On Fri, Dec 1, 2017 at 8:51 PM, Tamzen Cannoy <tamzen@cannoy.org> wrote:

Welcome to 1928, when even paper boys bought stocks because the market could only go up.Until it diddn't.

Shares are evaluated based on ability of company to return capital plus profit. There is always a point at which further upward valuation becomes unpalatable to a rational investor. Cryptocurrencies, certainly "Bitcoin", do not generally / currently pull in resources on the backside, thus are incapable of return in that fashion. Thus invalid comparison.

There are people on my local Nextdoor.com asking if they should be investing in bitcoin. At $10K/coin.

Should first minimally learn or be instructed what an eight decimal ledger vs "coin" is. Evaluating cryptocurrency is totally different than evaluating shares of IBM.

No, not unless they started 10+ years ago.

Basic math on an upheld promise of cryptocurrency says there's plenty of % gain to be had over the future. Some will concur and stake a position, some won't. There was no 10+ years ago, and not relavant since you can't invest a coin into itself (lending it isn't that either).

It’s a tulip bubble

All purchased tulips either died and returned to non reconstitutable molecules, or spawned upon the owners with various term success. Ledger ownership and existance of most cryptocurrencies continues indefinitely by design, and in the case of "Bitcoin" has both an agreed known and fixed final quantity and issuance curve. Thus invalid comparison.

and it is going to wreck a lot of people’s lives

They are free to choose their allocations. Historically more likely to be wreckage among fiats. Stay agile.

and set back crypto-currencies in general.

There is no such back in the box, nor will development be abandoned by all.