Opinion from a long time bitcoin user

I bought my first bitcoin at 9 dollars each so while I didn't get in at the absolute ground floor I've been following bitcoin for a longer time than most people here. Here are my current views on Bitcoin, take them with a grain of salt-

• World banking events are not directly driving bitcoin price- yet. In my opinion Cyprus didn't drive up price, China didn't directly drive up price, Brexxit isn't driving up price (significantly). What did drive up the price was previous holders thinking that a price rise was imminent due to traditional currency problems. What does drive up the price is increasing numbers of people being interested in bitcoin. To become a bitcoin holder you have to 1. understand Bitcoin, and 2. see the potential for storing your value in the medium to long term. People are not running to bitcoin because they fear their own currency is sliding, they are running to bitcoin because they understand the potential. The reason I hold this belief is because bitcoin volatility is far higher than fiat volatility, if someone wants a secure store of value they run to precious metals, bonds or other currencies. It doesn't make sense that someone would would resort to bitcoin to escape value concerns when traditional alternatives already exist. If everyone believed in bitcoin as much as we do here it may be the case, but it isn't yet. I wish people would stop classing a single cause as the reason bitcoin was rising because Bitcoin is global and a tiny market so any number of things completely unrelated to financial problems are usually going to be the cause.

• The pump in the past 40 days has been caused by institution investors taking a position in bitcoin. I don't have data to prove this speculation except my own intuition - The rises happened over discrete periods, rampant buying during set times. I saw buy orders for close to a million dollars worth on the exchanges. This means someone with a lot of money was buying bitcoin inefficiently over different exchanges, they caused themselves a lot of slippage. Long term Hodlers didn't have time to liquidate their cold storage wallets. The pump caused interest in new users who bought in at the same time which explains the current consolidation as others get out. The big buyers didn't know what they were doing or they would have used OTC. I imagine the phone call went something like this- "Johnson, I've had a number of calls telling me there's potential in this Bitcoin thing, lets take a position on it"; "Eh, ok boss, we've never done this before but how much do you want"; "Start with 200 million, just get it done". The buying characteristics seems to match with someone in control of a lot of money with not a lot of knowledge and where slippage wasn't even a concern.

• I applaud the bitcoin programmers for working under such scrutiny. In this politically correct era of equality and inclusiveness it's refreshing to see leadership and direction with a singular purpose. There are many noisy actors with enough technical knowledge to be dangerous and who have enough of a platform to railroad good ideas by introducing decision paralysis to a topic. "Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in". The debates have mostly been healthy and the results speak for themselves.

• The way I see it, as it current stands, Bitcoin's never been in a healthier condition. I think we'll reach a confluence point this year or the next where the people who have heard about bitcoin a couple of times start to realise this thing is not going away and that it's time to start paying attention to it. Many of the tech mavens who originally lambasted bitcoin have slowly turned to evangelists, this is something incredible to behold because when you have a group of people so polarised against something change to really get behind something you know there is real potential in the technology. I think we will have more trouble down the line from the likes of unfriendly governments or troll campaigns on this subreddit but we've fought them in the past and overcome them. I can't see any fundamental barrier to stop the project from succeeding except a co-ordinated all-out ban from all countries.

• Bonus conspiracy point- I think Bitcoin was originally designed by a secret government group. Someone saw the writing on the wall that the dollar is propped up by nothing and a decentralised currency was inevitable. The bitcoin project was executed with such precision in the early days that I think it was the product of a think tank in Washington. This explains why none of the early coins have moved. This explains why it hasn't been shut down or aggressively pressured in the US like E-gold was. Maybe their plan was that by the time the dollar slips towards hyperinflation Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency will have matured enough to take over the roll. The implication of this is that anyone holding bitcoin will be enter a new generation of wealth never seen before. Of course this is speculation, but nothing near as wild as some of the other theories.

Submitted June 27, 2016 at 06:41AM by forcevacum http://bit.ly/292YeMD