Why is Bitcoin so high?
Q-day is coming. Encryption will most likely be broken within 5 years with quantum computers. Possibly sooner if we extrapolate accelerating advancements. This means old addresses will be up for the grabs. This means Bitcoin becomes unsecure. Big money knows this. Yet they still push this past $100k. Quantum resistant hard fork won't be easy or smooth to implement.
The usual argument "B-b-but banks will be insecure, too!"
Not quite. For banks and centralized entities it will be way easier to implement additional safeguards and transfer to post-quantum cryptography. For decentralized cryptocurrency - not quite so.
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[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 34.3 ms ] threadThe real value of bitcoin isn't the algorithm, it's the address balances, viewed as a more important scorecard than the rest of crypto put together. Those numbers can be moved elsewhere, if necessary.
2) it's all speculative behaviour. The amount of non speculative behaviour in this market is tiny. It could be millions of non speculative transactions and still be swamped by whales and market distorting behaviours.
3) buying land or other real goods or investing in services and industry is better for the world, but your returns across diverse investment will tend to the longterm mean of 7% not speculative monster multipliers.
4) there is specific speculation of Trump constructing a US federal policy toward bitcoin, including taking a position inside it, or changing the regulatory landscape. I think it's a bad idea but in these days, who can say bad ideas don't get air time?
5) realised value from crypto trading incurs tax. Don't be fooled into believing the gains won't be taxed. Don't be fooled into thinking they exist, are crystallised if they remain inside a chain. Nothing which generates this kind of value, speculative or not, avoids the eye of taxation, and forensic accountants I know say chains make tracing fraud and criminal assets and hidden profits easier not harder. The people who know how to avoid tax are the same people who kill for money. You'll be conned out of your asset, your life or both, if you pursue this aggressively enough with enough value.
How come? Experts predict something like 5-10 years max.
> 5) realised value from crypto trading incurs tax.
Plenty of jurisdictions have 0% crypto tax.
Sure, there are jurisdictions without tax. America isn't one of them and the IRS assess worldwide income. If we're not talking about America then getting rights to use non tax jurisdictions you want to live in or be a citizen of is expensive and hard. Nor are most OECD economies zero tax. People who already have tens or hundreds of millions can afford to construct non Dom status. If you aren't already rich it's harder.
As for the Bitcoin market cap. That’s completely meaningless. There’s not $2T of value in Bitcoin. Any cryptocurrency can reach millions or even billions in market cap, and then go to zero in a day.
If make a cryptocurrency, give myself a trillion coins and sell you one for one dollar, does that mean that the market cap of one trillion dollars represents that there’s actually a trillion dollars of value in that cryptocurrency?