Will be over by 2020. Venezuela has blackouts because of the increasing mining. Mining of a digital beanie baby with no actual use.
Do people actually buy things with bitcoin or is it just a collector's item right now, like beany babies?
You can buy things. Anything. You can convert to another currency. I'm just saying that it is a dangerous behavior to dump real finite resources into generating an imaginary resource with no intrinsic value. Gold and silver have real practical uses. They exist in a tangible form. I can forget my bit coin wallet key and it is gone forever. I can forget where my gold is buried and it's going to still be somewhere.
If you mine gold up, smelt it and then bury it in your back yard and then forget where it is, I might come along next year after you sell the house to me and I might find it. You mine and get a Bitcoin but then lose the key to it, I imagine because of how it works, that Bitcoin is most likely gone forever, never to be found again. But I am not really up on how Bitcoin works at all.
I guess he meant a problem as a society. We weren’t exactly known for investing resources into super practical purposes prior to bitcoin.
It just smells of a pyramid scheme type scam to me. Get in early you get money, get in late, you get left holding the proverbial bag.
Not any more than a lot of stocks. Timing will be important. Some people will inevitably get caught on the wrong side of the swing.
The resources that went into extracting and processing ore to gold actually brought forth material with intrinsic value for all sorts of practical uses in technology, or at worst ornamentation. The resources that go into bitcoin produce ones and zeros with no purpose other than a unique digital signature with only as much value as demand is at the moment. When the price corrects, it will not recover because there is no real demand, only speculation on something with no intrinsic unique use. I'm not saying fortunes haven't been made and will continue to be for a little while longer. I'm saying bitcoin in particular is not a good cryptocurrency longterm and in fact is a total waste of resources in the end. This is tulipmania, without any bulbs to show for it.
This "intrinsic value" talk is nonsense. Fiat currency isn't a new thing, and as such, you deal with currency that has no intrinsic value every single day in the USD. Bitcoin's value, which might end up being superseded by another cryptocurrency in the future, is its solution as an online currency, a secured method of performing online transactions without a third party's presence, the programmable possibilities of the currency, and its detachment from governments and regulations.
You don't think cryptocurrency has a future. Great. I respect that idea. What I don't respect is the idea that it has no value, in a broad sense, and no "intrinsic value," more narrowly. I'll just ask you how you think the US and Europeans economies have prospered with currency that didn't have the backing of gold for the past 80 years?
I don't think bitcoin has a future that looks anything like it's present. They did it by regulating the money supply and constantly printing more.
And they didn't need a gold-backed currency to prosper. Bitcoin nor any other cryptocurrency are inhibited by that fact. I won't pretend that I'm capable of predicting its future trajectory, but it's a piece of technology that has valuable solutions to problems that have existed to for centuries. Universal ledgers for accountability and reliability, programmable currency that can restrict the buying power similar to SNAP/EBT programs but on differing/larger scales, potentially having dual uses outside of pure currency, and a lack of government/regulatory attachments that benefit developing countries with corrupt leadership and unstable local currencies. It's an innovative technology. I don't think the detractors are aware of its capabilities.
I've got money in Crypto that has actual application. ETH/XRP/REQ/etc. Might be pissing some dollars away or might wind up with a nice windfall one year. Not real impacted either way.
