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Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

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Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#381

Post by lurr »

dwild wrote: post #272
aviv wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His life was most definitely in danger.

There seems to be missing something in your story to show danger. They just asked for his cash, nothing show any sign in danger in that. Would you pull out a gun because someone asked you for food too? Was there a threat? Which kind of threat? Did it look like these guys had the means to carry that threat and did it look like they actually were going to carry that threat? I wouldn't kill a guy in hope to get a few th…

Demanded cash. Only an asshole would pull a gun on some homeless man who asks if he has any spare change.

It changes if they come up and demand money.

Losing a couple thousand bucks would suck, and if that was guaranteed to be the end of it then I'd rather that be the end of it. The problem is you are dealing with people who are already willing to commit robbery, there is any number of ways that situation could get violent. Once it does then who knows what happens.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#382

Post by lurr »

sireat wrote: post #368
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #83

As someone who owns and believes in cryptocurrency, I'm actually glad this happened. I was getting sick of all the get rich quick people who've been driving the price lately, even for the coins that shouldn't be pumping. It was almost as if the entire cryptocurrency space had turned into a huge unregulated casino. I was at a couple of Bitcoin meetups recently and was surprised to find that most attendees were proudly…

I am still trying to find fundamental cryptocurrency developments in 2017. 2011 were the first steps in BTC usability. 2013 was the rise of alt-coins and also BTC became actually usable(mostly due to Bitpay and Gyft) 2017 it seems all speculation. So let's take top (by market value on 12/22/2017) crypto-currencies: 1. Bitcoin - first mover, slow, expensive to use pivoted to store of value 2. Ethereum - smart contract…

I wonder if crypto currency will survive, or if we end up with Blockchain being a useful technology and smart contracts having niche applications and still worth a lot.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#383

Post by lurr »

bogomipz wrote: post #154
mutteraloo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't know what they were buying; bits in a database. A very poorly implemented database that was - not scalable - not rare - didn't have any government backing or big institutional backing in case the price dropped from 19,000 to 11,000 - easily hackable (tether, fake trades, scam exchanges, etc) - too expensive to do a single transaction this applies to most crytocurrency

>"- not rare" Its not a commodity it's a currency. Why does it need to be "rare"? The US dollar is also not backed by anything "rare" and hasn't been since Nixon abandoned the gold standard in 1973. >"didn't have any government backing or big institutional backing in case the price dropped from 19,000 to 11,000" You realize this is the exact reason it was created right? That's the whole point. It's not coincidence th…

> Its not a commodity it's a currency.

I don't see how this is justifiable at this point. With rampant speculation, $30+ transaction fees, the slow nature of the network, devs who keep putting off dealing with the slow nature, forking, etc...

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#384

Post by vec »

stinkytaco wrote: post #358
vec wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not 3. fast and easy to transfer ownership of or 4. stable in value over time. Plenty of things (houses, human toes, pre-release copies of films, etc.) Are both scarce and useful without also being good candidates for a medium of exchange.

Fair enough, but Bitcoin certainly can be either of those things, even if it's not right now. History shows us any currency can have those problems. Inflation can become so high that as a medium of exchange it's pointless. It can become so unstable in value that people use something else. Bitcoin is no panacea, but the "fake money" argument seems misplaced to me. It's current failings are not failings of crypto-curre…

Paying for a $5 cup of coffee with a debt card takes about 10 seconds and invites about $0.10 in transaction fees. Paying in physical currency is even faster and costs approximately $0.

According to https://bitcoinexchangerate.org/fees, getting a single transaction committed within the next hour costs just under $50.

