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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

#191

Post by Karunamon »

niggler wrote: post #63
imsofuture wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a terribly good point though -- fiat currency also has no intrinsic value.

That's a misunderstanding of history. USD used to be backed by silver and all bills said "in silver payable to the bearer on demand". It was only relatively recently that the practice ended. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/US-%245-...

It doesn't really invalidate his statement though. The USD is not backed by anything (whether it was in the past or not is irrelevant), and aside from the fact that it's commonly accepted, has no more intrinsic value than Bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#192

Post by knowaveragejoe »

cadetzero wrote: post #173
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…

Er, wouldn't you give out your public key to receive bitcoins?

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#193

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

grovulent wrote: post #128
jcampbell1 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion of "money" is quite well defined. You need 3 properties: 1) Store of value. Much easier to store gold/USD/Bitcoins than the food you will need in the future. 2) Medium of Exchange. Can be used to exchange for real goods, thus avoiding the headache of barter. 3) Unit of Account. e.g. is easily divisible. Bitcoins aren't great at #2, but gold is terrible at #3. If bitcoins prove to be a lasting store of valu…

Bitcoin hasn't yet proved it can do either 1 or 2 yet. If it succeeds in either it will do better than gold is currently doing as currency. But I wasn't trying to measure currency dick size. I was just making the point that not being good at 2 doesn't necessarily hurt its ability at 1.

A person who bought ~1600 USD worth of bitcoin last year instead of an OZT of gold would be quite pleased with the performance of bitcoin in category #1.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#194

Post by philliphaydon »

niggler wrote: post #41
PassTheAmmo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually for me bitcoin proves just how few people can ACTUALLY spot a pyramid scheme or a pump and dump - instead resorting to calling everything that seems too good to be true a scam. It may work 99.9% of the time, but BTC is the false positive IMO. I totally agree that the Cyprus thing is totally bogus though, journalists are uninformed and lazy as usual. The real reason is that it seems more and more likely that…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UKC7iaBKvs#t=768s A pretty brilliant scam if you ask me

I'm pretty much convinced its a scam after reading this:

http://nerdr.com/bitcoin-exchange-scam-bitcoins-are-worthles...

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#195

Post by calinet6 »

andyakb wrote: post #148
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…

This is not rational thinking. Simply because something has gone up in the past does not mean it will continue to. The returns for the past 5 months have been insane, but that doesnt mean it was a good investment 5 months ago because thats based entirely on results oriented thinking. In a casino, if a roulette wheel hit black 10 times in a row, somebody letting it ride on black the whole way would have made a fortune…

> In a casino, if a roulette wheel hit black 10 times in a row, somebody letting it ride on black the whole way would have made a fortune, but that doesnt mean it would have been a good bet, it means the people making those bets got lucky.

Equating a currency to a game of chance based on independent events—now that's irrational thinking.

My conclusions might not be valid, this isn't something I'm an expert at, but I really don't think that's a good example.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#196

Post by BrianEatWorld »

dragontamer wrote: post #167
nawitus wrote: post #139

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." I agree that the value of bitcoins changes faster than other currencies. However, the fact remains that the prices for all currencies change. Domain names are the exception, but inflation adjusts prices upwards of almost all commodities. "BTC as a…

USD changes at a rate of 3% per year, according to the CPI. Bitcoin is currently changing at a rate of 50% per month . Volatility is a bad thing for currency. Bitcoin has too much of it right now. And sorry, as long as BTC keeps changing by 50%+ per month, it will only be a proxy currency. If BTC is to become a true currency, it will need to settle down to ~3% / year volatility, like the other major currencies of the…

Thats a bit of a logical fallacy. Just because modern currencies tend to not exhibit volatility, doesn't mean its a bad trait for a currency. In the past, ideas like "menu costs" might make it less favorable because of sticky prices not aligning with a free floating currency, but that isn't as much of an issue anymore. The real issue would be if the underlying fundamentals, IE the supply and demand of the currency, didn't align, making the volatility due to human expectations and not genuine factors.

While I think that a good deal of the BTC volatility is due to human expectations, it just bothers me when people try and use older macro ideas when explaining Bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#197

Post by calinet6 »

1SaltwaterC wrote: post #182
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…

Call me a skeptic as I see this like speculation, but where I've seen that kind of return, turned out to be really clever ponzi schemes and enough supply of dumb enough "investors". Oh yea, I remember that fun time when the housing market in my area went up 5X in 4 years. It was all fine till people ran out of actual money. The rest is history.

A currency can't make value out of nothing for long. Eventually reality will set in. I think that's the moral of this story.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#198

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

acabal wrote: post #88
hilko wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wouldn't it be possible to link the BTC price to the going rate at MtGox, so that it always translates to around $35?

Yeah but that's what I don't want to do--because that makes Bitcoin just a USD proxy, not a currency and economy of its own. I'm interested in BTC as its own economy, but unfortunately the price instability and tendency of most users to exchange for USD in the end makes it impossible to explore that.

Sorry man, IMO it will be years before BTC can function in the way that you want it to. First you need widespread adoption.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#199

Post by NegativeK »

TranceMan wrote: post #147
jaibot wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a good way to short bitcoin?

If you really want to - Borrow $x bit coins - sell $x bit coins - wait for price to drop - buy back $x bit coins - return $x bit coins to lender. Now the speculators are in........

Do you know of any places that make loans in Bitcoin?

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#200

Post by dragontamer »

TillE wrote: post #138
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.

> it gives us a way to avoid Paypal and other online processors How do you buy and cash out your BTC? You still have to make all those real money transactions, just with the exchange rather than directly with the merchant. Seems a bit pointless to me.

Touche.

Although, a BTC exchange + BTC merchant together have to only beat out on Paypal's charges. BTC seems to be stable enough that Paypal's 2.9% charge per transaction makes BTC a useful competitor.

That said, now you have to trust both the BTC exchange and Merchant. But that is a bit easier if you can put up with the downsides to BTC (no chargebacks, etc. etc.)

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