I'm sorry to say it, but most of the people writing here are oblivious to the realities and are getting caught up in the usual reasoning about the qualities of Bitcoin and chart analysis.
Good thing that we have you here to help us through this phase of our bitcoin journey.
There is a very significant reason for the lack of a bull market, besides the usual manipulations by the big players. And it is the gold market. I'll just quote an excerpt from the following article:
Oh no.
More gold pumping (lamenting)?
Geopolitics is fueling this new gold rush. Much of global demand comes from China, which is stockpiling gold to reduce reliance on the U.S. dollar, develop the means to influence the international monetary system, and shield itself from potential U.S. punitive measures. Last year, the Peoples Bank of China covertly bought 630 tons of gold, and it has now accumulated more than twice the 2,530 tons that it officially declares, according to Money Metals analyst Jan Nieuwenhuijs. Chinas voracious appetite for gold has contributed to a spike in illicit gold mining across the Global South, prompting the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to warn in May that organized crime in gold supply chains posed a serious global threat. (Some 50,000 illegal Chinese gold prospectors are believed to work in Ghana alone.)
Less attention to the superior asset (bitcoin) then.
https://time.com/7325561/ghana-gold-mahama-galamsey/Currently, the whole world is in a gold rush at every level. Stocks, ETFs, physical gold, etc. One of the advantages of Bitcoin was that anyone could buy it, in the Western world at least. But this advantage disappeared with the advent of phone apps with which you can buy gold stocks easily.
Last time I checked, gold stocks are not gold.
There this rush is not so obvious, but if you take the trouble to ask people, you will understand that from the most illiterate to the most educated and from the poorest to the richest, there is almost no person who is not involved in it.
I am not involved in it, except for getting stuck in threads like this reading about it on nearly a daily basis in recent times.
Bitcoin no doesn't have a line, even though it is in the ballpark of 1,000x better than gold with merely only around 1/9th the market cap of gold.
This bubble will undoubtedly burst when China stops buying. But until that happens, we will not see an exponential bull market for Bitcoin because there is no retail market at all.
I doubt that bitcoin is lacking a market. .and even if it is true, there should be some value for anyone still stocking up on bitcoin... sure those of us who have been in bitcoin for a while can sell at any price. and not really have to worry.
I suppose the biggest dilemma is for those bitcoiners who are in the middle and who might feel that they have enough bitcoin so they aren't necessarily buying anymore, yet at the same time, they feel that they do not have enough bitcoin that they are able to start selling it.. so they are in a kind of bitcoin limbo.
When this rush subsides, Bitcoin will gradually calm down and start accumulating initially small but steady daily profits, which will start to attract the retail market again.
Does that mean that the bull run is over? Are you taking LFC's side of the bet?
This will at some point lead to the expected bull market, when the same n00bs rush to buy.
What about our current cycle? Is it over? Or you trying to completely ignore cycle theory?
This will be the end of this cycle, when these n00bs start panicking and selling at a 70-80% loss, as it has been so far. In short, the gold fever postpones this growth by a few months or even more. Until then, it is best to continue accumulating, knowing what will inevitably happen.
I am not sure what you mean by the cycle or your timeline on this? I thought that the cycle was until the end of this year. Are you suggesting that we get a gold bubble and then a transition to bitcoin all within the next 2.5 months or do you have some other timeline in mind?
Regarding a bet I am not 100% confident the cycle is over but I made a commitment so lets say for 100,000 satoshis -
That didn't sound like an unescapable commitment to me, while JJG's answer with the proposal did. However, an old school gentleman like you would not back out...
No more ATHs before the end of Q1 2026. If we hit a new ATH before end of Q1 2026 I pay you 100,000 sats. If we dont you pay me 100,000 sats.
... especially if the puny price of 100k sats could serve as a mental insurance of better things to come, so to say. As in "I do lose 100k sats, but it means number really go up at last!"
So I'm glad you're both looking like a deal is near.
A deal seems to be close, if not already confirmed.. and yeah, LFC could have had backed out of his proposition - even though we all know that I probably would have had chided him for a few years in regards to such... even though no one really talks about bob historical offer of blow jobs for everyone.
Another thing is that 100k sats is no longer a small amount. It is 1/1000 of a whole bitcoin. Many of us likely recall when we could get more than 100k sats for less than $10, but now, times have changed.
Some folks take a long time to build up their stacks to a mere 100k sats, and in the future (perhaps 10-ish years or maybe 20-ish years), 100k sats is likely going to be out of reach for a good number of folks, and even today is out of reach for some folks... The last time I checked, 100k sats is 1/10 of 1 million sats.
I admire JayJuanGee dedication and his tenacious undertaking having so much free time making large post day-in-day-out for years.
This guy deserves a forum award.
He must be respected for the hard work he do to reply folks here.
Indeed.
Maybe this time we should institute JJG Appreciation Saturdays? Maybe?
Even I am starting to feel that this is a bit much.
You claim to not be in favor of wrapped BTC, while at the same time spending quite a lot of time trying to proclaim that they are just a part of what we need to accept.
Sure, various shitty things happen in regards to bitcoin, yet I doubt any of us need to argue in favor of them.
