**** bitcoins, i play games like Halo, Left 4 Dead, Alien Swarm, Counter-Strike and so on.
 
 

There is no way to short sell overvalued digital coins like a more conventional investment such stocks or ETF etc
 

Bitcoin fell back to $17,000 which should cool demand slightly
 
 

historically the richest person ever had all gold and was able to travel far 1000 years ago
 
by comparison besos etc are peasants
 

mathematical
Bitcoin has crazy support at lower levels so it will never crash like before unless the economy/stock market crashes.

The thing about the economy and stock market is a funny thing to say. The supposed value of Bitcoin is that it is stable and independent of other currencies. It is now neither stable nor independent of other currencies.
Bitcoin doesn't need support, it needs utility.
Since its value is highly based on speculation, it is just as likely to crash as before -- when then too its value was highly based on speculation. Nothing fundamental has changed between then and now.
Because of speculation, the implementation which was supposed to prevent inflation isn't working.
Can you attribute the growth of 50% in 3 months to anything other than speculation? Has there been any fundamental change in Bitcoin's utility or its blockchain which can explain why its value should have changed 50% in 3 months? No. It's value changed due to speculation.
If speculation is the primary factor driving its value, it can just as easily go back down.

mathematical

ty_ger07

mathematical
Bitcoin has crazy support at lower levels so it will never crash like before unless the economy/stock market crashes.

The thing about the economy and stock market is a funny thing to say. The supposed value of Bitcoin is that it is stable and independent of other currencies. It is now neither stable nor independent of other currencies.
Bitcoin doesn't need support, it needs utility.
Since its value is highly based on speculation, it is just as likely to crash as before -- when then too its value was highly based on speculation. Nothing fundamental has changed between then and now.
Because of speculation, the implementation which was supposed to prevent inflation isn't working.
Can you attribute the growth of 50% in 3 months to anything other than speculation? Has there been any fundamental change in Bitcoin's utility or its blockchain which can explain why its value should have changed 50% in 3 months? No. It's value changed due to speculation.
If speculation is the primary factor driving its value, it can just as easily go back down.

Many fundamental things has changed since then. Many countries have legitimized it as legal currency. Paypal, Square, and others invested in it and now allow people to pay in bitcoin, granted it is still tied to the $ but so is any currency. 

Please tell me the fundamental things which have changed.

https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/cryptocurrency-on-paypal-faq-faq4398
Can I use Cryptocurrencies to pay or send money with PayPal?
At this time, you cannot use Crypto as a way to pay or send money on PayPal.

Can I use my Cryptocurrency balance as a funding source for my purchases?
No, not at this time.

I am not arguing that cryptocurrency has no purpose.  I think cryptocurrency can have a purpose.  But it is also exceedingly wasteful; so we will see how that plays out.
I don't think that Bitcoin has a bright future.  It might be bright for a while.  It might get brighter.  But it was a first, it has issues, it has a toxic community, and it isn't interested/able to fix some of its issues.  It's not realistic to expect Bitcoin to invent cryptocurrency and make no mistakes designing something which never previously existed.  There are other cryptocurrencies which have cropped up which have fixed issues and have the potential for a brighter future, as long as all the masses can find it in themselves to look past Bitcoin. Many alternate cryptocurrencies are just jokes and get-rich-quick schemes, but many others are actual legitimate attempts to fix a specific issue with Bitcoin, and have promise.
Once all of the Bitcoin is mined, once there is no longer an incentive to mine, if the problem difficulty drops to zero, at least it won't be an exceedingly wasteful way of banking.  So we can look forward to that day.  It will be interesting to see where Bitcoin's value ends, but I can't see it maintaining a high value.  If people some day start using it to actually buy and sell things, there is no reason why its value needs to be so inflated.
The Bitcoin block size is still limited at 1 MB, which has been proven countless times to be too small when people use it for day-to-day transactions.  This is one major reason why it isn't useful in mass for anything other than speculative investing.
The Bitcoin blockchain is currently 302 GB, and growing, of course.  This again highlights a problem with this sort of decentralized system.
Can it be used as a currency to buy and sell things?  Currently, no.  Never has.  Still isn't technically able to in the future either.  Things will need to change before Bitcoin can have any value other than speculative.  Please  tell me the fundamental things which have changed, other than people trying to buy into something they don't understand which seems to be somehow making people rich.
The Bitcoin conference had to stop accepting Bitcoin due to issues with Bitcoin network congestion, delays, and fees.  Nothing has changed since then.  If it isn't able to be used as currency for a single convention, it certainly isn't able to be used as a currency for a bank or government.
PLEASE read the blog post from a head Bitcoin developer which I linked to 3 times already in this topic.  If you are interested in cryptocurrency, it is very important that you know what you are getting yourself into.  The dude is incredibly smart and has ground floor, backroom information.  Nothing fundamental has changed.  It still is broken.  The only thing that has changed is that instead of people you have never heard of talking about it, people you have heard of are talking about it.  Speculation, speculation, speculation.  Speculation doesn't prove value, stability, or utility.

