent point. Gold exists as is, independent of anything else. BTC only exists if there is a network ready to verify what you have upon you wanting to use or transfer it. With BTC, you're not only relying on other people wanting to give you something for it, just like gold of course, but you're also relying on the huge infrastructure being operational to make it happen, unlike gold. Perhaps when you need BTC the most, because of some cataclysmic event, it will be least available. You already see BTC mining being outlawed in some countries because they deem that electricity needs to go to a better use. Now granted, in this digital age with so much computing power and redundancy, it seems unimaginable for such an event to happen that would prevent you from accessing your BTC, but we can all think of many scenarios where such a thing might happen. Going forward, the more we rely on technology, the greater there is a chance that it will fail us.
See that's I studied Bitcoin gold BTG, because it does not have a significant hash rate and has been 51% attacked many times. Yet, it is still marching on and it is worth more than $1B. I believe BTC needs far less hash rate than people think. This isn't money, people dont use it for daily transactions (but only to pretent it is money). Its also its not ground breaking technology, it was in 2009, now its quickly becoming old and stale. Its updates come as often as the Olympic games, its hard to do anything to make it better. What this is a historical ledger of the first time there was a tech that enabled people to fight back against governments taking people's freedoms away, now the peasants are striking back. In order to secure that ledger it doesnt take much, the fact that BTG is accepted after 50 confirmations and people still trust on it shows that even if Bitcoin were to lose a shiton of hash power, you would still be able to sneak in the Ledger after waiting for a few hours. I'm not saying a permanent drop of 90% in hash wouldn't lead to a bear market, it would but eventually people start to buy it back up again because even if the market goes to 6 confirmations to 20 needed, it would still be more convienient and easier to hide than gold, it would still have its historical value, etc, etc. In a way, the higher cost of maintaining Bitcoin is a fee for its premium service vs Gold. In any event, its really hard to drop the hash rate a massive amount in a permanent basis because people will fight back. They can change the hash algorithims to allow people to mine at home, etc. There are a lot of ways people can still make sure their Action Comics #1 is taken care of, they wont let it go easily, its their crown jewel
Staking on Adalite is 10x easier and simpler than on PolkadotJs. The requirements to run a validator on Cardano are also much lighter ADA: In terms of hardware, you should have the following available: 4 GB of RAM 24 GB of hard disk space a good network connection and about 1 GB of bandwidth per hour a public IP4 address Note that processor speed is not a significant factor for running a stake pool. DOT CPU - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700K CPU @ 4.20GHz Storage - A NVMe solid state drive. Should be reasonably sized to deal with blockchain growth. Starting around 80GB - 160GB will be okay for the first six months of Polkadot, but will need to be re-evaluated every six months. Memory - 64GB. This will affect decentralization. ADA is also priced lower ($2) vs $20ish for DOT, which tends to attrach a big retail following who like "cheaper" coins. This can start the network effects and get the word out No wonder ADA chart vs ETH looks great and the DOT chart looks like shit
Its starting to look like DOT is going the way of NEO, XEM and others. I wont be selling just yet, I rather see what ADA has to offer and if the chart makes any recovery. But if in 3-6 months DOT doesnt show it has a fight in it, I will likely convert it into ETH and/or ADA and consider it dead