+3

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Definitely not.

Now? There's been nothing left for over a year. Just smoke and mirrors.

Is it really hackers though? My impression has been that many of the biggest / most notorious failures of major players in bitcoin have been due to the operators of a "business" either running a scam from the beginning, running an honest business for a while but then deciding to run with the money, or just being plain incompetent and failing. Karpeles ended up with how many millions after Gox was "hacked"? Pretty easy to "hack" something if you're the one running it. In other words.. it's not the hackers, but the businesses themselves, that are the problem.

I'm as much a fan of small government and individual freedom as the next person who tried out bitcoin, but the reality seems to clearly indicate that regulation and oversight is needed.

Really? Gox? Last month? That was like a year and a half ago, not last month, can't keep blaming stuff on Gox forever. Unfortunately, Mt. Gox was not the only scam... from my experience, the overwhelming majority of bitcoin-related businesses are scams, frauds, failures, etc. And, given that this is unlikely to change, it will continue to be a major problem with the bitcoin economy.

So your theory is that after very few people are left using/hoarding bitcoin, suddenly bitcoin will become relevant again? It's not the price of bitcoin that matters, but its adoption as a system that people use. Also, thanks for your links, but I don't think questions about the long term viability of bitcoin can be addressed by technical analysis of the bitcoin price (technical analysis is built on ignoring the fundamentals and just looking at price action, but it's the fundamentals that I am interested in).  

Asicminer had its IPO in 2012 at 0.1 BTC/share, seeking initial cash to develop ASICs for bitcoin mining. They were among the first few companies to market with ASICs and were able to provide investors with a profitable dividend for a while based on this first generation product. Shares reached highs of 4.5 BTC each. However, the Asicminer team was unable to translate this initial success into a lasting business... their 2nd generation of chips was a failure (cancelled), and the 3rd generation of chips were delivered behind schedule and under spec, leading to losses. In the wake of the gen 3 failure, friedcat (the presumed CEO) stopped communicating. It is now presumed that those who had access to Asicminer money have run with whatever remained, although this has yet to be conclusively proven.

To answer the original question... you can't destroy the economy, so I'm not worried. You can destroy the financial system, but not the economy. So long as some people want things that other people have, and are willing to pay for them, there will be an economy.

As for people being put out of work by machines.... this is already happening and has been a continual trend. There won't be any one moment when suddenly machines replace everyone, but just the slow gradual automation of various tasks that we have been living with for decades now.

I'd say middle class is anyone in the range of income/wealth that makes the following statements true:

- does not need to worry about having enough money to afford basics like food/shelter/healthcare/etc on a regular basis. That is, they make enough to have security in their access to basic needs.
- does not have a store of wealth sufficiently large that earning income is no longer necessary to ensure the above security for the rest of their life

In the US, anyone making more than about $20-50k/year (depending on location) and holding less than about $2 million in liquid assets could fairly be characterized as middle class.

If you start earning $250k you're middle class for a while, until you've accumulated a few million in your savings/stocks/bonds/etc. Once you have that few million in liquid wealth (excluding value of primary residence), you're upper class, I'd say. If you're earning $500k but spending it all and never manage to accumulate any wealth, you're probably still middle class since if you lose your job you're just as screwed as the guy making $50k. Upper class is about having the freedom to not need to work for a living any more.

One of the few replies of interest so far, thank you.

In regards to sending $100 million, I don't know what kind of fees someone gets charged for that as I've never tried. My guess is that if you are a billionaire and in the habit of sending $100 million around, probably someone is paying you for the privilege of being the one to carry out your transactions, rather than the other way around. As for sending it with bitcoins... yes you can send 400,000 bitcoins with a low fee, but no, you can't send $100 million USD with that low fee... conversion charges on either side will eat you alive, not to mention market illiquidity. But even if you are right... sending very large sums like that is of use only to a tiny tiny fraction of the population, and small scale transactions that typify the economy generally have very low / no fees to the user.

As for no one telling you what to do with it, how to spend it, and how much you can spend... does someone tell you that with real money? The government takes its cut in taxes (which it will certainly take with bitcoin too if it ever grows outside of a tiny niche), and the rest you can do with as you please (outside of criminal activities), can you not? I mean maybe your significant other imposes some restrictions on your spending, but that hardly goes away regardless of what kind of currency you use.

As for blockchain technology... yes, there is a real innovation there, and it perhaps can find its uses. Though, I am not certain of its applicability for uses other than "online coins", since the design of the blockchain has been around for ~6 years now, and no major company has adopted it for other uses as far as I know. Still, even if cryptographically secured iterative ledgers modeled on the blockchain become commonplace in other commercial applications, that still says nothing about bitcoin itself being succesful.

Also, what do you mean by the only owner? In what regard do you own the bitcoin in your digital wallet more definitively than the dollar bill in your physical wallet or the bar of gold in your safe box?

I've lost about 1 BTC in securities, yes. Annoying, but hardly a big deal. Lost a little bit and learned my lesson. However, that is not the reason that I am doubtful of bitcoin's future.

Your call of course. Personally, I reserve my ignore list for trolls, rather than people that make one post I disagree with. But suit yourself.

P/E ratios are near historic norms and far from bubble peaks:

http://bespokeinvest.com/thinkbig/2014/5/20/sp-500-historical-pe-ratio.html


The population (in Western countries) is aging and an ever greater fraction of the population are retired, leading to a long term decline in participation rates until we get over the demographic hump. The unemployment rate is more relevant because it counts the people that are actually looking for work and not finding it, rather than counting retirees, college students, etc.


I think that future is already here, and we are already all using it, with online payment processors that let you buy things in any currency for only a nominal fee.

Meh, no interest in crap like that. The only bitcoins I ever got were a few back when you could mine profitably with GPUs, and a few more in exchange for services. Never bought any with real money and don't plan to. What I am interested in is if anyone serious still sees a future in bitcoin, and if so, what they're reasons might be. That's why I started this thread.

Yep the transaction just showed up in the blockchain a minute ago. Looks like about 2 hour processing time then.

Take your 50 BTC, sell it and get ~13k USD. Invest the USD in the stock market using any of the standard safe investing strategies. You will have lower risk and higher return.

I think it is.

Bitcoin use adoption has stalled. Media interest has dissipated. Prices have only slowly continued to decline for a long time now. Bitcoin securities have always been and still are a complete mess, with a near 100% failure (scam/fraud/incompetence/etc) rate. Mining has been concentrated in the hands of a few giant players, eliminating much of the advantage/security/democracy of thousands of individuals being the money processors. Alternative forms of online payment with US dollars (and other fiat currencies) are now cheaper, faster, and more secure than bitcoin (and of course far more usable to buy/sell real goods/services), eliminating any of its advantages as a payment system. Continued decline of bitcoin and strength in fiat currencies has put the lie to the idea of bitcoin as a store of value; there are far better more reliable hedges against inflation. Meanwhile the real economy is firing on all cylinders, stock markets are at all time highs, corporate earnings are higher than ever, unemployment is low, etc. Even amid the boom, no one cares about bitcoin any more. Bitcoin was a fad that lasted a few years, and is now on its way to being forgotten.

Thoughts? Anyone seriously disagree with this conclusion?

Why even bother getting out now? Any remaining investments people might have are worth pennies.

Well, they haven't processed the withdrawal so far. We'll see if they are even allowing withdrawals, I suppose.

Well, first thing I did was withdraw the bitcoins I had on deposit there. Wonder how many people are liquidating/withdrawing after that outage.