Fun Friday: Crypto Crystal Ball

Chris Burniske posted this Twitter poll a few days ago:

I voted for option one. I think the crypto markets will be under pressure for at least the remainder of the year. But I am a buyer so that may be wishful thinking on my part.

Where do you think crypto is headed for the remainder of this year?

#blockchain

Comments (Archived):

  1. Tom Labus

    wildly erratic, thinly traded and maybe a buy!!

  2. falicon

    If there’s one thing I’ve learned while studying this space over the past few years…everything here moves faster than expected.Crashes are strong and quick, but so are the recoveries and bounce backs.So that leaves me with option #2 or #3…I’m leaning towards #2 right now…

    1. JamesHRH

      Going to zero will be quick too?I still do not see this moving outside the SW community, which, admittedly, is huge now.The SW Cloud has eaten the world. The upside limit for me is that the Blockstack will pull the SW Cloud down to earth (first draft of that tag line, feel free to brush it up).I just don’t see a revenue model for it. Even as open sourced ledgers for everything……open source isn’t a great business, comparatively speaking.

      1. falicon

        It depends on the scale and timeline you are thinking about (IMHO).1. The distributed ledger stuff doesn’t work without a currency/incentive behind it ( http://falicon.com/post/136… )2. If A.I. is truly the future (and I think it’s hard to argue it’s not), it will need an economy that sits outside (the backing) of a current government. A.I. will not/can not have borders (and it’s economy can not either). Also – I believe it’s economy will *have* to be digital (to handle the volume, speed, and micro transactional details).3. The idea of ‘coins’ replacing an advertising model (or at the very least supplementing one) feels real to me. It’s not “obvious” or “ideal” yet, but I think it puts more parties in-line with each other than the current “distraction” model advertising provides.Finally – I would say there are too many people involved now to say it ever really goes back to zero…it might (probably will) evolve, and it might drop to commodity prices, but there are too many “true believers” now to ever let it go all the way down to zero.I don’t really buy into the whole “it’s just like the internet in the 90s” comments people make…but I will say that, in the case of predictions of it’s demise (or lack of importance/reach)…it does very much mirror that situation.

        1. JamesHRH

          Its the infinite internal loop that worries me.Miners mine coins that can only be used in one ecosystem. Coins don’t increase in value, miners have nothing.Suddenly, even automated mining has bad economics.And, the internet was the 3rd wave of computing: Mainframe, PC, Web. None of the infrastructure for any wave was open sourced.I don’t think open source can build mainstream infrastructure, for market reasons, not technical ones.Agree on the goes to zero comment. I mean, tulips and trains are for real.

          1. falicon

            Extremely valid concerns.I mostly agree with you regarding open source. Most of the *real* economy and the A.I. built on this stuff won’t be open source (even if the underlying technology/protocols are).Paradigm shifts are hard to buy into, because until they are mainstream (and no longer a shift), they usually don’t seem like they make sense…or should work…and yet…It may not be bitcoin or even blockchain based…but technology needs a global payment tier/ecosystem/protocol before I.O.T. and A.I. can really start to make true and significant improvements in human quality of life.That’s why I buy in/am willing to gamble a (small) bit on these early days…

          2. JamesHRH

            That is an excellent rationale as it aligns with the pre-existing 3 Tier ecosystems:HW Layer – Device – IoTMW Layer – Web Svces – AIDB Layer – Prop DBs – BlockstackStill, that doesn’t clear up whether its a Consumer play or an Enterprise play or whether it is a standalone offering or just a feature.I mean, you could really easily see AMZN rolling out a Blockstack service as a unhackable, crowd audited ledger for your home purchases. Doubt they need ETH or BTC – just build their own.And, again with the infinite internal loop issue – tokens are not useful unless you can trade those tokens for something.1 side of that trade is obvious – govt back currencies. But, the other side of that trade is not.Kin is a great example of this black box of value.Super productive – thanks!

