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Bitcoin reaches an all-time trading high of over $33

arstechnica.com

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Re: Bitcoin reaches an all-time trading high of over $33

#81

Post by [deleted] »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #62
yaix wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is a testament to its long-term viability as a currency. Until governments notice they are losing control and outlaw it.

It's not an easy feat to accomplish. You can't reliably outlaw it for citizens because in democratic societies it's kind of very hard to reliably harass citizens. Look at the copyright lobby and still not many people are really scared of persecution. They can easily take bitcoin-based businesses down but they would just shift to different/distributed jurisdictions (Japan, Eastern Europe) where they will be hell to co…

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin reaches an all-time trading high of over $33

#82

Post by yungchin »

justinmk wrote: post #18
adambom wrote: post #2

Bitcoin is a deflationary currency since it's supply is limited. Doesn't that mean that it's expected to rise in price? This also ends up being the currency's downfall, since there's an incentive to hoard it rather than spend it.

> deflationary ... there's an incentive to hoard it rather than spend it. By that logic, everyone would put their dollars into investments that beat inflation (this is a form of saving). Yet they do not. You can hold (hoard?) securities (VBLTX, HTS, JNJ) that beat inflation, yet people spend dollars on depreciating assets (cars, computers). There are other less-risky financial instruments [1] that beat nominal CPI, y…

I'm not sure I get that "currency is just a good". If people hoard gold, then the price of gold spikes, and it will be hard to come by gold, but you can probably still buy other things. But if people hoard a currency, to the point where there's not enough freely flowing to pay for stuff, it will affect all kinds of transactions. Doesn't that make it different?

(So I mean, the point of the securities you mention is exactly to hold/hoard them, whereas the point of a currency is not to hold it, but to pass it around, or?)

Re: Bitcoin reaches an all-time trading high of over $33

#83

Post by NickNameNick »

eof wrote: post #38
glesica wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says to me that there is a large amount of speculation. As a currency, Bitcoin is basically useless except for illicit transactions (which are usually pretty inefficient anyway). Would you use dollars if the value of a dollar could change by hundreds of percentage points in a few months? No one would.

Well your logic is obviously flawed, because people do use bitcoins for transactions and they have changed by hundreds of percentage points. "No one" is patently false. Besides, illicit transactions are still transactions. And.. you are just plain wrong. Bitcoin is also useful for buying many completely legal things. Including a VPN that can't be linked to your identity. (Illicit you say? What about a journalist in a…

You do realize bitcoin is not anonymous...

The act of conducting a transaction posts the wallet id's of the participants to the global ledger, and associating wallet id's to real identities is far from impossible.

Re: Bitcoin reaches an all-time trading high of over $33

#84

Post by icebraining »

laumars wrote: post #50
rishimoko wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin is basically useless except for illicit transactions I'd never spend my bitcoins on drugs or gambling. That's what the rapidly devaluing dollar is for. Recall that the US dollar is Narco Currency #1 on the planet. Bitcoins are useful as leverage due to their rapidly expanding (and sometimes deflating) value. I bought my first bitcoins for ~$3 two years ago and held them, even through the first spike and aft…

> Bitcoin is a very useful tool. It's the email of money. I hope not because email should have been replaced a decade ago (no native end-to-end nor encryption. Node-to-node encryption (eg SSL) isn't standard let along the default, no native support for binary objects and base64 MIME increases files sizes by ~30%, and the mess of plain text and half supported HTML across the plethora of clients make designing mailshot…

What exactly would be the point of native end-to-end encryption over PGP? The problem with email encryption is solving the authentication part, not the encryption itself.

Re: Bitcoin reaches an all-time trading high of over $33

#85

Post by eliasmacpherson »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #36
fourstar wrote: post #23

Can someone tell me if I should invest in this right now or not or did I miss the boat and I should just move on?

Sure, you should not invest. I say that because investing has different skill levels and different risk/reward profiles. The lowest level is perhaps savings accounts and CDs and at the most extreme end are derivative financial instruments. Long before you get to currency speculation you go through equity value investing, bond investing, and equity option investing. After going through those things you get to commodit…

A voice of reason in a world gone mad! He would have to clarify the amount of risk he wants to take and how much time he wants to spend on it. A friend has very successfully invested in bitcoin (1000%+ return), but I am very sure he has the price up on his smartphone 24/7 and can sell very quickly.

