back to article HALF of all Bitcoin-investing Winklevoss twins predict $400bn market for the currency

Facebook backer-turned-antagonist Cameron Winklevoss has issued a bright forecast for the future of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. Speaking in a Reddit Ask Me Anything session, Winklevoss said that he projects the value of Bitcoins could reach upwards of $40,000 at some point in the not-too-distant future. "Small bull case …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Yet one more reason

    for hoping Bitcoin will crash and burn.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      Re: Yet one more reason

      The trend does seem to be down .... last bitcoin price seems to be $732. I guess if you were a 'bitcoin' millionaire now would be a good time to sell?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Yet one more reason

        It went from nearly $1200 peak down to $550 ish then back up to your £732. There are a lot of hoarders who are likely hoping for $2k plus.

      2. Mike Flugennock

        Re: Yet one more reason

        "The trend does seem to be down .... last bitcoin price seems to be $732. I guess if you were a 'bitcoin' millionaire now would be a good time to sell?"

        Bitcoin millionaires are probably just a step below your Dot-Com Era's "internet millionaires".

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I own a load of Bitcoins

      and I'll do/say anything to push the price up.

      Problem is it's hard to cash in, the exchanges just don't have the funds to buy in vast numbers of coins.

      1. Rob

        Re: I own a load of Bitcoins

        And to compound the problem, as soon as that high price is hit everyone will try to shed their coins for cash creating confidence issues with the commodity which in turn brings the price down.

        I still don't understand why people are referring to it as a currency, from what I have read it has a limited number of coins in the algorithm so that makes it a commodity surely?

        If I had any coins, I'd be drip feeding them into the exchange now for cash before it's too late.

  2. Colin Millar
    Coat

    Its the new economic model

    Make shit up and put big numbers on it.

    Sorry - did I say new - I meant the same old con trick that's been around for at least 300 years.

    1. Annihilator

      Re: Its the new economic model

      Thing is, it's even riskier - we know it has zero intrinsic value and will return to zero eventually but have no way of predicting when. It's one of the purest bubbles there are!

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "it's basically errrrm, ahh," right... so there's.. errr"

    Check out the 'Winklevoss Twins Explain Bitcoin' video

    then invest away, lol

  4. Justice
    Alert

    How to give something value...

    "It's worth something, because we say it is."

    1. Turtle

      @Justice: re "It's worth something, because we say it is."

      You've nearly hit on a nice insight there. How about... "A Bitcoin is worth what Winklevoss is willing to pay for it."

  5. d3rrial

    Josh Zerlan

    Really? Josh Zerlan? The most untrustworthy person to have ever walked the path of bitcoin is quoted here? Please do not repeat that mistake, dear Reg.

    Just because he is an employee of one of the biggest bitcoin scam companies, doesn't make him a good source.

    I hope the price drops further and stays low until january, so I can buy some, to profit from the inevitable bounce upwards.

    1. Shoot Them Later

      Re: Josh Zerlan

      I think there's probably quite a lot of competition for the title of "The most untrustworthy person to have ever walked the path of bitcoin", and I'm not sure Mr Zerlan qualifies.

      I assume that you are one of those who is very unhappy that they have not yet delivered an ASIC-based miner that you have ordered. You may be further exercised by perceived queue jumping for orders of other products. None of this makes Butterfly Labs a scam company.

      I myself have a (now outdated already ) 5GH/s BFL unit. BFL were quite upfront about the uncertain and extended nature of the waiting time when they took my money, and I was quite happy with that deal. To be honest I'm pleasantly surprised that I actually have the thing already. Mind you, I never bought it expecting to make money with it; I just thought it would be a cool thing to own and fiddle around with. I'm hoping (if the bitcoin price remains at a similar level) to make back my purchase and running costs for it and earn a little pin money on top. Maybe someone with more mercenary reasons for wanting to get hold of their miner as soon as possible may be less sanguine about it.

      ASIC-based mining has been an explosion. It's an arms race, and even the arms manufacturers like BFL are having trouble keep up it seems. Those already with their powerful ASIC miners (and I'm not counting my puny one here) are laughing, while those still waiting are losing out and likely to be unhappy. This does not justify calling BFL a scam company.

      1. d3rrial

        Re: Josh Zerlan

        Oh no, I have received my orders in full. Just half a year too late, not meeting the specifications advertised, after beeing stuck in the "2 weeks loop of infinite agony" for a very long time. The pure arrogance that is Josh Zerlan has disturbed me more, than not receiving what I ordered remotely on time.

        I mean: Who promises to donate 1000 Bitcoins to charity if the power goals aren't met?

        Of course the power goals were not met and BFL was forced to donate these bitcoins from a PR standpoint. Now 1000 Bitcoins was a lot of money then already, so Josh Zerlan to the rescue, does this guy set up a Foundation and donates these 1000 Bitcoins to himself. The day is saved.

        This is a classical Josh. Also of course cancelling orders for no good reason.

