9 ms·

definitely not a bubble

kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
More like a bulb.
Kiro 9y ago
We don't even see this kind of stuff in a regular bubble. I think this is something new, either Bubble 2.0 or The New Dawn. I lived through the IT bubble and it mostly went unnoticed among me, my friends and family. Literally everyone talks about Bitcoin though. I'm seriously thinking this is a first for humanity and the consequences will be extreme regardless of crash or paradigm shift. It's one for the history books for sure.
- throwawayReply 9y ago
  "It's different this time!" - Someone in every bubble.
  - Kiro 9y ago
    Can we just stop for a moment and look at what people are actually trading here? A decentralised protocol upheld by a cryptographic function. This can't be compared with any stocks or commodity. Maybe the crash will be the same but it is still different.
    - kgwgk 9y ago
      But it can be compared with other decentralised protocols upheld by cryptographic functions, so it’s a commodity of sorts.
    - beaconstudios 9y ago
      stocks and commodity holdings are just protocols too though - not technical ones but legal/contractual ones. It's still pretty crazy though given bitcoin doesn't even have a major (legal) use to anchor it.
  - ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
    The Crypto Kitty bubble already popped. I lost a paycheck, which sucks right before Christmas. Ultimately I am probably lucky that I learned my lesson with "Captain Furball Cheezburger" instead of losing my mortgage when Bitcoin pops. According to the CIA there is 80 Trillion dollars in the world in soft money. With 21 million Bitcoins, if 1% of all the worlds money was transferred to Bitcoin, each Bitcoin would be worth $38,000. We are basically half way there. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets that high, but we I don't understand how people think it could keep going past that even theoretically. If someone understands the reasoning behind the $500,000 predictions, I would love to have that explained.
    - s17n 9y ago
      $500,000: BTC market cap approximately equal to value of all mined gold.
      - bpicolo 9y ago
        There's really no actual reason it should have value equal to the value of all mined gold though.
        down 9y ago
        yes, bitcoin is better then gold, will probably get higher
        acchow 9y ago
        Except, the millions of gold holders (including in jewelry, etc) around the world can transact among each other at any time. Bitcoin can handle 3-7 transactions per second.
        ryanwaggoner 9y ago
        There’s no actual reason that gold should have the value it does, either, other than the global shared delusion of it as a store of value.
      - 9y ago
- devdoomari 9y ago
  maybe you're in a different age group/peer group compared to when you lived thru the IT bubble? someone else going thru the 2000s IT bubble may have said that too...
- Scalestein 9y ago
  My guess would be that the .com bubble wasn't as easy to get involved in. With Bitcoin you can buy/invest in Bitcoin in 10 minutes with zero prior knowledge. With the .com bubble you had to find a specific stock to buy and go through all the rigmarole of buying it. The barrier to entry to this bubble (if it is!) seems much lower.
  - workthrowaway27 9y ago
    I don't know. People at least know what stocks are. Bitcoin is mysterious to most non-technical people and seems sort of sketchy at first glance.
    - Kiro 9y ago
      That's also what makes it so different.
    - cableshaft 9y ago
      Most people have a tenuous knowledge at best about what stocks are or the ecosystem behind the stock market, how to analyze stocks, or what the rules of trading are (I managed to break one when I briefly thought I could daytrade from Sharebuilder years and years ago and got suspended from trading for a few days). They don't understand it much more than most people understand Bitcoin. Not really. It's all 'buy X and hope the number goes up!', where X is a mutual fund or random company, just like with Bitcoin/Altcoins.
      - stordoff 9y ago
        Most people will at least know that a share is a tiny fraction of a company, and why it has value. Bitcoin is more of a black box (to many), and thus more prone to hype (it's far easier to make grandiose claims about the future of a currency than it is to pretend a company will grow at nearly the same rate).
  - ghaff 9y ago
    I'm pretty sure the opposite is true. Many people are already invested in stocks and, even in the .com bubble, many had accounts with etrade and the like--some of which were part of the bubble itself. All you had to do was transfer your cash/stocks to pets.com or whatever. With bitcoin, you have to sign up for/transfer money to various sketchy exchanges that you've never previously used.
