Don't even attempt to mine Bitcoins, it's a waste of time now. Litecoins are a viable alternative when it comes to commercial hardware.
Bitcoin price skyrockets, crashes, rinse, repeat, internet starts investing in tulips
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Don't even attempt to mine Bitcoins, it's a waste of time now. Litecoins are a viable alternative when it comes to commercial hardware.
Naked Snake
Member
Yeah I wanted to buy some bitcoins several months back (in order to buy something with them), but was put off by the all the hoops and didn't go through with it.
Easiest way would be to buy them from someone directly... I eventually found out that my landlord actually invests in them and he offered to sell me some, also a GAFer offered them to me.
Value of currency is mostly a function of people's trust and confidence in it. Bitcoins is of course different from the other traditional currencies, but the role of trust and confidence in its perceived value is just as important for it as other commodities. That's at the heart of arbitrary value humans place in things and it's all Bitcoins needs to succeed and gain widespread use. Will it ever be as commonplace as regular cash of fiat currencies?
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/21/businesses-embrace-bitcoin/3666279/
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpoli...n-political-debut-could-mean-for-transparency
http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/22/o...e-virgin-galactic-to-accept-bitcoin-payments/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/22/no-bitcoin-isnt-like-a-segway/
Maybe.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101213462
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/bitcoin-is-the-segway-of-currency/281625/
Maybe not.
Whatever the outcome, it's getting harder to deny that Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies are worth taking notice of.
dave is ok
aztek is ok
If anything that chart shows that bitcoin is a bubble waiting to pop
guess how many bubbles bitcoin has had that have popped, recovered, gradually inclined, and then followed by another "bubble". those earlier spikes looked just as big and insane at the time they were happening. they only seem like small blips compared to the ones that have followed.
but even if you're right, what does it matter if you've bought bitcoins before a bubble and then sold after a bubble and made a profit? does a popped bubble somehow reduce your gains after you've sold?
i honestly have no idea if bitcoin will be around forever and become a common mainstream way of transacting. maybe there will be an unrecoverable crash sometime in the near future that will make it fade into irrelevance, but that will hardly matter to the people that have already sold their bitcoins and made millions.
empty vessel
Member
You could say the same about any pyramid scheme.
Are you still here preaching that nonsense? I'd thought if someone had only negative things to say about something then generally people would go do something else with their time.
empty vessel
Member
Am I offending your Libertarian sensibilities?
If you're going to participate in a pyramid scheme, you should at least know what you're getting into.
Jackben
bitch I'm taking calls.
It isn't nonsense. And people asked for a reasoned perspective earlier in the thread. Sorry I must have missed the "positive posts only" in the brag-heavy OP.
Clearly most people - at the moment - are just in it to make some quick cash thus the price hike. There's no need to buy it as a currency nor would it be sensible given the high risks involved.
It's just another way to transfer money from one person to another. Some gamblers win, others lose and during the ride you will hear all the usual lines that are associated with such investment bubbles.
"This is the big thing, everyone stands to gain and the sooner you hop in the more money you will make"
It's just another way to transfer money from one person to another. Some gamblers win, others lose and during the ride you will hear all the usual lines that are associated with such investment bubbles.
"This is the big thing, everyone stands to gain and the sooner you hop in the more money you will make"
It isn't a pyramid scheme. That implies people who bought in later didn't get any value from. Clearly the events in the past 7 days puts holes in that assessment of yours.
His perspective isn't reasoned though. It's misinformation.
empty vessel
Member
No it doesn't. Early adopters will profit from later adopters until buyers dry up, at which point the later adopters will be left holding the bag. This is how all pyramid schemes work. If bitcoin had any meaningful utility, that might not be the case. But it doesn't, and few even bother pretending that it does.
SapientWolf
Trucker Sexologist
I'd say it does, but the instability caused by speculation has severely diminished it. I don't think bitcoin will ever be completely worthless unless they're maliciously hacked or exploited. People were using them before this bubble happened and they'll probably continue using them after the bubble pops.
And others will have lost millions. The money in is the exact same as the money out.
No, you actually pay for things with bitcoin. It's not just space money without any other use than speculation.
I have 2 questions:
1. Out of simple curiosity, do you have experience in the field of economics? I've noticed you seem relatively well read on economic theories and such.
2. What is your opinion of Peercoins.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peercoin
weekend_warrior
Banned
Value of currency is mostly a function of people's trust and confidence in it. Bitcoins is of course different from the other traditional currencies, but the role of trust and confidence in its perceived value is just as important for it as other commodities. That's at the heart of arbitrary value humans place in things and it's all Bitcoins needs to succeed and gain widespread use. Will it ever be as commonplace as regular cash of fiat currencies?
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/21/businesses-embrace-bitcoin/3666279/
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpoli...n-political-debut-could-mean-for-transparency
http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/22/o...e-virgin-galactic-to-accept-bitcoin-payments/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/22/no-bitcoin-isnt-like-a-segway/
Maybe.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101213462
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/bitcoin-is-the-segway-of-currency/281625/
Maybe not.
Whatever the outcome, it's getting harder to deny that Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies are worth taking notice of.
Sorry but everything you said is bullshit. Confidence means shit all if there isn't a large institution backing and protecting a currency. If bitcoins ever became mainstream criminals would begin flooding the market with fakes, the price would drop to nothing, and you'd be right back to looking for a new currency- litecoins, etc.
