From my limited understanding of bitcoin, I know that it has a fixed number of bitcoins that can be mined. Keeping a fixed float should keep the price up (assuming all else is equal), but will limit mass adoption as the price is too high for most people. Expanding the float would allow more people to participate in the market. What is going to happen if more bitcoins are allowed into the market? Will the price go down, then up again as more people can buy and use it?
They trade to 8 decimal places so you can buy a satoshi. You can buy competing crypto currency if you don't like the price.
If you mean the original Bitcoin (BTC), it is not possible to increase the number of them. It was fixed at about 21 million from the start and is inherent in the algorithm.
Just a few weeks ago a hedge fund manager dumped all of his BTC holdings, he bought at $200, he said it is probable that all these crypto currency companies will become worth $0 !! He said it is a solution looking for a problem, that's not how you build a product or service.
he is wrong. it is a solution to the lack of trust people have in governments, particularly fiat currency which are nothing but pieces of paper. he is simply saying that he believes the upward move in bitcoins has been overdone and it is time to take profits. if tomorrow the government cracks down on people who have not paid taxes on their gains the BTC market might collapse. zero price forecast is an exaggerated remark,not to taken literally. ps the stock market has been going up for the same reason.
I think bitcoin is too intertwined into the system to go to 0 and the use cases keep increasing. One government can crack down and say no more bitcoins, but others will embrace it and will benefit from the cryptocurrency revolution.
I see many similarities to gold. There is no justifiable reason for gold to be as valuable as it is, except for that people assume it will always be used as a store of wealth, exchangeable for other goods/services and it will remain scarce. So that's the utility of gold and I think it is similar for bitcoin. If bitcoin will become more scarce due to absence of mining relative to the amount of people wanting to start using it with the stated utility, price will go up quicker. If more will be mined but the amount of people using it will go down, price goes down. But Bitcoin has more utility than gold as it is easier to be used as a payment vehicle. If more and more people use it for payment an increased amount will be needed in checker accounts, hence price will go up even more. It is a funny thing what's happening for sure. If the government manages to outlaw it, then price drops, if not, it still might drop in the short term as many people are now invested in it just for short term speculation purposes..
Yes, but let's say you buy a ton of BTC today and they find a way to increase the float? Short term crash and long term growth? That's what I think.
Well sure it's a fun hypothetical thought experiment. Just like stock if the company issues more shares the value gets diluted. Still it's literally impossible with BTC. Now anything is possible with some other cryptocurrency; it's totally up to the designers.