- rhino369 9y ago
  This probably isn‘t even 1/10 as bad as internet and tech bubble. That had common people throwing their entire 401k into tech stocks. My dad ruined his retirement fund buying Nextel options that ended up worthless. Bitcoin is a dumber bubble though.
  - Kiro 9y ago
    I don't think we've seen anything yet. Imagine the crash when Bitcoin is $1M or $10M. I don't see that as an impossibility.
  - cableshaft 9y ago
    There are people putting their life savings into bitcoin. You'll see those stories pop up from time to time on the bitcoin subreddit. I've only got in it what I can afford to lose, personally, which isn't a whole lot, but it's still some skin in the game, at least.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    Several japanese retirement funds announced they’re going all in on Bitcoin, according to what I’ve heard. Even the rumors show that this is going in the same direction.
- sulam 9y ago
  It’s pretty much exactly the same, down to companies adding .com to their names and talking about their internet strategy and seeing their stock double.
  - Kiro 9y ago
    There are so many other spectacular things with this bubble, down to the nature of the actual instrument itself. Cryptography, decentralisation, miners, forks, etc. The IT bubble was still a stock bubble. I think this is something new.
    - sulam 9y ago
      If you were an adult during the first one, we might be able to have a real conversation about this. If not, probably not so much. This bubble is relatively small in comparison -- so far. The number of companies, the amount of the real economy affected, the sheer pervasiveness in daily life, etc. AOL single handedly carpeted North America with CDs. Internet technology revolutionized so many things it's hard to pick the most important, in the space of about 5 years. The one that still stands out to me personally is how it totally crushed international long distance calling. Hell, it completely revolutionized the _porn_ industry. Bitcoin is no comparison (again, so far).
      - Kiro 9y ago
        > If you were an adult during the first one That was uncalled for. I was very much an adult during the first one. You are talking about the internet revolution in general and a comparison to blockchains could possibly be relevant but not in this discussion. You didn't trade the internet in the Dot-com bubble, you traded stocks. Bitcoin is different because that's the actual instrument being traded.
        sulam 9y ago
        Not uncalled for at all. The people talking to me about Bitcoin and how big it is are almost all in their 20’s. They have a vague idea about the Internet bubble but they certainly didn’t live through it in any meaningful way. It’s like someone telling me I can’t properly appreciate the 70’s since I didn’t experience them as an adult. It’s totally true!
- workthrowaway27 9y ago
  The most recent times I've met someone and told them I was a programmer there next question has been along the lines of: "Do you have bitcoin/what do you think about bitcoin". Super strange.
- Keyframe 9y ago
  Someone said it's ok if everyone talks about that, start worrying when everyone says they bought some.
  - usrusr 9y ago
    Group A is talking about bitcoin a lot to mutually reassure themselves that buying into it was the right move (and also a bit to keep others from selling before they do). Group B is talking about bitcoin a lot to mutually reassure themselves that staying out of it was the right decision (and also a bit to keep others out since all new paper money entering the exchanges weakens their arguments, at least superficially) I think that defection rates between those groups are already very low and will keep shrinking.
- ermir 9y ago
  I started to get tempted to get in the crypto craze after resisting it since 2011, until my mother, who can barely use a computer, told me last night "What is this Bitcoin that everyone keeps talking about, everyone is getting rich, we should get in on it". That was a definite sign to stay away. She was still tempted even after I explained the bubble and reminded her that 2000 of our people died last time something like this happened in 1997. A lot of people are going to suffer this time, it's not going to be pretty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_Civil_War
  - Kiro 9y ago
    I posted another comment here saying that if the value reaches a certain level the Bitcoin crash could potentially start a war. I removed it though since I was downvoted to oblivion. I guess it wasn't so far-fetched after all!
- s4vi0r 9y ago
  The technology behind it could maybe one day cause "the new dawn", but there's 0 chance this is anything other than people going full retard. It's like a smaller scale, equally as stupid/shitty version of that tulip craze that happened in the Netherlands like 400 years ago or whatever.

