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Bitcoins reached $300

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Bitcoins reached $300

#81

Post by mike_esspe »

rmc wrote: post #60
jafaku wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the people of the world can't really have a bank account, let alone be eligible for a credit (card). With Bitcoin you only need internet access. Most of the people of the world can't really save either. Cash loses value over time, gold is hard to validate and keep safe, and is even banned in lots of places. Bitcoin to the rescue! Now everyone can start saving, and even be rewarded for that. I could go on all…

Most of the people of the world can't really have a bank account, let alone be eligible for a credit (card). With Bitcoin you only need internet access. Yeah cause internet access and a modern computer are waaaaay more common than bank accounts or prepaid credit cards....

In Russia it's common to have computer and internet, but no credit card.

Re: Bitcoins reached $300

#82

Post by VexXtreme »

chii wrote: post #36
dwaltrip wrote: post #29

Damn. Sometimes I can't believe it. I have been following bitcoin quite closely for over 18 months now. The ecosystem is growing in ways only a few bold people have predicted. Fundamentally, it is about belief and trust. The protocol has largely proven itself. People are starting to believe in bitcoin. This is why the price is going up. For those who say "It isn't being used as a currency!" here is my response: Bitco…

i wish bitcoin's equating with gold is going to last - but i believe that because bitcoin's uncontrollability (from the banker's point of view), it will be stamped out as soon as it threatens fiat currencies as the dominant means of transfer.

I was actually having a similar discussion with a friend today and we touched upon the topic of BTC getting outlawed by governments.

Hypothetically, what's to stop countries and ISPs blocking it on the protocol level, the way China blocks certain types of traffic? Wouldn't that kill it for mainstream use and make it work only on darknets like TOR?

Re: Bitcoins reached $300

#83

Post by heeton »

gnerd wrote: post #61
crassus wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing I don't like about bitcoin is that the mining reward goes to 0. Sure, there will be fees, but fees reduce the usefulness of a currency. And if people don't mine, bitcoin dies. Perhaps something else will take its place?

I may be wrong, but due to the deflationary nature of BTC (limited supply, increasing demand), when that happens, those fees are worth more (in government backed fiat currencies) than they are today. It's like being upset that the original miners could get a block reward of 50 BTC for mining on a CPU but today you have to use specialized hardware for less BTC. But as competition increased (and difficulty increased),…

Would something like FreiCoin help? (bitcoin with demurrage - coins 'evaporate' over time so that there are always new ones to be mined and lost coins eventually go back into the pool)

Re: Bitcoins reached $300

#84

Post by VexXtreme »

marginview wrote: post #80

it fails as a store of value and therefore is not money which is obvious given its volatility. Bitcoin is best described as a computer programme which sells itself on features written to provide assets to those with the mindset desiring such assets - libertarians, those anti fiat currencies, Austrian economists (more recently now gold is letting them down) etc... Such mindset are sure to only increase given the Wall…

What would make BTC obsolete?

Re: Bitcoins reached $300

#85

Post by LCoder »

vinchuco wrote: post #22

where do you personally buy/sell BTC ?

campbx.com within the United States. They do 2 day ACH withdraws for $2 and same day domestic wire transfers for $20. After bitfloor closed down I switched and have been very happy.

Re: Bitcoins reached $300

#86

Post by TomGullen »

grey-area wrote: post #57

If I had money in bitcoin I'd find this movement terrifying. It is not correlated with broader economic movements or the inflation rate of USD, and has all the classic hallmarks of a bubble, including true believers telling everyone it is different this time, increasingly wild oscillations, and exponential growth. I find bitcoin really interesting, love the idea of a cryptocurrency, and also find the idea of a deflat…

Look at Bitcoin closing price on a log scale: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/chart.png?width=940&m=mtgoxU...

Not so scary anymore! From what I understand, people should be looking at this sort of data on a log scale.

Re: Bitcoins reached $300

#87

Post by adrianwaj »

I wouldn't say it's a bubble just yet, because it's too close to the last ramping which was a response to the Cyprus confiscations. This is just a response to what many would perceive as the beginnings of capital controls in the USA... it's probably the tail end of that. Another "Bitcoin Bubble" to me would be around $500 in the next few days... thus entailing some burst or large correction.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/government/2013/10/17/jpmorgan-ch...

A better word would be "recapitulation."

Re: Bitcoins reached $300

#88

Post by heliodor »

It seems to me the real price is lower as depicted by Coinbase or CampBX which have a stable and reliable system, unlike MtGox at the moment. I think the ~6% higher price on MtGox is a reflection of people's lack of trust in MtGox being able to provide withdrawals in a reliable and timely fashion.

Re: Bitcoins reached $300

#89

Post by csomar »

Hate BitCoin or like it. Let's agree, nobody can explain this; and nobody can predict BitCoin value or usage.

Some top HN members criticized BitCoin heavily. I, for one, invested $0 in BitCoin.

But we can be sure about something: Bitcoin is weird, new and innovative. It's something completely new and has no rules. The game is open. How the market will react will not depend on your limited (or wide) experience.

Bitcoin can go all the way down to $0 and the rest is history. It can go up and widely used that it changes history. I'll be just watching though.

Re: Bitcoins reached $300

#90

Post by grey-area »

Mahn wrote: post #70
grey-area wrote: post #57

If I had money in bitcoin I'd find this movement terrifying. It is not correlated with broader economic movements or the inflation rate of USD, and has all the classic hallmarks of a bubble, including true believers telling everyone it is different this time, increasingly wild oscillations, and exponential growth. I find bitcoin really interesting, love the idea of a cryptocurrency, and also find the idea of a deflat…

If I had money in bitcoin I'd find this movement terrifying. It is not correlated with broader economic movements or the inflation rate of USD, and has all the classic hallmarks of a bubble, including true believers telling everyone it is different this time, increasingly wild oscillations, and exponential growth. I have money in bitcoin, I believe in its future, and I acknowledge we are in a bubble. Nothing to be te…

I have money in bitcoin, I believe in its future, and I acknowledge we are in a bubble. Nothing to be terrified of;

As long as you don't have significant money in it, it's no big problem, but say you had your savings in it or were paid a salary in it - at that point the volatility would be a nightmare and the prospect of a bubble seriously troubling (bubbles always burst badly, and frequently go through successive waves of euphoria before they do). That the price has returned to a new high does not mean it will stay that high.

To supplant other currencies bitcoin would have to deal with the volatility and perhaps more importantly the lack of regulation and verification - with the current setup and community that'll be a huge issue, and perhaps impossible. It'll be really interesting to follow the trajectory of bitcoin and similar currencies as they negotiate these problems but I don't trust them just yet.

I do think email is broken for precisely the same reason - it thrived in spite of its anonymous insecure nature, not because of it, they simply didn't think about having to verify identity at the start, which has led to all sorts of problems with phishing and spamming. A lack of verified identity is at the heart of both these systems and causes issues for both of them, so I think email is a great example of a system which has problems of abuse (spoofing, spamming, phishing, fraud) because of anonymity being allowed.

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