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Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

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Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#171

Post by pakitan »

stagas wrote: post #68
niggler wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of the people who ultimately argue about avoiding the banking system engage in behavior that is either morally questionable or explicitly illegal. I'd say about 1% are true "what i do with my money is my business and my business only" libertarians

Maybe you missed the fact that money in the bank are no longer trusted and can be confiscated for any reason by whatever government or entity?

I guess I indeed missed this recent confiscate event. Can you point me to where I can read about it? Last major financial disaster I've heard about is Cyprus. Where people deposited money in the banks, the banks gambled with the money and lost it. Which is "slightly" different than confiscation. The involvement of "governments" and "entities" only helped the depositors to lose less of their money.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#172

Post by drivebyacct2 »

dragontamer wrote: post #129
nawitus wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Currently, hoarders are the ones benefiting from BTC, but no one else is." That's not true, BTC has many benefits to bitcoin users. There's plenty of bitcoin-only services, but more importantly, it provides freedom for many people who are facing government regulation. In the long run, bitcoin enables all kinds of innovation (good example is reddit's bitcointip service, which wouldn't really exist without bitcoins).

And tell me, what is a good BTC tip today? 1BTC used to be a decent tip at $5. Today that is a $100 tip I'm giving someone. Anyone who gave money to Bitcointip is suffering from the volatility in the marketplace. A true BTC enthusiast will be happy when BTC stops moving . It doesn't matter what value BTC has, as long as it is constant. Only hoarders want BTC to keep going up and up in value.

Huh? Just... don't tip 1 BTC? For example, the bitcointip bot on reddit will take USD values, use the current mtgox price and then tip the equivalent amount in BTC. Of course the person receiving the tip is affected by volatility compared to USD. For now, it's certainly in their favor, and again, it's no different than other currency except BTC's high current volatility.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#173

Post by cadetzero »

DanBC wrote: post #154

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…

I'm not really sure why you say it's so hard.

You install the bitcoin wallet.

You sell something for bitcoins, and you give them your private key address in your wallet.

You receive bitcoins.

You buy something with bitcoins else where, and you just hit send and specify an address.

Simple as an account # + routing number.

Now funding your wallet with fiat currency is a little harder, but Coinbase has mostly taken care of that. It's as hard as paying a credit card off - link your current bank account, press buy or sell.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#174

Post by drivebyacct2 »

jaibot wrote: post #137
calinet6 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I see a currency rising in value faster than Gold itself, I'm going to want to get in on the value. Fact is, if I had "invested" in 100 BTC only 5 months ago when it was hovering around USD$10, that would have cost me about $1000. And now it would be worth $10000. There are not that many investments that have that kind of return in such a short time. You'd have to be dumb to believe that people aren't doing exactl…

What's a good way to short bitcoin?

Good luck. I hope it goes better for you than the people planning to do it 3 weeks ago. Or 3 months ago. Or a year ago.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#175

Post by terpie »

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.

If you have to ask HN this question, the following adage probably applies to you: "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#176

Post by lolcraft »

Some people here seem to think that this is temporary, that sometime in the future Bitcoin will stabilize into a glorious future global currency -- never mind the new class of cryptobarons it will have created from its inner circle, through shameless hoarding.

My question is, what then will happen when Bitcoin stabilizes, that is, when the time to new coin mined approaches practically infinity? Let's assume the global economy grows at 4% per year. Do Bitcoin's proponents believe a constant 4% deflation rate will be somehow compatible with capitalism? Why lend, why build new companies, when simply storing it is more than enough? Take shocks such as bubbles and demand-side crises. Could a economy based on Bitcoin survive them, and not crash inevitably into a deflationary spiral? I claim it won't.

The party line usually argues for the evils of inflation. What they don't understand, I think, is that capitalism, in its revolutionary (in the sense of production) facet, needs inflation, feeds from it. Inflation might screw lenders, and favor debtors, sure. But deflation is just the inverse: a gift for the leecherous rentier class, and a massive "fuck you" to entrepreneurs.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#177

Post by oscilloscope »

mtgx wrote: post #117
spartango wrote: post #28

I worry that as Bitcoin's value rises, people are buying in not to use it as payment for services or goods, but simply as an investment vehicle. In principle, there's nothing wrong with this; currency trading is common and well-explored. The problem is that the value of a currency is supposed to also be somehow related to its utility in acquiring goods and services. When it is rarely used to that effect, people may r…

I worry about that, too, but I think it's unlikely to happen, because Bitcoin will stabilize eventually. But it first needs to become so big (think $100 billion - $1 trillion here) that every single transaction affects the value in a very small way, and any top HN or Reddit article about it has an almost insignificant effect on its value. I do believe that will happen eventually, but it's too early right now. Bitcoin…

I would expect steady growth of Bitcoin's price to look like the logistic function. Exponential at first, then flattening out. At some point, it would just grow opposite the inflation of other currencies once it's stable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function

Of course growth will probably come in fits and starts, not so smoothly.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#178

Post by mapt »

saalweachter wrote: post #116
kiba wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that is only one side of the coin. If people are hoarding BTC, then they aren't spending them on goods / services. Sure they are. BitPay reports 2 million dollars in sale this month. The rate of transaction is accelerating too. What you meant is "they will horde more and spend less on goods / services", but sales and transactions are clearly accelerating. How do you account for this?

Is $2 million really significant? BTC famously passed $1 billion in the money supply recently. That means that about 0.2% of the money supply is turning over each month, and 99.8% being hoarded from month to month. The US GDP is about $15 trillion, so about $1.25 trillion in transactions happen in a month. If you take M2 of about $10 trillion as the US money supply, about 12.5% of the US money supply turns over each…

$2M and growing is significant, although it's only one of many companies. Every other day another business sets up with Bitcoin as a medium of exchange that is a low-fee, no-chargeback transactional currency. The fundamental value of such a currency, with a quasi-fixed money supply, scales as some multiple of real circulation. The momentary value is proportional to that fundamental value multiplied by short-term expectations of the BTC as an asset, which is driven by growth in usage and hype.

It's entirely possible that 99% of the value of a bitcoin is a self-reinforcing set of asset-bubble expectations, but this is something that really didn't exist before, that we don't have great paradigms to explain, that is undergoing massive daily shifts in its usage. It is explicitly not a stable national floating fiat currency with people who circulate the money their banking system provides & pay their taxes in those notes & denominate their salaries and grocery bills in sticky quantities of those notes, and so it's not directly comparable.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#179

Post by gst »

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?

Freicoin is a scam. If you mine Freicoins 80% of the mined coins are automatically transferred to the "Freicoin Foundation" (see e.g. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=134629.0). A real demurrage might be an interesting concept, but I wouldn't suggest to buy into Freicoin.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#180

Post by 1SaltwaterC »

jaibot wrote: post #137
calinet6 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I see a currency rising in value faster than Gold itself, I'm going to want to get in on the value. Fact is, if I had "invested" in 100 BTC only 5 months ago when it was hovering around USD$10, that would have cost me about $1000. And now it would be worth $10000. There are not that many investments that have that kind of return in such a short time. You'd have to be dumb to believe that people aren't doing exactl…

What's a good way to short bitcoin?

Thinking the same thing. It'll be interesting to see somebody going out sorosing the BTC "economy".
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