More like a bulb.

Kiro 9y ago

We don't even see this kind of stuff in a regular bubble. I think this is something new, either Bubble 2.0 or The New Dawn. I lived through the IT bubble and it mostly went unnoticed among me, my friends and family. Literally everyone talks about Bitcoin though. I'm seriously thinking this is a first for humanity and the consequences will be extreme regardless of crash or paradigm shift. It's one for the history books for sure.

throwawayReply 9y ago
"It's different this time!" - Someone in every bubble.
- Kiro 9y ago
  Can we just stop for a moment and look at what people are actually trading here? A decentralised protocol upheld by a cryptographic function. This can't be compared with any stocks or commodity. Maybe the crash will be the same but it is still different.
  - kgwgk 9y ago
    But it can be compared with other decentralised protocols upheld by cryptographic functions, so it’s a commodity of sorts.
  - beaconstudios 9y ago
    stocks and commodity holdings are just protocols too though - not technical ones but legal/contractual ones. It's still pretty crazy though given bitcoin doesn't even have a major (legal) use to anchor it.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
  The Crypto Kitty bubble already popped. I lost a paycheck, which sucks right before Christmas. Ultimately I am probably lucky that I learned my lesson with "Captain Furball Cheezburger" instead of losing my mortgage when Bitcoin pops. According to the CIA there is 80 Trillion dollars in the world in soft money. With 21 million Bitcoins, if 1% of all the worlds money was transferred to Bitcoin, each Bitcoin would be worth $38,000. We are basically half way there. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets that high, but we I don't understand how people think it could keep going past that even theoretically. If someone understands the reasoning behind the $500,000 predictions, I would love to have that explained.
  - s17n 9y ago
    $500,000: BTC market cap approximately equal to value of all mined gold.
    - bpicolo 9y ago
      There's really no actual reason it should have value equal to the value of all mined gold though.
      - down 9y ago
        yes, bitcoin is better then gold, will probably get higher
        acchow 9y ago
        Except, the millions of gold holders (including in jewelry, etc) around the world can transact among each other at any time. Bitcoin can handle 3-7 transactions per second.
      - ryanwaggoner 9y ago
        There’s no actual reason that gold should have the value it does, either, other than the global shared delusion of it as a store of value.
    - 9y ago
devdoomari 9y ago
maybe you're in a different age group/peer group compared to when you lived thru the IT bubble? someone else going thru the 2000s IT bubble may have said that too...
Scalestein 9y ago
My guess would be that the .com bubble wasn't as easy to get involved in. With Bitcoin you can buy/invest in Bitcoin in 10 minutes with zero prior knowledge. With the .com bubble you had to find a specific stock to buy and go through all the rigmarole of buying it. The barrier to entry to this bubble (if it is!) seems much lower.
- workthrowaway27 9y ago
  I don't know. People at least know what stocks are. Bitcoin is mysterious to most non-technical people and seems sort of sketchy at first glance.
  - Kiro 9y ago
    That's also what makes it so different.
  - cableshaft 9y ago
    Most people have a tenuous knowledge at best about what stocks are or the ecosystem behind the stock market, how to analyze stocks, or what the rules of trading are (I managed to break one when I briefly thought I could daytrade from Sharebuilder years and years ago and got suspended from trading for a few days). They don't understand it much more than most people understand Bitcoin. Not really. It's all 'buy X and hope the number goes up!', where X is a mutual fund or random company, just like with Bitcoin/Altcoins.
    - stordoff 9y ago
      Most people will at least know that a share is a tiny fraction of a company, and why it has value. Bitcoin is more of a black box (to many), and thus more prone to hype (it's far easier to make grandiose claims about the future of a currency than it is to pretend a company will grow at nearly the same rate).
