Bitcoin Gets Close to $5,000
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
1) The total SCALE of the bubble is much much smaller than say the tech bubble - the 280 stocks representative of the tech bubble fell almost $1.7 TRILLION in 52 weeks (2) vs the total crypto market cap @ the moment of ~180 billion.
2) The total scale of the Crypto bubble has MORE potential than stocks - why? The opportunity for casual global participation and almost complete lack of regulation / sophistication.
If the single use case for Crypto is nothing more than the world's greatest tulip mania / pyramid scheme it has the potential to be a multi trillion dollar asset class / wealth transfer.
For comparison: the founders seed round of Uber grew their investment 65,000×, tulip prices increased by at most 5,000× during tulip mania, some "best performing stocks" over the last century are reported as growing 1,000×.
There will only be 21 million bitcoins ever.
Let's say we were to measure all of our wealth in bitcoins, and let's say we already have all the bitcoins ever to exist available now. Then each bitcoin could be the equivalent of what $11,428,571.43 is to us today.
[1] https://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fi...
For all the people out there saying, "I cant find a use case", my question to you is, have you ever used it?!
If you have, did you notice that there wasn't a middleman taking a cut when you sent the money? I mean, do you have any fucking idea how much money businesses pay to the credit card companies?
Get on board guys.
HN is certainly "on board" as ycombinator and affiliates invests in various blockchain retailed companies
Only people trying to cash out need people buying in. If you were really invested in the long term you'd rather people not buy in so you can buy more at a lower price.
Bitcoin also has fees. The only reason the fees are lower than credit cards are because people in China can afford to burn electricity at a loss just to turn their Chinese money into anything else.
You still have to pay taxes on the capital gains. And you can't pay taxes in Bitcoin.
The best case scenario for bitcoin is it becoming the de facto monetary standard, meaning there would be no reason to buy or cash out, as everything would be priced in bitcoin.
Bitcoin will never replace current fiat money as it is inherently flawed: price fluctuate too much, and favor early owner of it.
These aren't flaws, welcome to economics, man. Once bitcoin gains enough things will be priced in BTC, so fluctuation won't be an issue.
Deflationary economics benefit the savers, while inflationary economics benefit the spenders. Just because bitcoin's economic model isn't something you're used to or like doesn't mean it is 'inherently flawed'.
So you mean, like, people will not waste nature's resources for things they don't really need? Oh, what a tragedy!
The tech is genuinely interesting and certainly doesn't lack hype. That is usually a formula for positive comments on Hacker News. So I'm genuinely curious why so many users here are against Bitcoin.
Is it because they didn't buy in early and want to justify missing the boat? Does it make people feel their own startup is somehow less relevant? Does it threaten the traditional VC funding model?
Eventually someone like Vanguard will come along and offer a blockchain with real value behind it. After this, all the hype around bitcoin will just look embarrassing in the aftermath.
The SEC was useful when information was hard to come by, but now it's just standing in the way of progress.
Not one bit. It's because people are losing their heads over it, it's got classic bubble written all over it, and you've got people who've made money and think they're all the wiser for it.
They arrogantly carry a sentiment that detractors are just jealous. Human nature to do that--I get it.
There's a saying I heard, something like "Sure, you made a lot of money buying the stocks of tobacco companies. So what? You're still an asshole."
In my mind, buying Bitcoin is like shorting the US financial system with the idea that it sucks and should to hell anyway. But, our system with all it's flaws works pretty damn well. It shouldn't be taken for granted and bet against.
First of all because it is decentralised, it is much less scalable than the current system, so I don't think it is going to be able to replace regular banking anytime soon (although I don't know a tonne about the scalability issues).
Also I like to have a centralised system, because if my bitcoin gets stolen/I screw up and lose it, it is gone forever. If my money gets stolen somehow, I call up the bank and they reverse the charges. Having a central authority is also pretty nice because they also give me lots of other benefits like credit card rewards, making it really easy to move my money around into different savings accounts or investments, etc. And regular currencies are also backed by the government, so are incredibly stable, unlike Bitcoin which changes values very quickly.
Bitcoin is also deflationary, which is a bad trait for a currency to have, as it discourages investment, and encourages people to hoard money instead of spending it.
I'm sure there are use cases for Bitcoin, but I don't think it is "some utopian shit", since the current system works super well for most people.
