Comment by johnwheeler | Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnwheeler | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> But where do you get your certainty?

By way of an understanding of human nature. From the book Bull! A history of boom and bust:

“...A bubble, Galbraith observed, is always supported by the belief that there is something new in the world. The history of past cycles is dismissed as irrelevant.“

That’s it in a nutshell. It is a time-tested part of who we are, and it’s almost like you’re either born with the ability to see that or you’re not. I don’t know why.

I don’t know how much the price will go up, but it going up, even to a million dollars a coin, means little. It will eventually go down and violently so, and some people will be badly hurt. Just people being people.

Assets need to be productive in order to be true investments. Like farmland or businesses. Otherwise, you’re speculating on price appreciation. Look at gold over the last 100 years and overlay its price graph over the Dow Jones during the same period. They’re not even close.

http://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-y...

http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/historical/marketindexes.h...

That’s the difference between speculation and investment.

> ...A bubble, Galbraith observed ...

Counterpoint: Galbraith confidently called the US stock market a "classic bubble" in April, 1999. At that time, the Dow Jones was at 10,494. Today it's at 24,504.

Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, it now looks like Galbraith was wrong.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/business/1999/apr/18/observerbus...

> Assets need to be productive in order to be true investments

Counterpoint: Maybe assets need to be useful to have value. Land, copper, the balance on a Walmart gift card and my World of Warcraft gold don't produce anything, but they're useful, so they have value.

> > ...A bubble, Galbraith observed ...

> Counterpoint: Galbraith confidently called the US stock market a "classic bubble" in April, 1999. At that time, the Dow Jones was at 10,494. Today it's at 24,504.

No! Current day valuation versus 1999 valuation has nothing to do with each other. In 1999 the market was over valued and the bubble soon popped.

> > Assets need to be productive in order to be true investments

> Counterpoint: Maybe assets need to be useful to have value. Land, copper, the balance on a Walmart gift card and my World of Warcraft gold don't produce anything, but they're useful, so they have value.

The key difference between an asset and investment is that investments produce returns.

> In 1999 the market was over valued and the bubble soon popped.

Here's a chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Please identify this bubble popping that you speak of.

https://imgur.com/a/4et6w

After 18 years we can say that Galbraith was objectively wrong.

When assets appear overvalued, sometimes they are, and sometimes people just don't see their potential at the time.

This is ridiculous. By that measure, the Great Depression never happened.

> The key difference between an asset and investment is that investments produce returns.

Right, but an asset can go up in price and stay there if demand increases and/or the currency the price is denominated in is losing value over time. Especially true if supply is limited.

I don't expect BTC to stay at $17000 - it could go down or up, and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it's currently in a bubble that pops. It might then go to near-$0, or it might proceed to regain those levels and continue even higher over time, depending on how demand evolves against the ultimately fixed supply. I remember $500 for 1 BTC seemed insanely high at the time. $675 must have seemed crazy for gold in 2006, but I don't expect it to return there again despite the intervening ups and downs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com