- ghaff 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure the opposite is true. Many people are already invested in stocks and, even in the .com bubble, many had accounts with etrade and the like--some of which were part of the bubble itself. All you had to do was transfer your cash/stocks to pets.com or whatever. With bitcoin, you have to sign up for/transfer money to various sketchy exchanges that you've never previously used.
rhino369 9y ago
This probably isn‘t even 1/10 as bad as internet and tech bubble. That had common people throwing their entire 401k into tech stocks. My dad ruined his retirement fund buying Nextel options that ended up worthless. Bitcoin is a dumber bubble though.
- Kiro 9y ago
  I don't think we've seen anything yet. Imagine the crash when Bitcoin is $1M or $10M. I don't see that as an impossibility.
- cableshaft 9y ago
  There are people putting their life savings into bitcoin. You'll see those stories pop up from time to time on the bitcoin subreddit. I've only got in it what I can afford to lose, personally, which isn't a whole lot, but it's still some skin in the game, at least.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Several japanese retirement funds announced they’re going all in on Bitcoin, according to what I’ve heard. Even the rumors show that this is going in the same direction.
sulam 9y ago
It’s pretty much exactly the same, down to companies adding .com to their names and talking about their internet strategy and seeing their stock double.
- Kiro 9y ago
  There are so many other spectacular things with this bubble, down to the nature of the actual instrument itself. Cryptography, decentralisation, miners, forks, etc. The IT bubble was still a stock bubble. I think this is something new.
  - sulam 9y ago
    If you were an adult during the first one, we might be able to have a real conversation about this. If not, probably not so much. This bubble is relatively small in comparison -- so far. The number of companies, the amount of the real economy affected, the sheer pervasiveness in daily life, etc. AOL single handedly carpeted North America with CDs. Internet technology revolutionized so many things it's hard to pick the most important, in the space of about 5 years. The one that still stands out to me personally is how it totally crushed international long distance calling. Hell, it completely revolutionized the _porn_ industry. Bitcoin is no comparison (again, so far).
    - Kiro 9y ago
      > If you were an adult during the first one That was uncalled for. I was very much an adult during the first one. You are talking about the internet revolution in general and a comparison to blockchains could possibly be relevant but not in this discussion. You didn't trade the internet in the Dot-com bubble, you traded stocks. Bitcoin is different because that's the actual instrument being traded.
      - sulam 9y ago
        Not uncalled for at all. The people talking to me about Bitcoin and how big it is are almost all in their 20’s. They have a vague idea about the Internet bubble but they certainly didn’t live through it in any meaningful way. It’s like someone telling me I can’t properly appreciate the 70’s since I didn’t experience them as an adult. It’s totally true!
workthrowaway27 9y ago
The most recent times I've met someone and told them I was a programmer there next question has been along the lines of: "Do you have bitcoin/what do you think about bitcoin". Super strange.
Keyframe 9y ago
Someone said it's ok if everyone talks about that, start worrying when everyone says they bought some.
- usrusr 9y ago
  Group A is talking about bitcoin a lot to mutually reassure themselves that buying into it was the right move (and also a bit to keep others from selling before they do). Group B is talking about bitcoin a lot to mutually reassure themselves that staying out of it was the right decision (and also a bit to keep others out since all new paper money entering the exchanges weakens their arguments, at least superficially) I think that defection rates between those groups are already very low and will keep shrinking.
ermir 9y ago
I started to get tempted to get in the crypto craze after resisting it since 2011, until my mother, who can barely use a computer, told me last night "What is this Bitcoin that everyone keeps talking about, everyone is getting rich, we should get in on it". That was a definite sign to stay away. She was still tempted even after I explained the bubble and reminded her that 2000 of our people died last time something like this happened in 1997. A lot of people are going to suffer this time, it's not going to be pretty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_Civil_War
- Kiro 9y ago
  I posted another comment here saying that if the value reaches a certain level the Bitcoin crash could potentially start a war. I removed it though since I was downvoted to oblivion. I guess it wasn't so far-fetched after all!
s4vi0r 9y ago
The technology behind it could maybe one day cause "the new dawn", but there's 0 chance this is anything other than people going full retard. It's like a smaller scale, equally as stupid/shitty version of that tulip craze that happened in the Netherlands like 400 years ago or whatever.