Quote from: raid_n on March 10, 2014, 09:24:34 AM

Quote from: Ibian on March 09, 2014, 06:38:26 PM

It only looks like a gamble if you don't understand the fundamentals.

I am by no means a bear and believe that bitcoin has the potential to become something huge.
But I feel that it is important to counter-balance these insane claims.

Clearly you do not understand the fundamentals, not one bit.
Bitcoin is two things. It is a protocol for securely transferring ownership of bitcoins and it is an abstract representation of value.
The first part is formally provable which is why we place trust in bitcoin.
The second part is a perception of its utility now and in the future.
Bitcoin's value fluctuates so much because of the uncertainty about the future outcome.
It is highly arrogant to believe that only you can see with certainty how bitcoin will succeed and everyone else is oblivious to the technological significance. If it were that clear that bitcoin will succeed the price would have quickly converged on what it should be in the future.

There is the very real possibility of a bitcoin fork or an entirely different project to ultimately succeed.
Look at the Linux world. Can you say with certainty that only one distro is "the one"?
You are making projections into the future and as such they inherently are uncertain. To call this anything but a gamble is a fallacy.
The real question that one should ask is what are the odds.
I personally believe them to be about 50%

In my eyes OP is too focused on the potential value. This is a sign of greed and that rarely leads to great decisions

Greed is one of the fundamentals. It's why miners mine. It's why investors invest. It's why traders trade. And it is why we won't see a fork or a 51%.