I’ll never trust invisible digital gold.

lehpron

ty_ger07
Again, why Bitcoin is a failed experiment.  I STRONGLY recommend that Lehpron read this, and consider how long he is willing to invest in Bitcoin.

Your link was written January 14, 2016. Back then in early 2016, Bitcoin went from it's high of $300 and cut in half to $170 over the course of about a week, so it seemed it was on a trajectory of uncertainty, hence the 'I told you so' article.  Except this type of 'correction' happens often following a surge, this is Bitcoin now for a two week period, although the difference isn't a 45% drop.  

As for Bitcoin ATMs, that's actually new to me, I figure a lot has happened over the years and support isn't stopping any time soon.

As for me, it isn't my hope that crypto can replace or compete with regular physical money someday, don't see my investment in crypto as me hoping it goes up; I make it go up, that's trading.  What I have as Bitcoin right now will eventually be dumped into an exchange and it won't stay Bitcoin.

It's not an "I told you so article" about volatility. It was a "this is why I am divesting my Bitcoin and leaving the Bitcoin Foundation development team" article. He was one of the few who communicated with Satoshi Nokomoto directly and was one of the few who was given the Bitcoin project directly from Satoshi Nakamoto. He was there when it started, and then years later, wrote an article about it's failures, why the failures weren't being fixed, and why he was leaving.  He was there on the ground floor developing, supporting, and advocating Bitcoin.  As Bitcoin grew, problems were discovered.  He tried to fix problems.  But more and more he realized that they had lost control of the Bitcoin project and that Bitcoin was more and more about money than sense.  His attempts to implement solutions were blocked by big investors and censored.  He realized that Bitcoin was doomed to fail as a currency, so he divested and left.
I suggest that you read it. It talks about a lot of root-cause and long-term stuff. I have no idea why skimming it made you think that it was just about a certain place in time. Ignore when it was written, acknowledge the author, read it, and then realize that it is timeless because the fundamental problems still exist.  Read the article before you assume what it is about.  It's not about January 2016.  More than 4 years later, the problems he discussed are still not fixed and are still being blocked by people who are only in it as a speculative investment.
It will burst again.  It is doomed to.  Something which is a technical failure can't stand based on speculation alone.  What happened to the price of tulips?
If you are looking for growth potential, I think Monero is a better investment. It has the chance to grow 10x its current value within 5 years thanks to atomic swaps with Bitcoin, and has less fundamental issues.  I think Bitcoin can grow, but I don't think that it can grow 10x.  And I don't think that it will grow forever.  If you invest in Bitcoin, you have the chance to make money, but only if you get out at the right time.  It is very volatile.  Keep a very watchful eye on your investment, and be ready to jump ship.  Also realize that jumping ship takes time, so you really need to plan ahead how you will jump, which service you will use, what you will jump to, have all of your accounts verified, and go through the KYC process.  While you are holding, it is very important that you transfer your investment to a secure personal address.  Exchanges are where the cryptocurrency is stolen.

CausticEd
I cannot see investing in bitcoin at these prices?  It just seems like the downside risk is much greater than the upside risk.

It'd be pretty silly. Nobody invests in the stock market when the stocks are regarded to be at their highest valuations, so why would anyone want to invest in bitcoin when it's at its peak? It's only going to crash sooner rather than later. Given human nature speculators will probably keep the cycle bouncing between crash/boom for the rest of the decade. 

It's going to crash again, that's how bitcoin works.  It cycles up and down pretty volatilely.

XRP recently collapsed after the SEC moved in to accuse it of being a security subject to regulation. It made my day to see it almost collapse completely/
 
XRP was 3 overall by market cap
 
Good riddance