          3. falicon

            You could see AMZN winning today (especially in places like the states and Europe)…and it very well *might*.But how does this extend to much of the rest of the world?There are lots of people in the world that are just getting cell phones, are not living in a stable economy/environment, but do have things to offer to the rest of the world and their community…sure they could use AMZN credits/bucks or whatever, but since it doesn’t exist right now…it’s a lot easier (and getting even easier every day) to get in on this crypto currency stuff right now.(BTW this vision is a lot of what something like the Toshi Browser is helping to push forward)It’s not about how we’ll do stuff differently, it’s about what different stuff we can/will do…incumbent players could have owned lots of emerging opportunities, but usually they don’t for one reason or another.So it seems more likely to me that Amazon eventually picks/backs a technology in this space (and odds right now are that it will be BitCoin) rather than “own” it…though they still may very well put a layer into/on it that gives them more power/control…

          4. Twain Twain

            Thanks for AWS tips. They’ve now sent me 3 lots of monthly credits for my Skills. :*).Software isn’t eating the world. Amazon is.

        2. sigmaalgebra

          > If A.I. is truly the future (and I think it’s hard to argue it’s not),That is a safe statement because to be wrong AI must never happen, and never is a long time!But the problem with this statement is also that never is a long time, and IMHO and knowledge tell me that we are nowhere near anything like real AI.What we have now is 99 44/100% hype and the rest is 99 44/100% water. So, right, it’s not all worthless!What there is now that has any value is almost entirely just cases of curve fitting, especially just 100 year old or some such regression analysis curve fitting.What’s different, beyond the hype, is that current computing permits the number of variables and the number of observations to be much larger than before. So, if have trillions of observations, then, maybe can get a useful fit with a million variables. Uh, there still are not many such sets of data!But if just glorified, 100 year old curve fitting is good stuff, then look at some of the rest of applied math also long on the shelves of the research libraries! Some of it is amazing stuff, very different from regression curve fitting, and potentially much more valuable than current AI.Here is a dirt simple example from part of my background where the math was dirt simple, the results literally saved FedEx from going out of business, and the math was wildly different from current AI curve fitting. It all was about the dirt simple initial value problem for the first order linear ordinary differential equationy'(t) = k y(t) (b – y(t))Don’t need trillions of bytes of data! Instead need just two numbers, y(0) and b. Then get to use other considerations to pick k. Then have the whole thing! Yes, there is a closed form solution; freshman calculus is enough; don’t need a course in differential equations. And, did I mention don’t need trillions of bytes of data? Really don’t even need a computer; a pocket calculator is enough. And, best of all, does much better than anything in current AI.In this way, it is just totally easy, trivial, totally to knock the socks off AI.For real AI, so far, no one has even a weak little hollow hint of a tiny clue how to proceed.Overwhelmingly, people hear about AI because of the hype, not the superiority of the technology. What’s long on the shelves in applied math is far ahead of current AI, but people don’t hear hype about that applied math.

  3. JLM

    .In the adult markets, classic flight to quality in the short term — North Korea, natural disasters (not including Hillary’s book), terror bombing in London, Iranian cheating, no Ocare R & R, no tax reform, quasi-amnesty immigration deal.Bitcoin investor, however, is not a flight to quality investor.I predict the Bit ends the year substantially lower under the pressure of the 4-hour Viagra rule, the Chinese (who are going to be in a bad mood because of NK and the potential for S Korea and Japan getting nukes), Iran, and a big fail on tax reform. Immigration is a non starter in the investment world — meaning no impact.Upside is that the Russia investigation winds down, there is free Russian dressing at Whole Foods for two days and nothing else.Bitcoin is going to be under a lot of regulatory, sovereign nation, Jamie Dimon pressure.It ends the year at half of where it was meaning $2,000.Cheating and looking at today’s news, I peg it at $1,800 and be happy about this.Remember this, the world is supposed to be run by adults. Some of y’all on this blog are adults. The world is so screwed. We need more adult adults. Adultier adults.$1,800JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

    1. WA

      #Adulting

      1. JLM

        .Yeah, well, there’s the problem — not enough adults. The ones who are adults are not so good at #adulting.A lot of people confuse it with adultery. People are good at adultery, suck at #adulting.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

        1. WA

          Yer killing me…lol. Agreed.

        2. JamesHRH

          The ESPN Public Editor is getting bombarded w the most juvenile comments I have seen in some time.He professionally laid out the editorial principles that underlie the Jemele Hill situation and no one is happy.Feels over Reals and Standards.Pretty sad state of affairs.

