
Bitcoin Is No Bubble, Says Investor With 30K Bitcoin Stake - pdog
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-10/bitcoin-is-no-bubble-says-investor-with-213-million-stake
======
mabbo
Tulips can only go up, says investor with his life savings invested in tulips.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Eh, he's a well-known VC with a portfolio of tens of different companies, a >
billion dollar net worth and a fraction of 1% of his original net worth put
into bitcoin, which has grossed him $200m.

So no, not quite.

~~~
thisisit
Not that I am disagreeing with Draper but this is like saying because someone
is rich and invested in many things, they cannot hold a biased view on
something they own.

~~~
mrb
This is a lousy argument. If he does not hold BTC, people say he is not
putting his money where his mouth is. And if he holds BTC, people say he is
biased. No matter what, Draper cannot win with these lousy arguments.

------
d3ckard
Well, I disagree.

Bitcoin is purely speculative market right now. Bitcoin is supposed to be a
currency - thing you pay with. Right now constant deflation means nobody uses
it to pay, which defeats its purpose.

Bitcoin is also not gold. It has no inherent value, it's not useful in any way
besides as payment instrument and right now utility of BTC as payment
instrument is close to zero.

Finally, Bitcoin is extremely expensive to maintain (electricity and computing
power) and there is no way to lower that cost. Once BTC network processing
power is too small percentage of world's total processing power, it becomes
feasible to perform an attack on a Network (you need 51% as everybody knows).

So, given that production of Bitcoin has a hard limit, at some point increase
in price won't be able to offset resources necessary to mine, which will cause
collapse of network processing power, which in turn will make network
susceptible for attack.

Mind you, it has nothing to do with product competitiveness(contracts,
transaction times etc.). Bitcoin is designed in a way that is not sustainable
and it will become clear at some point.

~~~
mrb
« _nobody uses it to pay_ »

Always the same misconception being repeated... Your _opinion_ is not
supported by data. Usage is quickly growing:

[https://blog.bitpay.com/bitpay-growth-2017/](https://blog.bitpay.com/bitpay-
growth-2017/)

[https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all](https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all)
(before someone says "it's speculators": no it's not—buying, holding, and
selling BTC on an exchange does _not_ create transactions on the blockchain;
the vast majority of speculators leave their BTC in an exchange and never move
it)

~~~
foobardeveloper
There is an important distinction between valuing something inherently with
bitcoin and accepting bitcoin for a real time USD conversion. What your are
seeing with all these merchants is the latter I suppose, they have an
intermediary who accepts bitcoin and converts it to USD and hands them the
amount. Until something can be stably valued in Bitcoin similar to USD, it's
use as a currency will be a moot point.

~~~
mrb
Your argument is like saying an American manufacturer whose British sales
office accepts GBP as payments which are immediately converted to USD means
that "GBP's use as a currency is moot in this case".

~~~
foobardeveloper
The conversion is just a workaround of a fundamental problem, the real
question is, Can a product be stably valued for a reasonable period of time
using bitcoin?

I can express the value of say a laptop for weeks, if not months, in USD /
GBP, can the same be done natively in bitcoin?

Can you point me to any manufacturer or business entity that values something
in bitcoin instead of mapping it to a fiat?

------
highace
And I still feel bad when I think about the 10 bitcoin I lost in mtgox and
what they'd be worth now... (he lost 40,000 in mtgox)

~~~
kaffeemitsahne
> _and what they 'd be worth now_

You could've bought back in after you lost them, at that time, for the same
amount of cash. Just like the guy who bought a pizza for 10k btc could've just
bought 10k more for a few tenners.

------
foobardeveloper
Let me just leave this here :

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd0TqkW7qHg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd0TqkW7qHg)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iNeXCAM_Ik](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iNeXCAM_Ik)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmH7GdSmSsU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmH7GdSmSsU)

------
ttul
Even if he loses it all, he’s a venture investor. This is what he does. It’s
his life to invest in crazy things.

One of his latest investments is a dodgy spam filtering idea that forces
marketers to pay to send email to you unless they are on your whitelist. This
will never work (source: I work in anti spam) for #reasons. But Tim clearly
has a major hard on for BTC.

------
cvaidya1986
I have a contrarian position. ETH will beat out Bitcoin in 5 years because
it’s a platform with smart contract programmability.

~~~
platz
You predict utility will beat out pure speculation, when the utility of
Bitcoin is largely ignored

~~~
cvaidya1986
More like a platform will beat out an app. FB vs MySpace.

------
mads
Aren’t those coins essentially worthless since he cannot unload them anywhere
without tanking the price?

He would have to sell them outside an exchange.

~~~
Cyphase
Outside an exchange is a place he can sell them.

