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Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180

bitcoinity.org

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Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180

#81

Post by pmorici »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #74
btcthrowaway2 wrote: post #52

I mined about 200 BTC in 2011 and I must say, they have changed my live. I still have 150, so during the passed 4 years, while bootstrapping 2 startups, those mere 50 bitcoins I sold have meant that I have been able to keep both companies running. Without those 50 coins, I'm not sure how I would have continued. But the most important thing was not the value of those 50 coins. Which really isn't that big a deal. It wa…

This is nothing to do with Bitcoin. You basically won the lottery. Some people mined or bought Bitcoin, it got a lot of media hype so the price sky rocketed, and then your coins were worth a lot of money. If I bought 200 BTC now and waited a few years I doubt I'd have the same experience. I'm happy for you that you got to use that to help you start a business but it was a lottery win.

"If I bought 200 BTC now and waited a few years I doubt I'd have the same experience."

Why? This is like the 5th or 6th boom bust cycle in Bitcoin and each boom has been bigger than the last. even the current long price decline is not unprecedented.

Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180

#82

Post by sqrt17 »

coding4all wrote: post #49

It's amazing how so many people are concerned about the dollar price of Bitcoin. If you believe in Bitcoin, you want Bitcoin and not dollars.

Not trying to be cynical about this, but: You want nice things, not bitcoins and not dollars.

Currently, more market actors accept dollars (or Euros, or JPY, or UKP) than bitcoin, hence you're closer to the things you desire if you have dollar liquidity than if you have bitcoin liquidity.

Investments, on the other hand, should be neither in dollars nor in bitcoins, because dollars have inflation and bitcoin is too volatile.

Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180

#83

Post by davidw »

honeybooboo123 wrote: post #47
tribaal wrote: post #10

Yeah, as much as I like the concept of bitcoin (and the blockchain), I don't see adoption becoming anything more than anecdotal. No interest rate, and you have to secure it yourself? No thanks. My "big bad bank" guarantees me at least a small interest in saving money, and if my card is stolen, I get a new one in 24 hours and all transactions are cancelled. I'm happy to pay some transaction fees ("extortion!") to get…

I don't own any bitcoins, but felt like pointing a couple of things out. Whatever shreds of interest your bank gives you will be way, way less than the inflation you're experiencing. In other words, your money's purchasing power keeps decreasing even if you're getting some interest on it, ie. you're losing your wealth. Bitcoin doesn't experience inflation like that, so it should be a better store of value than your f…

> the inflation

Not a lot of that going around the developed world at this point in time, though, is there?

Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180

#84

Post by ploxiln »

tribaal wrote: post #37
olalonde wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although Bitcoin is often marketed as such, it doesn't necessarily compete with banks. I personally see it as a currency which competes with other currencies. It's a bit like paper cash except that it can be stored digitally. I don't see what would prevent "big bad banks" (although unlikely) from adopting BTC as one of the many currencies they support and offer all the protections and services they offer with other c…

Banks can already transfer fund between themselves electronically and efficiently. And a bank account is exactly storing paper currency digitally. Again, I don't see what the innovation here is, except the technical aspects (the blockchain as a distributed system is very clever).

Except wire transfers take one or more days and are a huge pain in the ass to initiate online. In the US at least.

If you go to a third world country, it's even less convenient to pay for stuff. For example, you can't get a hotel room last-minute with a credit card in Vietnam, where I checked, because they need to verify your ownership/control of your credit card with a pair of small debits, probably because of the fraud/chargeback situation.

Another example, you want to donate to Wikileaks from the US. Not so easy.

Sometimes you really want digital cash you can take and spend anywhere for any reason, and US credit cards or debit cards or other mainstream bank accounts can't do that.

(There still is the problem of needing to use much more secure computers/devices to manage your digital cash than consumers are accustomed to having and using today.)

Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180

#85

Post by olalonde »

sgt101 wrote: post #78
tribaal wrote: post #10

Yeah, as much as I like the concept of bitcoin (and the blockchain), I don't see adoption becoming anything more than anecdotal. No interest rate, and you have to secure it yourself? No thanks. My "big bad bank" guarantees me at least a small interest in saving money, and if my card is stolen, I get a new one in 24 hours and all transactions are cancelled. I'm happy to pay some transaction fees ("extortion!") to get…

One bitcoin application that is reasonable is as a transferable karma token.

