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Bitcoin $500

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Re: Bitcoin $500

#111

I went to this talk in 2011 where Gavin Andresen tried giving bitcoin away to anyone that emailed him: http://blip.tv/amherstmedia/making-money-gavin-andresen-igni...

At the time of the talk (Feb 2011) 1 BTC was equal to 0.50 USD.

Amazing that it is up 100000% in about 2 1/2 years.

Re: Bitcoin $500

#113

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it impossible to withdraw USD from MtGox at this point? How can this be a viable source of BTC->USD comparison when the only thing you can do with a USD balance on MtG is buy?

I cashed out all my coins at $144 over a month ago now and I've still been waiting for money to show up. One the one hand I feel annoyed at losing out on the huge rise in value, on the other hand this huge delay makes me feel justified in escaping this terrible system.

Sold 5 for $10 a piece and never got my money. The process of converting BTC to USD is insanely convoluted. I should've sold them to a friend.

Re: Bitcoin $500

#114

No matter your take on bitcoin's long-term viability (or lack thereof), it can hardly be argued that this isn't damn interesting to watch unfold. A cryptocurrency with zero backing that exists only in digital form is now worth many billions of dollars. Is it a bubble? Will this foment a currency revolution of sorts? If it doesn't crash, how will governments react? If it does crash, what will replace it? Obviously the…

1. Any money is a bubble in a sense. It's a feedback loop of speculation that the commodity at hand will be widely accepted by other speculators in the future. The only basis for this speculation is that people need some money to trade. The money bubble pops only if there's some other, better commodity on the horizon that speculators may bet on. http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.fr/2013/04/bitcoin-... 2. Some…

>>1. Any money is a bubble in a sense.

Not really, no. Peter Thiel's explanation of bubbles is great. He says that bubbles arise when there is (1) widespread, intense belief that’s (2) not true. During the dotcom bubble, people were pouring money into companies simply for having a domain name; the intense belief was that the companies were worth a ton of money, and that simply was not true. A similar reasoning led to the housing bubble: the intense belief in that case was that houses are great investment vehicles and they always appreciate in value. Turns out that also was not true.

Currently, the main thing that is driving Bitcoin's price is speculation. There is widespread, intense belief that it will become a major currency. Is that belief true? The simple answer is we don't know.

But that's not true with just any money. The dollar for example is not a bubble: people believe it to be a reliable medium of exchange, and the fact that it is backed by the US government makes that belief true. Therefore it is not a bubble.

Re: Bitcoin $500

#115
post #93
post #2

Well now it must definitely be too late to invest. Don't even think about it guys. It's a ponzi scheme slash not real money slash libertarian wet dream. I'd rather trust helicopter Ben with my savings than some obscure open source software that eats 10Gb of my disk space.

The market capitalization of US dollars is (correct if I'm wrong) $3 trillion. The current market capitalization of BitCoin is above $5 billion. There will only be around 21 million BitCoins. If the market capitlization of BitCoin even gets close to a national currency like the US dollar, each BitCoin will be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. We are about to be at $500. Unless governments crack down on BitCoin(…

The US gov waited until eGold was doing ~2 billion in transactions annually before it moved to shut it down. Given the growth rate of btc it just recently became big enough to get the attention of the federal gov. I think it is certain the US government will attempt to shut it down more a question of when and how elaborate their attempt is (e.g. Will they try to: arrest a few btc users, dump large sums of money into the btc markets to destabilize it, or build a cluster larger than the entire btc network).

Re: Bitcoin $500

#116

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it impossible to withdraw USD from MtGox at this point? How can this be a viable source of BTC->USD comparison when the only thing you can do with a USD balance on MtG is buy?

I cashed out all my coins at $144 over a month ago now and I've still been waiting for money to show up. One the one hand I feel annoyed at losing out on the huge rise in value, on the other hand this huge delay makes me feel justified in escaping this terrible system.

Mtgox != bitcoin. For everyone who is wondering, Coinbase actually has pretty good service.

Re: Bitcoin $500

#117
post #2

Well now it must definitely be too late to invest. Don't even think about it guys. It's a ponzi scheme slash not real money slash libertarian wet dream. I'd rather trust helicopter Ben with my savings than some obscure open source software that eats 10Gb of my disk space.

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin $500

#119
post #2

Well now it must definitely be too late to invest. Don't even think about it guys. It's a ponzi scheme slash not real money slash libertarian wet dream. I'd rather trust helicopter Ben with my savings than some obscure open source software that eats 10Gb of my disk space.

Sounds like you've done your research and thoughtfully considered the different angles.
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