This whole thing is just about liberals thinking they're sticking it to the man.
SapientWolf
Trucker Sexologist
Fakes? As in fake bitcoin? How does that work?
*goes to cash out*
what
i can't hear you over the sound of all this real money.
Bitcoins don't work like that. They're pretty much impossible to counterfeit.
weekend_warrior
Banned
Really now? You think because it's digital nobody will figure out a way to counterfeit it? That the creaters are smarter then entire nations that have to deal with counterfeiting?
j_k_redtail
Member
Bitcoin is based on some pretty strong encryption. It has flaws, but "counterfeitability" is not among them.
empty vessel
Member
I agree. It has a theoretical, very marginal utility, but frankly all private currencies are doomed to die, just as they historically always have. Bitcoin's problem is not only that it is private money, it is that it has been designed to fail as money. That's why it may not be appropriate to consider it an innocent pyramid scheme. The people who were close to its initiation stood to gain a lot from its "success," just as the originators of any pyramid scheme do. And it appears to have been designed that way.
I don't think it has any long term future. Once people get burned, and they will, it will die.
I don't have any formal economic education beyond the basics that a liberal education provides. And I don't know anything about Peercoins. But, as I said above, I don't anticipate that any private money can be successful, and I don't want it to be in any event, because I believe currency should be public and democratically controlled.
Wait, so not only is bitcoin intentionally deflationary because it is limited in supply, it can even be lost? That means that it is in fact inevitable over a long enough time that the value of bitcoin will be 0. All bitcoins will eventually be lost.
ProfessorLobo
Banned
I'm mostly coming back to this thread to be amused by all the awesome theories by armchair economists.
D
Deleted member 13876
Unconfirmed Member
I don't have a pony in this race, but you might as well say anything is meaningless because of the eventual heat death of the universe. Reducing the supply by unintentional or intentional destruction will make it more deflationary, but a single bitcoin has like 8 decimals it so theoretically people could still trade with a total supply of .056484 whatever is still in existence. Whether people will still want to is an entirely different matter. You've made some decent points, but this isn't one.
if i set my wallet on fire, all of the cash inside is gone.
if i format the hdd that my bitcoin wallet is on, the bitcoins are gone.
while the currencies couldn't be more different, this particular aspect is consistent. if you destroy your money, you no longer have money.
ZombieSupaStar
Member
I hate people that did this because I didn't get to. Yes, hate them, as a human being.
But at least I am honest about it I guess.
But at least I am honest about it I guess.
Damaged currency still has value. Damaged digital data can have some sort of resiliency, but ultimately jumbled bits are worthless.
For example, running your wallet through the wash still leaves you with full value. Data loss on a harddrive sector less so.
Amibguous Cad
Member
Can you tease this argument out? It doesn't seem to resemble other pyramid schemes to me...
D
Deleted member 13876
Unconfirmed Member
Probably just the early adopters benefit the most thing, courtesy of the deflation and mining difficulty scaling.
Ether_Snake
å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®
Not really, because the price goes up and down, so it makes no sense to say that those who get in a certain time are favored. A pyramid scheme is structure to profit early adopters, while bitcoin's value goes up and down according to demand.
EV's criticism is not justified and I'm surprised seeing this coming from him. Bitcoins are not a Libertarian wetdream, they are the opposite. It's fiat currency, temporarily bound to a fix limit like any other fiat currency.
CornBurrito
Member
That certainly explains why they are so popular among Libertarians.
D
Deleted member 13876
Unconfirmed Member
Playing devil's advocate here, that's not my opinion but what I reckon is how he's viewing it. The early adopters arguably took the most risk as the odds of it carching on then were very slim.
This is like arguing that it makes no sense to expect index funds to increase over time because the stock market goes up and down.
theprodigy
Member
empty vessel
Member
It's actually very important. The loss of fiat money--when you drop pennies and lose dollars--is something that is taken into account by the government and replenished. Bitcoins cannot do that. It is a fundamental flaw if the aim is to create a currency. But that seems distantly like it was ever the goal of the creators. That, or they are really, really stupid.
Except your cash is replaced by the government. Bitcoins are gone forever. Good for early adopters (who don't erase their bitcoins), bad for a currency.
I'm not an expert on the technical details, but transactions are accepted based on communal acceptance. I suspect you could somehow redistribute money that had not been involved in a transaction for a long time, if most people agreed to it.
empty vessel
Member
I don't think they would. They'd be crazy to agree, especially given bitcoin's deflationary bias. Most people are holding on to bitcoins as a speculative investment, not as a currency. What do they care if bitcoin X hasn't been spent in a year? They haven't spent theirs either! A move to cancel bitcoins that haven't been spent over any period of time would be seen as a huge threat.
This will be a colossal failure. I only hope that GAFers who are in get out before it crashes and goes to shit.
Yeah, even if the amount of BTC in circulation is allowed to grow, the total amount of BTC is fixed by design as some are just temporarily withheld.
The supply of the USD can actually increase, be it to absorb currency loss, to meet the demands of an expanding economy, or for any other reason wise or unwise.
theprodigy
Member
yeah, the whole concept was never supposed to be its own "currency" or whatever the libertarians that hijacked the bandwagon want it to be
although I guess the creators are now millionaries, so unintentional pyramid scheming ftw? :lol
D
Deleted member 13876
Unconfirmed Member
No one would agree to that and I concur it's not good for a currency, which is part of the reason why I think commodity fits the bill better.