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Bitcoin price skyrockets, crashes, rinse, repeat, internet starts investing in tulips
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Worth a read, and the comments even more so. The 3rd comment esp. is very interesting.
apology accepted
D
Deleted member 1235
Unconfirmed Member
this is obviously not the case.
have a read of this,
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/...ad-pirate-roberts-and-satoshi-nakamoto/?_r=1&
if the authors idea is correct then I'd suppose the following
1. this nakamoto dude sought to create something that would appreciate in value (either over short or medium term.
2. it would be easy to move around on the internet even under scrutiny.
3. as it would appreciate in value and as he designed it, he would be able to hold a large stock.
I think your complaints about it are because you think it's trying to be a replacement of currency and work under the same rules.
also your bit about it being able to be replenished... well it can't be but you can continue to divide a bitcoin. you can also use it to buy litecoin, which can have 8x more coins in total. while all the 'me too' coins have dubious value, what has been created is a way to be anonymous on the internet.
System isn't perfect, but NOBODY said it's intended to replace currency. The guy has created a different beast. People saying 'omg it's all so stupid' are as silly as the people that say 'it's a real currency just the same'
it's different to currency and the guy that created it is a friggin genius. He saw a niche that he filled with an amazingly robust system.
also interesting to note that while the users are anonymous with wallets, the transactions are completely public. the cops can just build a web of the transactions, but have to use good old fashioned detective work to discover WHO.
I like it, the internet has become more interesting due to bitcoin. I look forward to getting verified and taking a gamble on some coins, buying a bunch of litecoins and then forgetting about them in the hopes they go madly up in value like bitcoin. If they don't well I lost my beer money for a month, no biggie.
edit: forgot the link but it's same article ComputerMKII posted.
The main point of bitcoins always was that it's a cryptocurrency, never had to do anything with value or something. This article actually proves nothing it claims if you read it.
Why empty vessel is mentioning a government not being able to produce more bitcoins (which government? the creator of bitcoin ALLEGEDLY comes from Japan, doesn't have to be true, no one knows anything about this guy) is beyond my understanding.
Litecoin is nothing more than pump and dump. The richest litecoiners is the owner and his friends who own millions of litecoins and are just waiting for it to go up in price so they can flood the market.
SteveWinwood
Member
I trust anonymous people to balance my dota, not run a currency.
D
Deleted member 1235
Unconfirmed Member
maybe. but that's essentially what hte bitcoins guy did, litecoin is apparently the best 'me too' contender.
I can already see how the researchers analysis was twisted to imply this was the only thing they were saying.
GAF Gaming side has trained me well to spot out of context line pulling.
That last line is laughably false. Luckily it doesn't invalidate everything else you said.
While the system is robust I'm beginning to see bitcoins as detrimental to the long term health of our society. Allowing currency to appreciate in purchasing power because of a limited supply promotes hoarding. Being able to divide up the bitcoin to ludicrously small decimal places with ease is the only saving grace for countering this type of behavior.
cooljeanius
Member
Wish I hadn't lost my hard drive that had my bitcoin wallet on it...
look into ppc and xpm, both set to take off today
*closes article*
that's how the FBI busted all those people and can bust hundreds of thousands more if they want-- because bitcoin is so anonymous.
Because a currency where "coins" can be destroyed permanently and not be replenished by some issuing body runs counter to what makes a good currency.
they go down a billion decimals.
the bitcoins won't run out
everything you guys come up with is something that people thought of and debunked several years ago. why not go read up on it instead of sitting here arguing poorly about it?
Can Crusher
Banned
I don't understand shit of this, and feel bad about my broke ass not being able to muster two thoughts that allow me to make 600k out of 100$ on bitcoins. Coming from a place of ignorance, this whole shit looks like some shady ass scheme. Farming bitcoins, the way speculation affects bitcoins so much... it's just insane.
I feel jealous of those who are making paper on this.
I feel jealous of those who are making paper on this.
You didn't understand what he said. Imagine in a war computers are targeted to make data unrecoverable. As a result a bunch of bitcoin wallets get wiped out. It doesn't matter if you can prove through the block chain you had that money at one time. All that will happen is that the people who still have their digital coins will see their asset appreciate in value.
With any other currency you would've gotten your money back no matter how long it took to reconfirm and trace the transactions up until the destruction.
This in of itself doesn't invalidate bitcoin as a currency but it does undermine its appeal for certain types of people which means it undermines it's overall value as a form of trade because they won't accept it for fear of that loss.