I don't know how much downside it has, as a long term gamble, because there's an upper limit on the amount of currency. If it does take off with the general public, the longer you can hold the more it will be worth.

"Hard limit of about 21 million Bitcoins" say you bought 1 million bitcoin at $1 and bitcoin becomes a replacement for paypal?

Re: Bitcoin reaches an all-time trading high of over $33

#86

Post by guruz »

mrb wrote: post #78
glesica wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Illicit plus grey market and a few special cases. Fine, you win the Pedant's Prize for nitpicking. The point is that they don't make a good general-purpose currency. Just because they're awesome for buying drugs and secret VPNs doesn't mean very much in the grand scheme of things (most transactions, at least in the developed world, do not take place in the grey market). Also, just because some people do something doe…

Bitcoins are an awesome general-purpose currency for electronically sending "money" to persons or businesses anywhere in the world, instantly. Say goodbye to: middle-men taking their high fees, currency conversion fees, bank holidays, wire transfers taking 3-5 days, wasting half an hour driving to a Western Union office, etc. I think what you meant to say is that bitcoins don't make a good general-purpose day-to-day…

There is actually several bars in Berlin which are supposed to take Bitcoins.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Restaurants_and_cafes

I don't have an Android+Wallet App (I think you need that), so if anyone with such a phone wants to go with me there, I'm up for it :)

Re: Bitcoin reaches an all-time trading high of over $33

#87

Post by derringer »

vellum wrote: post #80
downandout wrote: post #19

The fact that Bitcoin has flourished despite numerous high profile incidents of theft and fraud, the relative difficulty associated with buying and selling them, and the rather unsavory nature of many of its most popular uses today, is a testament to its long-term viability as a currency. The Bitcoin ecosystem has a long way to go before it is considered mainstream, but I believe its long-term success is almost inevi…

It's more a testament to high demand than long term viability. In addition to the other things mentioned in this thread, Bitcoin lets you evade oppressive currency controls. For example, Argentina's real inflation rate is around 18-25%. Because of that, they've taken drastic measures to prevent their citizens from transferring money out of the country. Here's one guy’s story of using a Bitcoin mailing list to buy pes…

You speak of this as though it is a inherently bad thing to have centralized control. I'm as techno-libertarian as the next HN user, but I know that when the market riegns completely free there is a non-trivial chance that boons can swiftly turn into depressions.

There is a reason the Greek government will impose draconian currency controls. It is for the benefit of the Greek people, so their savings accounts will only drop 50% rather than 80-90%.

A purely decentralized currency may be the way of the future, but it will be replacing old problems with new ones. Whether it is ultimately better is anyones' guess.

Re: Bitcoin reaches an all-time trading high of over $33

#88

Post by ragmondo »

jasonkolb wrote: post #6

This sucks. I was just about to pick up a bunch last week at $29. Unfortunately it's not very straightforward to obtain.

depending on what you have and where you are - try this website I knocked together to answer the eternal question "how do I get bitcoins" : http://bcfxer.appspot.com/

Re: Bitcoin reaches an all-time trading high of over $33

#89

Post by ragmondo »

glesica wrote: post #42
eof wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well your logic is obviously flawed, because people do use bitcoins for transactions and they have changed by hundreds of percentage points. "No one" is patently false. Besides, illicit transactions are still transactions. And.. you are just plain wrong. Bitcoin is also useful for buying many completely legal things. Including a VPN that can't be linked to your identity. (Illicit you say? What about a journalist in a…

Illicit plus grey market and a few special cases. Fine, you win the Pedant's Prize for nitpicking. The point is that they don't make a good general-purpose currency. Just because they're awesome for buying drugs and secret VPNs doesn't mean very much in the grand scheme of things (most transactions, at least in the developed world, do not take place in the grey market). Also, just because some people do something doe…

I just put together an Android App to display physical merchants that accept bitcoin. Yes I agree the data is a bit sparse right now but I am populating it as I find lists of merchants (and you can also submit your own business if you want). The app is here : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ragmondo
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