The Lemon Fool

They say a picture is worth a thousand words so first here are some screenshots of my financial news watchlist:
http://prntscr.com/oa29k3
http://prntscr.com/oa29r1
(you can see my full bitcoin watchlist here https://www.cityfalcon.com/watchlists)
However, there are some serious voices in the field of crypto, especially Bitcoin, such as Nouriel Roubini, that claim that Bitcoin is not secure, not decentralized and not even scalable. He even released this angry twit: http://prntscr.com/oa2hs0
My question to you is, as people with at least some experience, is really off or is there something substantial in his claims?

Hi Aldumbell

I agree its a bubble, but I dont think scalability will be the reason it collapses.

Im thinking it will more likely to collapse due to one of the following.

1) Hacking vulnerability in some of the exchanges which ends up effecting a huge number of users.
2) Government regulations come into force, something like Money Laundering & Terrorism Financing.
3) Richest BTC holders dumping and thus crashing the market.

Please post your theories... its a interesting issue...

It's only going to take a few more years before the ability to 'mine' new bitcoins evaporates and the power consumption needed to mine them exceeds the world's electrical generating capacity?! As that happens the validation of transactions winds down and the whole thing becomes unviable. End of bitcoin!

By then we'll have ZuckerBucks to replace them

Scumpy,

It's only going to take a few more years before the ability to 'mine' new bitcoins evaporates and the power consumption needed to mine them exceeds the world's electrical generating capacity?!

Where you see this as a negative to price, I see it as a positive.

The disallowance to mine new coins means the current ones become more scarce, which will only push up price.

As for scalability, you are correct but only as it stands, because it is possible to change the system, therefore it will likely be addressed and altered to fix this issue.

5pFredo wrote:The disallowance to mine new coins means the current ones become more scarce, which will only push up price.

As for scalability, you are correct but only as it stands, because it is possible to change the system, therefore it will likely be addressed and altered to fix this issue.

As I understand things, there are two actions in "mining".
One is the generation of bitcoins, and yes the reward of doing this is going down so eventually it will not be worthwhile.
The other, which is essential to the operation of bitcoin is the process of adding transaction records to Bitcoin's public ledger of past transactions*.
It is only with a vast and distributed network of people processing these transaction records that Bitcoin transactions can be trustworthy without a named "bank" to honour the promise of value.

If most people stop mining, it will become easier to fake bitcoin transactions. And then who will be willing to accept bitcoins as payment?

- Rover

*Source: Bitcoin Wiki

The BBC are reporting today that bitcoin's energy consumption now equals Switzerland's! I think it includes both 'mining' and transaction monitoring.

Surely in the current climate this must be a big threat to bitcoin?

It's average range movement in a month is 2500 dollars. And nearly 1000 dollar range per day.

For the gamblers.

I believe Bitcoin and all the other crypto currencies will go to zero when the bubble bursts. By zero I mean nothing at all as the whole thing is a trendy fad with no regulations and no government backing.

A UK bank account (up to £85k) is a much better store of value and won't vanish at the keystroke of a malevalent computer hacker.

I've been reading a book by James Rickards entitled - The New Case For Gold, in which he advocates holding physical gold as a cash alternative. Of course there are numerous problems - security probably being at the top of the list. Governments especially the Chinese, are currently buying hundreds of tonnes of gold each year. I would take more notice of this buying activity than that of foolish people buying Bitcoin.

Well with Libra offering a 100% backing with hard (fiat) currency. Bitcoin is certainly worthless.

If Libra takes off the government will either ban it or regulate it so much that the costs of transactions they are trying to reduce and the social benefits to the unbanked will be eliminated.

Same old story. If it moves tax it or regulate it.

Although it's a bit obvious that the government will try fighting anything the name FB is on it...
I mean, first of all, it's obvious for anyone who's at the top of this chain (as there ARE people on top of the chain).
And second, you can argue about this company's reputation, but the fact that you can argue in the first place is a red light by itself.

Headed to a Bitcoin bubble?

Every day that the price of Bitcoin > 0 is a bubble. We’ve been in one for years.

As I understand things, there are two actions in "mining".
One is the generation of bitcoins, and yes the reward of doing this is going down so eventually it will not be worthwhile.
The other, which is essential to the operation of bitcoin is the process of adding transaction records to Bitcoin's public ledger of past transactions*.
It is only with a vast and distributed network of people processing these transaction records that Bitcoin transactions can be trustworthy without a named "bank" to honour the promise of value.

If most people stop mining, it will become easier to fake bitcoin transactions. And then who will be willing to accept bitcoins as payment?

Mining is the process of updating the blockchain with transactions. The transactions cannot be faked - once a miner has cracked the maths required to update the chain and generate some new BTC as miners-earnings, the result needs the approval of 12 (or 25? I can't remember) other miners before it is accepted as correct.
Many miners compete to do the update, the first to do it earns the BTC once accepted. This is one reason why such processing power is needed, the race.

Well with Libra offering a 100% backing with hard (fiat) currency. Bitcoin is certainly worthless.

The point of BTC is to have nothing to do with fiat. Nothing to do with government regulation. Libra offers a way of tracking people as an extension of facebook. Libra has already been banned, should the concept ever materialise, in Germany and France with the intent it is banned in Europe. The US like it, they can retain control of the masses should the masses decide to go crypto.

Am I the only person (lunatic) here pro-Bitcoin? It seems to be the case

Opening myself up to a flurry of abuse (I hope not):
- Bitcoin exchanges collapse and funds are lost. I think this happens with banks and I'm sure we could name a few in UK/Europe over the past few years despite throwing tax payers money at them.
- Storing coins on an exchange is optional and wiser people use exchanges to buy bitcoins then move the coins out to private wallets
- I tried to move £20k just yesterday and the bank (Lloyds) limited me to £10k / day. I haven't come across this before where someone else controls my actual money and dictates when I can use it.
- Bitcoin is used in criminal enterprises according to JP Morgan - https://cointelegraph.com/news/jpmorgan ... -judgement
- The Fed just printed another $75 billion to correct the lending market. That's now 16% of the entire $800 billion bailout in 2008.
- Recent fines for just the laundering of money:
Wachovia - $160m
Deutsche Bank - $670m
Bank of Australia - $700m
ING - $900m
Citigroup - $237m
Standard Chartered - $967m
Commerzbank - $1.45b
HSBC - $1.9b
JPMorgan - $2.05b
(And they all used the US dollar, not bitcoin)

I quite liked this definition I found; "Bitcoin is a Paperless Medium of Exchange that allows users to transact on an international scale instantly. The value of which is determined by those who use it. It is not a currency of a state or country, it is a world currency of the people."

Couple of interesting links:

https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2019/08 ... r-company/ (Cute facts in there, excuse the swearword at the start of the text)

https://dickline.info/ (John MacAfee will eat his **** if Bitcoin doesn't hit a target he set. This site tracks progress amusingly)

and finally:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin- ... irculation


I don't think it's a fly-by-night fad. I do think it's the future and should be used as a savings option for small amounts each month with a view to that yacht and villa in Tuscany based retirement in 2030.

There was this quote above too:

A UK bank account (up to £85k) is a much better store of value and won't vanish at the keystroke of a malevolent computer hacker.

I do not believe this to be the case today.

Update:

- The Fed just printed another $75 billion to correct the lending market. That's now 16% of the entire $800 billion bailout in 2008.

They have now printed the entire value of all crypto currencies in one week, this week.

39.2% of the 2008 bailout, in five days. $275Bn.