It's the COMPUTER WAR.
Ever heard of people who get robbed? They can't recover it... Let's not use money anymore.
SteveWinwood
Member
Have you asked an insurance company to cover your bitcoin wallet?
I have and the only people who debunk the issues with bitcoins are gold bugs and austrian economists. It's christian science debunking the fossil record.
You don't understand the argument. You set your wallet on fire. You lose $100. The Federal Reserve assumes some percentage of dollars will be destroyed inadvertently and creates additional dollars to compensate. The money supply doesn't lose this $100.
Your bitcoin wallet is lost in a housefire. You lose 1 bitcoin. The max number of bitcoins that can be mined doesn't increase by 1, the blockchain doesn't recover that bitcoin and allocate it elsewhere, that coin is dead to the world.
empty vessel
Member
Yep, and over a long enough period of time, the bitcoin supply will become 0. Of course, I think bitcoins will be valued at roughly 0 long before that happens, but still. One way or the other, the value will without doubt reach 0.
The bitcoin will compensate for it because it goes down 8 decimals. When bitcoin is at it's mining limit and this would ACTUALLY be an issue, the absolute maximum limit of bitcoin would be 1$=0,00000001BC and that would translate to 21 trillion dollars.
empty vessel
Member
That doesn't compensate for the loss of bitcoins. The total supply of bitcoins is finite. It doesn't matter how much you can divide them. Division does not increase the supply. As bitcoins are lost over time, the bitcoin supply will fall over time.
Doesn't pushing a currency into smaller and smaller subdivisions exemplify a deflationary spiral?
D
Deleted member 13876
Unconfirmed Member
The estimate for the last Bitcoin to be mined, considering they are mined at a predictable rate is 2140, so we'll never experience the end of mining. Whether they'll still be worth anything is an entirely different manner, but I'm just pointing out the destruction thing won't play out the way you think it will.
You can print your wallet to paper if you want. You can secure it in any way you can secure cash.
You can do exactly this. An escrow agency, a bank, and insurance agency, a law firm, etc. all can hold valuable documents for you. That document could be a Bitcoin wallet (or a wallet they create which you transfer Bitcoins to, so you can't spend them without going through them). It's not hard.
Ether_Snake
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But no one is explaining why, if one Bitcoin system could be made, another can made as well, causing the value to sink. It makes no sense for bitcoin to go up in value if another currency can materialize tomorrow. It's basically already a fiat money system, except it's not run by a central bank so the supply could increase at any moment unpredictably. All virtual currencies are basically one currency, even if unrelated, until one in particular becomes widely adopted. Adoption is the only thing that can truly differentiate the virtual currencies from one another.
I am 100% that bitcoin value will be hit due to the emergence of other virtual currencies which will attract the speculators money. Once that happens, bitcoin would fall in value, and while it could stabilize, it won't if it isn't at a time when bitcoins are widely accepted for transactions because most of its value will be only based on speculation related to its arbitrary future value rather than based on its future adoption rate.
The more virtual currencies emerge, and the soonest, the more they will all be undermined.
I am 100% that bitcoin value will be hit due to the emergence of other virtual currencies which will attract the speculators money. Once that happens, bitcoin would fall in value, and while it could stabilize, it won't if it isn't at a time when bitcoins are widely accepted for transactions because most of its value will be only based on speculation related to its arbitrary future value rather than based on its future adoption rate.
The more virtual currencies emerge, and the soonest, the more they will all be undermined.
Shake Appeal
Member
There will, eventually, be 21 million bitcoins.
Each bitcoin is divisible down to 0.00000001.
It's going to take a while for all of that bitcoin to be lost.
Ether_Snake
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1000$ bitcoin by the end of the day?
If a loaf of bread costs 0.001 BTC then it would take a huge degree of deflation to make a loaf of bread cost 0.000001 BTC.
Shake Appeal
Member
No one is going to be buying loaves of bread with bitcoin any time soon. Unless they're very foolish.
CornBurrito
Member
Some of the logic in this thread if funny. Apparently if I take a single apple and cut it into 1 billion slices I suddenly have 1 billion apples instead of 1 billion slices that make up a single apple.
Shake Appeal
Member
The point is it's a highly exciting new thing that you can speculate on and make fairly reliable short-term profits in doing so. And it's fun to have skin in the game because everyone up to and including Ben Bernanke is talking about it.
