By the time the volatility is gone so is the opportunity. Bitcoin would need to expand its userbase massively to be stable. Stability can't happen unless the price goes up massively.
and what's wrong with that? bitcoin is currently more like a stock as the market is waaaaaay too small, and thus you cannot expect stability from it. it will soar, and it will crash, many many more times. but more importantly, it will survive all that and grow steadily in the long term. long term investors are not affected by these bubbles anyway.
I believe to be stable Bitcoin market cap should go much higher than it is now. It needs to be at the point where it's hard for someone even with a lot of money to manipulate it. It should be at the level where governments are afraid to seriously tamper with it because it can cause global recession.
My long term bet is that it will get there at some point. It might be in 5 years, 10 years or more, but we will get there. We are in a bubble now, but that's just market/human nature and I don't see any way to avoid it. This bubble will pop. There might be more bubbles to come, but what doesn't kill it makes it stronger.
As much as bitcoin's gotten some bad press recently, this kind of market volatility will severely hamper bitcoin's efficacy as a stable unit of currency. It needs a consistent and stable rate of growth (even if negative).
Bitcoin could be stable. I think it will have a hard time being stable because of the deflationary pressures, but it could theoretically be a stable currency someday when there's a significant economy of people using Bitcoins.
Just as how bitcoin grew (network effects), it will crash just as hard (network effects). I sold it all, yesterday :-)
I think it will stabilize around some point and then grow again. I'm waiting until it stabilizes.
Sooner or later bitcoin must stabilize. Either because it goes to zero or because it starts tracking inflation with volatility way down. That's when we will know.
If Bitcoin is not inherently stable why do you think it will become stable in the future? Do you believe it is subject to manipulation by parties other than central bankers? I don't understand this line of thinking but I am not an expert so I am curious to hear your perspective.
I worry about that, too, but I think it's unlikely to happen, because Bitcoin will stabilize eventually. But it first needs to become so big (think $100 billion - $1 trillion here) that every single transaction affects the value in a very small way, and any top HN or Reddit article about it has an almost insignificant effect on its value.
I do believe that will happen eventually, but it's too early right now. Bitcoin works by the law of numbers - after all it's all numbers and math. When its tiny in value, its growth can be very high. When it's already huge, the growth will slow down a lot.
You're appealing to future data that are not available yet. Bitcoin has never been stable in its existence. You are positing without evidence that it will become stable in the future.
Bitcoin will stabilize in time, when it's big enough to absorb short time supply and demand shocks. It will eventually follow the value of all economic activity through its network. The more economic activity, the less volatility in aggregate.
There's a huge cost in "stabilizing" a fiat currency, in terms of debt and inflation.
I agree with all of that, but I will add that for everyone who picked up some bitcoin as a hedge or gamble or whatever in its first ~10 (of 11) years of existence are sitting on a very nice reserve for now. Nothing is perfectly stable. Gold, land, even lumber? All have had their extreme roller coaster rides lately. And now the sacred USD is waning from inflation.
My only suggestion for those who seek stability is the typical one: diversify.
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