Looks like a pyramid to me

In theory, but in practice I don't believe it will work out that way. There will be a handful of winners and the rest will lose. Your likely winners are probably already toward the top end of the market cap list.

All the rest will have about as much luck legitimizing their Altcoin as I would if I started printing my own currency. It just won't get adopted.

People only will place value in this stuff if they trust it. Nobody is trusting something sitting at 458 on the market cap list.

So basically, you better have the money to lose if you�re going to play the game?

The difference here is that there is an underlying utility to Bitcoin or Ether or whatever. These aren't Beanie Babies. The value of these instruments exists outside whatever pricing bubble, perceived or real, that we've experienced.

If people were simply buying with hopes it'll go up in price because other people want to do the same down the road, perhaps I could see your argument. That could look "pyramidy". That would be if we were talking Beanie Babies, though, and we're not.

There is very real value here, and despite the pyramid people making their argument against cryptocurrencies (you're not the first I've heard it from), I tend to think that these people do not fully understand the subject matter at hand.

I'm fully prepared to watch it go up in smoke if it comes to that.

There is a value to Amway toothpaste

Bitcoin could end up be a losing proposition, but it's no pyramid scheme. Why is it that a few guys who have absolutely no understanding of it seem to have such issues with it?

I've known Amway people. None of them were selling toothpaste. Toothpaste salesmen could never be that annoying. Toothpaste is just their cover. If all you're moving is toothpaste and toilet paper, you're not very good for the Amway network.

They are trying to sell you the Amway dream...which, by the way, I've never wanted any part of.

I saw something last week that there is a bitcoin computer/machine/server (I forgot the correct terminology) in Washington DC I think it was, and it cost 100k a month in electricity to power it. Is that true?

I don't know specifically, but it could completely be true. Part of the Chinese government's disdain for bitcoin is the massive amounts of energy it takes to mine it.

Just to mine 1 Bitcoin, depending on what you pay for power, costs between $4K-$5K in electricity alone here in the US.

Describe for the class the act of mining this bitcoin? At it's heart is a nonsensical process of attesting, verification, etc of transactions that once a certain number of people have given credence to a new coin is sprinkled down like fairy dust. Much as any currency the value is in the acceptance of it and it's liquidity. If enough people think it's worth something in theory it's worth something. The major issue outside the mining process as I see it is the endless other offering of widget currencies that can be created. As a currency becomes valuable and out of reach groups who were unsuccessful will start their own. I won't say another word on this topic going forward. B OF A isn't allowing client at lynch to trade in it through them, Buffett thinks it's nonsense but what do they know. I don't have to be right today. I will just sit back and wait.

More likely it was a server site in Washington (the state) where electricity is relatively cheap.

1st off, Buffet admittedly has no idea what he is talking about on the topic. This is 100% out of his wheelhouse. The man buys Coke because he likes drinking Coke.

2nd, every firm on Wall Street is giving this technology its due credance. If you think they aren't, you know little of what's going on within the investment business (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Pretty much, yep.

yep, Buffet surely doesn't know anything.