Quote from: NotHatinJustTrollin on January 11, 2015, 06:51:53 PM

So maybe delusional bulls will finally see the truth and stop losing money on a shitty investment thinking that the market will finally turn around during the "despair" phase?

What's the alternative? That I want to manipulate the market in order to buy cheap coins?
Sure, whatever. I just can't wait.

These arguments are superfluous. Clearly, both points of view apply in some respect.

12 months ago, Bitcoin was overvalued as an investment but undervalued as a technology.

As an investment it lost value this year. But as a technology there isn't much disagreement - even amongst the most hardened media trolls - that it is the future and it isn't hard to see why.

Up till now it's been impossible to create a monetary token that is electronic without being reproducible. It's simply the nature of electronic media that "copy & paste" rules and that has made it a huge challenge to create any kind of token that could be considered as tradable in such a way that it could not be counterfeited. The so called "electronic money" we use on a day to day basis isn't money. it's just a counterparty held balance that changes according to the instructions of other authoritative counterparties ("banks" to me & you).

With the invention of blockchain technology, the counterparty is no longer needed in the loop. This solves two problems that "tulips" never had a hope in hell of solving:

[1] - it provides the basis for an unbacked, unlevered electronic monetary base which, given that most of the worlds markets have moved from a physical to an electronic platform over the last century, is an inevitable consequence of modern technology

[2] - in principle, it makes the counterparty system redundant (I say in 'principle' because email didn't make the post office redundant, it just created a whole new medium where the post office was non existent)

Make no mistake. A technology which solves both those problems at once is of immense value - both practical and financial. Just look at the pain and anguish that was the common currency known as the Euro. And yet a couple of decades later we have a common currency that is self managing, doesn't require agonising years of debate between states and that is not enforced on anybody yet freely available to everybody.

Whether you think Bitcoin is "IT" or not, the technology is out of the bag and here to stay. As it happens, I think Bitcoin is now far enough down the line that it isn't now going to ever go away. The current valuation is fine - it's 300% to 400% what it was 18 months ago but what most people don't see if huge amount of infrastructure development that's gone on this year which will start to bear fruit now. It may not be some huge explosion - email wasn't, it just crept up on everyone until we were all using it.

To compare Bitcoin with tulips is a bit like comparing a modern aeroplane wing with a plank of wood. Yes - in some respects the comparison holds, but the only people who cite it as being significant are those with no clue of what makes one fly and the other not.

Cryptocurrencies will fly because they solve a huge problem - one that most people don't even realise they have yet because they've lived with it for so long. It requires the supporting infrastructure to be advanced enough for mass adoption to take place, but take place it will.