Bitcoin's market cap is now higher than Tesla's | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin's market cap is now higher than Tesla's

8marketcap.com

15 pointsjanmo16 comments

At this point, Bitcoin is one of the best performing assets of the year, which is something I never thought I'd type out, espeically since we're still in the first week of the new year.

Why? Bitcoin is the best performing asset in history and has been for a while.

We're only a week into the new year, and the price has gone up like crazy. Personally, this seems like an unsustainable rise to me, but at the same time all assets (stocks in particular) are rising, so I'm probably wrong.

Why especially? The shorter the time interval, the more the best performing stock will look like a random sample from all stocks (probably with higher probabilities for smaller stocks).

Just based on how things have gone before, I would guess that this particular rally has a little further to go, and then we’re going to see a very sharp correction. However, the correction will probably bottom out around 10k then rebound over time to somewhere between 15k and 20k. It tends to be that the new floor after a big spike is somewhere around the peak of the previous spike. It will still be volatile, but I would expect the new relatively stable band to be in that range.

Also we can predict the short shift to altcoins again before the bubble explodes.

For all the nocoiners on HN (there are many) - is there a price at which you will admit bitcoin is successful? And if not, what is the reasoning behind why you will forever see bitcoin as unsuccessful? Thank you

    > For all the non-TSLA holders on HN (there are many) - is there a price at which you will admit TSLA is successful? And if not, what is the reasoning behind why you will forever see TSLA as unsuccessful? Thank you

Well I don't measure success in market cap, and despite my initial excitement about the crypto space, I almost universally see it as a tool for fraud, speculation, money laundering, and corruption.

I see very few cases where bitcoin has done any good in the world besides transferring wealth from the uninformed to the technically savvy and/or those uninhibited by ethics.

Bitcoin was created with these libertarian utopic ideals in mind, but I think it has shown that the landscape of anarcho-capitalism in practice is a nasty, brutish place.

I am not a noncoiner and I do like bitcoin a lot. But there's no such thing as a success moment in currencies as they can topple just as fast. Specially something without any hard backing or even political backing as bitcoin.

Bitcoin has been largely ignored by governments, but as it grows it won't be and it just takes one stroke of a pen for them to make it illegal. So, even if it gets to a trillion it'll still be a risky asset.

Price is set by the intersection of an ask and a bid; that the fact that a minimum of two people are willing to trade something at a specified price doesn't mean that thing is "successful", or even has value to society (i.e. fine art in private collections, POGs, Beanie Babies, etc...). Nocoiner's don't have a need for bitcoin, similar to me not having a need for fine art - it has nothing to do with what the price is set at.

For me the price is just people bidding it up, like the Tulip mania. So your question doesn't make any sense.

What would change my opinion is if usage of bitcoin as a currency or for some other application goes very high. i.e the utility rather than just speculation by people wanting to make quick buck.

Like everything, depends on your definition of success.

If we consider it a speculative investment, then, sure, at this point in time, BTC looks like a solid investment! BTC investments have funded a number of my vacations :D

But, if we consider BTC a form of currency, I would say it is a total failure given its wild fluctuations in value.

Curious what others think? Want to change my mind!

What would "success" even mean for a currency? I don't hear of many people actually spending it, although I'm sure some do. But it feels like it has devolved into nothing but an asset for trading, with literally nothing backing it.

There will be people who find success in trading it. If it keeps getting bigger, institutional investors and governments may play. But does that make Bitcoin itself a success? Or is it just another playground for rich people to get richer?

I wanted to write its market cap being 1% of the gold market cap. Then I checked and it looks it has already happened, and I still don't consider Bitcoin successful, just a little bit crazier.

I'd consider it successful if I could pay with it in physical shops, or at least in one of major online shops (let's say Amazon).

I'll call bitcoin successful when I can buy a croissant with it.

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