I am not arguing in favor of them. I am trying to give a more balanced opinion instead of all is bad, everyone who uses it is bad. I have explained why. This kind of approach leads people to choose even worse instruments and getting scammed. If you don't care about them at all sure you can say it is their own fault. I don't think that is necessary though. If they want to use wrapped things, we can at least educate them on the risk and push them towards the better options? Again the big misunderstanding here is that you are supposed to compare wBTC to BTC, that is not correct and you can't make that comparison at all. You are supposed to compare it relative to other wrapped options like renBTC if that is still a thing to evaluate it in its own relative context of what it is. Anyhow don't you get tired of all the yes I agree responses to your posts in many other threads?
Sure. I suppose there is nothing wrong with giving counter opinions, even though it seems to be bordering on pumping shitcoins, so there is not a lot of tolerance regarding shitcoin pumpening, even if you claim that you are not doing that.
That sounds good theoretically, but most of the corporate treasuries are held this way. Why jump on WBTC as wrong? Did you write to Saylor that he should take control of his keys?
Saylor is a bit of a dumb-ass in regards to his proclamations that custodial solutions are a good thing for either himself (his company) or even his various attempts to normalize those aspects of the way bitcoin is being held and/or sold - and so even Saylor likely realizes (since he is not a dummy) that bitcoin's power comes from its ability to be self-custodied (or threatened to be self-custodied), even if not everyone does it, and I think that I had heard Saylor acknowledge those points in the past, even though he has evolved into even less radical talking points in recent years as compared with some of his earlier years proselytizing bitcoin.
If you criticize Saylor and custodian wrapped solutions at the same time then that is fair. Here I want to say that criticizing custodians and wrapped solutions but applauding Saylor would be hypocritical and wrong.
We do hypocritical things all of the time, which means that we can like someone in regards to various stances that they take and dislike them based on other stances that they take.. so we are agreeing and disagreeing with ideas and not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with all things that any one person takes. We also sometimes will change our minds, so I might not even agree with myself in regards to an earlier stance that I might have had taken.
You think that there needs to be some kind of a litmus test in order for guys to express their opinions about bitcoin code? and/or governance? whether they know anything about these topics or not?
I don't think any kind of standard test would be good because that introduces a centralized barrier for entry which can be abused. I think that with education and scrutiny by senior Bitcoin members we can achieve enough impact. We should not encourage somebody who doesn't even know how a Bitcoin address works to go and annoy the developers about issues relating to OP Return..
If you think about it there is already a decentralized litmus test anyway, that is what I was trying to tell you. If you are a good participant in the discussions meaning that you show correct knowledge and reasoning and especially if you start making good code contributions you have essentially passed the test. With time more and more contributors will value you and your reputation will rise. There is no centralized leaderboard for reputation, but there is a decentralized one.
Sure. People can gain credibility through their past participation, and they can also gain credibility if they have good ideas and/lor they present their ideas well... but that does not stop bad ideas and/or bad presentations from getting into the discussions.
That is the nature of open source, and also the nature of free speech and various kinds of public participation matters that can frequently involve differences of opinion and even chaos.-
I doubt that you know everything in regards to various topics in which you choose to participate.
I don't but this is not a good comparison. You can't have it both. Either you can have the Core developers efficient and good development work or you can have them losing a lot of time to random people and their wrong opinions and ideas. They are limited in numbers and their time is limited. Wouldn't it be better for them to spend time reviewing important code instead of responding to the 1000nd wrong post about OP RETURN by people who don't even know the basics of Bitcoin?
Some developers refrain from participation and get criticized for their lack of participation. Some of the recent criticisms have related to their seeming to close out certain discussions, including locking out some participants.
This modern world is strange. Not that long ago people would not share their false knowledge, they would wait until they became masters of a trade before they would try to educate someone else.
Historically, the internet did not exist in all parts of the world, so there seems to be ongoing adaptation to the role of communication and information in this new world, and surely bitcoin is value attached to information, which is also both a threat and empowering at the same time in regards to its paradigm changing nature, and we don't even know the ramifications of how bitcoin is going to play out.... so who is going to administer this litmus test that you would like to have activated?
The problem is a cultural one, no central solutions would solve anything. People in general just need to shut up more and instead spend time learning and listening. Internet and social media have caused a massive denigration in this part of existence.
In recent times, some people in quite remote locations are way smarter based on their abilities to access information that was otherwise difficult for them to access previously. There has also been siloing (and walling off) of information too. Some information had been available for free, and then later it is put behind a pay wall.
You mean ostracize? Yes. We help them by referring to them as retarded, gullible and various other denigrations.
Yes, that is the word that I was looking for. I don't think that your method will work well with many people though. I mean you are right that they are those things, but the question is what is our goal? If it is to educate them and get them to use the right thing, then perhaps insulting them is not the best strategy?
When there is an open dialogue then there can be a variety of behaviors, and some behaviors are intended to try to stifle further interaction and other kinds of behaviors help to invite and open up the interactions... I doubt that we are really disagreeing about some of this since different communication tactics will be applied in different contexts, and some of the communication tactics will be effective and other tactics will not.. so then there might be questions about whether soft walls of communication might be created and/or utilized and other situations in which hard barriers might purposefully be put in place.
By the way. I am not even sure about what we are talking about anymore since we seem to even be agreeing and disagreeing in ways that contradict some of our earlier statements.