The wealth distribution of dollar is based on how many more people your grandfather killed than my grandfather. I don't have any problem with currency where initial distribution rewards people who took investment risks because they saw potential in innovative new technology.
And volatility - volatility in bitcoin is actually smaller every year, and this trend will continue. And btw volatility is natural and healthy. It's when something is not moving that you should be worried.
Enjoy the run, but sell at the right times because ultimately it will end in some form of tragedy.
When electric cars become mainstream, I expect there will be a turmoil in the USD
This guy noticed https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-you-wont-be-buying-a-coffee...
"High fees make it impractical to use bitcoin as a day-to-day currency. Paying a $5 fee to send $10,000 bitcoin isn’t a big deal, but it’s hard to justify buying a cup of coffee with bitcoin if the transaction costs more than the coffee."
Realistically, though, from the consumer standpoint Bitcoin is an electronic payments network analogous to credit cards that
1) Takes longer time to confirm (great news when you're standing in a checkout line).
2) Does not have a third party to resolve conflicts and disputes between the consumer and unscrupulous merchant or a straight out scammer.
3) Does not have a rollback mechanism in case of an unauthorized or fraudulent transaction.
4) Does not offer consumer-side rewards - cashback, airline miles, points - for usage.
Where do I sign up?
That's what the new Lighting network is for ( https://lightning.network/ )
Not an issue for me I'm afraid (UK).
You shouldn't consider Bitcoin as a currency but as a better form of Gold. Like gold it has a limited amount available: ~180k tons of gold and eventually 21 million bitcoins. Like gold it is a good store of value (especially as more people are dropping their gold to purchase BTC). Unlike Gold you can send it to someone else online and that means it can also be used like a currency (even thought it is not its strength).
Product 1 has use A (in this case Apocalypse Insurance), and product 2 doesn't because its meant for another scenario.
It could go up to $6,000, $50,000, or even $1M. It's not localized like tulips, and it's connected to the internet, so the universe of people available to fuel the speculation is enormous. That the Chinese are highly speculative is what's mainly driving the current price.
It has no intrinsic value. It's like gold in that it's not a productive asset. It doesn't yield anything like stocks or bonds. The only thing a bitcoin holder can hope for is that someone will buy their coins in the future at a higher price.
The interesting part is watching human nature unfold. People who hold bitcoin mistakenly believing they're investors because the price action is reinforcing that belief. They're 100% speculators by definition. It's OK to speculate. It's neither illegal or immoral, but you should know when you're speculating and when you're investing.
You can't make this stuff up. Look at the people coming out of the woodwork: The Winklevoss Twins, Dan Bilzerian, professional wrestlers, and such. All the community leaders are either fighting with each other or in jail.
Yup, just like every other currency ever to exist.
actaul trade from china is similar or smaller to that in the EU at the moment
It's almost crazy how gambling and stock bubbles are nearly unheard of in Europe or America, precisely because of how seldom those peoples speculate.
To think, if it wasn't for Jinan province's tulip mania, we'd barely understand the phenomenon of speculative bubbles. Or maybe it was Dandong, I forget.
Since there are only 1.4 Billion Chinese, these sort of sweeping generalizations are perfectly reasonable.
So... let's take a breath.
We all have assumptions about the world, there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes they're right and sometimes we're wrong.
What we want to do, is (1) recognize that blanket statements about an entire ethnic group can sometimes strike others as offensive or just comically antiquated, and therefore, (2) sanity check these generalizations against actual data.
I mean, it's one thing to offend a bunch of people if you're right, right? Maybe that's worth it... occasionally. But why waste the energy if you're going to be wrong? Or even just unsure?
Ok, I'm sure you're bursting with anecdotes already to defend the claim. I'll spare you some effort and try a few.
Like... the Chinese stock market is crazy! Well, yes, but actually a pretty normal level of crazy for a developing economy with some corruption and off-book efforts determining winners and losers.
Or... Macau is a huge gambling city! Sure, but lots of places have had a huge gambling hub before. They're often a symptom of other factors. A maturing hospitality sector... or restrictions on certain types of income. They make a great way to launder illegal money or support subtle capital flight.
Ok, what if we could look at gambling by country more broadly then, not focused on hubs but entire nations?