I've heard plenty of ideas to make the Bitcoin network a little cheaper or a little faster. Occasionally both! I've yet to hear a good theory for how the Bitcoin network can ever get both 500x cheaper and 500x faster.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#385

Post by lurr »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #308
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure those things help give value to the dollar by increasing its demand. Whether of not this constitutes "backing" depends on the definition of backing. There is no underlying asset that directly backs the dollar, which is the whole point of fiat currencies. The fundamental source of demand is the requirement that US Taxes must be paid in dollars. The utility of using dollars to trade with the US economy is simply a…

If such a loose definition of "backing" is going to be used, then one could also say that bitcoin is "essentially backed" by its utility as a medium of exchange. That utility is a consequence of: (1) the infaliabilty of its public ledger (which means it is especially useful where trust is low and where trust is needed). (2) The ease of making a transaction.* *Aside: since the bitcoin transaction volume currently exce…

> (1) the infaliabilty of its public ledger (which means it is especially useful where trust is low and where trust is needed).

Except when they roll it back because people with more money than you demanded it after they got screwed somehow.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#386

Post by lurr »

vec wrote: post #323
Mankhool wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dollar is essentially not backed by anything - except debt.

The thing about dollars is that I can pay my taxes with them. Let's say I think dollars are worthless, and my whole community works off something with real value, like shiny rocks. I'll still have to pay the IRS next April. They may take shiny rocks, but instead I could trade just one or two rocks for a big pile of worthless dollars and get Uncle Sam of my back for next to nothing. Unfortunately for me, every other s…

You don't think the fact that the other 99.99% of the population is perfectly happy using dollars is more of a reason?

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#387

Post by spiralx »

55555 wrote: post #205
djsumdog wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market manipulation. The prices are really set by the coin exchanges; what they are willing to take/pay. They're all really competing with each other on the best prices for BTC. All of this becomes a feedback loop. A lot of people I talked to really believed prices were being driven by some kind of market manipulation. Either within the coin exchanges or people who were finding a way to manipulate things on the block…

I believe that if you truly understood how exchanges work, you wouldn't hold this belief. I guess I should elaborate. You may know some of this but you likely don't know all of it. There are two types of orders: LIMIT and MARKET. Limit orders get added to a list. There is a list of standing BUY orders and a list of standing SELL orders. They are standing/LIMIT because no one has taken them up on their offer. For exam…

You're missing the fact that an exchange can execute trades where they're both the buyer and the seller, and so they don't end up spending anything overall. Illegal on actual stock markets, but very easy to do in the murky regulatory environment that exists around cryptocurrencies.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#388

Post by lurr »

nxsynonym wrote: post #123
hobs wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/s indicates a "closing" sarcasm tag.

He edited in the /s after the fact - and besides sarcastic comments don't add any value to the discussion.

Oh really? Cause he made effectively the exact same point you did.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#389

Post by vec »

lurr wrote: post #386
vec wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about dollars is that I can pay my taxes with them. Let's say I think dollars are worthless, and my whole community works off something with real value, like shiny rocks. I'll still have to pay the IRS next April. They may take shiny rocks, but instead I could trade just one or two rocks for a big pile of worthless dollars and get Uncle Sam of my back for next to nothing. Unfortunately for me, every other s…

You don't think the fact that the other 99.99% of the population is perfectly happy using dollars is more of a reason?

No, although that is nice.

Taxes are why I think a piece of paper with a bad portrait of George Washington has some intrinsic value to me, whether or not there's a secondary market for them. It's why I think the purchasing power of that piece of paper is anchored to a real phenomenon in the real world, and why I don't expect that purchasing power to move around much.

Think of it like this. If the dollar lost 20% of it's purchasing power overnight, I would be pretty damn sure something important has happened in American governance. Bitcoin just moved 20% because...?

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#390

Post by UncleEntity »

jcranmer wrote: post #372
UncleEntity wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Serious question: what value would gold have in a post-apocalyptic world? If I'm selling something, why should I take gold in exchange for it, instead of something useful, like ammunition or food or water? What if the people who want your goat don't have what you want to immediately consume but you know for sure Bob down the street (who doesn't particularly like goats) will trade ammo for gold?

Why would Bob take my gold? More importantly, why would he take my gold and not my dollar bills?

Because Bob knows he can use the gold to buy a chicken from Alice and she doesn't take USD because of the apocalypse?

Or perhaps your goat ate all your dollars...

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