          1. JLM

            .THE question is — why is ESPN in the politics business? Why not just stick to sports?”In football news today, the University of Texas Longhorns defeated the University of Oklahoma Sooners by 67-3 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, Texas on a day during which the Horns could do no wrong.President Donald J Trump, in the humble opinion of your reporter, is a white nationalist.Moving on.”One of those three paragraphs does not belong in a sportscast. Pick which one.ESPN is killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Bleacher Report.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          2. JamesHRH

            The commodity that the had the only supply on for 20 years – sports highlights – is available everywhere.To get ad $$$, they have to attract the 18-49 audience. That audience is pop culture based. ESPN started in this direction back in the ’90’s, think Stuart Scott.They will be out of business is 10 years, as leagues and team broadcast direct – likely on YouTube or on their own platforms.Running the NFL is actually a lot tougher than running the ad biz that supports it.

          3. JLM

            .The guys who founded and sold Bleacher Report used to work for ESPN.They approached ESPN and said, “86 teams account for about 80% of all traffic. Why don’t we create a focused channel within ESPN?”The ESPN brass fired them.The rest is history.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          4. JamesHRH

            Further proof that most really successful startups are mostly based on luck.

    2. LE

      The best part of the Jamie Dimon interview was when he said this about his daughter:”My daughter bought bitcoin, it went up and now she thinks she’s a genius.”https://www.cnbc.com/2017/0…The 2nd best part was this:Dimon also said he’d “fire in a second” any JPMorgan trader who was trading bitcoin, noting two reasons: “It’s against our rules and they are stupid.”Here is what Fred said when asked about Dimon’s comments:https://www.cnbc.com/2017/0…We emailed Fred Wilson, a partner at Union Square Ventures and one of the first investors in bitcoin-related start-ups, to get his thoughts on Dimon’s comments. “You have to have an open mind to be able to see the future,” Wilson said.The question remains is if bitcoin can become an institution in the way that gold has. Can it stay around long enough to be taken seriously as a store of value.

      1. JamesHRH

        Great answer from Fred.If you are familiar w the basic theory in Crossing the Chasm – for our younger participants: https://www.amazon.com/Cros… – Fred is an Early adopter and Mr Dimon, is, um, not.

        1. LE

          Yes but ‘seeing the future’ is maybe more like me in 1985 having experience with typesetting (doing it using programming) and then seeing the first Macintosh and Pagemaker (or even Mac Paint) and immediately seeing what was possible. Because I had knowledge and info that most others did not have seat of the pants. So I had an edge and a bet which I did based on that edge made sense and paid off. Luck as wel. Not all info advantages pay off, right?Ditto for what I did in the mid 90’s with certain things that paid off very well for me to this day. I knew something that wasn’t immediately obvious to others.Right now it would be interesting to see the age distribution of the people that are driving bitcoin pricing. And even with the case of Fred, whatever he has invested in bitcoin, I am going to guess, makes up a relatively small amount of his assets.

          1. JamesHRH

            I made a comment recently that ‘the fringe of things is not interesting, unless it washes over the mainstream.’Kind of the other side of the coin to your comment – unusual, arcane knowledge is not the useful….unless it suddenly becomes the key to seeing the potential in something.+100. Totally agree.What is odd about Blockchain community is that it is primarily young young young tech people and all types of finance people (that’s what VCs are, after all).I think it has application, but its tulips.

          2. LE

            I like both William and Fred so I hope they do not take offense at my comments. One thing is once you are in as they are, like hotel California, you can never leave. There are a whole host of psychological underpinnings to that concept. One is that sane people typically stick with and try to remain consistent with what they have said and have done. The other is that more time invested means more likely to not bail and be consistent. [1] So if you have touted something for 1 day it’s not the same as for 5 years. This is not to say they are wrong and that this won’t pay off. It might. Just to say that it’s impossible for them to look at it rationally at this point. That could be a good thing as much as a bad thing I will acknowledge. Notice how careful I am being here with my words.It’s easy for me to say that I was wrong about Apple Watch (I no longer wear it) because I am not that invested in it’s success. It’s like a gimme of my humility to make me think I can admit that I am wrong about something.[1] Real life illustration of this is the example I use give when buying cars or really anything. Waste the salesman’s time and you are likely to get a better deal since people are less likely to want to lose on something they have invested a great deal of effort in.

