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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

#351

Post by arethuza »

blibble wrote: post #306
MacsHeadroom wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like feudalism.

that is where it all originates from: our property/land laws are all built on medieval law, as we haven't had a revolution to shake things up! houses are nearly always freeholds, whereas flats (apartments) are normally leaseholds, as it would be unfair if one flat owning tenant has land rights over the others. recently the government has given leaseholders the right to purchase the freehold from their landlord (if th…

"whereas flats (apartments) are normally leaseholds"

Must be an English thing, that is certainly not the case in Scotland.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#352

Post by dragontamer »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #172
dragontamer wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The volatility of a currency is one of the most important metrics.

It really doesn't matter if a currency is inflating or deflating. It just shouldn't change that much over time. The less it changes, the better. (or, if it is changing, then it should at least change consistently. IE: People expect USD to inflate at 3% so it should).

Since no one can predict the value of BTC next week, or hell... even tomorrow's price of BTC... it becomes a very hard to use currency.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#353

Post by kjackson2012 »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #291
grovulent wrote: post #14

People like Max Keiser are calling 100k to 1mill per bitcoin. Hard to imagine. I left my gpu running for a few weeks a year or so ago and mined myself 1 bitcoin. I figure that should Keiser's prediction comes true - it will be a nice easy pay day - if not, I didn't waste much time, energy on it. I've been looking at it lately though and thinking that it surely must drop back soon. I'm thinking a drop back down to 15…

Bitcoin is like a startup. If it works, it's worth a tremendous amount. If it doesn't, it's worth nearly nothing. Right now its proponents are valuing it like a tech startup stock- what's its potential future value? Its opponents have already decided it will fail. Either side may be right at this point, though bitcoin has more going for it than it did six months ago. To me, the trend is currently towards "it's going…

The only way it "works" is if people start using it to pay for goods and services.

Right now it is an investment vehicle for speculation. And the crazy volatility suggests to me that most people won't feel comfortable using this as a currency for transactions, until the volatility decreases immensely.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#354

Post by marbu »

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?

Hard to say, but my guess is that the price won't go under 15 USD no matter from which level it will fall. Also it's interesting that according to google trends, the current popularity of bitcoin still doesn't reach peak level from 2011[1], I would expect that current popularity is much higher compared to 2011. BTW using forecast feature, "google predicts" the crash any time now :)

[1] https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=bitcoin

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#355

Post by SilasX »

dghughes wrote: post #81
dragontamer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'd like to believe you, a link to the "Cyprus lie" would be nice. :-) I don't think "core bitcoin" users are scamming anyone. But at this point, the speed at which BTC has grown has triggered my "manipulation trigger". A decentralized currency is prone to manipulation... its not like there is an FCC out there to stop people from manipulating BTC.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/03/experts-pour-cold-wa...

>Why would anyone trust an electronic form of money that could get hacked and then diluted into oblivion?" Michael Pento, president of Pento Portfolio Strategies, told CNBC.

Instant credibility death.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#356

Post by disintermediate »

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…

The price of Bitcoin won't stabilise. The best you could hope for would be a similar volatility to a commodity like gold or silver. So products and services will never be priced in Bitcoin while there is a better alternative like the dollar which is relatively stable.

A mistake 'economists' make with bitcoin is to draw macroecomic conclusions based on theories suited to single currency economies. Actually we need theories that allow for multiple currencies circulating that have different strengths to understand the effects.

Tl;dr Bitcoin won't change the way we price things, it just provides another option to transfer wealth.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#357

Post by 3am »

tlrobinson wrote: post #319
numbsafari wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course gold's value is inflated because of its dual role as a value store and as a commodity with practical applications. Even if gold loses favor as a value store, there will be some minimum boundary on its price based on its usefulness in practical applications. That is not true of bitcoin. The GP was implying that bitcoin has a commodity value, which it does not. It merely has value as a means of exchange. What…

So how much is gold's commodity value really? I've heard $30/oz thrown around (no idea how accurate that is). If that's true, 30/1600 is about 2%, yet gold is still perceived as a fairly safe store of value.

Commodities that are consumed are priced on the marginal cost of production. Saudi Arabia can pump oil for less than $5/barrel, but what drives the prices are the costs of fracked shale and frontier plays like UDW. Gold is the same. Generally, gold is found in sulfide mineralization deposits or in placer deposits (weathered ore bodies, ie nuggets in alluvial deposits). Most new mines are the former, which requires massive mining and ore treatment (on the order of grams of gold per ton of ore, which is then crushed and leached in acids). So it's expensive to produce. Usually it's found with silver and copper, and some miners will account for it after credits for selling those metals, but you can assume $800-1000 USD/oz for production costs after fully capitalizing the development of the mines, at least the last time I looked into it several years ago.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#358

Post by fragsworth »

deelowe wrote: post #218
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…

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…

> To be clear, deflation is categorically bad for a currency. It's terrible, like great depression terrible.

I hear this argument a lot, but no nation that we know of has ever collapsed because of deflation, right? We've never (recently) been in a period of significant deflation, so how can we be so certain of its effects?

> deflation makes it more profitable to do nothing than to invest.

Investment won't ever stop, it just behaves more like a there is a minimum interest rate. No matter what the deflation is, I can still loan out $100 and expect $110 back within a year and make a bigger profit than holding on to it.

People will still work, and spend what they need to. And there's a limit to how much a currency can deflate before it cycles back. And hell, how do we even know that inflationary/deflationary cycles are unhealthy? Even if it causes some businesses to die, maybe this improves an economy in the long term by churning things up a bit.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#359

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

dragontamer wrote: post #286
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the common scenario where my supplier screws me over on Ebay, I can put a "cancel order" on my credit card. I have no such recourse to do that with Bitcoins. Bitcoins offer no consumer protection right now. Once exchanged, the other party holds the money.

OTOH, if you're the supplier, there is no risk for you to go ahead and send the stuff if you were paid in bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#360

Post by Eliezer »

jcfrei wrote: post #219
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…

I believe we'll see some form of inflation through the introduction of new currencies. when the price (ie. deflation) of one cryptocurrency becomes too high other currencies will jump in. the outcome however is unclear, because we are now at an unprecedented point in history. because of the openness of the bitcoin protocol everybody has now the possibility to create his own currency - and the price of adopting a new…

Since Bitcoin can be subdivided and is used (rather than held) primarily as a medium of exchange, there's no reason for increased price in dollars to decrease its use as a medium of exchange... let alone a store of value. Unfortunately.
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