  6. Jonathan 29

    a crypto christmas

    As a concept Bitcoin is great, but it does seem to provoke a lot of negativity which is a shame and may harm greater adoption and usage even if the volatility is greatly reduced in the future.

    There is no question in my mind that crypto currency is here to stay. It has been tested by fire and remains unscathed. However, I believe that a newly branded crypto currency with real world corporate backing and shorter confirmations will soon be launched and go places that Bitcoin can't because of the perceived risk, fear and possibly even envy.

    I enjoy the stories about Satoshi. There is a convincing case to be made that he is an NSA employee or even a Google employee project secretly launched, but whoever he is, he must have very wealthy backers. There are hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoins that have never been touched and I don't care how altruistic you are that is a lot of money.

    1. d3rrial

      Re: a crypto christmas

      Well, that is the beauty in bitcoin isn't it? Even if he wanted to get all this money, he couldn't. He has no access to it, its simply impossible. Nobody who doesn't hold the private key for an address can access the balance of this address, even if he was the creator or lead-core dev himself. I don't care how greedy you are, there is no way to get to this money in a non-legitimate way, where the only legitimate way is, that the holder of the private key sends you this balance.

      I do agree tho, that there is a possibility of an alt-coin overtaking Bitcoin, because of perceived risk and psychological factors.

      Edit: It is of course possible that you gain access to the private key through illicit methods like blackmail, robbery, threat of death, malware or a weakness in the private key random number generator

      Currently there are no known weaknesses in the random number generators used, but even if there were, a new generated address without this weakness can easily be generated and the balance moved to the new, secure address.

      1. Jonathan 29

        Re: a crypto christmas

        Just to clarify I wasn't talking about hacking a wallet. There are thousands and thousands of coins that were mined probably by a singular entity in the beginning that have remained untouched. Maybe he lost his wallets or passwords, but it seems unlikely.

        1. Dave 126 Silver badge

          Re: a crypto christmas

          It is the volatility that is harming Bitcoin's adoption as a convenient method of payment. Would you spend bitcoins to buy a new laptop, if the value of the bitcoins might double tomorrow? And would a vendor want to accept bitcoins as payment for some goods, if there is a chance the value drops sharply the next day?

          1. d3rrial

            Re: a crypto christmas @ Dave 126

            Vendors don't necessarily have to deal with bitcoins, even if they accept them. Many use payment services like coinbase or bitpay. The vendor may accept bitcoin, but all the bitcoin stuff is handled by the payment service and at the end of the day (or week, or month), the vendor just gets a normal bank wire transfer with £££, to the amount the bitcoin was valued at, at the moment of the transaction.

            To the bitcoin deflation: I regularly buy things with bitcoins, just recently I bought a new GPU. Also I buy the humblebundle every week with bitcoin. I never regret buying these things, I don't think about the exchange rate before or after I buy these, I just ask myself if I value my bitcoin holdings more than the physical (or digital) goods I could buy with it and purchase on that decision. I can't speak for everyone tho.

            As to the bitcoin pre-mine: That wasn't necessarily satoshi. It could've been anyone. Thats just the basic principle of first come, first served. There was a 1 block official pre-mine and then the source code was released and everyone was free to mine the coins. True, I think its possible that satoshi mined a couple of hundreds of thousands of coins, but so could have anybody else, if they had shown interest.

  7. Spoddyhalfwit

    I first got into bitcoins about 2 years ago. Since then I've lost count of the number of times people have written it off, for the price (and adoption) to continue growing. We have the same old comments here I read 2 years back, but just a bit more bitter that they didn't buy a few hundred back then rather than writing it off.

    Back in 1996 when I was working for one of the UKs first internet companies I lost count of the number of times people told me the internet/www was "just another CB radio-type fad".

    Just like the internet Bitcoins offer something new... An ability to do things that weren't possible before. Much of the world has no access to banking for example. As bitcoins become more widely accepted I could make payment to someone in Africa direct to his mobile phone, even if he has no credit card, no bank account, no paypal. Virtually zero fees, no currency conversion required.Numerous other opportunities spring to mind.

    Some people will alway write off innovations just as they did with the internet.

    1. Turtle

      @ Spoddyhalfwit

      "Some people will alway write off innovations just as they did with the internet."

      To be fair, the tech industry does seem to have a far higher rate of "next big things that will change our lives" that turn out to be useless and worthless, than any other industry.

      1. d3rrial

        Re: @ Spoddyhalfwit

        True, so just invest in things you personally would use (or can imagine using) and believe in.

        I would never invest in a "smartwatch" company for example, as I think this will just fail miserably. I can't see myself wearing this and so I won't even bother looking for companies to invest.

    2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Some people will alway write off innovations just as they did with the internet.

      Innovation Xi was successful, so innovation Xj will be successful as well!