          3. JamesHRH

            Great point – psychological sunk costs, basically.I use the opposite approach when negotiating: I make it really clear that I am going to make an immediate decision if I get a good deal and that I know what a good deal is.80% of the benefits with less time invested for me.

          4. LE

            That is what I call teasing the dog under the door. You say “I really really want what you have but I am only willing to pay so much for it”. So you don’t try to act indifferent ‘take it or leave it’ you do the opposite. So the other side can see something slipping through their hands. There are definitely cases where that is the right approach. Like anything else it depends on how good of an actor your are and/or what the particulars are and how you size up who you are dealing with. The time isn’t typically a factor for me. It’s a fun process (generally) so it would be like wanting a short ski run vs. a long run ‘less time down the mountain’, eh?

          5. sigmaalgebra

            By accident, for the first new car I bought I used what you and LE explained!I did some pricing research and guessed what the dealer’s cost was. Then I started about $100 less than that cost and drove to all the candidate dealers, one at a time, offering to buy just then at my stated price. I started with the dealer I preferred, the one closest to me.So, I got no takers, raised my offer by $50, went to my preferred dealer and then all that others and tried again.I don’t remember how many iterations it took, but at one iteration, when I walked into the preferred dealer, the situation changed. The salesman took me to the office of the sales manager, and he added about $1.61 or some such to my offer, saying it was his “profit”, and we closed the deal. That dealer knew that my price was attractive enough that someone might close the deal and I’d never be back!But, as for LE, all the dealers had some time involved, and the dealer I closed with did that because like you wrote I was offering to close the deal then.

          6. WA

            You nailed it. Consistency and discipline are main ingredients of long term success.

          7. Girish Mehta

            The primarily young young tech people are too young to remember 2000. Lessons of history still to be learned.For the VCs, its the portfolio dynamic. Asymmetric bet — Little potential downside (to the total portfolio), big potential upside.To apply the idea of “inversion”…assume its 4-5 years back and you are a VC, why would you not want to get at least some exposure here ?Now, once in, VCs support their portfolio companies for the long haul. Thats a good thing.Moreover, VCs are human and (1)- Commitment bias, (2) -Consistency Bias and (3)- Endowment bias sets in. You like what you own after you own it. Also, their past success has come from sticking to their beliefs against the early nay-sayers.Outsiders need to keep this perspective.

          8. JamesHRH

            Every bubble has this dynamic it seems, no?The bubble comes when the non-insider & non-portfolio types – Paris Hilton anyone? – join in.

          9. Girish Mehta

            Every (edit: most) bubbles also have another dynamic – it starts with a kernel of truth at its core, with some reason for its existence, before it became a bubble, that was real and substantive.

          10. JamesHRH

            Agreed, but is it the internet or tulips?

          11. Vendita Auto

            All there is is meaning and mechanism. Events are decisions

      2. Vendita Auto

        Not without institutional support Therein is the rub and IMO rightly so.

      3. Matt A. Myers

        I feel investments in blockchain could be good bets, however for Bitcoin and Ethereum’s Ether themselves won’t take hold long-term. I am more and more comforted realizing that there are enough intelligent people regularly commenting now who aren’t falling for the speculative shenanigans integrated into these most popular blockchain crypto-assets.

    3. Girish Mehta

      Hmm…somebody who agrees with you about needing adults in the room.Sorry.https://www.youtube.com/wat…The world is supposed to be run by adults, but is run by people who suppose themselves to be adults ?p.s. Yanis Varoufakis’ book is not bad – Adults in the room.

