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A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail

dealbook.nytimes.com

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Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail

#121

Post by fat0wl »

ericb wrote: post #96
fat0wl wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This intrinsic value can be mirrored by any cryptocurrency or even just a parallel network of Bitcoin. It is no justification for $1000/coin the way overzealous BTC investors claim.

Any protocol could come along and displace http, or a parallel internet could come along and displace it. But we're going on 22 years now and that's how we're communicating. What if these protocols are not so easily displaced as you imagine?

yeah as ars mentions, it's already happened... plus there is litecoin, buttcoin, etc etc

When people compare to internet & DNS & things like that I get kinda pissed off. Those are standard protocol that we agree to because it helps ensure successful communication. Bitcoin is not anything like this stuff, it falls more into the category of "some code that runs on the internet".

Think of it more like a website (Facebook) instead of providing the false analogy that its like the internet itself. If Facebook were an open-source trading platform and it started looking askew, what do you think people would do? (hint: open-source)

Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail

#123

Post by indrax »

stevewilhelm wrote: post #101
cs702 wrote: post #29

Bitcoin befuddles experts who analyze it from a narrow perspective, because it is not just a new medium of exchange or a new store of value: it is also a new kind of point-of-sale payment system (one that doesn't require payment processors), a new kind of global financial transfer system (one that doesn't require financial institutions), a new kind of time-stamping certification system (one that doesn't require notar…

> It may fail as "money" (in a narrow sense) and still succeed as a global platform. I think that was the author's point. For example, Paypal, Amazon or the IRS could announce tomorrow they will accept payment in Bitcoins but peg their BTC/USD exchange rate to one. Speculation would all but stop and Bitcoins would become a transaction platform.

Can I get my tax return in BTC at 1:1 please? please?

Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail

#124

Post by jkarni »

One thing I never quite understood, but haven't really heard mentioned, is what makes this instance of a digital currency special. If I were to start another pool of bitcoins, with it's own mining etc. (like say, litecoin, but not necessarily technologically different from bitcoins) is the only disadvantage, from the perspective of adoption, that it wasn't the original, and is a little less prominent?

If so, I can empathize with the "losing faith" perspective. It only takes the tiniest bit of squinting to see bitcoins not at fundamentally limited, and therefore currency-worthy, but as completely unlimited.

Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail

#125

Post by TylerE »

chongli wrote: post #111
TylerE wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$150 billion a year is nothing?

That price is due to the rarity of gold. If it were as common as copper, 400 tons would be worth a lot less than $150 billion a year.

What's your point? Sounds to me like you're trying to win the debate by inventing your own set of "facts"

Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail

#126

Post by kdeforche »

brador wrote: post #107
Aqueous wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are applying old-world money ideas to something that is so new that we don't have useful models yet for deciding how it will behave, thinking that they do apply without loss of content. The rules of supply and demand apply, sure, but none of the other common-sense intuitions about how money works. BitCoins don't have any resistance to movement, or very little. Physical money does. This means the difference betwe…

That's because Bitcoins are relatively easy to buy and very difficult to cash out into real currency. Once enough people see how hard it is to liquidate their Bitcoins back to USD the realization will follow.

Sounds like nonsense to me: if you buy 1 BTC from me, then at the same time I've sold 1 BTC? That makes it by definition as equally hard (or easy) to buy as to sell?

Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail

#127

Post by GhotiFish »

brador wrote: post #107
Aqueous wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are applying old-world money ideas to something that is so new that we don't have useful models yet for deciding how it will behave, thinking that they do apply without loss of content. The rules of supply and demand apply, sure, but none of the other common-sense intuitions about how money works. BitCoins don't have any resistance to movement, or very little. Physical money does. This means the difference betwe…

That's because Bitcoins are relatively easy to buy and very difficult to cash out into real currency. Once enough people see how hard it is to liquidate their Bitcoins back to USD the realization will follow.

??

Bitcoins are a currency, there's no need to convert them. It's just happening now because some people want into this environment.

Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail

#128

Post by stevewilhelm »

mindstab wrote: post #104
stevewilhelm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It may fail as "money" (in a narrow sense) and still succeed as a global platform. I think that was the author's point. For example, Paypal, Amazon or the IRS could announce tomorrow they will accept payment in Bitcoins but peg their BTC/USD exchange rate to one. Speculation would all but stop and Bitcoins would become a transaction platform.

No, because no one would give them bitcoins at 1:1 and they can't magic up their own, they 'd have to buy them at market price and then sell them at a hilarious loss.

eBay, Amazon, and IRS don't need Bitcoins, they can set any exchange rate they want.

If enough goods and service providers followed suit, current speculators would have to take a hilarious loss to buy anything.

Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail

#129

Post by novalis78 »

Articles like this are actually quite revealing. It's incredibly interesting to watch "experts" comment on bitcoin as they study it, now, for the first time and have to think about it. Like a lot of people my initial impression was that of scam (it lasted for three hours) then realization of the ingenious concept with the thought that "this will not survive long enough to become what it is intended for". So I kept selling most of the coins I mined all throughout 2012. Three "bubble pops" later, I could see my "confidence"/"trust" in bitcoin shift. It really has to go through these intense run-ups and crashes to actually prove itself. If it continous to, it will appear as an extremely trustworthy long-term store of value, independent of any central agency and as difficult to slay as file sharing. At which point more people will pile in, to protect their wealth, again, long-term. Money they could afford to lose, initially. What we might be observing could be a Kurzweilian visualization of an exponential graph similar to technological break-throughs from the Dark Ages to the Modern Age. Bitcoin's wealth transfer and processing network seems to be on a similar level (monetary internet) regarding markets, finances and currency. If it succeeds a whole lot of middle-man industries will meet their demise and capital allocation would be supercharged. The price of bitcoin just reflects that realization on a (global) level.

Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail

#130

Post by mortehu »

TylerE wrote: post #98
chongli wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

400 tons a year is nothing compared to other industrial metals. By comparison, world production of copper is 17 million tonnes per year.

$150 billion a year is nothing?

I think you mean $15 billion?

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=400+tons+of+gold+in+dol...

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