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

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#201

Post by tibbon » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 5:12 PM UTC

gst wrote: post #179

pi18n wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Its definitely a strange thing. Money goes to "miners and grants"?

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#202

Post by polarix » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 5:15 PM UTC

Eliezer wrote: post #110

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…

As ever: Bitcoin is a lovely medium of exchange, a horrible medium of account and hence a purely bubbled store of value.

I believe the proper course of action is to make a calculation, involving: 1. a given velocity of money and thus a derived desirable monetary volume for a given economic condition 2. a projected percentage of that economic activity that makes sense in bitcoin 3. a projected economic condition

Even if there is no value in BTC as a medium of account, the quantity of economic transfer it could plausibly come to represent alone has a certain value.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#203

Post by tempestn » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 5:16 PM UTC

wwwtyro wrote: post #98

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…

How about an automatically-adjusted price scheme where the price varies according to the demand? You might even automatically optimize profits this way.

That is an extremely cool idea. Why worry about setting the exchange rate yourself when you can let the market do it for you!

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#204

Post by knowaveragejoe » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 5:16 PM UTC

phormula wrote: post #144

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got a source for that?

There was ticker on their site that must of reset this morning. They say need to get $850k per quarter in order to keep re-seller account and the low prices. They are selling 0% margin in order to promote bitcoin and get the competition, newegg and amazon to accept it as well. They didn't make the goal but were not open the whole quarter so they may still be able to continue. I'll see if they post news or press relea…

There is a ticker to get 850k by June 30th, maybe that's what you're talking about?

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#205

Post by pixelcort » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 5:16 PM UTC

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?

There are derivative markets where you could purchase an option to sell bitcoin at a set price in the future. If the price falls below your target by then, buy up cheaper Bitcoins and sell them at profit.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#206

Post by indrax » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 5:21 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #43

oleganza wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The problem is that the value of a currency is supposed to also be somehow related to its utility in acquiring goods and services." Well, it is. As more people hold some BTC "for the future", they are more than willing to accept them as payment for their services. Imagine you are surrounded by people who have "hoarded" some BTC. Suddenly they can just trade in BTC without going to a bank (unless they have some spare…

But that is only one side of the coin. If people are hoarding BTC, then they aren't spending them on goods / services. IE: Deflationary Spiral. It becomes hard to be a merchant who accepts bitcoins, because everyone expects BTC to keep rising in prices. People who bought a domain name for 1 BTC a few weeks ago from Namecheap lost a lot of money. They should have instead "saved" that BTC. Therefore, people are discour…

By that logic anyone who didn't buy bitcoin a few weeks ago lost a lot of money. No one should buy anything but bitcoin.

Anyone who buys with bitcoin can replace their bitcoin with dollars, if they want to stay invested in bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#207

Post by dm2 » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 5:22 PM UTC

betterunix wrote: post #100

GhotiFish wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true, but I'd wager most of the people who are buying into bitcoin for its property as a store of value will be shocked to find out bitcoins other very interesting property. The ease and low cost of transferring those bitcoins to anyone, anywhere in the world. "I can BUY things with these? Wait... I can sell things? I just need to paste a hash?!"

Then one day, some highly motivated attacker will come along and discover the other very interesting property: that the work needed to attack Bitcoin scales linearly with the work needed to use Bitcoin. As soon as a successful attack is announced publicly, faith in Bitcoin will be shaken to badly that nobody will ever want to use anything called "digital cash" for a long time. So the real question you should be askin…

Supposedly they can easily change algorithms if SHA-256 is broken in the future.

Here is a list of client security issues: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Common_Vulnerabilities_and_Exposu...

It seems like the biggest risk would be with the wallet websites, which is an issue that is present in other payment methods.

The biggest problem IMO is that there is no way to refund or right the wrongs done by an attack. If someone in russia or china steals half of the bitcoins, there is nothing anyone can do to get them back. I suppose they would all be logged and everyone could band together to block those BitCoins as payments, but that's probably not going to happen. That would be interest to watch play out.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#208

Post by Hermel » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 5:24 PM UTC

lolcraft wrote: post #176

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 globa…

You are saying that there won't be any growth because people will hoard all money because they want to participate in the (non-existing) growth? Isn't that self-contradictory?

I think you are wrong. Imagine living in such an economy and facing the choice between hoarding (4% deflationary gain) and a good investment (10% gain). What would you do? All I see happening is that less money is being spent on bad investments due to artificially low interest rates as it happens to today.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#209

Post by gnaritas » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 5:24 PM UTC

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.

> . It doesn't matter what value BTC has, as long as it is constant.

That'll never happen, bitcoin is doomed by math and economics to be forever a deflationary currency, worth ever more and more over time as the economy grows while the supply of bitcoins doesn't.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#210

Post by dobbsbob » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 5:25 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #200

TillE wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.)

It's not just about fees, Paypal has banned half the world from using their services (India, China) and dictates what you're allowed to sell, arbitrarily seizes money for months on end, and can be easily frauded with no protection for merchants.

You also don't have to trust any exchange, you can walk to your local coffee shop and trade for cash off the books with anybody from localbitcoins.com