Digital currency Bitcoin hits new high before losing S$200 in value in one day

[opmi]

There is something exciting going on, especially in the Blockchain technology field, but you are right, I believe the Crypto space is hugely speculative and overheated.

Sounds familiar?
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/21/long-isl...soars.html 

$24 million iced tea company says it's pivoting to the blockchain, and its stock jumps 200%

• Farmingdale, New York-based beverage maker Long Island Iced Tea says it's changing its name to "Long Blockchain Corp." as it shifts its focus to investing in the technology behind bitcoin.
  
• Shares soar 200 in the open percent, although the company says it's only in the "preliminary stages" of evaluating potential business opportunities in blockchain.
  
• The company said it's still going to make iced tea and other juice beverages. As of Wednesday, it had a market value of just $23.8 million.
  

back in 2000 dotcom era in SG, there were companies like this too. PanPacMedia.net (book publishing) , Aussino.com (bedsheets) , ione.net (internet terminal(?)), etc 

millenials were like 11-12 years old...

[Wildreamz]

Blockchain, like the Internet, is going to be revolutionary, and is going to result in sweeping, disruptive change to multiple industries, even give birth to new giants someday (1-2 decades from today).

It is now a wild west in the Blockchain field:
IBM now has the lead (contributed to Hyperledger Consortium; has many Blockchain project with many private and public companies/exchanges) with Microsoft closely behind (launched Blockchain as a Service); Alibaba and JD.com also experimenting on many pilot projects, Visa has a lead in the Fintech side of Blockchain technology (launched first phase of Blockchain B2B payment).

“In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could.” - Rudi Dornbusch.

Watch this space.

[brattzz]

https://webb-site.com/articles/bitcoinponzi.asp

Let's try to explain, in simple terms, why Bitcoin and other digital pseudo-currencies will fail. Bitcoin is the World's first distributed, decentralised Ponzi scheme. No single operator is running it, and everyone has a chance to participate in it, but its value is determined purely by the weight of money coming into it and the willingness of holders to sell it. Like any Ponzi scheme, earlier participants came in at lower cost, and are now receiving much of the billions of dollars (yes, really) that newcomers are putting in.
Some members of the scheme spend their time telling their friends how they should get in on this Big New Thing and how much money they have already made "on paper", or more accurately "on screen". If your Bitcoins are now "worth" more than you paid for them then you may feel successful, but if you haven't yet cashed out as much as you've put in, then you're still a potential victim. On the other hand, if you've got your cash back or more, then you're already a paid-up and paid-out member of the Bitcoin Ponzi Scheme. And unlike Bernie Madoff, you're probably not going to jail, although some of the self-serving promoters of Bitcoin are skating dangerously close to that if it can be proven that they knew their claims were false and/or were simultaneously selling. Also, unlike the beneficiaries who cashed out of Madoff's funds before he crashed, you probably won't have to pay anything back. That's the beauty of a decentralised Ponzi scheme.
Most of the larger participants will privately admit, if only to themselves, that Bitcoin is a bubble, but they also believe that they can get out before it crashes, or don't much care because they have already cashed out far more than they put in. But just remember this: Bitcoin is essentially a zero-sum game. At any point in time, the cumulative sum of all net cash put in by losers will equal the cumulative sum of all net cash taken out by winners (excluding mining costs).

great summary sir!

[Life is a game]

There is a difference between blockchain technology and cypto currency.

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

[Wildreamz]

There is a difference between blockchain technology and cypto currency.

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

Yes, huge difference. Using an analogy: Blockchain is a fundamental technology, like the internet. Cryptocurrency is just 1 application of Blockchain technology, like Ride-sharing. And Bitcoin is just 1 example of cryptocurrency, like Uber is just 1 example of Ride-sharing apps.

[mobo]

There is a difference between blockchain technology and cypto currency.

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

Yes, huge difference. Using an analogy: Blockchain is a fundamental technology, like the internet. Cryptocurrency is just 1 application of Blockchain technology, like Ride-sharing. And Bitcoin is just 1 example of cryptocurrency, like Uber is just 1 example of Ride-sharing apps.

Yea, but the problem is most people have no idea on the difference. Even if they know, what would they really understand in terms of 'blockchain'? I mean really understand the technology and its applications and limitations, not like a general conceptual read up from Wikipedia.  I will admit after reading online, I can easily spin a few bullet points enough for pantry talk, but at the end of the day I have no freaking idea what blockchain is.

