Where will Bitcoin be on 9/4/2018?

Sell! Sell! Sell!

Too late.

Heh, I don't really know what the situation is, but the news is blaring tonight about a big drop. I have no idea who that concerns.

Quote: Evenbob

Why is nobody here mentioning the meltdown today?

200 BILLION LOST TODAY ON CYBERCURRENCY ROUT

But the madness is extending to other cryptocoins. The market cap of the other coins was $100 billion on 18 November 2017 briefly surged to $362 billion and is still at $300 billion.

So you have hundreds of billions in the 1377 cryptocoins, and new ones being introduced all the time.

Quote: Pacomartin

But the madness is extending to other cryptocoins.

It's like German currency after WWI, it
took a wheelbarrow full of cash to
buy a loaf of bread. Currency based
on nothing.

Quote: Evenbob

Currency based
on nothing.

USD?

Quote: Wizard

I commented on WoV. I'm hoping it drops further because I bet a dinner that it will be below $10,000 on 1/1/18.

I am still thinking we are in a "2" phase of Elliot Wave. Seems to be settling down now to the $12-14 range so my guess is 50/50 that you are buying.

Quote:

I don't see it that way. It was all false value, based on nothing. There was no 200 billion dollars waiting for Bitcoin users to sell that disappeared. Real wealth is unchanged.

It is more complicated than that. When paper wealth disappears, bad things happen. Remember housing in 2008? Vegas was among the hardest hit. The dealer at Caesars Palace did not "lose" $100K because the value of his house dropped when he was not going to sell. But he still got laid off since all that lost wealth dried up sales activity, which cut realtor commissions, and banking profits, and so on and so on and so on.

Bitcoin isn't housing, but it is large enough that it will have an effect. I am putting a small amount in the some crypto. I think the idea is very real. If I make a decent amount, a deck and hot tub are coming to my house. If not then that economic activity does not happen. And so on and so on and so on.

Quote: AZDuffman

It is more complicated than that. When paper wealth disappears, bad things happen. Remember housing in 2008? Vegas was among the hardest hit. The dealer at Caesars Palace did not "lose" $100K because the value of his house dropped when he was not going to sell. But he still got laid off since all that lost wealth dried up sales activity, which cut realtor commissions, and banking profits, and so on and so on and so on.

Good point and I agree. I lost over half my wealth in the Vegas housing crash.

However, I can't feel very sorry for anyone who loses money in Bitcoin. Almost all the Bitcoin money is held by people mixed up in cyber crime or just gambling on it. I think if Bitcoin fell to $1 it would have a negligible impact on the world economy. It is just pretend money.

Quote: Wizard

Good point and I agree. I lost over half my wealth in the Vegas housing crash.

However, I can't feel very sorry for anyone who loses money in Bitcoin. Almost all the Bitcoin money is held by people mixed up in cyber crime or just gambling on it. I think if Bitcoin fell to $1 it would have a negligible impact on the world economy. It is just pretend money.

All money can be considered pretend money. What is the value of gold? Outside industrial use, its value is its scarcity. Silver? Same. Most USD is not even paper, just a bunch of 1s and 0s. 1s and 0s that can be increased at will, blocked at will, by the US Government.

There are legit uses for Bitcoin. How about online poker? Assuming a straight game, no crime is happening. The "crime" is sending USD over wires to play. So you move Bitcoin. Or say someone wants some Wizard calculations for a new game. They live in Asia with a hard to convert currency. Do you want to take a currency exchange hit? Just send the Bitcoin.

PRETEND MONEY? Look at it from this angle.

1. All money represents "energy" or "effort." Back to consulting. I could either spent lots of hours to calibrate a table game for my party nights to get a set return. Or you could do it in a fraction of the time. I give you something for your "energy." The person who wants me to make a fun game night could do it themselves, but they give me something for my "energy" to do it.

2. Your mind energy is worth more than my game energy since I can teach most people to deal a game in a few hours but learning the math takes hundreds of hours. You do not need my services unless you are hosting a party and I am local. So we need to find some indirect means of exchange.

3. We both care that the exchange item can be later exchanged. You take my energy and give it to a guy at the oil change shop. That guy wants someone to mow his lawn. We all want something the other will take.