    4. sigmaalgebra

      As I developed last night for a letter I’m sending Schumer (one of my senators), onquasi-amnesty immigration deal. athttps://www.youtube.com/wat…with in part starting shortly after 3:20 are some Trump remarks in response to some newsie questions (can’t hear the questions very well):… We’re not talking about that.We’re not talking about amnesty at all.We have not talked about amnesty.There will be no amnesty.We’re not talking about that. And IIRC in other such statements over the last few days he has stated clearly that there’s no deal and there WILL be a wall. The Wall!Sure, Nasty Nancy, “The San Francisco Treat,” after the White House meeting with Trump, Schumer, Nancy and a few others, claimed much more for her side than was true. Garbage.I’m starting to suspect that Trump has cooked up a newsie and anti-Trump small animal paw trap: Trump says something that can easily be distorted to something seriously different than what he said and meant and lets the newsies and/or other anti-Trump people do the distortions and blurt them out.Then Trump springs the trap, makes a statement cutting down the anti-Trump statements and, thus, undercuts the credibility of the newsies and anti-Trump people.Notice that in this case, Nasty Nancy, and not Schumer, is the one making the statement that Trump cut down.Why? At this point, Nasty Nancy seems deep into the California Dreamin funny stuff while Schumer is still a relatively cautious cookie.On this DACA issue, Trump is holding nearly all the high cards:(1) DACA was from Obama. It was not a law; it still isn’t a law.(2) DACA is just Obama’s executive order not to enforce our immigration laws.(3) In this way, what Obama did was unconstitutional, a violation of his obligation under the ConstitutionArticle. II., Section. 3.on the office of the President withhe shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed Well, this responsibility of the President says that illegal immigrants must be deported.Simple.Dirt simple.And no amount of emotional tear shedding, moralizing, philosophizing, excuse making, story telling, sympathy raising, irrelevancies, etc. can change that fact.Maybe the Chamber of Commerce, Business Round Table, Democrats, and the funders of Paul Ryan’s PAC don’t like that situation, but they are up against long standing laws and the US Constitution.(4) DACA is in a word ILLEGAL.(5) We had an election. Trump won. Clearly enough one of the main reasons Trump won was that Trump promised to enforce our immigration laws.That is, Trump is POTUS, and Nancy and Chucky are not.(6) We have about 94 million people — US citizens of voting age — out of the labor force, mostly people ready, willing, able, and eager to work. No doubt nearly all the 94 million want our immigration laws enforced.Uh, to be in Congress, need to be able to count votes. Okay, on enforcing our immigration laws, first we write down 94 million votes. Then for people in the labor force who don’t want to lose their jobs to immigrants, add in those votes. Presto, bingo, we are well over 100 million votes to enforce our immigration laws. I’m sure Schumer understands this arithmetic, and maybe someone should outline a summary for Nasty Nancy.(7) Yes, obviously lots of people in NYC, SF, and DC, the NYT, WaPo, the propaganda MSM, etc. like ignoring our immigration laws. But Schumer’s main base is just NYC, and Nancy’s main base is just SF. Nearly everywhere else in the US, the voters, although maybe not the Business Round Table and Chamber of Commerce, very much want our immigration laws enforced.Gee, enforce our laws? And Nancy and Chucky want to find that reprehensible? That won’t wash. That dog won’t hunt. People won’t swallow that hog wash or drink that Kool-Aid. Nancy, Chucky, the Democrats, the Business Round Table, the Chamber of Commerce, the NYT, WaPo, the MSM, etc. will lose this one. The Trump voters will win this one.To be humane, Trump has given the DACA people six months. Then so that he can get back to enforcing the laws, Trump has given Congress six months to pass a DACA law. Of course Trump has not promised to sign that law.Uh, in simple terms, all the confusing smoke blowing, anecdotal story telling, heart rending, hand wringing, tear dripping aside, clearly Trump, as in his campaign, is determined to STOP illegal immigration. The Trump supporters very much want that, and there are enough Trump supporters to win elections. In addition, if only for the tax issue, Trump plans rallies in states with Democrat Members of Congress; those rallies no doubt will also apply pressure to let Trump enforce the immigration laws and fund and build The Wall.Gee, enforce our long standing immigration laws! Some people find that really weird! Well, they are on the way to getting an education in reality.

  4. WA

    I chose two on the poll earlier this week. The trepidation is of being a contrarian and perhaps also selecting along wishful thinking. All boats float in rising rides. And many mistake bull runs for genius. Question of China has sent a message that other central banks and demagogue political leaders globally may follow suit? Perhaps our first crypto-contagion? When America sneezes – oh pardon – when China sneezes the world gets the flu?

