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Bitcoin breaks $200

coinbase.com

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Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#181

Post by kalleth »

saym wrote: post #170
Phlarp wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most times when one person "loses" cash another person "finds" it, leaving the money supply unchanged. When a private key is lost all the coins in that wallet are lost effectively forever. If this happens with large accounts the potential for it to effect the overall economy cannot be ignored.

What would the effect be?

At a guess, the opposite of Quantitative Easing -- deflation and increasing a bitcoins buying power.

Oh, but if it happens to a large enough account, a hit to the confidence of people in bitcoins.

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#182

Post by narcissus »

dllthomas wrote: post #89

I've been wondering whether people benefiting from bitcoin stability (silk road?) mightn't have been manipulating exchange rates. This seems to be weak evidence in support of that (though I still wouldn't say it seems likely).

For what it's worth, Silk Road provided it's own system for guaranteeing stability of price (that is to say, there were guaranteed exchange rates if desired). I don't think there was any need for SR users (well, sellers at least) to manipulate the price for that reason.

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#183

Post by sktrdie »

Phlarp wrote: post #138
sktrdie wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are all risks that come with using Bitcoin. I'm sure with time we'll see lots of improvements. For now a good way to store coins is by using paper wallets: http://www.bitaddress.org/ -you can print them yourself using any printer. Some say your keys shouldn't even be on any computer until you're ready to use them. But for the rest Bitcoin is like cash. You lose the key you lose the cash.

Most times when one person "loses" cash another person "finds" it, leaving the money supply unchanged. When a private key is lost all the coins in that wallet are lost effectively forever. If this happens with large accounts the potential for it to effect the overall economy cannot be ignored.

Well with my paper wallet analogy, if you lose your private key, someone else will find it as well. But anyway, there are enough divisible Bitcoin units that this doesn't pose itself as being a huge issue.

When the network will be hit hard by large amounts of bitcoins trapped behind lost private keys, I'm sure there will be some implementation changes to the Bitcoin software in order to free up the coins and make them go into circulation (to be mined).

For example if an address hasn't been touched for 20 years (death? lost key?).

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#184

Post by narcissus »

Phlarp wrote: post #137
jaekwon wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which ones? DPR's personal wallet is still intact.

That completely depends on how they were stored. If the FBI has his encrypted wallet file and DPR has the password to access those keys then the coins are effectively dead don't you think?

That's presuming that only DPR had the wallet in the first place. Even without the wallet he may have some trusted cohorts that can move the funds via a brain wallet or something similar.

Now having said that, that hasn't yet happened and I presume over time it's less likely to happen. But still, there's nothing intrinsic to Bitcoin that says "Party A has the wallet and therefore only they can spend what's in it".

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#185

Post by epaga »

moccajoghurt wrote: post #177

What about that guy that spent all his money on bitcoins? Is he rich now? Any news about that guy?

"I originally went all in at $7, went out at the same price on the way down, and went back all in at about $3. I've done extensive (bad) trading, and don't have my entire initial position, and far from enough to make me financially independent, but still a substantial amount (more than a year's average net pay, to give a ballpark number). I'm currently all in."

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1owf4v/im_rick_falkvin...

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#186

Post by VMG »

Datsundere wrote: post #94

I tried to buy bitcoins when they were $60. I look for sites that would sell me bitcoins for USD. It was so hard and the ways to buy them were so damn complicated. I had to sign up for a 3rd party site to import bitcoin to mtgox. The 3rd party site needed me to upload my personal identity information to verify my bank account. I was ready to do that as well, except they said it'd take 10+ days to verify. Also someone…

I had the same experience as you and was very excited about it. means that we are at the beginning of the adoption where the friction is high and not everybody can get in.

These are the 28k dialup days

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#187

Post by VMG »

Datsundere wrote: post #94

I tried to buy bitcoins when they were $60. I look for sites that would sell me bitcoins for USD. It was so hard and the ways to buy them were so damn complicated. I had to sign up for a 3rd party site to import bitcoin to mtgox. The 3rd party site needed me to upload my personal identity information to verify my bank account. I was ready to do that as well, except they said it'd take 10+ days to verify. Also someone…

I had the same experience as you and was very excited about it. means that we are at the beginning of the adoption where the friction is high and not everybody can get in.

These are the 28k dialup days

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#188

Post by kang »

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #72

Who wants to talk about china? Over the last few days the volume of transactions on btcchina has doubled. Gov run chinese media outlets have been surprisingly positive about btc. What is going on? One of the potential uses of btc is capital flight, and that is something that china has been incredibly strict about with their capital controls. Why aren't they clamping down? edit: some commentary from someone in china f…

'FriedCat' is from China.

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#189

Post by npongratz »

betterunix wrote: post #37
simplemath wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tulips and gold also don't have built in rock solid transaction protocols

Rock solid? A system that requires vast and increasing amounts of the world's energy to be devoted to it just to achieve a vague notion of security? A system that can be attacked in polynomial time (but let's just say that is not a problem; after all, we never defined security in a way to preclude such things!)? That is your definition of "rock solid?"

> A system that requires vast and increasing amounts of the world's energy to be devoted to it just to achieve a vague notion of security?

Consider the current system of government fiat and credit: the US dollar requires vast armies and navies, the vast and expanding Federal Reserve apparatus with its system of member/franchised banks, employees of the IRS, the US Treasury, the Secret Service (I'm redundant, I know). Millions of people are dedicated to propping up the "full faith and credit".

I'd be surprised if the energy required to keep billions of ASICs humming is more than the energy required to keep millions of people humming.

Further, the fractional reserve system is far from rock solid. It appears to be solid, until a tipping point of confidence is reached, at which point it falls like a house of cards. It's the definition of a con game.

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#190

Post by tslathrow »

fiatjaf wrote: post #179
tslathrow wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest you read up a bit on Robert Shiller and CAPE

Thanks for the elaboration and useful links.

I assumed you could just look in any introductory finance textbook, but here:

CAPE Formula:

- Adjust each of the yearly earnings of the last 10 years for inflation.

- Average the result of the step 1.

- Divide the current price by the result of step 2.

When I say yearly earnings I really mean trailing twelve months. Use TIPS etc to adjust for inflation.

CAPE is mostly horseshit but basically it's designed to give a sense of over/undervaluation of risky assets

It's about as awful as any other valuation metric though.

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