Quote from: JayJuanGee on May 31, 2022, 11:50:07 PM

Quote from: arcmetal on May 31, 2022, 10:14:10 PM

Quote from: tadamichi on May 31, 2022, 04:36:23 PM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on May 31, 2022, 04:02:08 PM

Quote from: tadamichi on May 31, 2022, 02:02:11 PM

Bitcoin is not a stock. It’s designed to be a medium of exchange. Just like a currency. When someone trades euros for dollars, is it „dumping of shares“ too? Ofc nah. It’s simply switching into a different medium of exchange. And just like you can’t pay with dollars in europe, you can’t pay with Bitcoin everywhere yet.

So the logical step is, to trade Bitcoin against whatever currency is accepted wherever you are, and then do the trade(if you’re trading with parties that don’t accept Bitcoin yet). But the more Bitcoin will be accepted, the less this will be necessary and you can use Bitcoin as a medium of exchange directly. Then there will be no more „dumping of shares“ and (spoiler alert) the system didn’t collapse. Or in simple words: magic myth numbers will allow for direct worldwide trade without intermediaries.

I don't really disagree with your overall points tadamichi, yet I am a little bit bothered if we end up locking ourselves too much into assertions that bitcoin is like a currency and not like a stock.. because in several ways, based on bitcoin's unique design aspects, bitcoin is like a lot of asset classes all at once. So, in that regard, bitcoin can be used like a currency, but there is already quite a bit of reluctance for bitcoin HODLers to use bitcoin like a currency in part based on the fact that it is the most sound of monies that the world has ever seen... so many people are going to become way more reluctant to spend it, when they may well have access to a lot of other monies that are less valuable and they can spend those less valuable monies (even assets) first.

So in some sense, there seems to be a kind of current built-in incentive status, that bitcoin HODLers are less likely to spend their bitcoin until after such a point that they either run out of the other kinds of monies/assets or they are so damned overly allocated in bitcoin that they have no disincentive to spend it because they have too much of it anyhow. It can take a while for bitcoin HODLers to get to the point in which they feel that they are overly allocated in bitcoin, especially if they are receiving cashflow/value from other kinds of asset classes/currencies - so they may well be inclined to spend those lower value assets./currencies first.

Personally, I don't have any real issues comparing bitcoin to stocks, even though it will tend towards a lot of misunderstandings if there are too many attempts to pigeonhole bitcoin into such a category - because in essence all stocks have a considerable amount of centralization, and so it could end up being way too misleading to be presuming bitcoin to be similar in those kinds of ways that HODLers/developers/miners have some kinds of control over bitcoin's issuance - and they do not.. it's almost as if Snowshow is wanting to imply that bitcoin has proof of stake attributions (similar to stocks) when it does not, so in that regard I agree with you tadamichi that getting too caught up in stock analogies will lead people to NOT understand the attributions of bitcoin very well.

I completely agree with you Jay. My point of view was more of a long term outlook, in the case that Bitcoin becomes so dominant that hodling alone won’t bring gains anymore. Then i think the incentives change and it will be used as a currency. But we’re still far away from this point. I just brought this up, because it kinda defeats the ponzi narrative, if Bitcoin really was a ponzi, then why does it stop bringing gains once it’s used everywhere and you wouldn’t even need to convert it into other currencies. But it’s a win/win situation for us hodlers, because it serves us like a stock or safe haven, as long as the old broken system continues and in case Bitcoin wins we get an ultra sound money system and early investors got rewarded for making it happen(because they have stacked the most sats).

What you guys are describing is just the S-curve of adoption. This is something that holds true for any new technology. Think of: electricity distribution, the light bulb, TV, the internet, cell phones, etc. They all went through the S-curve of adoption: at the introduction of a new technology very few will have it, or use it, but as time passes and if the technology is useful more people will have it and utilize it.

But in the case of bitcoin it so happens that in the beginnings of its S-curve, it has a low price and then later in its S-curve it has a high price. Which is simply due to supply and demand. This allows for some who notice this to get in on an easy way to grow an investment. But, as you point out, towards the end of its S-curve, when bitcoin has spread as far as it can spread, its price will level out. A point will be reached where buyers and sellers are in a sort of balance. The price will still oscillate, but the large incremental rise over time will no longer exist. Of course, no one really knows when or at what price this will happen, at a million, at ten million, this is not possible to predict.

I guess its just cool to see that others have noticed these obvious (maybe not so obvious to some, I'm looking at you Snowshow) properties of bitcoin.

Sure exponential s-curve adoption based on Metcalfe's law and networking principles has been part of what tadamichi and I had been talking about, but it was not the only thing, because when you are an individual attempting to decide what you are going to do in terms of whether to invest into bitcoin and how much to invest, you may or may not be able to recognize or appreciate that exponential s-curve adoption exists where you might be on the timeline or even abilities to figure out your own financial and/or psychological circumstances.

Even though you (arcmetal) acknowledge that there are ups and downs within the s-curve.. we still should acknowledge that those squiggly exponential lines are not guaranteed in terms of either how far they will go UPpity or how long it will take for the BTC price associated with the squigglies to get to whatever point that they are getting (and sure you acknowledged that part too). Lot's of normies (or bitcoin newbies) may well end up getting reckt as fuck, if they are not able to figure out some kind of reasonable and prudent strategy that fits for them, which many of us would theorize that kind of reckening to be difficult to achieve, even though we likely have witnessed some folks who end up achieving what seems to be an impossible task (getting reckt in a bull asset class like bitcoin).. and sure one of the fastest ways to get reckt is to use margin or leverage, but another way is merely trying to time the ups and downs of the market with a kind of hubris belief of knowing where the BTC price is going in the short-to-medium term.. which also may well end up causing both financial and/or psychological damages.

Correct. Trying to come in now and make wealth based on trading on the little ups and downs off day to day ups and downs, is very difficult. It is not something I'd recommend to anyone. Unless you have at least a good system should one attempt that, but even then they can still get reckt as you say.

This is opposed to the easier method, which is getting more difficult to do as time passes. ... That being, if a newbie had entered into the bitcoin system say ten years ago, they could have made 1,000 to 10,000 times their investment. But, getting in now they may see a 10 times, or waiting a little longer, a 100 times on their investment. ... If investing to make wealth is all they had in mind.

But there are other newbies that can get in now that can do even better, without going down the path of investing. That is, they can take advantage of bitcoin's properties to make bank. For example, someone could start up a remittance business between the US and Colombia, or between the US and Thailand, or wherever. Or, they can get into any other number of businesses popping up.

These are the ideas, the topics, that seem to elude the OP.

And then there are the other opportunities that will eventually pop up in the future. There will be layers on top of the bitcoin system, things that no one has come up with yet.

I recall using the internet back around the early 1990's when mosaic came out. I used to like using a web search utility called "webcrawler". It worked well, and I thought it was great and a useful idea to help me with my web searches. ... Then one day, during one of my computer classes back then, these two guys walked into the lecture hall and gave us a short preview of their new web search engine. I think they mentioned that they were from some university out east, or was it the west coast, hehe. They described a new algorithm for how to tie a search term to a page's contents. Then they showed us their webpage, it was a white blank page with just one entry box and couple of buttons. They called it "Google". ... When I went to the lab, I tried it, and I liked it because it had no clutter, no ads on the main page. I thought wow, what a great idea.

No one really knows what's coming.