251–260 of 424 posts
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Doubt it, but I would love for it to happen. I see this as criminal theft by the USMS.
It is not theft, it is sale of abandoned property as they offered for people to claim their BTC and no one did.
Downvote all you want but you don't seem that sharp.
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Huge companies with massive legal departments don't accept bitcoin. They contract with smaller VC-funded startups to accept it and assume the risk and pay the large retailer in cash at sale time. The large retailers neither accept nor hold bitcoin directly, nor should they (as a merchant, you don't want to be holding something that loses 10% of its value during your business hours as bitcoin did today). The large ret…
That seems like a non-standard usage of "accept". Does everyone who accepts a payment method while hedging it also not count as another vendor who accepts it? If someone accepts PayPal while insuring against the possibility of not being paid "not accept PayPal"? If a non-US vendor uses forward/option contracts to maintain cash flow in the local currency, do they "not accept" USD?
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You'd still be able to buy things if the exchange rate was 1 cent. Where's the rest of the value coming from?
Where does the value of USD come from?
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All very good points. The volatility is the greatest hindrance to it being a viable transaction system. I'm hopeful that well functioning derivatives (futures, options, etc) will help to stabilize the price (as is the purpose of a futures market); however, that would rely on the traders having effective forecasts on supply and demand which I view as unlikely. Related to that, I thought of an idea a while ago for a no…
Such centralized system most likely will be shutdown by US government. See E-Gold, E-Bullion, Liberty Reserve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_gold_currency#Manageme...
What if there were two separate entities? One for the currency, and another one for the exchanges? Only exchanges would be considered money transmitters in such a case, right?
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The arguments you make (speculation + deflation) have been discussed many times. The answer is always the same. Bitcoin proponents argue that they are not a problem because: 1. As the use of Bitcoin increases over time, as the exchange markets become bigger and deeper, as economic activity is surpassing speculative activity, etc, the effect of speculation are becoming smaller and smaller. There is evidence that this…
Bitcoin proponents tend to have a vested interest and can be.. less than objective. @1: A trade alone does not help BTC stabilise. We ARE seeing an increase in BTC trade, but all of this is pegged to local currency, and usually traded out for that immediately. As it is held for a very short period, there is no real effect on price, and is essentially the same as cashing out.[1] What might help BTC stabilise would be…
Actually, the best we could hope for has much, much higher volatility than gold: there are vast reserves of gold available and the oceans contain about 9 pounds of gold for each person on earth, 100x the total amount of gold mined throughout human history. There are many old mines that could be reopened in a few months or years if the price would justify it.
On the demand side, there are technical uses of gold, medical and jewelry. So we clearly have demand and supply curves that are pretty flat and a price driven by fundamentals, yet we see significant volatility, especially related to gold's speculative and monetary use.
On the other hand, Bitcoin is a digital asset designed purely for speculative and monetary use. It has NO fundamental demand and an almost vertical supply curve. There's no way to price a Bitcoin on it's fundamentals, the only driving factor is "what other people think". As a future PhD in economics, let me tell you that is not conducive to stabilization, quite the opposite, it's prone to violent and self-sustaining boom and boost cycles.
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> You want a cryptocurrency that isn't absurdly volatile? Make it steadily inflationary, not steadily deflationary. There are cryptocurrencies that do this, PeerCoin and Dogecoin for example, and they don't seem to work out, maybe because there is a lack of incentive to be an early investor if your investment steadily loses value. There is no significant barrier to entry for creating a cryptocurrency that represents…
Bitcoin got first mover advantage. I don't think its popularity is due to it getting the incentive mix "just right". Besides, the characteristics of a "good coin" depend entirely on who you are and what your goals are. Some people want to gamble and get rich, others are looking for a reliable store of value, others are looking to transact. The ideal coin will have different properties for each of these people, but no…
Particularly the deflation argument does not predict that Bitcoin will fail, it states that if Bitcoin replaces traditional currency, the economy will fail. If you choose to believe it however, it's an argument to hoard Bitcoin from a rational economic perspective.
People looking to criticize Bitcoin should rather focus on the centralized mining problem.
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Not really. Seized properties often sell for less than half of the market value... doesn't mean the property is worth half now... it means the government can't be bothered to take on the responsibility of selling the property at full retail -- ie. they just want to get rid of the assets and move on.
Actually is does mean that it's worth what it sells for. The nature of seized goods increases the risk premium demanded from a buyer resulting in a lower price. Sources of risk: 1) Goods aren't as they seem. Drug dealers may not have treated the goods as well as average owner. 2) Risk of violence. I wouldn't want to buy some drug dealer's prized yacht... wouldn't sleep well. 3) Illiquid good. If it's hard to resale t…
How is that not the case here?
What people should be more concerned with is the fact that the government is selling off someone elses property before they have even been convicted of a crime. Dread pirate roberts plead not guilty and has still not had a trial yet. He has not been convicted of any crime so if these are his coins they are selling them before the trial is even finished
What people should be more concerned with is the fact that the government is selling off someone elses property before they have even been convicted of a crime. Dread pirate roberts plead not guilty and has still not had a trial yet. He has not been convicted of any crime so if these are his coins they are selling them before the trial is even finished
Seems to me that only BTC that are directly linked to SR that are sold.