Well, gambling revenues track with GDP really well, countries with the most money are the ones that gamble the most. The US is way on top of the list. Go figure. Ok, so let's control for GDP...
If you run that check on the dozen or so countries big enough to matter, you'll find Italy and Australia topping the list with twice the proportionate losses as China. China muddles around the middle, squarely between the UK and the US, not much beyond France or Japan. It's perfectly boring.
Beyond this, levels of regulation seem to have a strong influence, so we'd want to control for the weird mixed status of Macau vs. the mainland (which has legal lotteries but not slots).
It's a project that could be done, possibly useful, but the data already screams other factors that matter more. Patterns aren't determined by culture so much as they're determined by all these simple exogenous factors that obviously require a control, like how much money is in people's pockets, how much access they have to games.
And speaking of controls... we're being generous here by not even controlling for population, which would tank China's rating.
There's a reason gambling isn't strongly tied to a certain nationality, why several regions have been gambling hubs over the ages. There's a similar reason speculative bubbles happen in markets around the world, not just in China.
Speculative affinity isn't a cultural characteristic, to the extent it's even measurable at all.
Ok, we can save time at this point. I'm pretty sure you still disagree.
If it makes you feel better, downvote this one too, they're just fake internet points.
But if you make sweeping generalizations disparaging an entire race based on archaic stereotypes, you should expect some pushback from time to time. It shouldn't strike you as a sudden unexpected shock to occasionally get called out on that sort of thing. Frankly I don't think it's a hill worth fighting and dying on, but everyone has to pick their own redlines I suppose.
Good luck with your Internetting.
@brownbat, I can't downvote you since you're replying to my comment. I would guess the downvotes are because your original comments are snarky and lack an argument germane to the OP.
I don't have raw data and am basing my conclusions on the stock market you mention, that luck is a big component of chinese culture, and that the Chinese operate the largest bitcoin mining pools. My comments weren't meant to offend. I'm not implying there's anything wrong with speculators (so long as they don't call themselves investors).
1 BTC is a historically common denomination that will likely receive less usage if the price continues to rise.
I find the idea of crypto currency, especially bitcoin, very interesting. I just have a very hard time seeing how it's actually useful. It can't handle very many transactions per minute. And the thing that supposed to make it so great is that no one controls it. But if bitcoin becomes really important then people will want to control a lot of the mining power. Pretty soon you end up with a group of miners (or even a single miner) having enough power to influence things leaving you pretty close to someone being in charge of the thing.
It's such a fascinating idea. But in less there was someway to limit mining so people couldn't throw additional power at it I'm not sure it's useful.
As an example, you could use a block chain to enforce a ledger between a couple of different companies but you'd have to have some sort of contract it said everyone was only allowed to use one of device X for mining. That way everyone would be equal and you could easily check it because the blocks should be minded roughly evenly.
But when miners can buy additional mining capacity, and they get rewarded for doing that with more money, how does this not end up with a winner takes all situation?
you can store and send any arbitrary amount of database entries
and wait for several minutes while your transaction is processedWill it hold up when 10 million people want to do that per day? 100 million? Half 1 billion? I know it can work at niche scales (relative to total global financial transactions) but can it actually be scaled up to be a real player?
Even if the block size was massively larger, say 100 MB, would enough transactions be able to be broadcasted around fast enough to be able to be collected in giant blocks to keep up with demand?
As to hardest/impossible for a government to steal from you: this is the mining pool problem. What if China decided to do something about all of the mining pools they have in their country and try and manipulate bitcoin? What if in addition to the pools that they could get/force to cooperate they added a bunch more miners with government computers?
What if the US government just decided to throw computer power at trying to make the dominant hashrate mining pool?
I'm guessing there are number of governments in the world it would be capable of doing that TODAY. They could certainly do it if they cooperated. Even if they can't take over they could throw enough uncertainty into the process to cause the price to crash.
If they all competed against each other we could end up in a situation where even know if theoretically no one controls bit coin realistically it's controlled by a bunch of giant governments and no one else is capable of competing. Oops, that sort of like the current banking system.
Like I said it's a fascinating idea, but I don't think it works at planet scale or if people can independently buy additional hashing capacity. It seems like it would have to have some sort of agreement to limit everyone to be roughly equal for it to work out almost anywhere.
