[Cryptography] Btcoin -- bubble or investment opportunity?

[Phillip Hallam-Baker]

On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 5:44 PM, Krisztián Pintér <pinterkr at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> disclaimer: i have absolutely no intention to listen to the video, i
> managed to watch 5 minutes of the hour long earlier one, not a single
> argument came up, i moved on.
>
> but here is this:
>

So let us count up the arguments as opposed to straight contradictions here.



> Phillip Hallam-Baker (at Monday, March 3, 2014, 12:15:23 AM):
> > My take "BitCoin is Stupid"
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW8Mn2FaxNY
>
> > More precisely it is the Bitcoiners thinking they are going to get
> > rich quick here because BitCoin is certain to replace money.
>
> which one then? because being stupid and not getting you rich quick is
> miles apart. everyone believing anything will get them rich quick are
> either dreamers or gamblers or geniuses, and only the latter can
> actually hope to achieve this goal. this tells *nothing* about bitcoin
> though.


This might be an argument, but not one that makes sense to me. I don't
think it parses for a start.

Here at the IETF we just had a rather remarkable presentation on BitCoin by
a CEO who clearly sees buying BitCoin as an 'investment'. He has tripled
his million bucks since the start. But even as an investment, he is in big
trouble as the market for BitCoin is thin. It is easy to buy BitCoin in
bulk as $2 million of new currency is minted every day. Selling BitCoin in
bulk is far harder. There isn't enough liquidity to sell $3 million BTC
except veeery slowly.



>
> > But more importantly, currencies are a medium of exchange and I see
> > no evidence that is happening
>
> i see no evidence that Pluto has smaller hydrogen content than Io, but
> it is largely due to the fact that i didn't even try. i personally
> know a lot of places where you can actually pay with bitcoins. i don't
> have a statistics about the investment/direct use ratio, but you seem
> to only have a blank claim on the contrary. and even if it is
> primarily used as investment ... so as gold. it does not invalidate it
> as money. there is no rule what the correct ratio should be, as long
> as the medium of exchange use exists.
>

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. Here we have a group of
people who claim that BitCoin will replace the US Dollar, the Euro and the
Pound as global reserve currencies. There is a group claiming that
AuroraCoin is going to 'free Iceland from the shackles of fiat currency'.

I am not demanding extraordinary evidence, I am demanding some evidence
that people ARE using BTC to buy stuff rather than the abstract possibility
that they could do so if they chose.


What I see in BitCoin is a classic bubble mentality. Nonsensical
projections are made and accepted as incontrovertible fact, except when
they are being challenged when they are immediately abandoned rather than
risk a defense.

Nobody in the BitCoin community is arguing against the notion that BitCoin
will 'certainly' replace the dollar when that is proposed. At best the
response is 'that is probably over-enthusiastic, it will be a long time
before that happens'.



> so these arguments are non arguments, and i can only hope you have
> something better in the video.


There is a principle called projection.

-- 
Website: http://hallambaker.com/
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