Bitcoin price hits $40k less than three weeks after shattering $20K

From what I understand, matching engines don't scale horizontally, so you really need some people who can craft highly performant C, C++, or Rust. The algorithms are pretty interesting, and can process a very high number of transactions on even a single core if implemented tightly. I've watched some videos on exchange architecture (from the likes of Jane Street), and their systems are able to handle the entire stock market on a single machine!

At any rate, I think they'll get it sorted out, they certainly have the profit to throw into engineering. And I must commend them on their security, almost everyone else in the crypo space has been hacked, so they've done something right. I'm sure the IPO is going to blast off on day one, and it's an easy 10xer in five years given the current crypto markets.

Bitcoin has reached product market for for money laundering and avoiding capital controls. It doesn’t really need more to hit these valuations with inflation expectations and near 0 interest rates.

Personally, I am bullish on the use of crypto for decentralized finance: https://defipulse.com/ That is product/market fit for crypto, and this past year has proven out some of those smart contract models.

See: Synthetix (derivatives), Aave (lending), Stable coins (Maker DAI), Compound (lending), Uniswap (trading), etc.

The flaws with using bitcoin as a currency today are:

1) It has a delay. When you send money it could take them literally over an hour to get that money. (Usually within 5 minutes though.) This is not ideal for a business. There are bitcoin services that smooth this over, giving them cash immediately, and automatically transferring it to USD so the company never touches a bitcoin. To the business it's basically a credit card.

2) Transfer fees. While not the end of the world in the early days, they're worse than credit cards today. Expect to pay a lot to buy a latte, almost 1.5x due to fees.

The bitcoin community for a while has been strongly pushing for BCH or Bitcoin Cash. It addresses these two issues, reducing fees significantly and accelerating transfer. It's the alt currency the bitcoin community has been pushing. However, I admit I have zero experience using it to buy items.

I always find this sentiment a little funny, because I think payments are the least interesting thing about Bitcoin. Fast and easy payments will come in time with crypto, but in most developed countries the credit card system is a safer and easier consumer alternative anyway.

Crypto is way more than payments, it's an entirely new financial system outside the control of existing governments and corporations. If you don't understand why this is way more important that being able to buy a coffee easily, you haven't been paying enough attention. There's only so many options for long term wealth storage, and crypto represents an entirely new class, so from a hedging perspective it makes sense for all high wealth individuals to have a small allocation. We're reaching the point where you're at a greater long term risk not holding any.

As more money is stored in crypto and more trust placed in it, there will naturally be more desire from those users to be able to easily use it for consumer purchases, so give it time. But again, the most interesting stuff is what's being built out now, which is an alternative to the legacy financial system, not a Visa competitor.

Bitcoin is a STORE of VALUE, like gold or Bonds.

We're currently in an age of unprecedented Fiat currency devaluation the likes of which we've never seen before in such a developed country. And we're only going to see much much more of it as the younger generations have made it clear they want much more from government in the way of fiscal and stimulus than they want taxes. Hence deficit spending will continue to expand and expand. The Fed will keep printing money until inflation runs super high: 2 to 4%, they said they would be happy with! and lets not forget the CPI is undervalued by at least 1%.

the monetary supply this year has expanded at a record pace, just look it up. Assets have been exploding over the last 10 years, both in the US and worldwide.

What all this means is that there is an unprecedented need for a stable STORE of value. It's not about bitcoin. It's about having a store of value that's guaranteed to not be inflated and the world has a huge burning need for it. this is why bitcoin will expand from 700Billion today market cap, up to 10Trillion or 20T or more over the next 5 to 10 years. maybe not in a straight line but it will get there and even exceed it maybe. Bitcoin may be the new bonds, in about 30 years time from now.

The FEDs of the world, that pump up the monetary supply have all agreed on the same game plan: It's call UP is the only way out. The only way to deleverage the economy is to inflate away all the debt. The Governments of the world are all on board with this policy. Why do you think they're all so desperate to create high inflation (3%-4%)? That's how you reduce the debt burden. 10 years of 5% inflation can reduce your debt almost in half, right along with anyone's savings. And by keeping interest rates at 0 or less, they want to make saving as painful as possible, so people will go out and spend their entire retirement savings on consumables to keep the economy going in the short run. the only way to protect yourself from this is to own: Stocks, real estate (not scalable or viable for most), and Gold. That's all there was. Until now. Now there's bitcoin, another way to diversify and not put everything into super high stocks.

BTC will never be a widespread payment for things like coffee, as it makes no sense. It will always have to be pegged against a local currency (and that currency shown) so what's the point of using it to buy coffee?

At present, Bitcoin still an extremely risky asset. If it stays that way, who knows.

With wallets like Breeze & Phoenix initial onboarding of new users to LN is quite painless because they offer in-flight inbound channel creation (for a tiny fee). So you can install and accept payment right away. Strike mobile app allows to easily fund your LN wallets with smallish amounts of money ($1-$1000) very quickly - just plug in your debit card.

I have been kicking tires paying for my coffee in LN-accepting Palo Alto coffee shop before the lockdown and it worked OK. But in other situations LN payments did have some problems (usually lack of receiving liquidity on the receiver end).

Another road to Bitcoin scaling for payments is using sidechains like Liquid. I haven't tried it myself yet.

But generally I agree that payments on Bitcoin are not critical right now, as it is becoming a trust-less collateral and saving device for bigger institutions for who $10 tx fees are irrelevant. It might however force smaller investors to try out sidechains/LN for casual payments.

If he isn't, it means there will only ever be 20M bitcoins.

Previous results don't guarantee the future, but most likely, if you can keep your emotions out of it, you'll make good money following the cycle.

No, they're not.

I guess it depends on your definition of "all major exchanges".

If what you means is "US exchanges", then maybe.

It's cool to be bullish on Bitcoin but this kind of reasoning shows a serious lack of understanding.

Further, bitcoin has absolutely nothing to say about amount of currency in circulation in a world where credit is used to create currency (i.e. modern world).

I hope you like unemployment because economic policies that increase CPI inflation are the primary tool against fighting unemployment and drive as much economic growth as possible. 2% CPI inflation is all it takes.

Of course, governments are too incompetent to actually do things that increase CPI inflation so they just do asset inflation because pandering to the wealthy is what the governments are best at.