A few thoughts - Friday, April 18, 2014

Post by **Steve Sokolowski** » Fri Apr 18, 2014 12:00 pm

Today's thoughts:

1. In altcoin mining news, the charts are a beautiful thing: http://shoemakervillage.org/temp/payouts-0418.jpg. The expected payout for mining the most profitable coin for 1Mh/s/day has almost doubled since Monday. It looks like, despite all the recent articles where people claim altcoins are going to disappear, they are still worth something yet.

2. I'm shocked that no bad Chinese news happened last night. That probably means that there won't be any more news until Sunday night, which means no abrupt crashes during the weekend.

3. Has anyone noticed the recent spate of articles and videos with big investors touting bitcoins as the next big thing? /r/bitcoin is flooded with that one video on CNBC where bitcoin is recommended as the top investment of the next 25 years.

4. More interesting than these videos of bitcoin supporters are some of the opposition. One key article titled "why I'm not investing in bitcoin" seemed like negative news at first, but the author went on to say that he isn't doing so simply because the regulatory oversight isn't there yet. He said there is plenty of money to be made once the risks of regulation are resolved. Even the people who are less bullish on bitcoin aren't downing it anymore; they're just not going to invest until there is more money in the system.

5. One of the things that really peeved me was that Cryptsy started showing negative balances earlier in the week. Apparently, this caused the Blackcoin pool to stop payouts, because they use Cryptsy to buy Blackcoins. The Blackcoin pool was able to continue mining, but a more complex pool like mine, which is set to use Cryptsy when it opens on May 23, could not afford to continue operating during such a period. And what are the alternatives? Vircurex, which is insolvent and admits to it? That lead me to realize that...

6. ...after all these years, it strikes me that the major issue with cryptocurrencies is the same as it was last year, and the year before that, and the year before that. The NASDAQ doesn't go down for a day and show negative balances. It is no wonder that people don't take bitcoins seriously when we still have exchanges that are fractional reserves, or which have serious bugs, which lose bitcoins to theft, or which charge fees as high as 1%. I absolutely agree with the person who posted yesterday that the number one obstacle to mass adoption is that it is too expensive and unreliable to buy and sell cryptocurrencies. A competitor needs to get into the market and undercut Coinbase before people will be willing to buy bitcoins in order to make everyday purchases.

7. /u/lowstrife posted a survey about what the next high will be. To me, the majority of the estimates seem low. Remember that last year, even the most optimistic supporters saw $800 as the bubble's high. Bubbles always go higher than people expect, which is why my vote was for the average of the green and blue lines on /u/moral_agent's bubble chart.

8. I don't agree that Easter is going to have any impact whatsoever on the price of bitcoins, as some are saying. There are fewer religious people every year, there are fewer people who attend church who are religious, many people celebrate on Sunday only, the excessive snow has cancelled most school vacations, Easter is not a public holiday, and not all Christians celebrate Easter on the same day.

9. Like yesterday, I edited this post to add one more thought. I think it's a significant hit on blockchain's reputation that they decided to use the new B symbol on bitcoin.com, which they purchased recently. Apparently, Blockchain and a few other smaller companies have an agenda of forcing this symbol to replace the well recognized one, and their way of implementing the agenda is to simply use it everywhere as if it were the standard practice that everyone agreed to. I think most would agree that it is not acceptable for companies to unilaterally decide to change things that are overwhelmingly opposed by the vast majority of the community. Given the success of drawing attention to other bad behavior in the past (like the resignation of a moderator in /r/technology over censorship), people who agree with me need to make sure that people are aware of what happened and generate some negative publicity against Blockchain for what they are doing.

10. I edited this post again because /u/folhowk pointed out that I was mistaken as to the symbol used. However, I still believe that a debate is warranted before arbitrarily changing symbols without consulting anyone. Note that there are many currencies which use the same symbol as each other to denote completely different values of money.