Realistic view: BTC is used as a speculative hedge, and to evade currency controls in China.
[2] http://rethinkresearch.biz/articles/ibm-samsung-unveil-adept...
There's admittedly a high cost of learning/adoption, but once that is overcome it's not an issue. My guess is that (like most technology) bitcoin will eventually be easy enough to use that we don't have to understand or think about it, the same way I don't really understand how ACH or merchant processing works but I have a credit card.
That cracked me up, because it sums up much of the Bitcoin experience... but in Australia at least, there's a card (Coinjar Swipe) that you can use to pay with Bitcoin in any store that accepts EFTPOS, which is most Australian stores. (The same card terminals that accept Visa & Mastercard usually accept EFTPOS.) You can even use it to convert Bitcoin to cash as Cash Out at supermarkets.
https://support.coinjar.com/hc/en-us/articles/202202609-Intr...
Anyone can "contribute" to discussions on anything from the budget of the DoD to health care without having the slightest clue how anything actually works. All you have to do is instead of having to deal with those cumbersome details you just talk about "money" and suddenly everybody is free to join the discussion with great enthusiasm and unhindered by constraints of missing information or subject knowledge.
That's also why a lot of "solutions" to any problem work like this:
Problem => Money => Solution
Problem => Magic => Solution
I write meaty articles about Bitcoin; if that's what you seek, check out: http://www.coindesk.com/author/jameson-lopp/ and https://medium.com/@lopp
It could be because of the barriers to entry, even perceived barriers to entry, or barriers to said use that it's not actually being used for its intended "purpose", admittedly.
(I have much more trust in blockchain than in government retirement schemes).
I don't see how people can look at cryptocurrencies as investments over the long term. It's like saying you have all your money in Swiss Francs in a checking account that returns no interest because you think the Swiss are doing a stellar job at setting up an economy/banking system.
In the short term you're basically betting on cryptocurrencies gaining adoption and thus more of the economy needing them. In the long term it's just a currency not an investment.
>(I have much more trust in blockchain than in government retirement schemes).
That's not the alternative, some kind of diversified portfolio of stocks (a simple index fund is usually the easiest) is the right benchmark. Personally I will always feel safer with owning a (very small) percentage of the total productive companies in the world than a currency that's only worth something as long as someone is willing to keep trading in that specific one and not change to some other one. I look at the value of my stock holdings in euros only because it's also my day to day currency but the underlying value can be repriced in any currency over the next 50 years (my investment horizon).
What I would really like to do is price my stock holdings as percentage of total world stock market capitalization (with plenty of decimal points). Anyone have a good source for that number?
Until it isn't and it's replaced by a new one. Less than 20 years ago Euros didn't exist. It's entirely possible that in 20 years time they won't exist either...
You've played your hand by saying you look at your stock holdings in fiat. What happens if fiat fails you? i.e. if hyperinflation kicks in or the powers that be decide to restrict access to your fiat? I realise it sounds tinfoil hat-esque but if investing to safeguard your future, these are possible doomsday scenarios... (just ask people of Venezuela)
> In the short term you're basically betting on cryptocurrencies gaining adoption and thus more of the economy needing them. In the long term it's just a currency not an investment.
A deflationary currency with a fixed supply... so it's an investment in the sense that (a) it's scarcity will naturally drive up the price if demand increases (b) it will hold value better than fiat, given that the supply of fiat is, well, unlimited.
You can get close with a few ETFs: US market and bonds, Ex-US global market and bonds:
http://www.pragcap.com/a-simple-four-fund-global-financial-a...
This is your weekly public service announcement.
Social Security is not an investment, it is an insurance. The goal of Social Security is not to make everyone rich but to keep anyone from being destitute.
This has been your weekly public service announcement.
I am not aiming for becoming very rich for that — my goal is personal security. But thank you for your concern.
The lesson is to be impolite? I think I saw this in an episode of Silicon Valley.
