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 gold is palpable can be used to make things.
Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180
151–160 of 348 posts
Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180
#152Does 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…
Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180
#153Not really surprising. 2014 was meant to be the year of bitcoin and it flopped as far as the general public was concerned. Bitcoin picked up some more merchants but they almost universally saw disappointing sales or dramatic drop offs(Overstock the poster child which at one point was claiming serious expectations of $15-20m in bitcoin sales ended up with a 5th of the lower end of their claim). Mining companies are cl…
> a 3rd of the lower end of their claim $5M USD in Bitcoin sales is pretty astonishing, actually. EDIT: 1/5 of $15M is still pretty astonishing. I expected something around 250K in BTC-denominated sales.
Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Banks can already transfer fund between themselves electronically and efficiently. And a bank account is exactly storing paper currency digitally. Sure, but it doesn't matter what benefits Bitcoin offers to banks (although I do think you are overlooking a few). If banks ever were to support BTC denominated accounts, it would be because of consumer demand, not because Bitcoin is more efficient for them to store/tran…
Unlike the baking systems "digital currency" which can be confiscated from its owner or it owner prevented from using it in certain situations (see Wikileaks) bitcoin give you complete control over your own hard earned money and the causes you choose to support. It may not be much of a currency at the moment since banks are attempting hard to prevent its use but the freedom it gives you outweighs the risk of it being…
How do I do a chargeback on a purchase paid for via Bitcoin?
Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it is expected that relatively new currencies have a turbulent period of a certain time. And as for interest, here in the Netherlands it is less than inflation so you loose money (interest on savings accounts is about 1%, inflation is between 1 and 2% over the past years). Bitcoin has or will have its niche, perhaps it will not be for your savings but sharing money with friends using a bitcoin wallet app is b…
Has there ever been a time and place where interest on savings accounts was above inflation? I rather doubt it.
Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180
#156Yeah, 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 think you see many things. Like just how widely Bitcoin has already become. Just yesterday I read about 10,000 Spanish atms being converted to bitcoin. "No interest rate" Why would there be? There's no risk. There isn't a government of Bitcoinlandia with a debt and deficit(s) it needs to finance. Whatever currency you're holding now isn't paying you a real rate of interest. Your stupidity is clearly of the Am…
Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180
#157Yeah, 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 think you see many things. Like just how widely Bitcoin has already become. Just yesterday I read about 10,000 Spanish atms being converted to bitcoin. "No interest rate" Why would there be? There's no risk. There isn't a government of Bitcoinlandia with a debt and deficit(s) it needs to finance. Whatever currency you're holding now isn't paying you a real rate of interest. Your stupidity is clearly of the Am…
Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180
#158Not really surprising. 2014 was meant to be the year of bitcoin and it flopped as far as the general public was concerned. Bitcoin picked up some more merchants but they almost universally saw disappointing sales or dramatic drop offs(Overstock the poster child which at one point was claiming serious expectations of $15-20m in bitcoin sales ended up with a 5th of the lower end of their claim). Mining companies are cl…
"Was meant to be" amounts to your own view. The software isn't even called 1.0 yet, and the core developers all say the important applications are a couple of years away. Yes, Bitcoin was probably hurt by the mania surrounding $1000. Had it gone to $180 from $30, without the spike, there would be calls of tulip mania instead. Is it too early to build applications on top of Bitcoin? No, I don't think so, some wants to…
Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have any idea how much energy, work and time is being spent on the infrastructure of regular currencies? Minting, ATMs, secure transport, brank branches, all kind of mainframe dinosaurs running 40 year old COBOL code? Even if scaled up to global usage, I very much doubt Bitcoin mining would be worse.
Yes, bitcoin mining would be worse. Provably worse. As computers get better, traditional applications, like databases, perform better and you can either serve more customers, use cheaper (and often more efficient hardware), or do nothing and use your outdated hardware. With bitcoin, your enemy is not the performance of the raw work you are doing (you can hash better), but the fact that everyone else also has these in…
... and exponentially worse as time goes on (by design).
Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
People are still upset about 1933, I see. It's an interesting case as both a huge widespread human rights violation (leaning very heavily on the concept of "public interest") while being part of a set of measures which greatly improved the productive (rather than hoarding) side of the economy.
Anyway. Turning "hoarding" into a dirty word is one of the last signs an economy is about to tear itself to pieces, just before the baseball bats come out and shop windows start getting smashed. Stay classy though!