  5. IDK75

    Much higher from this panic bottom today.

  6. Anne Libby

    Where’s Jim? I’d love to hear his quip about you being right 50% of the time!

    1. JamesHRH

      Miss Jim too, esp on Fridays.

    2. sigmaalgebra

      Recall, it’s easy to be right 50% of the time: Just flip a coin and ignore everything else. IIRC, I posted the proof at either AVC or JLM’s site.

  7. Brad Lindenberg

    Going back to $2k but I’m a buyer on weakness. Dollar cost average and accumulate. Be greedy when others are fearful.

  8. chris dirubio

    Personally, I love these buying opportunities. I see cause for concern with a decentralized global cryptocurrency, but believe there is a need for a digital gold. The majority value is not in currency, it’s in the blockchain infrastructure.

  9. Brian Schuster

    I think we’re getting to the not so fun part of a boom-bust cycle. No matter how bullish you are on the technology (I’m “leave your job to pursue this full time” bullish), you can’t get around the fact that natural systems just don’t grow sustainably like the AltToken Market did this year. It went from ~$3 Billion to $100 Billion in six months with what can only be described as a straight line up and slightly to the right. When animal populations do that, their ecosystem collapses. When markets do that, they crash.

    1. JamesHRH

      https://uploads.disquscdn.c…I sourced this from an Andy Swan tweet (btw, it sucks that you cannot link in somebody who is a Disqus user if they have not commented today, think about that folks)……That’s the most Bubblicious graph I have ever seen, personally.

  10. Frank W. Miller

    I have no idea. And that’s the problem. Unlike an asset that is tied to some underlying value, like a commodity or a company, cryptocurrencies vary at the whim of those who own it. When you or some other large or influential holder decides to dump, things could get ugly fast.

    1. LE

      Fred will not dump. I say he is in it ’till the bitter end. The bitter end is the part of the anchor line that slips through your hand that you have not tied it off to the cleat.

      1. Frank W. Miller

        I think so too, but he’s not the only large holder.

  11. Pointsandfigures

    My palms are out. Especially if the stock market corrects

  12. Mike Carson

    I hope you got in under $3k this morning because I see it making a new ATH before the end of 2017

  13. Sebastian Wain

    Since one area in my company is working on ICOs for real companies. with real products, real customers, and not only a whitepaper, I should say that things will improve before the ending of 2017. A new wave is coming with more due diligence.On a different note it is important to highlight that the Ethereum team latest release of geth shows more maturity and professionalism than before.

    1. DJL

      Can you point me to some of these? i have been searching (in vain so far) for a real use case backed by an ICO that has a chance at real value in the next 1-2 years.To me, raising money via an ICO is a totally separate decision than building a company based on blockchain (“distributed ledger”). I can see many possible applications within the cyber security space, but cannot find the startups working there.

      1. Sebastian Wain

        I can do this once they launch their campaign publicly.I agree with your point of you, I don’t think we should force ICOs to be connected with decentralized applications. Currently, one of the main issues is the legal aspect since many of these companies will do ICOs for securities.

  14. Mike Cautillo

    I’m somewhere in between 1 and 2, but right with you as in that I’ve always averaged in with the major dips anyway. One observation I’ve made as the ecosystem continues to grow, is that the duration of the corrections have become shorter. ETR none the less!!

  15. Michael Elling

    What if one or a few of these larger ICOs fail or look to be unstable or their future funding is put into question? Perception counts here; so that could turn on a dime. Then how stable or liquid is the foundation if there is a rush to liquidate those tokens into ether/bitcoin and then into real money?With current VC investments, individual risk is spread across a portfolio, which itself has dampers for shock and then liquidation doesn’t really upset the underlying monetary foundation. Unless of course a perfect storm of events from other areas happens to hit the base.I doubt ether/bitcoin could withstand real shocks internally or externally.

  16. jason wright

    how can i possibly exercise by Twitteritic right to vote when i don’t yet have a clear understanding of what Beijing’s policy is on crypto? When the Chinese government has a clear understanding of its policy i’ll consider my options. until then i abstain, and… hold on;https://www.youtube.com/wat…p.s. i’d be more interested in what Dalia Blass might have to say.