And that is all that matters, that enough people accept it. Bitcoin is getting there. People are giving it worth. If it will last, who knows. But what has the governments scared is the idea of money they cannot control.

Quote: AZDuffman

All money can be considered pretend money. What is the value of gold? Outside industrial use, its value is its scarcity. Silver? Same. Most USD is not even paper, just a bunch of 1s and 0s. 1s and 0s that can be increased at will, blocked at will, by the US Government.

Good points. I admit that some of the value of gold and silver is just to hold it as a store of value in the name of diversifying a portfolio or you think the sky is going to fall and everyone will lose faith in paper money (I know many who think this) as opposed to precious metals which have been valued for hundreds of years. With paper money, I admit it only holds value because people think it does, but at least the name of the country is on the currency. If we can't have faith in the strength of the government to control its currency, then we may as well become anarchists and hunker down in a log cabin full of weapons of food.

Quote:

There are legit uses for Bitcoin. How about online poker? Assuming a straight game, no crime is happening. The "crime" is sending USD over wires to play. So you move Bitcoin. Or say someone wants some Wizard calculations for a new game. They live in Asia with a hard to convert currency. Do you want to take a currency exchange hit? Just send the Bitcoin.

I totally agree. Look at the business I'm in. I've lost easily $50,000 or so in getting screwed in exchange rates. In the last few weeks I had to send 95,000 in Euros to a bank in Germany and the Bank of America overcharged me by 2% on the exchange rate. There is $2,000 gone right there.

Quote:

PRETEND MONEY? Look at it from this angle.

1. All money represents "energy" or "effort." Back to consulting. I could either spent lots of hours to calibrate a table game for my party nights to get a set return. Or you could do it in a fraction of the time. I give you something for your "energy." The person who wants me to make a fun game night could do it themselves, but they give me something for my "energy" to do it.

2. Your mind energy is worth more than my game energy since I can teach most people to deal a game in a few hours but learning the math takes hundreds of hours. You do not need my services unless you are hosting a party and I am local. So we need to find some indirect means of exchange.

3. We both care that the exchange item can be later exchanged. You take my energy and give it to a guy at the oil change shop. That guy wants someone to mow his lawn. We all want something the other will take.

And that is all that matters, that enough people accept it. Bitcoin is getting there. People are giving it worth. If it will last, who knows. But what has the governments scared is the idea of money they cannot control.

So I totally believe in a one-currency world. I don't dispute that a crypto currency is the way to do it. However, I think you can agree most of the money in Bitcoin or any crypto currency is held by people gambling on it. I think its natural value, if you take out the gambling component, is around $1,000 for a Bitcoin. If it gets close to that number, I'll start buying it.

Let me add that Bitcoin is flawed and we need something better. Huge transaction fees, long processing times, and it wastes the energy consumption of a small country to mine the things. I think there are better cypro currencies but that is about as far as I can take that point.

Quote: Wizard

So I totally believe in a one-currency world.

That's a lot to imagine knowing about the food riots in Argentina when they tried to peg the Argentine peso to the USD. The fixed exchange ratios were abandoned in the 1970s, so it is difficult to imagine going to a single currency.

Even within Europe, many countries only had banknotes of relatively small values compared to those of the German Mark. Today the banknote most often withdrawn from ATMS is the 50€, but higher value banknotes are in wide circulation throughout southern Europe.

smallest	largest	EU currency	late stage just before conversion
3.05 €	76.22 €	French franc
6.01 €	60.10 €	Spanish peseta
0.52 €	51.65 €	Italian lira	258.23 €
2.49 €	49.88 €	Portuguese escudo
0.29 €	29.35 €	Greek drachma

The great migration of money from Greece would not have been possible without the single currency and large value banknotes. Back in 2000 before conversion there was only €9 billion in Greece Drachma banknotes for the whole country in the relatively small denominations in the charge above. When the economy crashed hundreds of billions of Euros left Greece.

Quote: Pacomartin

That's a lot to imagine ...

I know I'm just dreaming. I am trying to say it would be a good thing to have a single world currency but don't see how it happening in my lifetime.

Maybe the best shot is a Crypto Currency based on a precious metal(s).