121–130 of 145 posts
Remember friends, keep your identity small ;) -- http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
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…
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…
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.
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...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
1. Either USD goes straight home, raises the prices and destroys remnants of the US economy.
2. Or govt erects an iron curtain of capital controls to keep the influx of USD at bay which destroys remnants of the US economy.
The war is not an option because it only works when you fight with one country while the others are maintaining the value of USD that you print to fund that war. When there's no one to give you stuff voluntarily for USD, the state goes bankrupt way too quick. And the first guys to notice the raising prices are heavy industries and military complex. US would have to transform to something like Hitler's Germany to force people to build and fight. But more likely is the scenario of Weimar's Republic which hopefully transitions to Bitcoin before complex economic connections between all producers are completely broken down.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
And then of course, there's currencies of states that have little qualms of open currency manipulation like the Renminbi.
But even the USD, or at the very least it's value, but I'd argue the US state itself as well, has several critical dependencies. Oil would be the most obvious one, but easy and safe access to the seas, not just around the US, but all over the planet. And I'm sure there's dozens of other things.
In short : The US is not invincible, and I'm pretty sure the status of the USD currently does reflect that belief.
Note that this is a falsehood. Speaking on an indefinite timescale, it's an absolute certainty the US will fail. And economic output will falter with a much greater certainty. So it's a matter of when, not if. And the USD may have lasted longer than average for a currency, but it's nowhere near the top (that would be the Holy Roman Empire and it's Guilder (later replaced, and it's complex, depending on regions, ... I guess when a state celebrates a millenium's existence some issues crop up with the currency and they have to play around with it. Some day the US may be lucky enough to have to do the same. The "real" currency can be said to be silver).
It's also humbling to think that this very, very, very long running state did fail eventually (yes, you can make an argument that it didn't really fail, only parts did, most made smooth transitions to their currently existing forms ... I wouldn't agree with that argument but it's not indefensible).
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(…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
use coin2pal.info. I have used their service a few times and it is working. Slow but reliable process.
Don't trust anything with .info
Yes, I own an info domain. Because I liked it and it was cheap. That's it.
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Not at all! Technically , it's a pump-and-dump.
Care to elaborate?
A classic pump-and-dump(PnD) is when a large amount of an instrument (security/commodity/shares/etc.) are bought by a few entities (people/institutions/early investors/etc). Thus creating a scarcity of the instrument which when executed well will be followed by enough hype, as the common people usually see the "meteoric growth" as proof of a good investment and "a large number" of people believing in its future, rather than the reality of a handful.
This creates a situation where a lot of these novice/late investors start buying the security, usually using market orders (i.e. accepting the sellers offered price). Now since a handful of entities own a large number of the instrument and they offer few shares incrementally at higher levels, and keep selling more and more as the hype/momentum/# of small investors increases.
Eventually taking it to a point where a large amount(still not the majority) of the instrument is now owned by a large number of small investors hoping to make 10x-1000x like the early investors did. At which point they have a few choices/combination of choices(all : 1) Offer a large amount at a price point where the gen. public will not find it valuable, thus leaving only one direction for prices to go 2) Create a small sell-off by selling large quantities through a market order, thus making smaller investors panic 3) Wait it out to let the news, govts or some other external source to present a good opportunity for people to panic, and do one of the above 4) If they are big enough they can actually create #3
A well executed would further buy back the instrument while it crashes for a round of rinse-and-repeat.
There are a lot of examples of pump-and-dumps, a lot of them are legitimate, most are well established and usually don't intend losses for the later investors. The "dump" can just be profit taking, reducing risk, being satisfied with the earning etc. All companies that have raised financing can technically be classified as PnD
ex 1(legitimate): (i) 2 individuals + 2 computers + 1 idea (100% share) [$10,000 valuation/opportunity cost.] => (ii) YC give 3-8% of share for $20k [25x to 67x profit on equity given] => ... so on ..
ex 2(classic PnD - There are plenty worth mentioning): Crude oil futures rally from mid '08 - to its subsequent crash in early '09. I can write a thesis on this one. It was great fun, good times.
ex 3(currently playing out): Bitcoin : This does not undermine the quality of the idea or its execution. Just the fact that a small number of early miners control a large quantity of the instrument. Prices are being driven up by mostly small order-sizes being executed on the sell side (not to be confused with [0]). There is a higher probability that these bitcoin's are being sold by early adopters.
It may be a few weeks early to say if it is a classic pump-and-dump. If it is I would expect to see [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sell_side [1] http://raszl.com/blog/bitcoin-benefits-and-risks