      People who "write off innovations" have statistics on their side. Yes, some will be successful, just as some lottery tickets will be winners. That's not a rational argument for investing in them.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wow this Winklevoss guy is a visionary such a sage

    "Small bull case scenario for Bitcoin is a $400bn market cap, so $40,000 a coin, but I believe it could be much larger"

    "When this will happen, if it happens, I don't know, but if it happens, it will probably happen much faster than anyone imagines."

    That is just a load of BS and hot air. He thinks Bitcoins could hit $400bn market cap, but then maybe much larger than that. Then he says says he doesn't even know if it will happen but if it does happen it will happen faster...

    Total BS all hype and spin with meaningless statements, but they are to be expected from someone who is balls deep in the currency.

    I want Bitcoin to do well and succeed, but it is people like these two who are a detriment to the currency. They are just trying to pump it as high as they can so they can dump when they think the time is right and it can't be hyped any further. Bitcoin could do without these vultures ramping the price up on the back on speculation, because in the long term they are just going to do more damage to the currency because they will sell at the right time and the currency will crash massively and probably never recover

    1. d3rrial

      Re: Wow this Winklevoss guy is a visionary such a sage

      The higher the price, the better for everyone, in my opinion.

      21 million bitcoins aren't many, of course they are fully divisible to 1^-8 decimal places, but that doesn't count for much if a single bitcoin is only worth $0.01. So if you needed to transmit $100 worth in bitcoins, you would need 10,000 bitcoins already, which are rather far spread at the moment and not concentrated on a point. if the bitcoin was worth $10,000 tho, you could send 0.01btc which is a much smaller part of those 21 million btc, which has better availability.

      Alright, I didn't explain it well, but I hope you get what I mean.

      1. d3rrial

        Re: Wow this Winklevoss guy is a visionary such a sage

        Uhm yeah. 1^-8 is nonsense. Apologise my typo, I did mean 10^-8 of course.

  9. Schultz
    Paris Hilton

    Paris Hilton angle

    She likes to talk up her assets too.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Two words about Satoshi Nakamoto...

    Bond villian!!

    Doubtless his evil plan is to get everyone talking about Bitcoin and then pull it off the market, creating an IT news drought and bringing the world's "latest fad in technology" machine to it's knees.

    I rather agree that more crypto currencies could arise. It seems that a lot of government and financial types might be interested, but then of course they might actually be "Mr. Nakamoto" themselves.

    1. Coen Dijkgraaf
      Meh

      Re: Two words about Satoshi Nakamoto...

      "I rather agree that more crypto currencies could arise"

      There are already other crypto currencies, e.g. litecoin https://litecoin.org/

  11. Mike Flugennock
    Coat

    Winklevoss!

    BWAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAHHH, ha, hah, eh heh heh... d'ahh, never mind.

  12. Tony Rogers
    Boffin

    Mining Costs and Speed

    I "invested" in a Bitcoin mining setup in November 2013. It runs at 3.3Ghs. (ASIC for the record)

    That was a reasonable speed at the time of purchase and I bought at a very reasonable price.

    £160 inclusive. (Current Ebay price £500+)

    At the current payback via a well respected "Pool", I will have mined one Bitcoin in about

    650 days if all factors stay constant at 24hrs per day ! (They won't)

    I really hope this covers the cost of the electricity I am using as "er'indoors" picks up the

    electricity bill.

    A large hike in the future value of a Bitcoin is required and expected as the alternative is

    my dangly bits cut off !

    1. Spoddyhalfwit

      Re: Mining Costs and Speed

      Tony Rogers

      I looked at buying a mining rig too... I don't think the numbers add up... As you mentioned the difficulty of mining coins will rise quickly so your yield will fall rapidly. You said:

      "A large hike in the future value of a Bitcoin is required and expected as the alternative is my dangly bits cut off !"

      Better to have spent your 160 quid (plus cost of electricity) on bitcoins, and rely on them going up in value, because I doubt you'll ever mine the number of bitcoins you could have bought for 160 quid at time of purchase of your rig.

      1. Halfmad

        Re: Mining Costs and Speed

        You don't mine Bitcoins anymore even with a single ASIC miner. You mine altcoins using ATI graphics cards, ideally several and trade those for BTC. It's much more effective.

        ASIC miners can't currently mine altcoins like litecoin, digitalcoin, worldcoin etc as they use scrypt which ASIC doesn't support although there are rumours of them coming out in the future. However they won't mine faster than people using decent ATI cards, only run with lower power requirements.

        It's still viable to run a PC with ATI GPUs 24/7, it more than covers the electricity and with a single 9750 you'll get around £80/month profit at current prices, but it's really those playing the long game - hoping prices rise that are doing it. Personally I'm not entirely convinced the profit calculators online are reliable anyway especially with the rising cost of electricity, potential HW failures if you don't keep everything cool and fluctuations in the BTC/LTC market which has been all over the place in the past month.

  13. loser

    tulip anyone?

    This has "bubble" written allover it.

    Would anyone like to buy a really rare tulip for £20k?

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