If not, what price would you ask? Bitcoin has been around for a while, but if it has a future of wide global usage, it is clearly still in its infancy. "This time it's different!" is a sucker's mantra. But still ... this time it's different. Was there ever another commodity in which the total supply was permanently capped? I have compared bitcoin to genuine Picasso paintings. The total supply can only decrease over time. Fashions influence their value, but they can't lose value because of decreasing scarcity.the current price will collapse dramatically
Would you be willing to promise to sell me 100 BTC (or a bag of peanuts, if bitcoin ceases to exist) in five years for a total price of ten dollars? Seriously, with signatures and escrow and whatever we need to make a deal.There is no case in history that I'm aware of in which a commodity can sustain a 1,000,000 fold price increase in the space of a couple years and not come back to reality.
I agree, for commodities I am aware of. But there is also an annoying statistical anomoly that I see frequently. Country X has the fastest-growing GDP in Region Y. It's true, but Country X is really tiny compared to the others in that region. It's easy to grow fast when you are young and small. I once doubled my body weight in a week, back in my zygote days.
Obviously not. There's no upside for me in that case. I'm not going to make a hard price prediction. There is a chance BTC will be worth a decent amount years from now, but if so, it will be through gradual adoption, which will make the price increase steadily. As it stands now, this is a bubble. Bubbles all burst eventually.Would you be willing to promise to sell me 100 BTC (or a bag of peanuts, if bitcoin ceases to exist) in five years for a total price of ten dollars? Seriously, with signatures and escrow and whatever we need to make a deal.
I don't mean to suggest that you don't make a good point. There is no way I would accept less than, say, $10,000 for the promise to sell 100 BTC in five years. It's too risky. But on the buying side, I get uncomfortable at only $100. There is a huge amount of uncertainty. But what about Google stock? It was a positive frenzy at the IPO in 2004, when the first stocks went on sale for $85 per share. Was there ever a more obvious bubble? Yet GOOG trades today at about 1 BTC per share.Bubbles all burst eventually.
If your time horizon extends to the heat death of the universe, then this is undeniable. And it has been true of all traditional commodities I know of. (Tulipomania was a great read.) All investments come to naught on a long enough time scale.
The point is, if you are bullish on bitcoin, you can buy them and hope to gain. If you are skeptical, you can still put money (and therefore credibility) behind your position and hope to gain by shorting bitcoin. The current graph does make the word bubble come to mind. But this is exactly how it looked running up to $100. I was too skeptical then to buy in, so my money has been earning a safe 0.1% at Wachovia instead of gaining 20x. People still make money selling tulips.There's no upside for me in that case.
There's ten bucks (less the cost of peanuts) in it for you. If that's not enough, you can name your price. (For the record, I am in at ten. I would consider it for $100.)