I'd love to see history prove me wrong. I don't remember seening a solution to the problems that worry me yet. If they exist I'm not smart enough to think of them.
We'll see what happens.
This makes me think you haven't ever transferred bitcoins.
Why is it so hard to see?
Whenever you send money somewhere electronically, a middleman takes a cut. With Bitcoin there is no middleman.
It's that easy.
So much wrong with this statement.
First, not many banks in the U.S. do "the exact same thing for free", actually almost none do. Most ACH transfers take 1-5 days, instead of ~10 minutes with Bitcoin or ~15 seconds with Ethereum. Yes, I know about Zelle, but not all banks support that, and clearXchange isn't always same day, even.
Second, some services like Coinbase[1] insure your holdings, even while in crypto.
Third, almost all services that use ACH, like GDAX (Coinbase), Gemini, etc. don't do a 3% transfer fee through ACH, it's actually free. But it's next business day, like most ACH, where as crypto would've been an hour at most.
Lastly, some countries, like oh I don't know, Japan[2], have negative interest rates, so your money shrinks by the day instead of growing.
[1]:https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/166237...
[2]:https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/21/business/international/ja...
Seems like instant liquidity confirmation has been solved with credit cards or Paypal for trivial amounts (third party willing to act as an intermediary) or wire transfers for larger amounts (banks engaging their backchannel comfirmation protocols for a measly $25 fee).
There are also debit card payments, admittedly not as widespread, but impressively fast when used through Square Cash or Facebook Messenger.
None of the existing solutions are perfect, but all seem to be "good enough".
If I deposit to GDAX, sell to USD, and withdraw to my bank it will be there in 1 business day. It's been that way for years, for almost everyone I know. ACH pulls take longer, sure, but what I said is correct.
Also, multiple countries implemented negative interest rates[1]. Japan isn't an anomaly.
What you might lose from BTC fluctuation, you may also gain, as seen by the 400% YTD growth, this year alone[2].
You really should do more research and actually understand the topic instead of dismissing it because it doesn't fit your world-view.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_central_b...
[2]: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-price-nears-5000-ytd...
Is bitcoin capable of doing 50% of that? 10%? 1%?
I know people have just decided to expand the block size but what's a realistic limit on how many transactions can be done per hour? Is that enough for real widespread use?
I can certainly see uses but I worry that he can never get big enough to truly matter. Or if it does that a government or large private entity could easily try to take it over through force of computing power.
There's no holidays for the blockchain like banks have so you can send 24 hours a day, every day.
At some point this would cause people to build stashes of tokens instead of investing in real businesses with real production capacity.
When this trend would become widespread enough, it would eventually cause global production capacity to drop. That's right, when enough people do it, token hoarding displaces investment in businesses and factories and lowers global production capacity. This means token hoarding causes a future drop in things available to buy with these very tokens.
Eventually there will be people who want to buy real things with their stock of tokens. The tokens will be chasing fewer goods which would mean prices for stuff would rise (tokens would lose value). This could happen suddenly when people with large stockpiles of tokens notice that value is dropping and that there are tons of other tokens waiting on the sideline ready to make it drop even further.
Hoarders might rush to get rid of their stockpile all at the same time before they're worthless which would cause their fall to worthlessness. This drop would bring the tokens closer to their natural intrinsic value of zero. The cycle can then start again, such is aggregate economics.
The 1920s and 1930s suffered from this type of production drop but with gold tied currencies instead of cryptocoins. It happened to a lesser extent in 2007 when western world central banks failed to keep inflation rates high enough.
It's important for the world's sake to not let deflationary currencies become too popular. When savings or financial promises are insufficiently tied to future production or to accumulation of real goods, there will be disappointment when many people try to exchange them for real stuff. That is true for crypto currencies as well as government currencies (that is why the system is designed to make banks invest people's money in real businesses and minimize the proportion of money that is stockpiled idly).
It's true that crypto currencies are currently not widely held enough to significantly affect the aggregate economy but speculation already keeps them volatile and the knowledge that as they get more popular, there will be more macroeconomic pressures towards volatility keeps the speculation wild and cryptocoins unstable.
Currencies that are not designed to lose value over time can not be stable. Intrinsically worthless tokens engineered to have better than market risk adjusted, liquidity adjusted, real returns compared to real productive investment will always fluctuate increasingly wildly as they get more popular.
