
Bitcoin Is Back, But It Never Really Left - Amorymeltzer
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/bitcoin-is-back-but-it-never-really-left/
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jakejake
Aside from a few bitcoin I bought before it exploded, I have had an uncanny
ability to buy and sell bitcoin at exactly the wrong times. If you want to
make a lot of money with bitcoins, my advice is to look at what I do and then
do the exact opposite!

~~~
applecore
That "uncanny" ability is mostly a result of markets being much more
sophisticated (in terms of price determination) than you think. It has nothing
to do with bitcoins; it's just as true for stocks, bonds, or any other traded
commodity. If you're a long-term investor and not a short-term, price-
sensitive trader, you shouldn't worry too much about it.

~~~
jcslzr
if by sophisticated you mean ringed...

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cb18
It's amusing how there has been a spate of these 'bitcoin is back' articles
after this recent little(by bitcoin standards) pump and dump. Because the last
time bitcoin was here apparently was the massive pump and dumps in 2013.

So the criteria for bitcoin being somewhere is people getting fleeced and
losing their shirts all for the promise of 'magic internet money,' no scratch
that, 'winning the crypto lottery,' duly noted.

~~~
cb18
And another amusing little wrinkle to this is that this recent btc pump and
dump appears to have been driven in large part by an actual admitted ponzi
scheme with no pretensions of appearing otherwise.

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bitcoin+mmm](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bitcoin+mmm)

[https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/mmm-global-republic-
of...](https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/mmm-global-republic-of-bitcoin-
cryptos-next-scandal)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_(Ponzi_scheme_company)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_\(Ponzi_scheme_company\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Mavrodi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Mavrodi)

~~~
herendin
Though you love using the extremely incendiary term "pump and dump" in your
numerous comments, you obviously don't even understand it. Look up a
definition.

A pump and dump is type of fraud that cannot, by definition, be "driven" by
any _true_ external factor, such as people buying bitcoins to invest in a
pyramid scheme, as you've just suggested. Therefore your comment contradicts
itself.

Though it's not impossible that the MMM ponzi affected the bitcoin price, your
comments are mostly lazy mud-slinging and weakly-founded opinions dressed up
as facts. That's better suited to reddit

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applecore
We're somewhere between the _Trough of Disillusionment_ and the _Slope of
Enlightenment_ within the industry-standard hype cycle, which is just fine.

~~~
herendin
FWIW, I think that hypecycle graph is almost totally garbage. Nobody knows
where Bitcoin and the Blockchain are going. Maybe it's a false dawn, or maybe
it's the future. But I think predictions are worth very little. Nobody knows.
Predictions are usually just people trying to claim ownership on your
brainspace.

That's opinion, so take it with a pinch of salt :)

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cb18
_" In fact, last week, as the price of bitcoin topped $500, the usage rate
reached an all-time high, after roughly doubling over the past twelve months.
“The real usage is catching up to the hype,” Armstrong says."_

That is a highly questionable claim, and considering the source, all the more
questionable.

As this article mentions, the metric of bitcoin 'transactions,' is in no way
equivalent to what would commonly be understood to be an economic transaction.

Anybody who has been even cursorily following bitcoin the past six months, or
so, can look at that chart and know exactly what it is showing, especially
those spikes this past summer, in the lingo, 'stress tests,' or 'spam
attacks.'

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/search?q=stress+test&restri...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/search?q=stress+test&restrict_sr=on)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/search?q=spam+attack&restri...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/search?q=spam+attack&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all)

And since carrying out one of these 'stress test'/'spam attacks', simply
involves writing a script to shuffle around some bitcoins and then running it
on a server, it is pretty obvious that is where the majority of transaction
volume is coming from since the block size increase proponents have an
ideological incentive to do so.(I'm on neither side of the block size debate
btw.) And anybody banking their livelihood on bitcoin has a financial
incentive to paint a picture of increasing 'transactions,' and when painting
that picture is as simple as flipping a switch on a server, it's pretty
obvious that is what is occurring.

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coldtea
> _Bitcoin Is Back, But It Never Really Left_

It also never really went anywhere. Remains, and will be for the foreseeable
future, a curiosity.

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Udik
" _the ultimate aim is to turn bitcoin into something that anyone can use to
more easily store, send, and receive money_ "

Please, tell how you do that with a currency whose value fluctuates so wildly.
The problem with bitcoin, to put it simply, is that as soon as people start
_using_ it, its value soars, making it unusable again. That's why it will
never work in its current form.

~~~
balladeer
This is what I have never understood about Bitcoin and its advocates (who I
guess are just fanboys or early adopters holding bitcoins). I mean it's just
like shares. Also, it's very skewed. Whoever got in first has got a lot of it
with your chance of getting it at later stages not equal, actually extremely
unlikely. And no sir, no, it's not the same case with "money" as we use it
today. Bitcoin is broken in this sense if we talk of it from a traditional
mean of currency point of view. It's just a glorified fad for geeks, fans, and
early adopters.

~~~
cb18
_Bitcoin and its advocates (who I guess are just [...] early adopters holding
bitcoins)._

Exactly. This is the fatal flaw of bitcoin, the distribution model.

~~~
winthrowe
What's your alternative distribution model? How do you propose to bootstrap an
independent value store unattached to existing national currencies? It seems
that bitcoin mirrors that quote about democracy in that way, "the worst form
except the others that have been tried."

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askafriend
Meh, Bitcoin is boring.

