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Bitcoin Hits $1 Billion

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Re: Bitcoin Hits $1 Billion

#171

Post by jes5199 »

dllthomas wrote: post #60
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…

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

Huh? Cash is synchronous.

Re: Bitcoin Hits $1 Billion

#172

Post by jes5199 »

psycr wrote: post #6

I particularly enjoyed this line: "For a bit of perspective, that's how much Facebook spent on its acquisition of Instagram last April." Some might argue that the comparison employed distinctly encourages a lack of perspective.

I guess it's not so much that bitcoin is worth a lot, but that real money isn't worth much anymore.

Re: Bitcoin Hits $1 Billion

#173

Post by indrax »

adestefan wrote: post #134

People keep comparing the "value" of bitcoin against the USD. If bitcoins were a truly useful currency, then there would be no need to value them against another base currency.

All currencies can be valued in terms of other currencies. Bitcoin can also be valued directly against goods. (as can other currencies)

The price of most goods is currently tied to some other currency, because most businesses have expenses in traditional currencies. But you get similar price fluctuations in international trade.

Re: Bitcoin Hits $1 Billion

#174

Post by tocomment »

pilgrim689 wrote: post #62
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?

yep, people are already doing micropayments on reddit. See http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcointip and http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoin . Basically, you can do "tip $0.50" on reddit and a bot will parse your comment and process the transaction.

On that's cool. Could we implement one like that for hacker news?

Re: Bitcoin Hits $1 Billion

#175

Post by NoahTheDuke »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #137
jstalin wrote: post #2

That article is incorrect, it says there are 109,000 BTC in circulation. It's more like 11 million. http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin/

That many exist but they're not actually circulating.

I know I have two previous computers that crashed with close to 15 BC each. (Which is a small number, clearly, but how many others like me have small sums of BC that will be gone forever?)

Re: Bitcoin Hits $1 Billion

#176

Post by MacsHeadroom »

aneth4 wrote: post #59
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…

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

Green addresses allow instant confirmation. There is also verified escrow. This problem was solved long ago.

Anyone can keep spending money in a "Green Address" which is guaranteed by the eWallet provider.

There are no problems without solutions. We have an over abundance of solutions just begging for problems. This is the age of abundance.

Re: Bitcoin Hits $1 Billion

#177

Post by adestefan »

indrax wrote: post #173
adestefan wrote: post #134

People keep comparing the "value" of bitcoin against the USD. If bitcoins were a truly useful currency, then there would be no need to value them against another base currency.

All currencies can be valued in terms of other currencies. Bitcoin can also be valued directly against goods. (as can other currencies) The price of most goods is currently tied to some other currency, because most businesses have expenses in traditional currencies. But you get similar price fluctuations in international trade.

Yes, but for everyday purchases people do not care about that. Until bitcoin can get to that point, then it's not a useful currency. Especially since it seems like people bitch and moan now about things costing too much in bitcoin because it's currently strong against the USD.

Re: Bitcoin Hits $1 Billion

#178

Post by eric_bullington »

zeteo wrote: post #170
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…

Your comment amounts to a rather naive "we should get excited about Bitcoin, it has great potential and critics are shortsighted". And it is precisely this excitement (with calls for more excitement) that generates Bitcoin's current value. But where will the decline stop once the first run inevitably occurs? All other currencies have a bottom floor that they can't fall below, be it either intrinsic value (jewelry, pl…

"All other currencies have a bottom floor that they can't fall below"

I suspect holders of the Zimbabwean Dollar would disagree, as would the holders of many other hyperflationary currencies going back many centuries. Such currencies were all legal tender, but it didn't make any difference.

Re: Bitcoin Hits $1 Billion

#179

Post by powertower »

cadetzero wrote: post #99
gyom wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first idea would be to see if it's possible to create massive sell-offs by crashing through many people's "stop on loss" barriers. For example, let's say that the exchange rate is 100 USD per bitcoin at the moment and that you have tons of people who would absolutely sell their bitcoins if it went below 90. I'm not in the bitcoin game, but I think mtgox offers "stop on loss" features so that people could get out o…

Oh, this literally happened yesterday. Someone sold off 5k bitcoins (~USD $450k at the time). That's exactly what happened. Big sell off from 95 to 80ish, and then it sprang back to ~$90 today. There's low confidence in it right now, but that's because most players are actual players. They aren't using bitcoins for groceries, like a bank reserve (yet). They're playing them like stocks.

5k bitcoin sell crashed the market?! To the tune of 100MM in market value loss on those transactions.

That just shows most people are hording it / not really selling or trading, and a few people are buying it, probably the majority of which are doing so because they need to spend it on SilkRoad or a gambling site.

The moment that goes away, or a few big holders decides to cash out, watch out.

Re: Bitcoin Hits $1 Billion

#180

Post by andrewljohnson »

michaelochurch wrote: post #169
andrewljohnson wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better though, it's like gold you can get for cheap for now. Assuming people don't stop using bitcoins, it's hard to imagine bitcoins not appreciating over time. Either a major calamity like government intervention will end BitCoin, or it will be supplanted by different technology, or BitCoins will appreciate for decades. They will either be worth zero, or a lot in my estimation. Disclosure: I own 20 bitcoins.

It's unstable. There's no barrier to entry. I could make a competing product called ZitCoin with a different inflation/deflation profile. At some point, it comes down to weird, fickle, and not especially meaningful brand effects. Then it's just speculation. If you buy BitCoin, you're betting on the prestige of its being the first. Do people even know what the first fiat currency is? Or care? People who sell at the to…

I don't think the comparison to the life of fiat currency is reasonable - no fiat currency outlives the nation-state backing it.

It is a fair point that there could be other competing, but not dominant currencies, which could lead to a non-zero, but low price for bitcoins. So perhaps, 0, a lot, or anywhere in between for the value of a bitcoin.

As long as the number of things you can buy with bitcoins rises over time, the value of bitcoin will rise. I don't think it is unreasonable that the momentum, including technology and community (not just brand around BitCoin) will make it a favored son in digital currencies. So it's not just buying it based on the prestige of being first, it's buying based on the value of being first. I actually bought my coins when YC invested in CoinBase, because I thought that was a strong signal.

It will be an interesting future where people buy currencies based on their mathematically-dictated value profiles, as opposed to whichever currency is sold by the local government, and _seems_ to be the most stable.

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