People who think it's going to 'replace' state currencies are lunatics. But there are absolutely applications for this no one has thought of yet, and the technology alone is one of the most exciting innovations in years.
Plus I've made five figures and counting from it.
People who think it's going to 'replace' state currencies are lunatics. But there are absolutely applications for this no one has thought of yet, and the technology alone is one of the most exciting innovations in years.
Plus I've made five figures and counting from it.
I think you might need to think this analogy over again.
CornBurrito
Member
I don't think anybody is arguing that you can't make money off BTC, or that BTC can't be fun and exciting to trade as a commodity.
But making five figures (in USD?) by trading Bitcoins doesn't make it a currency. You said it yourself, nobody is buying a loaf of bread with a Bitcoin unless they are foolish.
It is not meant to be a perfect analogy.
1. EV (and someone else) claimed there were a finite supply of BTC.
2. People responded with "uh no, you can divide BTC so they are infinite in supply."
Shake Appeal
Member
It doesn't need to be a currency to be fun, exciting, and profitable.
CornBurrito
Member
Yeah I just said that....
The current argument between EV and others seems to be about its status as a currency in case you haven't noticed. I can't quite see how you reasoned out that EV was arguing over how fun, exciting, or profitable BTC are.
That's mainly what I've been getting out of bitcoins.
And most recently a boatload of coffee... but I've been buying all my Christmas gifts off Amazon through bitcoins. As far as its long term ramifications, it'll be interesting to watch, but in the more immediate sense I can absolutely spend them and turn them into fiat if I wanted to cash out. Probably won't right now but I can and eventually will, maybe soon maybe not.
Are they a new currency? I don't believe the bitcoin itself will be the thing that is introduced as some standardized digital currency, if it happens, it'll be something similar, but not bitcoin. If nothing else it raises interesting questions as to how a digital currency would be handled by institutions and as Shake mentioned... it's been a hell of an investment in the short term.
What's pissing me off is how convoluted the process to buy them is. I finally was verified to start buying last Thursday, and now I have to wait all the way until this Friday until they end up in my account! All this to exchange them for some litecoins, which are rising rapidly -.- LTC was $9 last Friday, now they're $17!
Corn Burrito already saved me the trouble. Actually think about what is being said instead of using imaginary logic.
In other words.
Ether_Snake
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Now that it passed 1000 (soon anyway), nothing will stop it to reach 2000!
criesofthepast
Member
Litecoins are seriously overpriced. How the F did it rise so high? I bought some when they were $1.60 in March or April.
Market cap is now about $10B. Some people, among which the Winklevoss twins, expect the market cap to rise to $400B within a few years.
This would also result in an exchange rate of roughly 40 times the present one.
We could then be looking at a price for one bitcoin of $40,000 in 2016.
Or $0. That's also entirely possible. But to me it looks like mass adoption is beginning.
A mass switch to some form of electronic global currency was always going to happen. Why not the bitcoin?
Vigilant Walrus
Member
how hard is it to make your own currency?
I mean, can't I basically just create one as well, and call it a day?
I mean, can't I basically just create one as well, and call it a day?
ProfessorLobo
Banned
I keep waiting for a mini drop before I buy but I don't think it's going to happen.
toxicgonzo
Taxes?! Isn't this the line for Metallica?
We are going to hit 1000. Then, news of this milestone will push it a little more before we see a dip and people cash out.
Even if I didn't already know what the issues with the currency's fundamentals are, the zeal with which bitcoin enthusiasts try to evangelize it to those lower on the ahem, ziggurat, would be a terrifying thing.
don't get me wrong, it might normalize, I am sure I will be dumb and miss the boat, but how many other stable world currencies exhibit this kind of mania and behave like an irrationally successful stock offering?
don't get me wrong, it might normalize, I am sure I will be dumb and miss the boat, but how many other stable world currencies exhibit this kind of mania and behave like an irrationally successful stock offering?
Ether_Snake
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You can't compare it like that, except maybe the gold rush. It's a new "value" that came out of nowhere, so it's normal that in the early days it would go as it is going now. You would expect it to stabilize in the future. The only thing that can stabilize it is it being more and more adopted. The thing is it's very difficult to determine what would favor its adoption. I expect it to remain a highly speculative currency for a long time. You'd need the emergence of a lot of other virtual currencies for things to stabilize, but then it would also put into question its adoption.
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