Ah that's shitty that you were one of the pets investors. That whole thing really marked the end of that era. Yes, I agree with you. This is almost definitely a bubble. However, neither you nor I knows how close we are to the top. We could easily still have years left of this. I might get burned at the end of the bubble, but I have already made so much off crypto that it's worth it to continue investing what I can afford to lose. Regarding Upfiring, the premise of incentivizing file-sharing is something that I can see continuing past the bubble - which is why I chose to invest. Rewarding seeders for seeding files is inherently a good idea to grow a P2P network, otherwise nobody really wants to seed while everyone wants to download. Just my 2 cents on the matter, nobody knows what the market will bring of course and everyone should do their research before investing in anything.
I wasn't really, just used it as an analogy. I think we are getting close to the top with all these forks and new ICOs. The only reason why some cryptos will survive the massacre (of the pricedrop) because there is actual demand for their usability from countries like China and Venezuela. That demand will put a damper on the sell offs. Companies like pets.com and webvan were based on a faulty business idea. I do criticize cryptos a lot, but they do have 2 utilities that no other payment system have: 1. Black market anonymity. 2. Capital control avoidance. As long as they can fulfill at least one of these roles, they will have instrinsic value, and there will be demand for them. Still, the growing competition doesn't help.
I agree. And I said that about the top in August. And yet here we are with BTC close to $6000. The reality is, the market is so new that we really don't know where this will end. This could be a 500 billion dollar market in a year from now and I don't think too many people would be surprised. I do wonder how long capital control avoidance will last. It's inherently impossible to regulate cryptos otherwise the purpose is defeated, but you know governments are going to try.
As I've said on another post, US regulations (i.e. banning cryptos) similar to Pokerstars is the biggest threat as banks and payment processors and other "gateways" would be hindered in the US and can't spend btc on Amazon, NewEgg, WholeFoods, etc. Same as Pokerstars, cryptos would be usable outside of the US. What's fair value of such an event? $1000 and lower would be my conservative estimate, but it would not go to zero as countries like Japan are supporting cryptos. I added a third one to your list as it doesn't fit on the other two. The best way to explain it is by example. There's an ICO for an escort service I read up on recently. By all accounts, this would not be legal in the US (i.e. securities law and prostitution). Except, the people behind it are hinting they are in Toronto, but are they? Then, there's the biggest securities fund-raising (ICO) that happened a few months ago, called Tezos which raised $230M but higher valuation now as btc price has increased, significantly. The people involved are straight up from NY Wall Street. Guess what they did? They went to Zurich and opened a company there with all of the lawyers crossing the t's and dotting the i's. If they had done the ICO here in the US, these guys would be in jail, but using Global Markets, they got away with it? https://pinkapp.io/ http://www.ibtimes.com/beyond-bitcoin-blockchain-tokens-sex-industry-2601252 https://www.tezos.com/
Well, yes. Laws differ by country and people take advantage of this all the time in business. The amount of rich people who keep money in swiss banks is ridiculous.
Bounty Campaign is here btw if anyone wants to earn free UFR: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2274134.0
I'm spewing. A technician who was working for me in Asia told me to buy Bitcoin at $3.00 . I nearly sacked him and told him he was a wan.er. Now I'm the wan.er for not even throwing 1k at it.
Arguably though, you would have sold it by now for sure. Most people sold on the initial rise to 200, and then again and 1000, and now people who invested anytime before 2015 have sold. I'd venture to say there's an insanely small number of people who have held their BTC since 2012 or earlier until now...and if they have they're all millionaires.
Bitcointalk Upfiring ANN thread is here if anyone has questions: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2223828.0
This aged pretty well. The Upfiring app is launching in about a month and the market cap is only about 2.5 million USD. Pretty crazy potential for how game-changing the product could be. The reddit community is pretty active as well if anyone's interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/Upfiring/