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You could say the same thing any time in the past an you'd be wrong every time.

That curve will predict such high price but in year 3400 (I'm guessing, I didn't check yet because I wasn't interested in time horizons that exceed my foreseeable future).

It's a logarithmic curve (albeit on logarithmic plot). For example the bull market in 4 years from the one that we are currently entering will result in just doubling Bitcoin price which is pathetic (even when compared to 5-7x of the current one, let alone past ones). In another 4 years the growth will be even less.

Besides, at some point the random noise in the price signal will mostly overwhelm the shape of the curve and bitcoin will just become like stock market, growing at the glacial pace of economy growth.

Bitcoin is ending, but not in a sense of becoming worthless but becoming another boring randomly walking asset at the price around less than $1mln per unit possibly for entirety of this century.

That general insight of the shape what Bitcoin is that can be inferred from long term prices is also confirmed by plotting MVRV:

https://insights.glassnode.com/content/images/2023/02/07_mvr...

It cyclically heads towards boring.



What's the differentiator from all the other cryptocoins?


I'd say mostly just the sheer amount of money that was already sunk into it. All those people have very little incentive to break the status quo. Bitcoin protocol successfully resisted changes that could potentially alter its shape.


Truly decentralised proof-of-work, with network effect.


> You could say the same thing any time in the past an you'd be wrong every time.

1. That is a weak argument. None of the prices so far would reault in this clear absurdity. Bitcoin cannot store more value than there is value. I am wrong if the population booms to the trillions, or the dollar crashes like Zimbabwe.

2. Past performance is not indicative of future results. For the past 40 years I have been alive. If you said anytime in the last 40 years I would die tomorrow, you'd be wrong every time. I will therefore live forever. Biology and statistics be damned.

Also see: https://xkcd.com/1122/


> That is a weak argument.

It's merely an observation.

> Bitcoin cannot store more value than there is value.

There no hard cap on entirety of future value that will exist at some point in time. And bitcoin growth is slowing down in a way. Same way since the day one. Hence simple fit to a single curve. I have no idea what fraction of value bitcoin will ultimately "store". You can look at gold amd take some guesses but there's no real reason for any of them to be right.

> Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Yes. And this is not an investment advice.

> [...] I would die tomorrow, you'd be wrong every time. I will therefore live forever.

Which is true to some approximation and good assumption to live by. Vast majority of people lives everyday with assumption they won't die tomorrow or anytime soon (for their definitions of soon). Then, if they were lucky they grow old and everybody seeing their decline adjusts their expectations. Where are the signs of decline of bitcoin? Is market cap shrinking? What about transaction volume?

> Biology and statistics be damned.

What statistics or rules of science understood at least as well as biology contradict the working assumption that bitcoin will keep for the foreseeable future its shape that it's been keeping since it popped up?


Ill ignore the stuff before the last question as it doesn't all seem in good faith. E.g. saying "it is an observation, not an argument" about a provocative statement containing the words "you'd be wrong". For other things you said it wont be interesting to dive into them on a HN thread. That is more about this medium than the points you made per se.

To answer the last question. First principles. Exponential growth tails off when resources limits are met.

At best Bitcoin takes over all currency usage and the value of it (at some point $ comparisons become useless as it has become more used than dollars) follows human progress i.e. the things we do to trade for bitcoin. There is no reason to believe that the growth rate of all human civ will be as high ad bitcoins break out from Satoshi. And if it is, it has nothing to do with Bitcoin and everything to do with AI. However the future is uncertain enough that we can't pretend this curve is a predictor.

Now my back foot is hurting so lets turn this around.

What are the underlying principles and systems that make your curve predictive?


I'm not sure why do you think any of what I wrote was provocative. Do you not agree that if you'd predict (or imply) immediate catastrophy for Bitcoin at any point in the past you'd be wrong every time you did that?

Isn't it just a factual observation of reality (even trivial one) that you also agree with? Or did you observe something different?

I just stated something. I did not propose argument for anything. I didn't even tell you that you are wrong, only that you'd be wrong if you said it at any moment in the past. I don't find it even mildly provocative. You might still be right right now. It's just very unlikely in my option.

> Exponential growth tails off when resources limits are met.

Do you believe that Bitcoin grows exponentially when I just told you it fits logarithmic curve not straight line on logarithmic plot?

Are you sure you are basing your reasoning on relevant first principles?

> What are the underlying principles and systems that make your curve predictive?

Statistics. Large number of uncoordinated trades so far and large number of capital exchanging hands in various ways, places and contexts makes it unwise to dismiss it as purely accidental and prone to flipping on its head any moment. Global "once in a century" pandemic didn't affect it. Neither associated disruption to global trade nor partial transition to remote work. No political changes. Nuclear power instigating war in Europe didn't affect it. Raise of AI didn't affect it. Evolution and degradation of global economy didn't affect it. Brexit. Trump's win. Trump's loss. Loss denial. And if we are looking at events "closer to home". Countless bankruptcies of crypto exchanges didn't affect the fit. Billion dollars scams in crypto coming out didn't affect it. Bans on mining in leading countries. Forking of BCH, BCC and Bitcoin gold. Invention of stable coins (also NFTs) is not visible on the fit. I'm sorry, but all that makes it super hard to believe that suddenly it's gonna deviate from the fit when it stayed pretty much on track while all other real world and crypto charts were going bonkers due to real world events and trends and whims of the markets.




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