Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#151

Post by tibbon » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 4:01 PM UTC

pi18n wrote: post #150

tibbon wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demurrage (cost to hold currency) could help hoarding. However, at some point, people will start spending them too. There's a fork of Bitcoin which actually has this built in. I imagine we could see an interesting future with cryptocurrencies, where people are essentially betting/investing on the stability of the framework/algorithm and demand on it. Multiple ones could exist, and you're hoping for the best return, o…

Oh, I was going to write about Freicoin. It seems like an incredibly fascinating concept and I'd really like to see an online economy emerge around it. Do you use it?

I don't, and I'm not sure of where I could generate/buy some. I'd definitely like to play with it a bit.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#152

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 4:01 PM UTC

nawitus wrote: post #94

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An impressive list in quantity, but upon closer inspection I don't see any essential goods & services. Under "consumables" there are literally no general groceries, just specialty foods. Under clothing, a bunch of niche items. It's also worth noting that nearly all of these look like to be pretty low-quality vendors.

There's lack of payment options with "essential goods & services", like groceries, but what's your point? Any new currency, especially digital, doesn't start with supermarkets, because supermarkets tend to be owned by large corporations that are not first adopters. If bitcoin will become a major currency, it will have to have a phase where it cannot be used in general and only with a small number of companies. That's…

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#153

Post by knowaveragejoe » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 4:02 PM UTC

nawitus wrote: post #94

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An impressive list in quantity, but upon closer inspection I don't see any essential goods & services. Under "consumables" there are literally no general groceries, just specialty foods. Under clothing, a bunch of niche items. It's also worth noting that nearly all of these look like to be pretty low-quality vendors.

There's lack of payment options with "essential goods & services", like groceries, but what's your point? Any new currency, especially digital, doesn't start with supermarkets, because supermarkets tend to be owned by large corporations that are not first adopters. If bitcoin will become a major currency, it will have to have a phase where it cannot be used in general and only with a small number of companies. That's…

What you say is true, but I don't see mass adoption anytime soon because it seems there are no essential goods and services(and perhaps more importantly complex B2B services) being bought and sold with bitcoins alone. I think it's safe to say that the majority of these vendors accepting bitcoins are turning around and converting them to USD to pay for operational costs and only a small(if any) portion of their bitcoin revenue is traded as bitcoins. It will always be that way until the large corporations that we are all beholden to, especially as businesses, accept bitcoins.

So at this point it's really an investment vehicle and a convenient method of exchange, not a replacement for fiat currencies.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#154

Post by DanBC » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 4:03 PM UTC

Some people lack the knowledge and skills needed to be able to buy something from Amazon. Compare buying something from Amazon with buying anything using Bitcoins - Amazon is ridiculously easy.

Bitcoin will never reach that level of ease of use. But when it has something like a 5 step LiveCD[1] it might start to get wider use.

[1] Something like insert CD, prepare anonymising stuff; load encrypted file from USB stick; load key from hardware token and enter short password; and have the distro wallpaper give idiot proof flowchart diagram instructions.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#155

Post by wmf » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 4:03 PM UTC

pi18n wrote: post #150

tibbon wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demurrage (cost to hold currency) could help hoarding. However, at some point, people will start spending them too. There's a fork of Bitcoin which actually has this built in. I imagine we could see an interesting future with cryptocurrencies, where people are essentially betting/investing on the stability of the framework/algorithm and demand on it. Multiple ones could exist, and you're hoping for the best return, o…

Oh, I was going to write about Freicoin. It seems like an incredibly fascinating concept and I'd really like to see an online economy emerge around it. Do you use it?

Why would anyone opt in to demurrage?

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#156

Post by 3am » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 4:05 PM UTC

acabal wrote: post #72

I added a Bitcoin purchase option to Scribophile to test the waters. But I'm interested in a Bitcoin economy, not a USD cash alternative--the situation where a Bitcoin has its own value, not a value dependent on a different currency. For that reason, I decided to fix the price of an upgrade to 2 BTC, not peg it to the dollar like most other sites do. Unfortunately it seems like that's just not going to work at this p…

I'm reminded of this: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/golden-cyberfett...

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#157

Post by dragontamer » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 4:07 PM UTC

rytis wrote: post #143

dragontamer wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A new domain name has been 10 USD from Namecheap for the last decade. A new domain name in BTC however, has varied between 1 BTC and 0.1 BTC in just the past two months. BTC as a proxy for USD is still useful IMO, it gives us a way to avoid Paypal and other online processors. But for it to be a USD replacement, it needs to first settle down and stabilize.

"settle down and stabilize." Depends how you look at it. From BTC point of view it is the USD that's highly unstable and dropping in value... It's all relative.

Except we can look at the price of computers, milk, eggs, oil, etc. etc.

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt

Across all of our goods, the total change (ie: CPI) between January 2013 and Febuary 2013 changed from 230.280USD to 232.166USD. A difference of 0.8%

In the same period, BTC changed from 13.51 to 20.41, a difference of 51.1%

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#158

Post by specto » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 4:08 PM UTC

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #142

cadetzero wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US government declares it an illegal currency, and if you accept bitcoins at your business you will be investigated. Game over.

They would have to define it to ban it. Bitcoin would just evolve to no longer fit the ban. There are already dozens of other cryptocurrencies brooding- just waiting for a scenario where Bitcoin is pushed out to make more room for them. A ban on bitcoin will work about as well as a ban on piracy.

Not really, since the success of bitcoin still relies on conversion to another currency.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#159

Post by pi18n » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 4:09 PM UTC

_k wrote: post #107

xhrpost wrote: post #79

Everyone keeps saying that a crash is around the corner and the current price is unsustainable, been hearing it since $40/BTC, maybe earlier. I don't completely disagree, the question I keep pondering though is, if there is a big sustained crash coming, is it from $100 to $30, or $900 to $300?

Been hearing it when it was trading at prices less than $ 1. Not sure what to think. What if it gets hacked ? What if the creator has a backdoor ?

The creator doesn't need a backdoor; the early adopters have gigantic stacks of BTC that has never been used. The appropriate concern is not that they have a backdoor but that they flood the market and make it crash.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#160

Post by Atropos » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 4:10 PM UTC

eric_bullington wrote: post #105

nkohari wrote: post #20

Is it possible to sell short, or buy put options? I think bitcoin has potential long-term but this seems like a ridiculous speculation-fueled bubble.

It is incredibly easy to buy and sell Bitcoin options: icbit.se is just one of several reputable derivatives markets that focus on Bitcoin. So yes, if you are completely sure this is a bubble, it's easy money...right?

Yeah it is incredibly easy to short Bitcoin by trusting an unregulated, anonymous website without exposing yourself to any counterparty risk... There just isn't any real way to short Bitcoin, because if your investment thesis is true and collapses, it will be very difficult to collect your winnings.