I see many people who do not even understand basic computing acting like they really understand the future of blockchain technology and by implication cryptocurrencies. The fact that MAS needs to publish an explicit warning on Bitcoin not being a currency and you could lose everything shows that the situation is getting serious. It's no longer limited to just a few morons speculating in land banking, fine wine or tree saps.

[Wildreamz]

I see many people who do not even understand basic computing acting like they really understand the future of blockchain technology and by implication cryptocurrencies. The fact that MAS needs to publish an explicit warning on Bitcoin not being a currency and you could lose everything shows that the situation is getting serious. It's no longer limited to just a few morons speculating in land banking, fine wine or tree saps.

IMHO, the fundamental concept of Blockchain technology is pretty straightforward: a distributed ledger shared among many computers such that all transactions are recorded and traceable (a la double-entry accounting); which allows for decentralised transactions over the internet.

I don't think you need to be a software engineer to understand, or reflect on the implications. Steve Jobs wasn't an engineer, Jack Ma never written a line of code.

[mobo]

I see many people who do not even understand basic computing acting like they really understand the future of blockchain technology and by implication cryptocurrencies. The fact that MAS needs to publish an explicit warning on Bitcoin not being a currency and you could lose everything shows that the situation is getting serious. It's no longer limited to just a few morons speculating in land banking, fine wine or tree saps.

IMHO, the fundamental concept of Blockchain technology is pretty straightforward: a distributed ledger shared among many computers such that all transactions are recorded and traceable (a la double-entry accounting); which allows for decentralised transactions over the internet.

I don't think you need to be a software engineer to understand, or reflect on the implications. Steve Jobs wasn't an engineer, Jack Ma never written a line of code.

Yes, but there were millions of others who neither understood software nor written a line of code who dabbled with businesses/investments that had to do with computers or the internet. These people are all lost in history and never mentioned again. Jack Ma and Steve Jobs are interesting as individual case studies in retrospect, but not much of an assurance when somebody reads up 'fundamental concepts' from google and tells me all the supposed hazy potential breakthroughs in the future.

The devil is always in the details. Just like e-commerce, everyone who reads an article or two knows in the early 2000s that this is going to be revolutionary on shopping in the future, but that tells me nothing useful in terms of making investment decisions because the timing, extent and form the technology will present itself as is yet unknown at that time. The Amazon and Taobao we know now are simply the survivors in the ocean of competing ideas. 

It is very important to know there is a difference between identifying a broad social/technological trend and translating that into useful inputs for investment purposes. The former is very easy as most reasonably well read people would know but the latter is what differentiates the insanely successful and the mediocre. Sadly I'm on track to a path of mediocrity. 

[Wildreamz]

It's all in the timing and the details. Yes, the Internet did change the world in a big way. But not all companies that added ".com" to the end of their name is going to succeed. 

In the end it all boils down to Business execution and Business model, and of course, valuation. Alibaba, Tencent, Facebook and Google have great models to leverage and monetized their network effect. They have great leadership, and kept coming up with great new products. 

IMHO, blockchain technology is still nascent despite huge interest. Much like the internet in the early 90s. Many established companies and banks have added blockchain to their existing business and product line, but the BIG money business model is not clear to me. I can see some business model (like Abra) that could potentially change the landscape of the financial service industry when they get big, but even then right now, there is not much way for OPMIs like us to get involved, besides dabbing in highly risky ICOs of these companies.

For now just keep look see attitude, one more pertinent factor to watch, would be whether these new business model would be a threat to companies we own. If investors understood what ride sharing is all about, they would have avoided Comfortdelgro in recent years, for example.

[yeokiwi]

How about some skepticism on blockchain?

https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/bitcoin-b...ues/18019/

At the current state, blockchain is unable to be revolutionary. It hogged too much resources to do so little.
For a typical company, it is still much cheaper and faster to open an account with a bank to do business.

The decentralized concept is probably the most deceptive since the bulk of blockchain computation is owned by a few pools of computers. Ironic isn't it.

Last but not least, with such a huge gyration of cryptocurrency value, they cannot be used for transactions. A company that accepts cryptocurrency for payment may be staring at high losses when the value drops the next day.
So, at the current state, cryptocurrency is just like the tulips mania 500 years ago. Cryptocurrency is only useful for speculation now.