> a transferable karma token

That's arguably the definition of money.

Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180

#86

Post by facepalm »

hueving wrote: post #13
tribaal wrote: post #10

Yeah, as much as I like the concept of bitcoin (and the blockchain), I don't see adoption becoming anything more than anecdotal. No interest rate, and you have to secure it yourself? No thanks. My "big bad bank" guarantees me at least a small interest in saving money, and if my card is stolen, I get a new one in 24 hours and all transactions are cancelled. I'm happy to pay some transaction fees ("extortion!") to get…

>Bitcoin is the electronic version of "let's buy a lot of gold and stash it somewhere". It's even worse than that because normal people at least have a decent idea of when their gold is secure. A non-techie just has to trust that the online bitcoin provider or author of the wallet is doing what he/she really says and in a secure fashion.

Actually I find the problem of stashing gold very tricky. A bank vault seems like a bad idea because of the history when the government seized the gold and people weren't allowed to open their bank safes without a policeman.

Hiding it at home seems risky because of burglaries.

I haven't found a solution yet, that's why I don't own any gold.

With bitcoin, at least I can spread the risk, like putting a part of the "secret" into a bank vault, hide part at home, at a friends house, whatever. The risk of a simultaneous burglary in two unrelated houses seems low.

Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180

#87

Post by derefr »

redthrowaway wrote: post #72
honeybooboo123 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't own any bitcoins, but felt like pointing a couple of things out. Whatever shreds of interest your bank gives you will be way, way less than the inflation you're experiencing. In other words, your money's purchasing power keeps decreasing even if you're getting some interest on it, ie. you're losing your wealth. Bitcoin doesn't experience inflation like that, so it should be a better store of value than your f…

There are no grounds to say that BTC should be a superior store of value. Aside from its very public history of being an absolutely abysmal store of value, it also has no central bank tending its value, as fiat currencies do, and no substantial trade denominated in it, which is what gives fiat currencies value in forex markets. It is solely a speculative vehicle. It sucks at commerce and it sucks at investment. Bitco…

I think you're attacking somewhat of a weak-man: the people saying Bitcoin as it is valued right now is any sort of store of value (and there are, indeed, such people) are obviously slightly insane.

But in a long-term sense—an imagined future where all the speculative value has gone out of Bitcoin and it is now just "worth what it is worth"—it would make a fairly good store of value, in exactly the same way gold would if we knew exactly how much of it there was to mine out of the earth, if some property of the (never-changing) extraction process meant that it was only able to be mined out at an exactly inverse-exponential rate, and if it were very easy to handle the resulting gold in 0.00000000001g pieces.

Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180

#88

Post by stretchwithme »

Are oil and bitcoin becoming less valuable? Or is the value of the measuring stick, the dollar, changing?

If you measured how tall your kid is every day and he's 5'1" one day and 4'8" the next and 6'1" the day after that, there just might be a measurement problem.

For whatever reason, the end of quantitative easing or whatever, the dollar is getting stronger.

Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180

#89

Post by [deleted] »

jokoon wrote: post #79

Does it really matter ? Wouldnt it smarter to use bitcoin as a secure way to make payments, but not to keep as a currency ? For example, if you want to buy something using bitcoins, you just buy the exact amount of bitcoins you need, you make the transaction, and the people who gets the bitcoins just convert it back to dollar. To escape the fluctuation of the conversion rate, just open a bank that keeps amount in dol…

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180

#90

Post by hueving »

facepalm wrote: post #86
hueving wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Bitcoin is the electronic version of "let's buy a lot of gold and stash it somewhere". It's even worse than that because normal people at least have a decent idea of when their gold is secure. A non-techie just has to trust that the online bitcoin provider or author of the wallet is doing what he/she really says and in a secure fashion.

Actually I find the problem of stashing gold very tricky. A bank vault seems like a bad idea because of the history when the government seized the gold and people weren't allowed to open their bank safes without a policeman. Hiding it at home seems risky because of burglaries. I haven't found a solution yet, that's why I don't own any gold. With bitcoin, at least I can spread the risk, like putting a part of the "sec…

Unless you had a virus on your computer when you generated the keys, in which case it doesn't matter.
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