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Not OP but as someone familiar with BTC tech / history I still haven't discovered any real use for it. As in, issues 99% of people in first-world countries have with fiat that it solves, rather than exacerbate (let alone the other massive hassles with using BTC).

It seems to only exist for speculation. Its meteoric rise in the face of all this screams bubble to me. (But.. I've also been saying this for a while.)

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For most economic bubbles, one way you can track/detect them via correlated market is signals that diverge.

For example, the housing bubble in 2008 was detected when rental and mortgage prices diverged greatly.

Since the bare-bones value of Bitcoin is tied to the cost of computation power and electricity to mine, you could theoretically track the price of bitcoin vs. the cost of the computational power to mine bitcoin at it's current block difficulty.

Still looking good by that metric then?

For Bitcoin? Dunno, I can't find the market rate for processing (i.e. $/gigaflop)

Really? I often buy drugs with BTC. I have friends that use it to buy software.

I guess "but that's illegal!" is a strong argument for those that have a lot of trust in governments. I... don't... so I'm happy to use non-governmental instruments. I still pay my taxes and contribute, I'm not an anarchist, I just like having means to express value that aren't controlled by governments.

Yeah but your a small minority compared to the people using it as a means to speculate and trade. For the vast majority of buyers its pruelly investment into something they will never use beyond trading it back into cash.

Well that vast majority has no idea the wonderful drugs they are missing out on! ;P

Out of interest, is it dangerous to publicly state that you buy drugs with BTC (with or without personally identifying information attached)?

As in, is it likely that someone would/could be targeted by law enforcement because of that, and could a comment like that be used in court?

Meh. If they wanted to they could fine me ten bajillion dollars for having a pirated version of Zootopia on my harddrive.

I guess my words could bite me in the ass but I am fairly confident as a non-dealer I'm not exactly a target. Probably on a radar for when the Fed runs out of Big Fish, but for now probably fine.

Forever is what you need to worry about since you’ve posted this on the internet, not for now.

Who wants to live forever, if love must die?

But given the now rather excessive cost and/or slowness involved in bitcoin transactions these days, it seems inevitable that it’ll be ousted by some other crypto currency in the illegal markets.

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