Bitcoin is over 9000

A friend of mine emailed me yesterday. He had just been shopping at the Aldi. He used his phone to pay with Android Pay and the checkout person asked him if he was paying with Bitcoin. A little more discussion it turns out that the checkout clerk owned some Bitcoin but didn't really know enough about it to know that you couldn't pay with Bitcoin at Aldi or that because of the high fees and full blocks it would have been impractical to use to pay for $30 of groceries even if they did accept it as payment.

Point is; this rally is being driven by a bunch of people who don't know what they are buying but are excited about the prospect of it "going to the moon" and getting rich. No way this ends well. Bitcoin Core was a rational investment at $1,000 when it looked like there would be comprise on the block size but now it is just a ponzi scheme which will be remembered as the MySpace of Crypto.

edit: Another interesting data point is Coinbase user growth. Their growth has recently been doubling month over month and they are on track to add 2 million users in November up from 1 Million added in Oct.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NgvD2kFT69mSXuJPzPDu...

Compare that to actual transactions on the Bitcoin network. They peaked in May after sustained multi-year growth and have been flat or down since because the transaction limit as hit and Bitcoin Core is shedding users to any of the numerous alternatives.

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactions.ht...

Serious question: who is mining bitcoin still, and how are we seeing such growth lately?

Last I read up on it there were some data farms crunching away barely covering their expenses, and it’s only getting harder. How can we even see see such growth?

I'm not convinced it will continue rising. I think it will be eventually replaced by a currency that solves all of its problems.

That reddit thread isn't pretty.