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Bitcoin 2014 – Top predictions

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Re: Bitcoin 2014 – Top predictions

#41

Post by nwh »

nisa wrote: post #26
nwh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mining with a CPU is long since irrelevant, even GPUs are completely useless as far as mining is concerned. The network uses ASIC hardware now, basically chips designed only to mine Bitcoin quickly and efficiently. Attempting to mine on a CPU is completely futile and does absolutely nothing for the network.

It's not really useless. There is Primecoin that is searching for prime chains as proof of work. At the moment there is no (public?) GPU miner. The involved computations are also difficult to port to the GPU.

Primecoin? It's not solving a "problem" as it claims, there's nothing that can be solved with chains of primes. They're interesting but that's about the end of it. The vastly smaller network means it's a lot more susceptible to attacks.

Re: Bitcoin 2014 – Top predictions

#43

Post by TomGullen »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #23
DanBC wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "percentage market cap growth" mean? (Is there a glossary of financial for beginners that anyone can recommend?) If dogecoin takes off on Reddit and 4Chan as a way of showing appreciation I can see it having many users.

Market cap is a term borrowed from the share market[1]. I don't think it's technically correct applied to BTC but it commonly is. Market cap growth as a percentage just means, if all BTCs in circulation are worth $10bn today, and $15bn tomorrow, then the market cap has grown by 50%. I didn't use the price of the coins themselves as BTC is being minted more slowly than DOGE. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_cap…

"Total dollar value" is the correct terminology for currencies

Re: Bitcoin 2014 – Top predictions

#44

Post by 3pt14159 »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #32

Predictions are basically hopes. When you look at them rationally, they are rarely based on facts but intuition. On this list: 1. More than $100M of venture capital will flow into Bitcoin start-ups. No it won't because if you ask VCs they will mostly tell you that the value can not be extracted easily into fiat currency and that's what they need to still work in. To that argument, some will say "BTC-only VCs" will em…

1. Bitstamp is a YC company and many investors are looking to invest in the next Bank of America, unconcerned with short term liquidity.

2. Mining is currently barely profitable, but some people get economic value from heat and the mining futures market is going to stabalize the mining to bitcoin price relationship.

3. If you ever believe that a decentralized currency will be how we transact in the future (as I do) this will always be the case. The benefits of crypto currencies are vast, and the institutional support seems to be behind bitcoin at the moment, but this could change if a strong contender arises.

4. You misunderstood the author. He is saying that it will be easier to be anon with bitcoin in 2014 (think Tor backed bitcoin clients).

5. Global forces are complex. Corporations are some of the actors, politicians others, and the military and intelligence groups others. It is fair to talk of America's interests, as papers like the economist do.

6. Bitcoin is hard to use right now, it only competes well on irreversibility and on annonimity. People use it to buy drugs in western countries, but as it gets easier this may change.

8. Making something easier to use does not necessarily change its security. It is both easier and more secure to make a voice call over the internet than next to a land line.

9. Most people (including you it seems) don't have an intuitive understanding of inelastic supply. The price changes look more rational when you do.

Re: Bitcoin 2014 – Top predictions

#45

Post by drakeandrews »

TomGullen wrote: post #40
PaulRobinson wrote: post #32

Predictions are basically hopes. When you look at them rationally, they are rarely based on facts but intuition. On this list: 1. More than $100M of venture capital will flow into Bitcoin start-ups. No it won't because if you ask VCs they will mostly tell you that the value can not be extracted easily into fiat currency and that's what they need to still work in. To that argument, some will say "BTC-only VCs" will em…

Most of your points are reasonable, but your last ruined it all for me. > I'm not sure if they give that award to ponzi scheme creators A Ponzi scheme requires new money all the time for it to continue. If new money stops going into Bitcoin, it's not doomed to collapse like an actual Ponzi scheme. Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme.

Pretty sure if all the miners stopped mining, bitcoin would be dead in the water, unless there is a secondary transaction mechanism that doesn't rely on miners.

Re: Bitcoin 2014 – Top predictions

#46

Post by fennecfoxen »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #32

Predictions are basically hopes. When you look at them rationally, they are rarely based on facts but intuition. On this list: 1. More than $100M of venture capital will flow into Bitcoin start-ups. No it won't because if you ask VCs they will mostly tell you that the value can not be extracted easily into fiat currency and that's what they need to still work in. To that argument, some will say "BTC-only VCs" will em…

> And of course, it's virtually impossible for BTC banks to operate because they can't provide interest (BTC is designed to be anti-inflationary, and therefore by definition the concept of interest is hard to fit into the scheme of things)

Here is how a bank operates: take deposits, promise withdrawals, send some fraction of the deposits to a third party to spend, charge him interest, give depositors a cut. Track him down if he won't pay, or absorb the losses, and if there are too many, fail (and all the depositors lose money). Likewise if there's a crisis of confidence and everyone rushes to withdraw all their money.

