Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

bitcoincharts.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 600 posts

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#261

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

wmf wrote: post #243
dragontamer wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

In a common scenario where the customer pays 1% to Coinbase and the merchant pays 2.6% to BitPay, Bitcoin comes out worse than Paypal or credit cards.

In a common scenario where Paypal freezes your account for dubious reasons and then refuses to answer your telephone calls or emails, Bitcoin comes out ahead.

In another common scenario where a Senator named Lieberman makes a press release accusing Wikileaks of criminal activity, and other payment processors simply refuse to conduct transactions for you, Bitcoin also comes out ahead.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#262

Post by aneth4 »

dobbsbob wrote: post #234
dia80 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cryptobarons it will have created from its inner circle, through shameless hoarding. This isn't 1941 England and bitcoins aren't sugar. Early adopters in the right thing often make money. Usually on HN they are called investors and congratulated. Sour grapes on missing out? (I did too)

I bought 30,000 bitcoins when they were worth less than a penny and sold them all when the value went up to $0.80. Lol, oops. If you don't want to miss out again, buy Litecoins and Namecoins. Litecoin will never be worth as much as BTC (because there will be 80million of them as opposed to 20something million BTC) but it will slowly gain in value as it has some impressive features especially suited for online gaming…

What you should be worrying about is the money supply, not the individual coin value.

Is there any acceptance in commerce of these competitors? Unless there is an underlying demand created by available products, these coins will be worth nothing.

In my opinion, features won't matter. Bitcoin has critical mass, and it's unlikely to face real competition.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#263

Post by corysama »

josephagoss wrote: post #170
sliverstorm wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At $100/BTC, GPU mining might be profitable again. Slow, but profitable.

Unfortunately not, I have been watching GPU mining returns vs the BTC price for a while, all the time the hash rate of the network is always increasing a little quicker than the income from mining. The ASIC's will continue to dominate. Per watt of electricity they are far more efficient and we will see thousands of ASIC coming into existence this year. GPU mining Litecoin and converting over the USD or Bitcoin is act…

I fired up a miner again recently just for fun. Took 5 days to dig out $15. That's comparable to the $3/day the same GPU could mine back when the exchange rate was $5/coin. But yes, the ASICs are coming. There are only a few in the wild right now. Pretty soon there won't be much point to GPU mining.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#264

Post by [deleted] »

walkon wrote: post #250
deelowe wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few replies here that seem to be reacting negatively to the OP due to the tone of the submission instead of the content. To be clear, deflation is categorically bad for a currency. It's terrible, like great depression terrible. The reason it's bad is that deflation makes it more profitable to do nothing than to invest. When this happens, people react by not spending money. The market dies. While inflation…

> The reason it's bad is that deflation makes it more profitable to do nothing than to invest. When this happens, people react by not spending money. The market dies. If this is holds true, why do people buy from markets where prices regularly decrease? Wouldn't it follow that they will wait in perpetuity and never buy that new phone/laptop/etc?

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#265

Post by betterunix »

aneth4 wrote: post #256
deelowe wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few replies here that seem to be reacting negatively to the OP due to the tone of the submission instead of the content. To be clear, deflation is categorically bad for a currency. It's terrible, like great depression terrible. The reason it's bad is that deflation makes it more profitable to do nothing than to invest. When this happens, people react by not spending money. The market dies. While inflation…

That is one theory, and is the prevailing one. It is not necessarily correct. Regardless, it is certainly a consumer's right to store their assets in something that is not inflationary, as most do. Is the population holding empty real estate or gold instead of currency really that much better for the economy? No. Smart money will simply shift out of cash in an inflationary environment, and the value will not necessar…

"Is the population holding empty real estate or gold instead of currency really that much better for the economy? No."

A population holding productive factories, tools, and land is a whole lot better for the economy than people hoarding gold.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#266

Post by yxhuvud »

BrianEatWorld wrote: post #196
dragontamer wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, d…

Uh, do you realize big companies already put big hedges for the value of existing currencies to minimize the swings in value? That will not be possible with bitcoins with the current volatility since it will be way too expensive. That is bad for business and therefore also bad for the economy and the currency.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#267

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

alexchamberlain wrote: post #213
rytis wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

It's common to value a currency against a basket of other currencies; you would still see BTC's volatility be huge.

Because of currency manipulation, some would rather think of bitcoin's value with respect to a basket of commodities instead of currencies.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#268

Post by dragontamer »

aneth4 wrote: post #256
deelowe wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few replies here that seem to be reacting negatively to the OP due to the tone of the submission instead of the content. To be clear, deflation is categorically bad for a currency. It's terrible, like great depression terrible. The reason it's bad is that deflation makes it more profitable to do nothing than to invest. When this happens, people react by not spending money. The market dies. While inflation…

That is one theory, and is the prevailing one. It is not necessarily correct. Regardless, it is certainly a consumer's right to store their assets in something that is not inflationary, as most do. Is the population holding empty real estate or gold instead of currency really that much better for the economy? No. Smart money will simply shift out of cash in an inflationary environment, and the value will not necessar…

Gold is a piss poor investment.

Owning Real Estate (and making money off of it) entails taking care of it. People taking care of their land (so that it can appreciate in value) is a good thing. The typical Real Estate "investor" adds a ton of value to their home, not just through maintenance, but also additions (ie: a new deck).

This maintenance is true value added to the economy. True value that wouldn't have been added if the investor just left his cash in something else.

No one wants to buy a 30-year old home that had no maintenance on it. Unless you're a fan of buying homes with leaky roofs and a flooded basement...

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#270

Post by Judson »

teebs wrote: post #247
deelowe wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few replies here that seem to be reacting negatively to the OP due to the tone of the submission instead of the content. To be clear, deflation is categorically bad for a currency. It's terrible, like great depression terrible. The reason it's bad is that deflation makes it more profitable to do nothing than to invest. When this happens, people react by not spending money. The market dies. While inflation…

This is part of the issue. The other part is that no one has any incentive to spend money, which can cause a recession. You can either 100 units of something today, or buy 110 units of it tomorrow. This gives you a very strong incentive to wait and not spend money. This means that no one buys anything, so no one needs to make or manufacture anything. People lose their jobs, so they don't have money, so they can't buy…

>You can either 100 units of something today, or buy 110 units of it tomorrow.

People make this kind of tradeoff all the time. I can either purchase a product for $100 from Best Buy, or, I can wait for two days and get the same product for $80 from amazon (or $83.99 and get it the next day).

There are times when I choose to be prudent and save the extra cash and wait 48 hours until the amazon package shows up. Other times, I would prefer the product sooner, rather than later and spend more money for the item.

Post reply on HN