As someone actively working in this space for the past 3 years, I have a few observations on Bitcoin's price movements:
* The only parameter that in any way is correlating to Bitcoin's price is it's transaction count over time. In fact, if you take out Bitcoin's extreme price spikes they almost completely match up. number of transactions should go through the roof one the Lightning Network is functional.
* The only real world application of Bitcoin that I have seen so far has been 1) Black markets; 2) International money transfer (it's faster to do Bank-Exchange-Bitcoin-Exchange-Bank in most cases than direct bank to bank transfers. That should tell you something about the current state of banking.
* Using market caps for a commodity is ridiculous. The only meaningful parameters to track is nr of transactions, depth of order books globally, nr of exchanges in countries.
Side note: I don't hold any crypto currencies anymore. I don't invest in things which I can't have direction over.
Plus the bank gets to charge interest while they hold it, a week at my bank and a week at the receiving bank, for multiple transactions is a nice little earner.
> only real world application is black markets; money transfer
Currently bitcoin is in between a commodity & a currency. Given that the R3 bank network will be more of a transfering network and btc having difficulty with scaling, I see bitcoin as a currency. It bas lots of potential uses, here are more than the ones you touched on currently:
* Pricing and purchasing conduit to all major crypto currencies.
* Crypto speculation/investment vehicle.
There are more applications than the 4 we listed but I somewhat agree with transaction vol being the metric. For all other alts and btc actual trade volume is more important than market cap. like fiat, it is based on trust and ascribed value. just because there are provable transactions and known amounts, volume & transactions are an insication of value (or perceived value) and this likelihood people begin accepting them
R3 offers no efficiencies over incumbent transfer systems. SWIFT/ACH/etc are far more efficient than R3. R3 seems to be figuring that out, and is rapidly pivoting from their original goals (including blockchain)
It isn't built yet, but ACH is pretty bad, so I can't imagine R3; regardless of what tech they go with, being worse. It started in 74 so its 4 decades old. I'm not saying you are wrong but I would like a bit more color. I am not excited about R3, bug given the backers (all major banks & payment inst) I assumed it was moving forward & poised to take ach in the next 3-5 years
* The only parameter that in any way is correlating to Bitcoin's price is it's transaction count over time. In fact, if you take out Bitcoin's extreme price spikes they almost completely match up. number of transactions should go through the roof one the Lightning Network is functional.
* The only real world application of Bitcoin that I have seen so far has been 1) Black markets; 2) International money transfer (it's faster to do Bank-Exchange-Bitcoin-Exchange-Bank in most cases than direct bank to bank transfers. That should tell you something about the current state of banking.
* Using market caps for a commodity is ridiculous. The only meaningful parameters to track is nr of transactions, depth of order books globally, nr of exchanges in countries.
Side note: I don't hold any crypto currencies anymore. I don't invest in things which I can't have direction over.