Quote from: Marvelockg on Today at 11:47:37 AM

Quote from: coyhasmon on June 17, 2025, 02:09:31 PM

With banks it is hard for many reasons. Often they ask too much information and make the process complicated. In other times, if you live somewhere rural you may need to go far away to open your account. Even when you open it, there is no branch close to you and maybe only an ATM at best. For someone who needs help from a bank worker in a branch, this is not useful. So why bother and lose some important money each month to pay for the account?

as much as we can identify this as part of the problem resident in rural areas are facing when it comes to getting access to the banking system, it is going to be more difficult for them to deal with bitcoin since to an extent, it is more difficult to understand bitcoin if you do not understand how the banking system works. a major issue people leaving in remote villages encounter is lack of access to internet services which is going to be at the Centre of using bitcoin as an alternative to the banking system. also, the issue of unavailability of smart phones is going to be another that is of serious concern because the majority of those leaving in such environment rarely have access to a good phone that is capable of browsing. it might even surprise you that the majority of them do not know how to use them which makes things more difficult to those that might be ready to champion the advocacy.

the issue of social divide is really broad and for people that are of the region that are on the list you brought out, the reality on ground is far more than what might have been documented already.

I don't think internet accessibility is a primary argument for this topic. Sure, there still are people who do not have internet but this group continues to shrink at a very fast rate and they will probably not even hear about Bitcoin if they don't have internet anyway. I'll also add the assumption that if you don't have access to internet in the year 2025, then you probably don't have money to invest or just play around with Bitcoin. Data on this differs a bit between sources, but look at this chart.

Quote from: d5000 on Today at 05:19:13 PM

I agree with what you wrote about price discovery, and it would be interesting if there was data about Bitcoin volatility "taking out" the general bullish trend. I'm currently not aware of such a chart, but it may be possible to calculate it based on daily exchange data. And it's indeed likely that this would bring Bitcoin even closer to "average" currencies. This value could be part of a metric to evaluate the "usefulness" of Bitcoin as a currency/savings alternative to average people, including the unbanked.

Do you have an idea how this could be calculated mathematically speaking? I'm now really interested in this, but I don't know how to subtract the trend from the volatility.

Quote from: d5000 on Today at 05:19:13 PM

Where I don't agree is that Bitcoin "must go into the million range or it will go bust". Even if it stays in the current price range, or even lower, Bitcoin would still be a valuable "niche" currency. I also honestly think that the volatility-adjusted price trends (like "rainbow charts") hint that we'll not reach the million that easily, but of course an extreme bullish cycle is still possible, for example if Bitcoin truly is perceived by the markets to rival gold.

I am not sure when we will reach it, but I think that we find ourselves close to the last stage of Bitcoin's growth before it becomes the largest asset class. As you have seen, getting the first ETF took almost a decade and once we got ETFs they started breaking all kinds of records and the competition is strong. The same thing is slowly happening with Bitcoin treasuries. We are only missing two things. One is for at least 2 of the biggest companies in the world to start a Bitcoin reserve, and the other is that at least one country like the USA official adopts it. Game theory suggests that it will play out exactly how it played out with everything else, the last example being ETFs. People tend to underestimate the total money supply, how tiny Bitcoin is and the potential just based on numbers. If you had told people 10 years ago about the price reaching $100k how many would believe you? It is very similar now. If the USA wanted to acquire 1M Bitcoin, it sounds like a lot of money but that is a drop in the bucket for them. Bitcoin despite its size is still very very small, and the money printer does not look like it will stop in the near future. It is just my take on it.

Quote from: d5000 on Today at 05:19:13 PM

Quote from: coyhasmon on Today at 03:25:10 AM

I strongly disagree with this. All the bullishness comes only from two activities the ETFs and Bitcoin treasuries, nothing else. The macro environment is terrible. There are wars everywhere, interest rates are high and quantitative tightening is still going on.

I was referring only to the Bitcoin price trend itself. However, several stock markets were also rallying in the past years despite of the tightening.

I stand corrected then, what you wrote is accurate. That said, I think that there is a general underestimation of the significance of Bitcoin's bullishness during current macro conditions. Once things do get better, and eventually they must, I think we will see a lot more positive surprises.

Quote from: d5000 on Today at 05:19:13 PM

Quote from: coyhasmon on Today at 03:25:10 AM

I would like to pose another question as a counter. Assuming the USD is the strongest currency, how much have savings been devalued in real terms in just the last 5 years? I'm not talking about officially fabricated numbers, but the real market value of the dollar. I think these days we can safely consider saving in other currencies more risky.

I think if you compare the USD purchasing power loss into account the Bitcoin performance in the past 5 years you're of course correct. Even the "official" numbers hint to at least a 30-40% "USD dip", and if we take into account real estate prices for example it may be lower [1]. So a 50% Bitcoin dip would not look that scary if we assign a high likelihood to a recovery in 2-3 years.

However the Bitcoin dips have been more in the 75-85% range until now. I hope 2022 was the last time we saw that, but it's not impossible that price discovery also could go into another direction eventually. This is related to what I wrote above: it's possible that Bitcoin will stay relatively "niche", i.e. not seriously rival gold for example, but without being a failure. And we don't know still where the equilibrium of that scenario could be. My own personal estimation is that we're still lower than for that scenario (it could be at a $150-200k Bitcoin) but it's not out of the question that the equilibrium is below 100k.

[1] Real estate however has several catches as a metric, often larger cities (which are currently bubbling due to a strong rural -> urban movement in the last 15-20 years) are overrepresented in the price data, and also external effects like costs to maintain a property, which in some countries is very high due to bad urban planning, can influence the price.

Yes, I agree with this. There was a short period during which the prices were very low and the final bottom was a bit too much of a dip in the last cycle. I'd also like to see a reduction in the maximum dip that occurs in each cycle. I'd like to say that it is more likely that this will happen now because of institutional investors and demand, but it is too early to determine that. If this does change then yet another argument against Bitcoin will fade away. Opponents with real contra arguments have steadily been losing ground.