I would say the economists who most shape my views would be Nick Rowe ( http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/nick... ), David Beckworth ( http://macromarketmusings.blogspot.ca/ ) and sometimes the more controversial but always entertaining Scott Sumner ( http://www.themoneyillusion.com/ ) .
A while back, I wanted to do as a side project, a game with a realistic macro economy but I got stuck at the learning phase and never got around to do the game (the rabbit hole went deeper than I had imagined). While I was researching, I put some of my musings about what I was learning in a few posts here: http://bessiambre.tumblr.com/ then later kind of summarized the views that I had formed in the following medium post: https://medium.com/@b.essiambre/the-world-deserves-a-pay-rai...
I'm sure my conclusions are simplistic and over-general compared to those of real economists.
My email is b.essiambre@gmail.com. Don't hesitate to write if you have questions.
Scrypt (LTC) and KECCAK-256 (ETH) are less power intensive than SHA-256 (BTC). Those are just proof-of-work.
Proof-of-stake or proof-of-importance would have barely any power footprint, but there are still debates about whether they could replace PoW and offer similar security guarantees.
Of course that means that you need some way to set up the initial steaks and decide who gets them. And that means it isn't as democratic like bitcoin is, which I know is a big plus for many people.
(Sorry, couldn't help it.)
- Investment Prospectus: https://www.ethereum.org/pdfs/TermsAndConditionsOfTheEthereu...
- Premine Part I: Anyone can buy ETH in exchange for BTC for the next 42 days
- Premine Part II: On top of Premine Part I, +10% of the total ETH allocated during Premine Part I will be distributed to "early contributors"
- Premine Part III: On top of Premine Part I and Premine Part II, +10% of the total ETH allocated during Premine Part I will be distributed to the Ethereum Foundation
- The supply of ETH is uncapped and inflationary at a rate of +25% per year
- The premine is being conducted by "EthSuisse", a Swiss entity which will be prompty dissolved after the premining period ends. The Ethereum team makes no guarantee that development of Ethereum will continue after the dissolution of "EthSuisse"
- Regardless of how many BTCs are raised during the premine period, ~4000 BTC is explicitly reserved to pay for "Expenses incurred prior to and related to Genesis Sale". Translation: they are pocketing the first 4000-5000 BTC
> The Ethereum Platform is being developed primarily by a volunteer contributor team - many of whom will be receiving gifts of ETH in acknowledgement of their dedication - and will continue to be developed on a volunteer basis by some developers as well as under a more formalized contracting or employment relationship for other developers. The group of developers and other personnel that is now, or will be, employed by, or contracted with, Ethereum Switzerland GmbH ("EthSuisse") is termed the "Ethereum Team." EthSuisse will be liquidated shortly after creation of genesis block, and EthSuisse anticipates (but does not guarantee) that after it is dissolved the Ethereum Platform will continue to be developed by persons and entities who support Ethereum, including both volunteers and developers who are paid by nonprofit entities interested in supporting the Ethereum Platform.
via Cyther606 ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8072947 )
If their "market caps" aren't decimated then I will be a true believer.
I say this as someone who has owns some of a few different ones.
Things that rapidly appreciate in value also carry the risk of rapidly depreciating in value. That’s fine as an investment vehicle, but a much less attractive prospect in a currency.
Litecoin evangelists will point out that the usability of litecoin is currently far and away better. Part of that is certainly attributable to design, but part of it is attributable to LTC/USD being a better ratio than BTC/USD, meaning a 0.001 tx fee is a few pennies in one and a few dollars in the other.
The popularity of a coin increases adoption (and so network effects), but increases hurdles to usability at the same time, it's a really fascinating game theory situation...
We might end up with a suite of coins that users bounce between, or maybe some clever altcoin designer will find a clever fix for some of these issues. Not sure.
Are you going to say 1/10 bitcoin or will that have a name?
One thing I haven't seen anyone talk about is the language to make bitcoin more accessible.
No other currency (that I know of) has 1 unit as the MAX unit to transact (at such a high value) with no smaller denominations.
If Bitcoin really DOES end up at 100k/coin - and you want to buy something that's $10, are you really going to say .0001 bitcoin? There has to be a cleaner way. Even that, you could easily screw up decimal spots very easily.