  17. William Mougayar

    #3 but I would have added this choice:- seesaw pattern towards higher highs

    1. DJL

      William, I know you have been watching these ICOs. Is there a company creating coins for distributed identity management? (Two-factor authentication.)Reading the Fortune article about the hacks on Coinbase (painfully rehashed here several times.) – the weakness is phone-based authentication. And Coinbase is still using it – only more layers.

    2. awaldstein

      I tend to agree.Ride it out and be prepared to loose. Sell if you want to turn the dollars into something as I wouldn’t take on debt based on it being the payoff.

  18. DJL

    No clue. I am going to vote that things will be slow in the short term and then keep rising until someone gets their butt burned in a major way.I read the most recent Fortune article – and I still have no idea where things are heading. I have never seen a technology with so much mystery around it and so few real use cases. I have spent many week digging in and still don’t have a good sense for the major players and potential killer apps.It seems to me that private blockchains will be where the real value lies. And yet by definition these are not in play (unless I am missing something). If private chains can take off without any rise in the public chains (Bitcoin, ethereum) then I think the public chains will deflate massively.

    1. Guillaume Taglang

      I see a development path that should parallel the Internet. Like for communication networks, applications are starting with private or sector specific blockchains. It will take time before it makes making more sense to standardize and adopt a common toolkit.As far as applications, blockchains essentially integrate any reconciliation/settlement process. It will replace companies like Slearstream, software like ERPs. They have the potential to simplify and democratize any system involving transactions.There was recently an article in Forbes discussing how blockchains are developed to transform the shipping industry. It can provide you an idea of how transformative they could be:https://www.forbes.com/site

      1. Guillaume Taglang

        That made me think of something: are any blockchains offering a way to have public, peer-to-peer, and private transactions?In the ERP example: you might want to publish some information publicly, keep the details of a contract private between parties, and keep the details of the company private.

  19. OurielOhayon

    if today is a proof, it ‘s likely to be a yo yo rollercoaster, massive ups and downs till regulations land…which means a few months like that…then ATH…

  20. Lee Lorenzen

    As version 1.0 of the http://www.KINcoin.com site says:”KINCoin.com provides the world’s first independent viewpoint on the KIN eco-system and shows both when and why Kik Interactive’s and KIN’s market caps will grow to over$100 billion during the next 5 years.”Here is the foundational post providing the rationale for my prediction:https://kincoin.com/blogs/d…Here is the personal background post for why my prediction is credible:https://kincoin.com/blogs/d…And here is a fun image honoring the genius of Ted Livingston: https://uploads.disquscdn.c…And here are the supporting charts: https://uploads.disquscdn.chttps://uploads.disquscdn.c

    1. JamesHRH

      Lee – interesting set of links, especially the last one. You are the definition of ‘under the radar.’So, if I have your read on Kik right, you are basically saying that Kin is a Trojan Horse. Its not really of any value to anyone other than Kik, as it really just pulls a bunch of people together to do work that is valuable to Kik (add more Kik users) that Kik cannot seem to achieve, in a direct fashion, in the current market.Admittedly, Kin miners et all get Kin as a currency, which may or may not be worth anything (everyone betting yes, but again, no hard cash value at the moment).A good parallel would be MS providing IDEs (and other helpful things) to independent coders, in order to pull as many users as possible onto the WinTel platform.The issue is the long term strategy @ kik – this is not new, or particularly insightful, Ted has laid out their desire to be WeChat for Western Markets a lot:Google = SearchFB = SocialKik = Messaging Portal to WeChat set of servicesHow do you account for the current complete lack of demand – in Western Markets – for the bottom right hand box (this is fairly new, even for AVC regulars) of my Box9 Founder’s Framework for Innovation?Economics <-> Model <-> MarketSupply <-> Distribution <-> CustomerProduct <-> New Solution Attribute <-> JobI think Ted is very very very close to certified Tech System Innovation Genius. But, I have not been able to square up the universality of WeChat services. Many, many things seem to move west to east ( sometimes, it seems as if 1/3, maybe 2/3, of the entire world population would happily live inside an IKEA supplied home, for instance) but very few cultural norms (excepting food, which benefited from great distribution…..i.e., immigration ) move east to west.Most flaming unicorns have a simple, fundamental assumption that is wrong…..and several fundamental assumptions that are bang on. I can’t get past the idea that Kik is a flaming unicorn, if Kin takes off.Very, very interested in your answer and happy to take it offline if you are not in the mood to share publicly.

