101–110 of 114 posts
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Disrupt is fine. Its basically a quick way of saying a company is in a specific industry. disrupt industry x. Bubble, lets lose that. People are so bad a predicting bubbles it is laughable.
That's what disrupt means now. It used to mean a company is changing the way an industry does business. But then everybody started claiming they would do that, no matter how trivial the change, so now it means "there's a new company in this industry and it has a hip website."
How many legitimate real world services and products currently accept Bitcoins? I understand it is only the Chinese search engine. I also take it for granted that any major Euro/US-based organization (be it Google or Domino's Pizza) that starts accepting Bitcoins will instantly face very serious political repercussions. Given these facts it is astonishing that Bitcoin seems to be heading from strength to strength.
It's better to not use MtGox as a baseline price anymore, it's at about $20 higher then any other exchange due to the fact that you can't actually get your money out of it ATM. Check the btc-e graph for a better view: http://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/btce/btcusd (They both show the same trend, I'm just being pedantic)
$200? Hardly. Maybe if you look at Mt.Gox, it might look like you could get $190 per bitcoin. Howerver, there is no way to actually get that money to your bank account, since Mt. Gox hasn't been doing any banktransfers for months. The price is high on Mt.Gox because people that have money on there can only get it out by buying Bitcoins and transfering those to other exchanges. This drives the Mt.Gox price up. If you…
People have been saying this for the last $100 or so of rise. And yet here we are.
$200? Hardly. Maybe if you look at Mt.Gox, it might look like you could get $190 per bitcoin. Howerver, there is no way to actually get that money to your bank account, since Mt. Gox hasn't been doing any banktransfers for months. The price is high on Mt.Gox because people that have money on there can only get it out by buying Bitcoins and transfering those to other exchanges. This drives the Mt.Gox price up. If you…
My experience was that buying Bitcoins from other exchanges is usually much more expensive than Mt.Gox. I'm not sure about selling, though.
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But why does a fixed supply make it deflationary? What happens when all BTC have been mined, will the price still go up all the time? I guess it could go up if the Dollar goes down at the same time. The actual price is staying the same, but the Dollar is worth less, so it takes more to buy X. Not sure why that would be bad. Also I suspect banks will create virtual bitcoin, as they do with money (lending BTC that they…
Well, if you assume economic growth, a fixed number of counting tokens will have to represent larger values over time. The real trick is to read 'deflationary' as 'will create deflationary pressure', not as 'will inevitably cause deflation at every moment in time'.
That seems incorrect. While impractical, there might be other solutions, for example the Porsche could cost 1 BTC+ 1 Carrot, or maybe it could cost 2 BTC anyway. The buyer just wouldn't be able to pay in one go.
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Well, if you assume economic growth, a fixed number of counting tokens will have to represent larger values over time. The real trick is to read 'deflationary' as 'will create deflationary pressure', not as 'will inevitably cause deflation at every moment in time'.
You mean, assuming there was only one Bitcoin: if a VW Beetle costs 1 BTC this year, and next year a Porsche is published (growing the economy by replacing cars with better cars), the Porsche would also have to cost 1 BTC because there isn't more than 1 BTC? That seems incorrect. While impractical, there might be other solutions, for example the Porsche could cost 1 BTC+ 1 Carrot, or maybe it could cost 2 BTC anyway.…
What I mean is that if you assume a healthy trade in something of limited abundance, you should be prepared for demand to drive up the value of that thing. It might not, but given the simple dynamics of supply and demand (microeconomics isn't really controversial), it is prudent to be aware of the possibility.
(I do sort of assume that people are mostly using bitcoins to complete transactions and speculate, I don't assume there is a healthy trade in them)
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> When it comes to thinking "this time is different" and "I have an idea to refactor the world economy", your age is VERY relevant. Its really not. If you are trying to evaluate how good of an idea someone is likely to come up with, their scope of understanding of economics and past efforts in that field is relevant, and age is an extremely poor proxy for that. (It's exactly the same problem as using age alone as a p…
" their scope of understanding of economics and past efforts in that field is relevant, and age is an extremely poor proxy for that. (It's exactly the same problem as using age alone as a proxy for to measure programming skill would be.)" That's exactly the spot where I disagree. Understanding political-economy properly requires a certain amount of cynicism that can only come from observing the world for a while. Ver…
Cynicism hinders understanding, though it may be a product of understanding, and while cynicism may come from age, its a whole lot more related to particular experiences interacting with underlying personality.
> For what it's worth, I didn't feel that way when I was 22.
For what it's worth, I might have been more inclined to your simplistic paean to the magical powers of age and the value of cynicism when I was 22 -- or at least 17-18. At 40, not so much.