Even the core belief of Bitcoin... that it is limited in production is a lie. They've already proven they can just fork off and create more. If the core developers own the currency why not inflate? Why are we limited to Bitcoin Cash? Why not Bitcoin Supra or Bitcoin Plus?
I don't know about that, the core devs are highly resistant to inflating the supply of BTC, just as they are with centralization of the infrastructure.
This is not true of the forks and altcoins, though, which are much more susceptible to the whims of their creators and majority stake holders (usually one and the same). If Vitalik wants more ETH he can make it happen, or if a bunch of investors are locked out of their funds because someone fat-fingered a line of code in a digital contract, he can fork it so they get their money back. And I bet if Ver thinks the world needs more BCH he can make that happen, too.
For better or worse, there's no single entity with significant control over BTC, that whitepaper concept is still very much intact.
The people I know who wouldn't be upset about losing $9K on a speculative bet, also don't need the money. If/when people bought it at 3 digits or lower, sure. The ROI is like a lotto ticket. You spend beer money on the chance to live the dream.
That's a tough one, alright. It's a much more straight forward choice of keeping a BTC that was purchased at $9 than shelling out $9k to get your first one. I think the best way to look at it, if you see BTC as worth speculating on, is to change your wallet and exchange settings to display the value in millibits (mBTC) and manipulate the psychological value we attach to whole (and round) numbers to our favor. If its value continues to grow, we'll all be talking in milliBTC, microBTC, or Satoshi units, anyways.
What's the consensus of dollar-cost-averaging with BTC?
It seems like the last time I researched it, there were some studies that found a statistical advantage with investing an entire year's worth of retirement savings in January, because the market is more likely to go up than down, plus you get the full benefit of dividend reinvestment. I don't know that there's any consensus on that, though. But even if there were, as a psychological tool that helps motivate regular investment, I think dollar-cost-averaging has enormous value. And in terms of BTC, Coinbase makes it easy to set up a monthly buy, say 10 mBTC per month, which would be $100 today, but could be $40 next month, or $70 the one after that.
We've been through 80% drops before, there's no guarantee it won't happen again. It might go to zero or, as some hedge fund guys have been saying lately, it might hit $40 per mBTC by the end of 2018.
