The bullshit artists that already 'invested' in this scheme will now tell you that China did not matter and the people under them will parrot it.
Anybody that disagrees simply doesn't understand Bitcoin or just mad that they could not get on the choo-choo train at the right time.
If you're so sure that it's bullshit you're free to put your money where your mouth is and short it.
I don't have too much knowledge about cryptos. And the ICOs occurring certainly seem mostly like BS, but I'm still "investing" (more like trading quickly and selling) to make a profit while this gold rush lasts. Doesn't matter how I feel about it.
2) The only realistic way to short BTC is to do so via a very small list of exchanges. Even if you trust them (which, given the history of cryptocurrency exchanges is hardly a given) the borrow cost is huge: there's no way you could reasonably make this kind of macro BTC bet.
The combination of these two realities makes the "If you don't believe the price, you ought to be shorting it" assertion completely baseless.
Because this is a self feeding cycle, the price can double & redouble from almost any point if the "story" is good enough. So you can be dead right about a given asset being in a bubble, but if you short it the odds are that you're going to get painfully stopped out long before the bubble collapse finally happens. As Keynes said, prices can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent: The history of investing is littered with individuals who were right, but lost their capital because they were simply too early.
“The price of BitCoin has a 91% correlation with Google searches for BitCoin” http://uk.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-price-correlation-goog...
Obviously BTC can be in a bubble & whilst still having real value - the two things are not necessarily connected. (Although having a good future value story is helpful for a bubble to form in the first place I would argue.)
(In my personal opinion: It's like asking when the next collapse in a sandpile will happen & how big it will be. Not possible.)
PS: I have no intention of cashing out.
Since BTC is deflationary I'd rather hold till each BTC is worth 100k. Check this thread in 2030 :)
Imagine if soy beans gradually went extinct. In the short-term, the prices would spike as companies reliant on soy beans compete for the shrinking supply. But as prices go up, these companies either go bankrupt, or find alternative inputs to replace soy beans. Either way, the prices eventually hit zero before extinction occurs.
The once plentiful and valuable becomes rare and worthless.
How does one define supply with a divisible unit like bitcoin? Arguably, supply does not diminish, rather people use smaller units of bitcoins.
Tldr; Bitcoin is deflationary because math.
Secondly, at some point, calculations become onerous. Like, if btc is $100k/coin, then normal, every day transactions will need to be in 0.000001 coins. Which is an incredibly annoying unit to work with, it's trivially easy to miss an order of magnitude, i.e., 0.0000001 at a glance, is that a dime, a dollar, or a ten?
Accidentally give a $100 instead of $10 once, and you'll be annoyed, do it twice and you're done using btc.
Further details: http://bitcoinchaser.com/bitcoin-units-and-denominations
You are unquestionably better than ignorant humans with liquid assets.
If lightning had struck a few houses over, would I have cashed out or held? I suspect I would have cashed out most of them around $1k. Why did you hold?
Oh and for those of you reading this: back up your wallet.dat in an encrypted truecrypt volume with multiple cloud backups!