Re: rpietila Wall Observer - the Quality TA Thread ;)
Imagine you were back in the 90s, the WWW is starting to gain traction, you're convinced of its golden future, and you are able to buy shares of the HTTP. You don't even need a brokerage account or anything, you can do it in any amount, by cash, anonymously, on the street. That's pretty amazing.
Great point. Makes for a good sales pitch.
I love how these types of simplistic, short sighted, narrow, etc. comments (following):
All of the above arguments could also be applied to dot-coms when they were in their early stages. I'm sure early adopters were as ecstatic as BTC early adopters. So it must not be a surprise when bubble crashes sooner or later, before cryptocurrencies become as usual as Internet.
Bring out TRUTH that not only squashes the OP's comment but does so in a multi-faceted way.
Not only do we now see the diamond that is Bitcoin (and cryptocurrency like tech) but we get to see more of her facets thanks to the bright comments shared here.
Its About Sharing and thanks for doing so
Sorry, I haven't exactly caught the tone of your message, either it's positive or negative. I assume that's due to English not being my native language. Anyway, I'll expand the idea behind comparison with dot-coms.
WWW and HTTP is very good example. Considering that blockchain is underlying technology like TCP, HTTP, etc., let's imagine we could had bought protocol shares back then, before the boom of dot-coms, just like we now buy Bitcoin and alts. Then, during the dot-com bubble, the price of these protocol shares would likely have risen along with dot-coms and crashed later. Just because underlying technology is not as demanded as before and initial euphoria is gone. That's what I meant by speaking about bubble crashing. Even though I wouldn't mind it for growing indefinitely, as I suppose the majority on this forum do, I don't believe it could. At one point it will fall heavily and it's better to be ready for it. I'm not saying it's going to happen tomorrow or happening already, just at some point in future.
Basically, I was saying that your statement was based on an analogy. This is very simplistic. Not that simple isn't sometimes right, and not that your analogy was completely false, but the replies to your message, showed much deeper and well thought out possibilities.
The analogy you pose, loses traction (or grip) as we start to understand that the protocol in this situation is money (for starters, and when you look at the further uses of it, more value is added). So, not only is it money, but it is a backing for other technologies which will be built on top of and along side it and all that they entail. (e.g. Counterparty, NXT, Ethereum, etc.) So, where as we can't exactly buy "http" we can by "BTC". The companies that bubbled and crashed are not exactly analogous to BTC itself crashing, where as those companies were built on top of the internet, they were not the internet (http). We might say any of Counterparty, NXT, Ehtereum, etc. might fail, but that is not the same as BTC failing. BTC (http) is not going anywhere anytime soon (unless there is a catastrophic event), so companies such as Pets.com, etc. might have failed, but HTTP never bubbled and failed. The analogy you pose is incomplete and has to be, as the current technology of Bitcoin (and it's blockchain) is not just a protocol. It also contains an intrinsic value in a sense.
Its about sharing