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Realtime Bitcoin Stats

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Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#101

Post by Nursie »

dj2stein9 wrote: post #83
gigantor wrote: post #76

I have one new appreciation for fiat currencies - they're designed to circulate with a steady rate of inflation. It seems there's a hesitation of spending bitcoins knowing if you just wait a day it will go up, so it's being treated like a precious metal rather than a new way of paying for things. Edit: Thanks for the correction, meant to say fiat currencies tend to 'inflate', not deflate.

I don't believe the argument that a deflationary currency, by itself, will make people not be willing to buy things. Consider a savings account - why would anyone take money out of their savings account to buy things? If all you need to do is keep it in the account, it will make more money, so why spend it?

Most savings accounts pay under the rate of inflation, and rely on someone (usually a bank) being willing to pay you that rate to get you to give them your money. Presumably the utility they derive from this makes it profitable for them.

BTC on the other hand, if we reach a steady deflationary state, beats the rate of deflation by definition, and just by you sitting on it. Slightly different situation.

--edit-- Also see here - http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf It seems the ~80% of bitcoin are long-term dormant, so people are just holding on to them, regardless of the reason.

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#103

Post by jvm »

dj2stein9 wrote: post #83
gigantor wrote: post #76

I have one new appreciation for fiat currencies - they're designed to circulate with a steady rate of inflation. It seems there's a hesitation of spending bitcoins knowing if you just wait a day it will go up, so it's being treated like a precious metal rather than a new way of paying for things. Edit: Thanks for the correction, meant to say fiat currencies tend to 'inflate', not deflate.

I don't believe the argument that a deflationary currency, by itself, will make people not be willing to buy things. Consider a savings account - why would anyone take money out of their savings account to buy things? If all you need to do is keep it in the account, it will make more money, so why spend it?

Yeah parent would have been precise referring to the low volatility rather than the inflation of fiat money.

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#105

Post by sneak »

astrodust wrote: post #98
dragontamer wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions There are more bitcoin transactions... but not enough to qualify the 20x increase in value the last three months.

That could be explained by rampant speculation.

It could also be explained by increased organic non-speculatory demand as Bitcoin shows up in the media more frequently, and more people begin to use it - against a relatively fixed supply.

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#106

Post by sneak »

myspace wrote: post #95
asperous wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>no one questions who posseses the first "coins". This is thoroughly documented https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining

The whole thing of this is to remain anonymous. Again, no one questions and no one knows how posesses the first coins. So, this is a free Out of jail card.

The creator of Bitcoin included a newspaper headline from the Financial Times the day of Bitcoin's release in the very first block.

While he may be in possession of the earliest coins, he obtained them after the public release of the software, as it would have been impossible for him to include that quote in the genesis block before the day he announced the release to the whole internet.

The quote: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks"

From: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/banking/ar...

You could have had any of those blocks. I had several.

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#107

Post by mkr-hn »

brianbreslin wrote: post #42

All this hype and speculation gives me a bit of pause, and worries me about actually mining. However, I keep wondering, what opportunities are there left to "sell the shovels" ?

Investor tools and services are how it's done with traditional currencies.

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#108

Post by mrb »

gibybo wrote: post #71
deepblueocean wrote: post #53

How do you calculate the hash rate? I have spent some time trying to understand the various hash rate estimates people come up with. Basically, I've determined that they're all 100% bogus. People like to work from the difficulty using bad/incorrect statistics since that's the most obvious way to get to something in the units of hashes/s, but I can never understand exactly what the process is. I'm genuinely curious to…

100% bogus? I'm not sure what bad/incorrect statistics you are referring to since it's relatively straight forward to find. The current target hash is "0x000000000000022FBE0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000" This means that to solve a block, you must find a SHA-256 hash of that block's transactions + nonce that hash to a value equal or below that target. Since the output of a SHA-256 hash is essentially r…

You have errors. 170 blocks have been found so 170*3.3e16 = 5.6e18 hashes have been computed. Divided by 86400 = 64.9 Thash/s (and the site currently reports 65.2 Thash/s, not 6.5).

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#109

Post by SkyMarshal »

dj2stein9 wrote: post #83
gigantor wrote: post #76

I have one new appreciation for fiat currencies - they're designed to circulate with a steady rate of inflation. It seems there's a hesitation of spending bitcoins knowing if you just wait a day it will go up, so it's being treated like a precious metal rather than a new way of paying for things. Edit: Thanks for the correction, meant to say fiat currencies tend to 'inflate', not deflate.

I don't believe the argument that a deflationary currency, by itself, will make people not be willing to buy things. Consider a savings account - why would anyone take money out of their savings account to buy things? If all you need to do is keep it in the account, it will make more money, so why spend it?

That bit of economics common knowledge was also developed before our modern, dynamic, fast, globally interconnected economy. I'm sure there's still some technical truth to it, but I wonder if it's as true now to the degree it was back in, say, the Depression era.

It would be interesting to see how a currency with a set rate of deflation instead of inflation worked now. Say your money gained 3% per year purchasing power instead of lost it, everyone would be incentivized to spend or invest it in ways that returned either ROI or utility worth at least 3% per year, or otherwise hoard it. Spending and investment (or at least malinvestment) would slow, but capital formation would increase.

Too bad there's no way to test such a thing, see how it works out in practice. BTC unfortunately does not seem to provide a stable rate of deflation, at least for the foreseeble future.

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#110

Post by mkr-hn »

myspace wrote: post #96
ramblerman wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how to interpret your argument. It just seems like your pissed of someone else has 2,000,000 dollars.

What pisses me off is people are falling into this Ponzi Scheme.

How is it a Ponzi scheme? I don't see anyone promising returns to previous investors based on money taken from new investors.
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