Maybe I'm just not used to it yet - maybe they're just use the first part? "san", "deca", "mil"
There's a lot of reasons why prices move. There's obviously speculation. But there's also utility. And the way ETH is designed is far more useful to me than BTC.
My prediction is that both currencies will reach 10k USD in the next few years. But ETH will get there faster
I'll let you do the over/under on that one.
It may be more fungible at the moment, but is it anywhere near as safe? Gold goes up and down but nowhere near to the degree we've seen with bitcoin. Add a minimum it's useful in manufacturing so even if the price crash there would still be people to buy it. Rolexes are useful, they have an intrinsic value/use. Bitcoin is only valuable as a medium of exchange.
Bitcoin could effectively disappear. I'm not saying it looks likely at the moment but even if your holdings are very large all it takes is the market to decide to stop accepting/exchanging it.
I think that's FAR more likely than gold or Rolexes.
And in case you didn’t know, cash is also used for illegal activity...
Bitcoin has had a high value for a couple of years. I'm not trying to suggest it's Beanie Babies or Pokémon cards. Obviously those were never useful as real currency and bitcoin can buy things today. But I don't think it's fair to compare it to gold or cash.
And you're right, cash is used for illegal activity. But a HUGE chunk of it's use is for normal legal activity.
There's no real way to know, but I'd be very interested to find out what percentage of bitcoin use is for legal activity. It's a very popular on the dark web because it's so much harder to trace than the normal credit card. They are legal stores on the "normal" internet that take it, but do they process a lot of transactions compared to the illegal stuff?
Calling something FUD usually means that you think someone is mounting some sort of propaganda campaign against someone/something.
That's not me, but the literal meaning fits. I'm afraid people will convert money they can't afford to lose into bitcoin even though we don't know how stable it is long term. I'm uncertain that it can continue to be used as transaction volumes increase. I doubt it's as impenetrable as people think because the US government (among others) is capable of throwing a LOT of computer power at getting enough hashing to manipulate the block chain.
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/merchants-arent-accepting-bit...
How big of an industry are electronic payments? Anyone have a guess? I couldn't even find a number I was confident was a reasonable approximation. Unfathomably large.
A unit of exchange as volatile as BTC is not an obvious ideal in the US. But what about in Venezuela, compared to local currency? What's the value of an asset that holds or appreciates, or even bounces around wildly in value in comparison to a currency with triple digit inflation? If all it does is put a stop to the grossest malfeasance by the dozen worst central banks in the world, how would we calculate that as a value?
It's reasonable to believe that BTC isn't the ideal solution for any of these, but with the established markets, even if it is destined to just take over a minority 1% of those sectors, then it's currently far undervalued. If it has a shot at preventing governments from causing mass starvation by printing money and passing it to cronies,[1] then it's a net win for humanity.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/aug/18/g...
Of course, this is impossible. If there is anything we have learned, and I can demonstrate that I predicted 5 years ago, it's that the definition of bitcoin is infinitely divisible. I could claim a bitcoin fork in 2027 is the true bitcoin, and price it at $1M a coin.
I mean if some big retailer like Amazon or BestBuy or Walmart to accept it, but only 0.02% of their daily transactions involved bitcoin would that be a success? It's a lot of money in absolute numbers, but it's minuscule as a percentage.
If it were 5% that would certainly be something to look at.
I suspect virtually all of it. People dismiss this viewpoint because they attribute it to Silk Road type activities, which can't explain the scale, but what I'm talking about is millionaires and billionaires funneling wealth out of China etc.
One thing that's certain is that bitcoin isn't really a currency. When you pay with bitcoin, the value is tied to and converted to USD, and the price paid is tied to USD. Bitcoin isn't the currency in those transactions, USD is. Bitcoin is more like a decentralized anonymous Western Union than it is a currency.
I also don't understand what proponents think the endgame is for bitcoin as an investment-grade asset. Everyone who buys some just becomes the world's first trillionaires, and we become a 2-tiered society of people who bought bitcoin and people who didn't?
Bitcoin might have some serious world-changing implications, but I seriously doubt it being an investable asset is one of them.
Until the end of the infrastructure phase at least. A lot of folks are going to get hauled off the prison, which will create new opportunities to challenge the dominant existing players. At this point the value being ascribed to the different blockchain assets is pretty arbitrary.
But to your other questions, check out: http://longbets.org/