  21. JamesHRH

    Its not 1) and its not 2). its either 3) or 4).I think it is 3, with the caveat that 4) shows up within 18 months.

    1. Hiyito Patada

      LOL. Your denial is amusing.You should write for BitCoin Obituaries.

      1. JamesHRH

        If we all just blindly thought the same way…life would be no fun.Not sure you will get this reference, one of us is FrontPoint Capital.

  22. Hiyito Patada

    Meh. It’s short-term profit taking, along with some FUD. Then price will start climbing again (like it is today), especially when people remember crypto can get along just fine without China, and their desire to make the yuan the worlds Petro dollar. More countries like Japan will legalize it. More countries like Estonia will do things like e-Residency and incubate projects like Mothership.Then Lightning and Atomic will come out on BTC mainnet. In 2-3 years processing BitCoin will be as fast or faster than MC/Visa. Then tax laws will start changing to make it more practical for everyday business use.Then guys like Dimon will be fired and many old, institutional people still won’t understand it.In other words, it’s just another day in crypto. Stretch. Yawn. HODL. Where’s my coffee?”The revolution will not be centralized.”

  23. LE

    On to the next crystal ball:”With $600 Million ‘Blank Check’ IPO, VCs Experiment on Startup Listings”https://www.bloomberg.com/n…Instead, he has asked investors to essentially give Social Capital Hedosophia a blank check to invest funds in late-stage startup companies that the holding company believes are promising, with the twist that it will lend expertise to help the companies grow.“We, i.e. the team that helped build Facebook, will help you build a bottom up understanding of product market fit,” Palihapitiya said. “That’s a far superior way” compared to a traditional IPO, when companies place their fate into the hands of a few hundred initial investors who are looking for a trading “pop” and then may bail on the stock, he said.

  24. Chuck

    When gold was release from government price control (in 1971) at $35/oz it went through a price discovery process that brought it to around $800. BTC is going through a similar process as being the “digital-gold” i.e. a digital store of value asset. Thus any number makes sense in any time frame. Of course no price discovery process goes up in one straight flight (unless financed by the central banks money creation machine and “market put”) so we will see strong seesaw shape.

    1. JLM

      .The history of the US currency and gold is far more complex than you suggest. In fact, our currency was historically backed by a specific amount of gold such that holders of our currency could “cash it in” for a known amount of gold.If one was skeptical as to the buying power of the USD, one could cash it in for gold.In 1933, FDR issued an XO which required individuals to turn in all of their privately owned gold at a value of $20.67/ounce. The gov’t then set the value of gold at $35/ounce.Without private ownership of gold, the USD effectively ceased top be gold backed.In many ways this was a fiction as the London Gold Fix was set twice a day. The London Gold Fix is set by some banks who are the market makers. This feels like the fox in the hen house to me.One must always recall that currency was backed by gold and that gold had a robust industrial and jewelry demand for the precious metal.The London Gold Fix was not undertaken for a period from the beginning of WWII (1939) until 1954. When it returned, all of the investment gold in the US was owned by the gov’t and the world had changed dramatically — Hitler captured a lot of European gold and the Swiss were holding it for him. It is quite incredible that much of that sovereign nation gold was never returned.The London Gold Fix is now taken twice per day.If you are going to “talk gold” over a long period of time, then you have to account for inflation and look at a correlation with some stock index (NYSE).When one does that, it is apparent that gold is not a wildly volatile commodity — meaning that its industrial and jewelry demand provide some dampening of demand driven arbiters of value. This connection to the real world is very important when thinking about gold.The Bit does not have any of that objective price setting or dampening of price fluctuations caused by a real world demand. It is purely a paper, fictitious product. It is not “utilitarian.”It is interesting to me that when the Bit is compared to gold, there is some irony given the odd history of gold price regulation and wholesale gov’t interference.If the Bit is a analogous investment preciousness, then it invites the exact same regulation.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…