Complaining that you can't go into CVS and buy something with Bitcoin right now is like complaining that all you can do with the Internet is send "electronic mail", which nobody reads, in 1990, or like complaining that Facebook is nothing but a glorified campus directory in 2006.
The truth is, you can't buy things with Bitcoin at CVS because the technology isn't there yet. Right now, Bitcoin is suitable to be digital gold, but with a much higher possibility of return because it's a new asset.
In a couple of years, the addition of the lightning network on top of the Bitcoin network will enable you to buy things at CVS.
Right now, buying Bitcoin is like making an angel investment.
That's awfully optimistic. Occasionally I drop in on Bitcoin forums/subreddits to amuse myself, and what I've seen for the last year+ is a deadlocked stalemate with the Segwit/BU/LN/no change people all screaming at each other with no progress made whatsoever. Amazingly, Bitcoin has ended up in a place where there's actually less innovation velocity than the world of fiat currency, because it's impossible to form the needed consensus on moving it forward.
My prediction for the future of Bitcoin is that it won't die per se, but it will continue spinning its wheels forever with arguments like this.
Bitcoin is crypto gold. It has been valued by markets as cryptogold for 5+ years. Nobody wants to turn it into crypto money now, because that would destroy the valuation for its scarcity and clunkiness.
The alogirthms for cryptomoney are going to be different, and the fact nobody has written a compelling implementation yet (ie, can handle preposterous transaction volume, huge networks, maintain consistent inflation to incentivize maximum velocity so it can work as a money (unlike btc), and avoids costing billions in proof of work mining to maintain) hasn't taken off yet.
Pedantry: US Gold eagle coins are actually legal tender US currency with a $50 face value.
So while it would be exceedingly foolish to treat an ounce of gold like a $50 coin, you could.
Where this becomes slightly interesting is the $10k limit on foreign currency declarations in international travel ... since these are $50 coins of US legal tender, you should be able to travel with 199 of them (worth about $200k) without declaring anything.
YMMV. IANAL.
Something else on the same technology is a different story though.
I'm still puzzled as to how banks think they're going to do this.
You may be right, but judging from the clumsy and pretentious analogy about email that you think proves them wrong, you also are missing a lot of points.
[1] http://www.hbscny.org/s/1738/cc/index2.aspx?sid=1738&gid=4&p...
He is worth ~$2B. Assuming he put 0.2% (only $4M) in Ethereum during the crowd sale, 3 years later Ethereum appreciates 48× and represents 10% of his net worth. Of course he says he is also invested into Bitcoin, not only into Ethereum. Say he purchased only $2M of ETH, that's 3300 BTC as of the crowd sale's initial phase (22 Jul - 5 Aug 2014 when 1 BTC was ~600 USD and purchased 2000 ETH,) so he got 6.7M ETH which is 9% of the total ETH supply at genesis.
Edit: oops. He didn't say he purchased at the crowdsale (0.0005 BTC or 0.30 USD per ETH) but when it was 1 USD per ETH. So he would have needed to plunk 0.6% / $12M of his wealth into Ethereum. Still a tiny fraction.
If so, he can't sell it without tanking the value so hard he'd never be able to get a decent fraction of its "worth".
I was at the panel discussion and he seems wayyyy more excited about Ethereum - I wouldn't be surprised if he held more ether at this point (which is probably why he was so enthusiastic).
following the tendency, he may be a hobo right now.
10% of 100 bucks, probably
Diversify into some non-monopoly assets too.
His brother has a TV show too: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Robert_and_Cortney_Novogratz
Talent runs in the family.
Really? My video?
It's also the first example of a functioning DAO. The organisation is funded entirely by the blockchain (new blocks reward the miner, the master nodes, and fund a treasury). It has a second network of 'master nodes', which are collateralised and incentivised to provide security and additional features to the network, including Instant Send (really fast confirmations).
The most impressive thing is that it's already positioned to make decisions about future changes by way of master node voting, so it doesn't suffer from the same issues Bitcoin does currently, where proposed changes have no means to be agreed and actioned quickly.
I'm really impressed with Dash and I hope it gets more attention.