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Bitcoin Hits $1 Billion

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Re: Bitcoin Hits $1 Billion

#51

Post by niggler »

eric_bullington wrote: post #43
niggler wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A larger number means that people are holding onto BTC for long periods of time, a smaller number means that people are spending BTC soon after receiving it. In a sense, its a more granular way of looking at money velocity.

Can you please explain what you mean by "a more granular way of looking at money velocity"? This is probably a good point, but I'm missing it. I understand "granular" and "money velocity", but am having trouble understanding what you mean here.

Money velocity is an aggregate phenomenon: if a single dollar is passed around a billion times, it is treated the same as a billion dollars passed around once.

Under BDD, if i understand it correctly, the single dollar case would result in a nearly 100% BDD while the billion dollar case is much more modest. It looks at each bitcoin independently. The dollar analogy would be if we kept track of every single dollar bill etc.

Re: Bitcoin Hits $1 Billion

#53

Post by niggler »

waffle_ss wrote: post #47
cs702 wrote: post #35

As usual on HN, any submission about Bitcoin is met with concerned comments about its high volatility, present impracticality as a currency, disadvantages versus precious metals, current concentration of transactions in a single exchange (MtGox), potential for market manipulation by governments and/or speculators, etc. This is analogous to being present at the creation of the World Wide Web, but instead of getting ex…

There are some real concerns with Bitcoin. For example, I was going to write an app that accepts Bitcoins as payment. However, the problem is that the amount of time it takes for a transaction to become "verified," i.e. be part of the official block chain, can take up to 10 minutes. What am I supposed to present to the user during this time? Am I supposed to tell them that their payment may or may not have been accep…

Sounds like an opportunity for a "bitcoin credit card" or "bitcoin charge card" where a trusted third party maintains complete control.

Re: Bitcoin Hits $1 Billion

#54

Post by zenocon »

tocomment wrote: post #48

I'm curious, why hasn't anyone implemented a mining client in javascript, so you could in effect has visitors to your website mine coins for you. It might be a create way to fund content instead of advertising.

it would have to be in a web worker. it would have to be a site with high traffic that users will stay on for long periods of time, and even then, cpu mining (ala JS or any language) is pretty much a waste of time now. very few do it even with dedicated boxes -- everything has moved to GPU and forthcoming ASICs. not sure if you could offload JS web worker to GPU using WebGL or something, tho.

Re: Bitcoin Hits $1 Billion

#55

Post by wmf »

tocomment wrote: post #42

One thing that hit me recently on bitcoin is I realized that for the first time in history micropayments are 100% possible. I'm thinking all kinds of startups should spring up from that, but I haven't thought of any yet. What are your thoughts?

Bitcoin micropayments are possible if you can solve the UX issues (copying and pasting addresses, etc.) and if you can avoid "recommended" transaction fees that are currently near 5 US cents.

Re: Bitcoin Hits $1 Billion

#56

Post by waterlesscloud »

niggler wrote: post #53
waffle_ss wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some real concerns with Bitcoin. For example, I was going to write an app that accepts Bitcoins as payment. However, the problem is that the amount of time it takes for a transaction to become "verified," i.e. be part of the official block chain, can take up to 10 minutes. What am I supposed to present to the user during this time? Am I supposed to tell them that their payment may or may not have been accep…

Sounds like an opportunity for a "bitcoin credit card" or "bitcoin charge card" where a trusted third party maintains complete control.

Perhaps YC could fund such a startup.

Re: Bitcoin Hits $1 Billion

#57

Post by tocomment »

wmf wrote: post #55
tocomment wrote: post #42

One thing that hit me recently on bitcoin is I realized that for the first time in history micropayments are 100% possible. I'm thinking all kinds of startups should spring up from that, but I haven't thought of any yet. What are your thoughts?

Bitcoin micropayments are possible if you can solve the UX issues (copying and pasting addresses, etc.) and if you can avoid "recommended" transaction fees that are currently near 5 US cents.

I don't get the recommended transaction fee thing. What happens if someone pays 1 cent? Will no one process it?

Re: Bitcoin Hits $1 Billion

#58

Post by tocomment »

wmf wrote: post #55
tocomment wrote: post #42

One thing that hit me recently on bitcoin is I realized that for the first time in history micropayments are 100% possible. I'm thinking all kinds of startups should spring up from that, but I haven't thought of any yet. What are your thoughts?

Bitcoin micropayments are possible if you can solve the UX issues (copying and pasting addresses, etc.) and if you can avoid "recommended" transaction fees that are currently near 5 US cents.

I don't see why the UX issues have to be a deal breaker. If nothing else it's a micro payment system for early adaptors for now.

Re: Bitcoin Hits $1 Billion

#59

Post by aneth4 »

waffle_ss wrote: post #47
cs702 wrote: post #35

As usual on HN, any submission about Bitcoin is met with concerned comments about its high volatility, present impracticality as a currency, disadvantages versus precious metals, current concentration of transactions in a single exchange (MtGox), potential for market manipulation by governments and/or speculators, etc. This is analogous to being present at the creation of the World Wide Web, but instead of getting ex…

There are some real concerns with Bitcoin. For example, I was going to write an app that accepts Bitcoins as payment. However, the problem is that the amount of time it takes for a transaction to become "verified," i.e. be part of the official block chain, can take up to 10 minutes. What am I supposed to present to the user during this time? Am I supposed to tell them that their payment may or may not have been accep…

I'm guessing there is no solution to this problem. BitCoin will clearly fail.

Re: Bitcoin Hits $1 Billion

#60

Post by dllthomas »

waffle_ss wrote: post #47
cs702 wrote: post #35

As usual on HN, any submission about Bitcoin is met with concerned comments about its high volatility, present impracticality as a currency, disadvantages versus precious metals, current concentration of transactions in a single exchange (MtGox), potential for market manipulation by governments and/or speculators, etc. This is analogous to being present at the creation of the World Wide Web, but instead of getting ex…

There are some real concerns with Bitcoin. For example, I was going to write an app that accepts Bitcoins as payment. However, the problem is that the amount of time it takes for a transaction to become "verified," i.e. be part of the official block chain, can take up to 10 minutes. What am I supposed to present to the user during this time? Am I supposed to tell them that their payment may or may not have been accep…

Leaving aside bitcoin for a moment, payment shouldn't be synchronous anyway, if you can avoid it - you're relying on external systems.
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