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-   -   The Cryptocurrency & NFT Thread (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifting-gears/148237-cryptocurrency-nft-thread-24.html)

Source :
https://cointelegraph.com/news/gover...research-shows

Government Sites in India Among Prime Targets for Cryptojacking, Research Shows

Unocoin founders arrested for installing Bitcoin ATMs

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...w/66408647.cms

Whatsapp and fb are now being flooded with messages on initiativeQ.com - the next bitcoin, they say:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lelalon...w-bitcoin/amp/

So here we are with bitcoins at the end of November 2018.



However, what was the projection for December 2018, according to the foremost experts on bitcoins?

Pantera Capital: $20,000 By December 2018
Fundstrat Global Advisors: $25,000 By December 2018
Anthony Pompliano: $50,000 By December 2018
John Pfeffer: $75,000 By December 2018
Kay Van-Petersen: $100,000 By December 2018

Anybody here think they are still right? In that case you can make a killing by buying loads of bitcoin before we get into December.

You can't have wealth generation that is disconnected from matched value addition via goods and services. I wonder how all these experts not know that.

Of the lot, I recognize John McAfee (of McAfee anti-virus fame) and Max Keiser. The latter is a well-known gold bug. He believes that USA will go into hyperinflation and Gold will go to infinity.

https://bitcoinist.com/max-keiser-ge...orner-bitcoin/

The price of crypto-currencies could have well gone higher, but as has been argued earlier in the thread even if the prices went up it would have been just because of speculation rather than any value addition. In fact this is the right environment for crypto-currencies to rally, what with drop in equities, ongoing trade wars and IMF reducing growth forecast. I read that US authorities are investigating irregularities by coin exchsnges which created artificial demand to jack up prices and attract speculators.

Block-chain technology will stay put and will grow in usage, which was never in doubt. The same cannot be said of various crypto-currencies. I reiterate, irrespective of how good a technology is scamsters will find a way to manipulate and dupe people even if there is regulation. One can understand how it will be without regulation.

Gentlemen,

Question for the investors in bitcoin and other crypto currencies - what's your take now on the way prices are going? What would be the impact of a full blown trade war between China and USA on the price and saleability of crypto currencies? My best wishes for a safe landing.

Crypto, % Below all-time high...
BitConnect: -100%
Qtum: -99%
ICON: -98%
Cardano: -98%
Bitcoin Gold: -98%
Bitcoin Cash: -98%
NEO: -97%
Lisk: -97%
NEM: -96%
IOTA: -96%
Dash: -96%
TRON: -95%
zCash: -94%
Ethereum: -93%
Litecoin: -93%
XRP: -92%
EOS: -92%
Monero: -90%
Bitcoin: -83%

I spent a substantial amount of money at peak due to FOMO without understanding the fundamentals and underlying technology, and am 90%+ under water. Lesson well and truly learnt.

A minority of us kept pounding away at the lack of any economic fundamental underneath the cryptocurrency phenomena, in this very thread. Instead, we kept getting told by all the investors here that this is new kind of economics, which we oldies won't understand. :)

Samurai I understand that and am not debating, even back then I had read your views and acknowledge that they have merit. However I was lured by the extreme valuations and did not think how many use cases are viable and needed. A fool and his money and all that.

Thank you for the data and for your candour and honesty with yourself. I hope, relative to your savings & income, not too much was lost. Your strength is that you are not in denial. We all, including your truly, make some mistakes in our investments and many of us, at least once, get lured into get rich quick schemes. Even the rich & famous of America fell for Bernie Madoff. Best of luck. Take it on the chin and march on.

As someone quite fascinated by the technology, let me try.

The economic fundamental that is easiest to see is the elimination of the middleman. This is only one of many use cases but a very important one. Getting rid of a middleman in any activity is an obvious source of value. Bitcoin does this in a small variety of cases - most obviously as a currency. Others like Ethereum try to take this a step further and allow you to write very general smart contracts. Two examples, both of which rely on Ethereum's smart contract functionality, might help:

1) You can place bets on nearly any question you care to wager on without a centralized betmaker (see Augur). Bets without the house taking a cut - why not?

2) You can get USD loans using cryptocurrencies as collateral instantly without a centralized bank, paperwork, etc. (see Maker). The incredible part about Maker is that it worked perfectly even as the price of the collateral (Ether) tanked over the last few months.

Is there economic value to this? Absolutely. The idea that this whole space is a scam or a ponzi scheme is easy to falsify. The only big technological roadblock that remains is how well these solutions scale with the size of their user base. There are obviously many talented people trying to crack this problem now and their success will determine the final outcome of whether crypto will become mainstream or not.

So should you invest your hard earned money into this space, particularly since we're seeing cheap prices now? In my opinion, the current market price movements have nothing to do with the technology's value. It is primarily driven by speculation and so your guess will be as good (probably better) than mine!

All these myths have been beaten to death many times before in this thread. No point in repeating that.

Meanwhile, wanted to share couple of articles.

Bitcoin: https://www.technologyreview.com/the...elf-safe-from/

Ethereum: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/6...e-to-prove-it/

Quite the counter argument.

What else did you expect? :) You came to a 5 year old thread with 350+ posts, and repeated the same old arguments. If you are serious, do read through the thread from the beginning, instead of asking us to repeat it all over again.

Your post anyway addressed only the technology bit. Although you used the word economics couple times, but the explanation had nothing to do with economics. Cryptocurrency in the current form is an attempt by techies to pretend to be economists. It has failed and they can't even see it.