Here is how a Bitcoin bank would operate: take deposits, promise withdrawls, send some fraction of the actual cryptocurrency tokens to a third party to spend, charge him interest, give depositors a cut. Track him down if he won't pay, or absorb the losses, and if there are too many, fail (and all the depositors lose Bitcoin). Likewise if there's a crisis of confidence and everyone rushes to withdraw all their Bitcoin.

Either way, there's more money around than there used to be. Oh, there are the same number of crypto-tokens, but there's more money: money is money because people believe it is money, and you believe there's money in the bank. You could go so far as to say that all lending is, by its nature, a double-spend attack (with a promise to set things right in the future).

But since essentially no earns Bitcoin for a living, the foreign-exchange risk on a BTC-denominated loan is insane. A loan that'll cost $500 to pay back one day and $1000 a few weeks later? They'll sell like hotcakes!

Re: Bitcoin 2014 – Top predictions

#47

Post by yebyen »

iSnow wrote: post #38
d0ugie wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of dogecoin, I want to pick up some dogecoin without any bitcoin on hand to trade and without elevating my risk to fraud any more than necessary. I realize there are forums and presumably faqs, possibly "the same way you'd pick up bitcoin," but what is the HN prescription to go about doing this? Given that it's relatively nascent, low turnover, goofy and so forth, I'm apprehensive when hearing "very coinbase…

Even with only a Core i5 CPU, you can use cpuminer to create some yourself. For small amounts, you could go to http://www.reddit.com/r/dogemarket , the fraud risk is not very high there. In the US, there's https://www.altquick.co/ . Other than that, you need BTC/LTC first then trade on cryptsy.

Is this an auto-updating string? I hope not!

"Over 3 LTC sold and 1 customers served to date!"

If you buy 1BTC from one of the established channels that you know, you can have a practically limitless supply of altcoins at cryptsy.com. That is assuming, you don't want more than 1BTC worth.

Re: Bitcoin 2014 – Top predictions

#48

Post by krrrh »

iSnow wrote: post #39
PaulRobinson wrote: post #32

Predictions are basically hopes. When you look at them rationally, they are rarely based on facts but intuition. On this list: 1. More than $100M of venture capital will flow into Bitcoin start-ups. No it won't because if you ask VCs they will mostly tell you that the value can not be extracted easily into fiat currency and that's what they need to still work in. To that argument, some will say "BTC-only VCs" will em…

>If you can't see that strength as a massive weakness, ask yourselves what value BTC intrinsically has over other alt-coins. That's an easy one: the network effect ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect ). Same why you cannot simply start another successful social web and eat Facebook's lunch.

Just like MySpace, or Friendster, Facebook's dominance is eternal.

Bitcoin's adoption in broad society is next to nil.

Re: Bitcoin 2014 – Top predictions

#49

Post by paromi »

DanBC wrote: post #19
reitzensteinm wrote: post #13

Here's one that I'm sure I'm going to regret saying publicly later. But, here goes: Dogecoin will outperform Bitcoin in terms of percentage market cap growth in 2014. Even if both are negative.

What does "percentage market cap growth" mean? (Is there a glossary of financial for beginners that anyone can recommend?) If dogecoin takes off on Reddit and 4Chan as a way of showing appreciation I can see it having many users.

you can check the market cap for bitcoin and dogecoin here : http://coinmarketcap.com/ dogecoin is at 8 mil for now , bitcoin at 10 bil.

Re: Bitcoin 2014 – Top predictions

#50

Post by stephenbez »

3pt14159 wrote: post #44
PaulRobinson wrote: post #32

Predictions are basically hopes. When you look at them rationally, they are rarely based on facts but intuition. On this list: 1. More than $100M of venture capital will flow into Bitcoin start-ups. No it won't because if you ask VCs they will mostly tell you that the value can not be extracted easily into fiat currency and that's what they need to still work in. To that argument, some will say "BTC-only VCs" will em…

1. Bitstamp is a YC company and many investors are looking to invest in the next Bank of America, unconcerned with short term liquidity. 2. Mining is currently barely profitable, but some people get economic value from heat and the mining futures market is going to stabalize the mining to bitcoin price relationship. 3. If you ever believe that a decentralized currency will be how we transact in the future (as I do) t…

I think you mean Coinbase is a YC company. Bitstamp is an exchange based in Slovenia.
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