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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

#111

Post by bayesianhorse »

kiba wrote: post #52
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.

According to an unscientific bitcoin community survey, only 9% used bitcoin to purchase narcotics. 53% of uses were for donation.

The surprising thing about that survey is that even 9% actually admitted to felonies...

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

#112

Post by AlexMax »

acchow wrote: post #103
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…

Nobody is saying Bitcoin is currently awesome and better than standard currencies. However, what is clear is its long-term viability. You should ask yourself from where currency originates. What is its predecessor and was its acceptance ubiquitous. And take note that there was a period not long ago where saffron was used as "currency". Also, though you may be intelligent, it would good to take a note from Socrates an…

> Nobody is saying Bitcoin is currently awesome and better than standard currencies. However, what is clear is its long-term viability.

This isn't clear to me at all.

There are a finite number of possible bitcoins, and once the last one is mined no new ones can be created. While it might be true that putting more USD into circulation causes the value of each individual dollar to go down, that's actually an incentive to spend money and create economic activity, instead of hoarding it hoping the price goes up.

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

#113

Post by bayesianhorse »

shredfvz wrote: post #48
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…

Money is ultimately just a standardized indicator of wealth with no intrinsic value on its own, a definition shared by both USD and BTC. The downside of USD being that it can be counterfeited, illegally by unscrupulous individuals or legally by the Federal Reserve (see: QE Infinity). Regrettably, it's still super common for people to turn up their noses in disgust, claiming "Bitcoin Boogey Man, oh noezzz"! I'm sorry,…

For one thing, currency instability for BTC is bigger, and secondly the primary use of BTC right now is making illegal income look legal.

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

#114

Post by lenazegher »

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…

>Bitcoin is also useful for buying many completely legal things. Including a VPN that can't be linked to your identity.

The "can't be linked to your identity" part depends entirely on how you get your BTC in the first place.

If you buy them with cash from a guy on the street who has no idea who you are, fair enough.

If you buy them from an exchange by making a deposit from your bank account, the level of anonymity you enjoy depends entirely on how much you trust the exchange. They know your real name and the wallet you used to receive the BTC. If they share this information with anyone, a sufficiently motivated attacker can trace the BTC to their ultimate destination (the wallet of the VPN firm). If you launder the BTC through a few intermediary wallets first, I suppose you might have some plausible deniability, but if you're a journalist in a repressive regime how much is plausible deniability worth?

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

#115

Post by shredfvz »

lmm wrote: post #99
shredfvz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the BTC price couldn't have anything to do with factors external to the market participants themselves ... ? Whenever the BTC price moves up or down, do you honestly believe "It's those blasted early adopters, at it again I tell you" You also appear to assume, incorrectly, that early adopters are just itching to exchange out into fiat currencies, as if their eyes are glued to their computer monitors, just wait…

>Whenever the BTC price moves up or down, do you honestly believe "It's those blasted early adopters, at it again I tell you" Because of bitcoin's ludicrous generation curve the early adopters own what, 3/4 of all the bitcoins, guaranteed to be at least half of all those there will ever be? So yeah, price movements are likely to be their influence because they're the biggest owners. >You also appear to assume, incorr…

It's a double edged sword. The unique point of difference benefits of BTC itself remain unchanged regardless of current market price, and furthermore, should early adopters dump all old coins onto the markets all at once, the lower price would only make it more affordable for newcomers to buy at discounted rates.

Recall that early adopters of questionable loyalty to BTC already had a chance, or two or three, to cash out at very favorable rates. Many did. The result is Bitcoins continue to drift into stronger and more loyal hands. Meaning, as time passes it grows less and less likely for there to be ANY event capable of destroying confidence in the markets. If you get into BTC at this point, you should know fully well what the risks are.

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

#116

Post by shredfvz »

bayesianhorse wrote: post #113
shredfvz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is ultimately just a standardized indicator of wealth with no intrinsic value on its own, a definition shared by both USD and BTC. The downside of USD being that it can be counterfeited, illegally by unscrupulous individuals or legally by the Federal Reserve (see: QE Infinity). Regrettably, it's still super common for people to turn up their noses in disgust, claiming "Bitcoin Boogey Man, oh noezzz"! I'm sorry,…

For one thing, currency instability for BTC is bigger, and secondly the primary use of BTC right now is making illegal income look legal.

* citation needed

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

#117

Post by morsch »

gdeglin wrote: post #40
DanBlake wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coinbase was a giant waste of time for me. I signed up a week ago and its been a mostly crap experience. Would not recommend. Im using mtgox now and its a much more streamlined experience. . Here was my coinbase timeline- Keep in mind I verified my account, did 2 step auth, everything. About as normal a user as possible. They make buying bitcoins near impossible. 1: Create a account and link it with a US bank. I am l…

My experience with Coinbase has been amazing. I tried to buy Bitcoins around a year ago and it seemed nearly impossible to do with USD. Here's how buying them through Coinbase went... 1. Signed up and linked my bank account 2. Bought bitcoins the same day (at their price on that day) 3. 5 days later they were available for me to use I've bought more coins 3 additional times. Each time they were available in under 5 d…

How is it amazing when you had to wait multiple days for them to available? That seems completely backwards to me. Why aren't they available immediately once the block is confirmed, ie. within less than half an hour?

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

#118

Post by shredfvz »

bayesianhorse wrote: post #109

Trading bitcoins, even in an otherwise legal fashion, is essentially money laundering at this point. Yes, there are legal bitcoin traders or bussinesses. And No, you can't pretend these are the majority. And it's not really a problem that I am thinking this. The big problem is that the European Central Bank is saying this too. The legal status of Bitcoin businesses remains unsolved, even if the proponents don't run o…

* citation needed

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

#119

Post by pantaril »

lmm wrote: post #95
shredfvz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is ultimately just a standardized indicator of wealth with no intrinsic value on its own, a definition shared by both USD and BTC. The downside of USD being that it can be counterfeited, illegally by unscrupulous individuals or legally by the Federal Reserve (see: QE Infinity). Regrettably, it's still super common for people to turn up their noses in disgust, claiming "Bitcoin Boogey Man, oh noezzz"! I'm sorry,…

Even in the presence of QE, the value of the USD remains more-or-less stable. I can go to bed confident that it's not going to cost me $10 to get a loaf of bread tomorrow. Bitcoin isn't and won't be useful to me as a currency until its value is stable.

Bitcoin is currently indeed very risky to use as store of value as the market grows quite rapidly and the exchange rate fluctuates greatly. I expect that it will improve in the future and ultimately bitcoin will be better store of value then official currencies, because the savings will not lose the value ove years due to inflation.

But fortunately bitcoin has great use even today in its current state. It is great for sending or accepting money internationaly, quickly and without ridiculous transaction fees. This is something you can't do with official curencies and is IMO big part of the success bitcoin is experiencing.

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

#120

Post by nwh »

rcamera wrote: post #93
dhughes wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sucks is not knowing where your wallet is. I have .9 of a bitcoin somewhere transferred between a Linux PC and three different phones over two or three years. I have about $28 US somewhere.

I had this sort of issue. Back in 2010 I had mined a hundred coins (CPU mined, back in those days, lol). A month ago I decided to find the wallet file, took me 2 hours to search 5 HDDs with multiple partitions each from my old computers... I fixed this problem now by printing the keys out, storing them securely in a safe and deleting the wallet files.

Better luck than me. I've 500BTC that I mined and gave up on. They'd be worth $26k if I hadn't decided to clean out my backup RAID.
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