21–30 of 80 posts
However awesome bitcoins are, I wonder how much longer till wallets can be securely stored online, and the technology is simplified to an extent that my barely computer-literate mother can understand bitcoins.
Quite a long time to go, but that's ok. How quick did such a mother adopt credit-cards?
Is there any possibility of another virtual currency - a Bitcoin competitor - being created? Surely this would have a big impact on the value of Bitcoin.
There have been a lot of alternatives[1] spring up, but as far as I can tell, they're all very similar to Bitcoin, so none of them solve big problems that Bitcoin doesn't already (variations include mining being not so biased towards GPUs/ASICs and small changes to the way blocks and coin supply are handled). Fundamentally, they're all variations on the same theme. If a new currency was developed that solved some of…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There have been a lot of alternatives[1] spring up, but as far as I can tell, they're all very similar to Bitcoin, so none of them solve big problems that Bitcoin doesn't already (variations include mining being not so biased towards GPUs/ASICs and small changes to the way blocks and coin supply are handled). Fundamentally, they're all variations on the same theme. If a new currency was developed that solved some of…
Can you expand on the fragility issue? Are you talking about the lack of chargebacks/reversing transactions?
In (not only) that sense, Bitcoins have more in common with hard dollar bills than with bank funds. If you burn your dollar bills or lose them in some other way, they are gone forever. Similarly, it is not possible to duplicate a dollar bill. In this regard, Bitcoin is even more secure since forgery is not possible either.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are many. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/List_of_alternative_cryptocurrenc...
Do you know if any of these are likely to reach the heights of BitCoin anytime soon, or are we a while off that?
All these make it seem like a better alternative for micro-transactions in the end.
Bubble or no, from a personal perspective I will not use bitcoin as a currency to exchange goods - things like purchasing items or paying salaries. Bitcoin's value is just too volatile, why would I pay someone a certain amount in bitcoins, when it'll probably rise up to 10 times the current value in a few weeks? But as a medium for investment, like buying stocks, bitcoin does provide a novel and alluring option.
>why would I pay someone a certain amount in bitcoins, when it'll probably rise up to 10 times the current value in a few weeks? Why would you pay someone a certain amount in USD, when you could buy Bitcoins instead and they would probably rise to 10 times the current value in a few weeks?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are many. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/List_of_alternative_cryptocurrenc...
Do you know if any of these are likely to reach the heights of BitCoin anytime soon, or are we a while off that?
You can check out btc-e.com and see the absolutely massive price spike of litecoin. It went from .80c two weeks ago to trading at $4 consistently over the last week.
I'd love to get an economist studying why the value of bitcoins goes up. After all, they're infinitely reusable, totally fungible, and incredibly low friction. The only reason for their value to rise (rather than them just being passed around at the same price indefinitely) is if people expect them to rise, or if there's a shortage (forcing people to use fractions of a bitcoin to represent the same number of dollars…
Great sarcasm there!
I'd love to get an economist studying why the value of bitcoins goes up. After all, they're infinitely reusable, totally fungible, and incredibly low friction. The only reason for their value to rise (rather than them just being passed around at the same price indefinitely) is if people expect them to rise, or if there's a shortage (forcing people to use fractions of a bitcoin to represent the same number of dollars…
Great sarcasm there!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>why would I pay someone a certain amount in bitcoins, when it'll probably rise up to 10 times the current value in a few weeks? Why would you pay someone a certain amount in USD, when you could buy Bitcoins instead and they would probably rise to 10 times the current value in a few weeks?
This is the best counterargument to the tired old "Bitcoin is deflationary" I have ever read, and you did it in a single sentence. Thanks!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There have been a lot of alternatives[1] spring up, but as far as I can tell, they're all very similar to Bitcoin, so none of them solve big problems that Bitcoin doesn't already (variations include mining being not so biased towards GPUs/ASICs and small changes to the way blocks and coin supply are handled). Fundamentally, they're all variations on the same theme. If a new currency was developed that solved some of…
Can you expand on the fragility issue? Are you talking about the lack of chargebacks/reversing transactions?
As epaga points out, if you lose access to your wallet (forget password, hardware failure without backups, somebody dies without leaving the password to their heirs) there is no way to retrieve that money.
Secondly, if a transaction is made to a valid-according-to-the-protocol address that nobody owns, that money is lost with no possibility of getting it back.
You could argue that these are problems that can be solved with more technology on top of Bitcoin, so you could have Bitcoin banks that:
1) Guarantee that your wallet is stored securely. The idea is that you need to trust that the bank is better at not doing stupid things than you.
2) Control access to it. Like modern banks, you would need to trust these banks, for they would have access to your wallets.
3) Make sure that payments are going to the right place. To make a payment, the bank that controls the wallet that the payment is being made to could be required to notify via another protocol that the address is real and belongs to a certain person/organisation. If this was widely used (so that payments to raw addresses was considered dangerous), it would also prevent a hacker from breaking into, say, EFF's Twitter account and tweeting "we're now accepting donations on this address...".