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1 Bitcoin Worth 10 USD

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Re: 1 Bitcoin Worth 10 USD

#111

Post by davidklemke »

hollerith wrote: post #84
davidklemke wrote: post #52

This is exactly the last thing BitCoin needs to be successful as a currency. After the speculative bubble last year it started to make some headway as the price remained relatively stable. Now in the past 2 weeks we've seen its value appreciate by 50%, something that just doesn't happen with traditional currencies. It's dangerously reminiscent of what happened last year and shows that the BitCoin economy is still ver…

>in the past 2 weeks we've seen its value appreciate by 50%, something that just doesn't happen with traditional currencies It happens with gold, which could be viewed as a traditional currency.

Care to link to any graphs that support this? Gold isn't that volatile, even though it may have swings of $50 up/down every week that's 3%, far below the volatility we're seeing in the current BitCoin market.

Re: 1 Bitcoin Worth 10 USD

#112

Post by jff »

wmf wrote: post #95
c1oder wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin seems to be more like payment method than currency.

But when judged as a payment method it has such poor usability that it seems pointless.

If you point out that it has poor usability for payment, well, it's actually a way to store your wealth. If you point out that the volatility makes it a bad idea there, well, it's actually a vehicle for speculation. Why would you speculate on randomly-generated numbers? Well, because it's so good for payment... or keeping your money away from the government... or... crap.

Re: 1 Bitcoin Worth 10 USD

#113

Post by javert »

sylvinus wrote: post #27

Am I the only one to think Bitcoin is just a big Ponzi scheme benefiting the first users/creators who got all the first ones?

Yes. Look up the definition of "ponzi scheme." There is no way for an open source currency to be a ponzi scheme, by definition.

Re: 1 Bitcoin Worth 10 USD

#114

Post by csomar »

I'm still convinced that the reason for that is the death of Bitcoinica which offered shorting.

Without shorting, the only way to make money on Bitcoin is to go long. That is, the price will keep going up until investors thinks it's too much overvalued and BitCoin will crash again to 4 or 5 USD; the value that shorting stabilized it at.

Re: 1 Bitcoin Worth 10 USD

#115

Post by btilly »

rictic wrote: post #107
btilly wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is a fixed number of coins available. Not necessarily true! There is slow growth in coins. But if it takes off then we know all of the primitives to make a second bitcoin. Establish one with a price peg to existing bitcoin. If you maintain it long and well enough, it will become accepted as equivalent. Once that happens you've done a big one-time increase in the supply. In fact I would recommend doing this at s…

How would one peg the price to existing bitcoin (honest question)?

See https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_5:_Trading_acro... for how to verify trades across currencies without trust.

So what you would need to do is have an account in both currencies with large amounts of currency in it, and publicly advertise that you will trade across currencies in some predetermined ratio. If your account has enough currency to succeed in handling people who might deliberately try to trade against you, then you will successfully peg currencies.

Admittedly an attempt to provide a peg like this might fail. But what is in it for the entity trying to do it? Quite simply, that entity presumably starts with a much larger amount of the new currency than they used for establishing the peg. If you can successfully create the peg, your net worth decreased by the amount of bitcoin you had to accumulate to create the peg, and increased by the amount of other currency that you had. So you make a handsome profit. (Conversely you have the risk that people will set about mining your new currency and converting it all to bitcoin through your peg, then when you have to abandon the peg you've lost the bitcoin you had to purchase to try to establish said peg.)

There are a number of tricks that can improve your odds of establishing a successful peg. But that's the principle.

Re: 1 Bitcoin Worth 10 USD

#116

Post by Unoeufisenough »

moonchrome wrote: post #106
ewillbefull wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin trading volume over a 30 day period is more than $20 million dollars, which is incredibly notable for an open-source currency which isn't managed or operated by anybody. The technology involved and the implications of its growth are very significant/newsworthy. The fact that it's trading at $10 again is also very significant to the Bitcoin community, it hasn't done that in more than a year. And it'll probably…

>trading volume over a 30 day period is more than $20 million dollars Again - as a currency this is insignificant. I agree that bitcoin is a great technical accomplishment but talking about it's price as it has any meaning outside of a few hackers playing traders is not realistic.

@moonchrome is right.

One of the world's large credit card networks processes on the order half a trillion dollars in a typical 30 day period. So bitcoin has a way to go yet before it's volume is significant compared to other ubiquitous electronic payment methods.

Consider that they need to grow by a great many orders of magnitude to become globally economically significant, yet consider that the supply of bitcoins is relatively fixed.

How smoothly do you think that is going to work?

If you believe in the future bitcoins, you also have to believe that their value will have to eventually sky rocket by several orders of magnitude. If you believe this you should hoard every bitcoin.

So if you actually believe in bitcoins, why would you ever spend one?

If you don't believe in bitcoins, why would you ever accept one?

do you see the problem yet?

Re: 1 Bitcoin Worth 10 USD

#117

Post by jimktrains2 »

Symmetry wrote: post #105
sp332 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. As more gold was mined during gold rushes, the value of gold decreased. As people found more uses for gold and demand outstripped supply, the value increased. And of course the relative value of gold and silver changes over time.

Particularly, the discovery of the New World with all the gold there caused some huge disruptions in the Old World economy.

Makes sense.

Re: 1 Bitcoin Worth 10 USD

#119

Post by joering2 »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #68
nullymcnull wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like joering, you have failed to specify how the government will magically kill bitcoin.

Spend enough money on machines to have 51% of the processing power and subvert the integrity of the keychain, thereby making the entire system untrustworthy. I cargo-culted that explanation, but it sounds good to me.

also, they can simply legislate to ban it, for whatever reason the want like someone mentioned before. Its up to you whether you want to break the law or not, but most people will not.

Re: 1 Bitcoin Worth 10 USD

#120

Post by hollerith »

davidklemke wrote: post #111
hollerith wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>in the past 2 weeks we've seen its value appreciate by 50%, something that just doesn't happen with traditional currencies It happens with gold, which could be viewed as a traditional currency.

Care to link to any graphs that support this? Gold isn't that volatile, even though it may have swings of $50 up/down every week that's 3%, far below the volatility we're seeing in the current BitCoin market.

I wrote the text of grandparent, realized it was wrong, but hit the "Reply" button was an accident. I agree gold is not as volatile as Bitcoin.
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