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Comment by cvsh | Hacker News Reader

All the kids from my high school still working menial jobs in my hometown 10 years later have been buzzing about buying Bitcoin all weekend up and down my Facebook feed. To me, there's no clearer sign that any money to be made during this rally has already been made.

I liquidated all my cryptocurrency holdings on Friday. When Wall Street steps in this week and shorts it, it's difficult for me to envision any other outcome than all those kids panicking and selling.

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Same here. All of the sudden all of the college dropouts from my area are blockchain experts, talking up new coins as if they read the whitepaper (as if that is enough anyway). These are the "get rich quick" folks, the same ones who were selling herbalife(or vemma or whatever) a few years ago. Despite this, I can't say for sure that they'd sell given some serious volatility. There's a growing cult like groupthink attitude best represented by the phrase "HODL".

There's also some serious fraud allegations at the exchange level, and I think there may be some truth to the rumor that USDT is being printed to drive up the price of BTC.

While all of this is concerning, it's hard to believe that BTC will drop lower than 1-2k in a panic. I think the market value has been established on a psychological level. I think blockchain is going to be taught in ECON101 classes in a few years. And while I don't think BTC is the best cyptocurrency, I believe in the coming years its value will stabilize, transaction fees will get fixed, and it will be a great store of value. It will be especially valuable for those without access to good banking systems.

The other really big problem is liquidity/access. I live in NYC and my coinbase account was randomly locked a few months ago(good luck if this happens to you). Now the only way I can buy/sell bitcoin is at a cash ATM with an 8% fee, or buy.bitcoin.com with a 7.5% fee. Bitcoin doesn't solve the problems of those without access to good banking if it's impossible to reasonably buy. I think this will get better too, but it's definitely gotten worse recently.

In conclusion: I think there's a chance BTC could be worth less than it is now this time next year. I think in 2 years, the total market cap of cryptocurrencies will be significantly higher than it is today.

>Despite this, I can't say for sure that they'd sell given some serious volatility. There's a growing cult like groupthink attitude best represented by the phrase "HODL".

True, but the rise in price seems to have largely been due to newcomers entering the market who don't share the attitude of longtime HODLers. See: Coinbase shooting to #1 on the App Store. I think that raises the odds of a crash considerably. The new crowd is in it because they expect the rally to continue and if they realize it won't, they'll want out en masse ASAP.

Yes. I may have not been clear, I do think BTC is in a bubble. When my 60 year old parents, who can barely figure out how to use netflix are asking me if they should buy bitcoin, there is a serious problem. Though I do not think it will be as bad as people like OP are predicting. 1000 entities control 40% of the circulation of BTC. They will be much less likely to liquidate in any event. Thus you have some solid stability there I suppose.

On a semi related note, I'm curious to know more about the profile of altcoin holders. In the event of a BTC fallout, would these crash as well? Or will we see a rush to those currencies due to the inevitable difficulty in converting BTC->USD/EUR/etc? I have so many questions...

Which cyptocurrencies are better for either as a daily currency or holding value?

Cool, can you please tell me more about your facebook feed, bro?

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