QUOTE(TheRealist @ Sep 16 2017, 10:32 AM)
The problem is that people in lowyat in general are not civilized enough to hold a conversation with people with ideas that contradict theirs. My other account was banned just because I have dared to say something that contradicts what was being said over here.
If bitcoin was so massively cheap last year why didn't you buy them. In fact if you had bought them last year, you may not even be chatting with me here. In fact you should have bought them when bitcoin first incepted.
Problem is are people actually using those technologies. Most probably not. 90% of the people probably just bought bitcoin because it's sound cool, the technology looks cool and the price has been shooting up recently. As you stated, the only thing that is supporting the price is the confidence of the technology which is the decentralized nature of the coin. Well there are also many great technologies that are cheap or free for example email etc. As I mentioned previously Amazon aws is something that increases the profitability of an application but yet is not as costly as bitcoin. Just like anything else there is no reason for a technology to be expensive unless the technology provides convenience and extra profitability. So my question here is what is then preventing bitcoin from becoming zero. I mean you guys say that fiat is worth nothing. Then why would crypto which is in the end is just bits be worth so much more? Yes it's backed by blockchain but then it's only bits that's alll.
Why would you want your financial transaction to be transparent in the first place. Is it not my right for outsiders not to interfere in my business?already more and more cryptocurrencies are created. So your argument that government cannot create more cryptocurrencies is moot. Cryptocurrencies are no different then a more complex version of gaming money. Your understanding of the utility of bitcoin is not even correct. Reason why I compared crrypto with laptop or phone is those 2 items represents the added value of technology.
Price manipulation happens all of the time. That is why there are cartels that collude together to direct the price to a particular direction. It happens in all commodities and even finanical instruments like interest rates. You are obviously oblivious to this.
You really do not know how finance work. The reason why people are willing to invest in a share that does not give dividend is because of their confidence that the company will grow and thus the price of the stock will grow with it.you are obviously blind to see that gold is being manipulated. But nvm.
More like those millions just want to make a quick profit that's all. Your assumption is that there is no manipulation of prices. Hello. Anything that is subjected to exchanges can be manipulated.
Hope you are not naive to not realize that when the merchants accept bitcoin they will immediately convert those bitcoins to USD. Also I believe that items that are being charged in bitcpons is going to be more expensive.
The value of every single thing that ever existed in this world can be break down into two part: fundamental value and speculation value. The fundamental value is the real value of any item, for example in an efficient market, if every single one of us are willing to pay RM5 for an apple, than the apple value is RM 5 (the fundamental part). However, if someone bring any rumors about that apple (i.e. government will ban the import of apple starting next month), for sure more people will queue to buy more apple to stock up, and are willing to pay another RM3 extra (the speculation part). In the end the final price will be 8 = 5 + 3 (i.e. the base price + the impact of speculation).
The same thing with Bitcoin - as more people start to believe in the technology behind blockchain, the demand will increase which cause the price to soar (the fundamental). And when new rumors come out such as China is banning the exchange, then the price dropped to react to the news (the speculation bit). And similar to the above example, the final price of bitcoin will be equal to the fundamental part plus the speculation part. When we say it is cheap, is because we believe that the real price of the bitcoin (the fundamental value) is higher than the current price, and what cause the price to go down is due to the market reacting to the news (the speculation bit).
Of course, everyone would have different opinion on what the real price of bitcoin is, for you it may be 0 but for us who believe in the technology, we think it is worth 5k. And back to your question, why don't we buy more last year? I cant say for others, but for me I don't really understand the technology the same way as I did today, so that's the reason I dont buy any last year. And as more people start to adopt the technology, the price will continue to rise. This is why, we believe that the price of bitcoin will keep continue to rise as we expect more and more business to start adopting/accepting bitcoin as a currency. In fact, some car dealers, coffee shops in US are already accepting payment in bitcoin.
About anyone can create a new cryptocurrencies - Yes this is true. But not everyone will accept and adopt the new coin you created (i.e. the demand is not there). That is why you have some random coin at 10 cent versus bitcoin at 3.5k usd. In the end, what drives the value of coin is the market itself, if everyone agrees X is worth Y then X will worth Y.
About comparing blockchain to email.... that is not really a good comparison, blockchain is a game changer technology. Maybe you should do more research on why blockchain is the technology of the future. You can watch many TedTalk video about blockchain on youtube. Even if you still dont trust bitcoin as a replacement of currency, you should at least be able to understand the potential of block chain.
Cheers!