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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

#211

Post by nmarley »

coldtea wrote: post #176
GhotiFish wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Bitcoins are a currency, there's no need to convert them Yes, unless you want to, you know, buy something...

Many businesses accept Bitcoins as payment for physical things. The last Bitcoin meetup that I went to was at a bar/grill that accepts BTC as payment. Most of the attendees paid for their drinks with Bitcoin. You don't need to convert to cash in order to buy things with Bitcoin.

Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail

#212

Post by dwaltrip »

andrewla wrote: post #155
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…

I'll jump on this and say that the script issue is irrelevant to Bitcoin's success. In fact, I would argue that the script functionality is a huge flaw in bitcoin, probably the largest flaw. The existence of a scripting language within the transaction log makes it much more difficult to analyze whether I hold bitcoins or not -- my ability to spend bitcoins "held" in my address is contingent on my having additional in…

Can't one just simply check the nature of the transaction to see if it has any conditionals? It isn't hard to imagine those features being added to blockchain related web services, such as blockchain.info.

Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail

#214

Post by [deleted] »

stevewilhelm wrote: post #178
mindstab wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they can sure set them, and then no one would use them. do you not understand money? what are you, the owner of 100btc going to do: a) buy $100usd worth of goods at ebay directly b) cash out at a proper exchange for $100,000usd, then buy $100usb worth of goods on ebay and have $99,900usd left over? or cash out ONE btc for $1000usd, buy $100usd of goods and have $900 usd left over AND 99btc? How do you expect any even…

In any financial exchange, both parties, the buyer and seller, need to come to agreement on a price. Given the fact that current BTC to USD exchange volume is fairly small, it wouldn't take that many large global goods and service providers pegging their BTC/USD exchange rate to cause the speculation market to collapse. Those that recently bought their Bitcoins at $900 would sell below the current high price to reali…

[deleted]

Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail

#215

Post by dwaltrip »

stevewilhelm wrote: post #178
mindstab wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they can sure set them, and then no one would use them. do you not understand money? what are you, the owner of 100btc going to do: a) buy $100usd worth of goods at ebay directly b) cash out at a proper exchange for $100,000usd, then buy $100usb worth of goods on ebay and have $99,900usd left over? or cash out ONE btc for $1000usd, buy $100usd of goods and have $900 usd left over AND 99btc? How do you expect any even…

In any financial exchange, both parties, the buyer and seller, need to come to agreement on a price. Given the fact that current BTC to USD exchange volume is fairly small, it wouldn't take that many large global goods and service providers pegging their BTC/USD exchange rate to cause the speculation market to collapse. Those that recently bought their Bitcoins at $900 would sell below the current high price to reali…

The buyers and sellers have come to an agreement already. They prefer the price of $1000. Any large retailer attempting to manufacture an artificial peg would only create a good amount of temporary humor.

Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail

#216

Post by chongli »

TylerE wrote: post #125
chongli wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

The original point of discussion was the quantity, not the price.

Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail

#217

Post by a3voices »

aianus wrote: post #175
kens wrote: post #156

My prediction is that bitcoins are midway through a short-lived bubble and then rapidly fall to approximately 0, and in a few years people will look back with the disbelief now reserved for pets.com. The hype - get in right now and get rich, or you'll miss out and kick yourself - reminds me of 1999. My in-laws were talking about bitcoins yesterday, so bitcoins are getting the attention of the public at large; I take…

I wish there was a reputable market for shorting bitcoins. It'd be nice to earn some interest on my long position while providing the naysayers a chance to bet against it. It'd also help with the volatility.

Shorting bitcoin seems like a bad idea.

http://i.imgur.com/GOYWUMo.png

Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail

#218

Post by mcintyre1994 »

caublestone wrote: post #110

At Soylent, we have been accepting Bitcoin using coinbase. The decision to do so was based on marketing and the anticipation that not many people would actually use Bitcoin and we wouldn't have a large risk exposure. To date only 130 people out of 12,000 have pre-ordered Spylent using Bitcoin. Our total risk exposure was less than 1% of total revenue. The recent rocket ship rise in a Bitcoin valuation has valued our…

Out of interest, do you know how standard it is for merchants to hold onto bitcoins after accepting them? I always figured they would be converted pretty much straight away, but with that risk/reward profile maybe others are doing something similar?

Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail

#219

Post by smsm42 »

pathy wrote: post #180
GhotiFish wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>there's no need to convert them. Have you tried paying your taxes in Bitcoin? The IRS (or regional equivalent) is not going to accept bitcoin any time soon and they will want you to pay taxes on, for example, profits. There is a need to convert, don't believe otherwise.

Taxes is not the big problem. Try buying a meal or filling up your gas tank or rent an apartment or paying an electricity bill with bitcoin. 99.(9)% of merchants you'll encounter in the course of your regular life accept local money and about the same do not accept bitcoin.

Re: A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail

#220

Post by fiatmoney »

andrewla wrote: post #148
fiatmoney wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not my reading; I believe what he is getting at (similarly brought up in Graeber's book) is that when the government controls a large enough share of the economy, the sine qua non of "money" is that you can pay taxes with it. That doesn't require anything about the historical origins of money.

I should probably read Graeber's book, though based on what I see here I might find it a bit exhausting. I hear this argument a lot in discussions about bitcoins, and I ask, but have not yet received, a good explanation. Let me ask you if you can summarize the reasoning for why paying taxes in a currency helps a currency? It seems very obvious that the opposite is true -- if you don't have to pay taxes by working in…

"Debt" really is good, especially if you disregard what he writes about >1950 where he messed up a few factual assertions.

It's not so much that "paying taxes in a currency helps a currency" - it's that forcing people to pay taxes in a particular currency or go to jail creates demand for that currency, which percolates through the economy (especially if they're concurrently giving it out when they're obliged to pay someone).

Consider what would happen if the US declared "you can pay your taxes in BTC, and only in BTC". There being ~21M bitcoins, and ~$2.5trillion of federal taxes, the price of BTC massively spikes. It's also suddenly much easier to pay people in BTC and not futz with an effective forex trade every paycheck (especially since that's what the government is paying all of its contractors and pensioners in).

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