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 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…
Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180
161–170 of 348 posts
Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 f…
As far as I can tell, most UK wire transfers are essentially immediate (at most a couple of minutes), even between different banks.
Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180
#163Not 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
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
A store of value must be such over any given timeframe. If the balance in your savings account is worth $100 today, $50 in three months, $150 in six months, and $75 in a year, then it is a terrible store of value -- regardless of whether it's worth $200 two years from now. Similarly, talking about imagined futures is not a convincing way to defend a currency as a store of value. If you have to posit that your money w…
I'm not saying people should be putting money into Bitcoin now because they should assume A, B, and C will be true. What I'm saying is that there's no reason to assume that you won't see Bitcoin's value stabilize e.g. ten years from now, and Bitcoin become a useful store of value from that point forward. Or, to put it another way, just because the Bitcoin that exists today is a bad store of value, doesn't mean that "…
Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180
#165Earlier 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…
What are the factors which could make bitcoin less turbulent later? As for most frictionless exprience: you do not need new currency for that. My bank offers 'quick send' functionality in their app, basically you just enter amount and select whom to send money to, that's it. You don't even have to login.
Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180
#166Earlier 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…
You buy shares in GLD ETF which holds physical gold for you. The risk is that SPDR collapses or get their assets stolen. You can also buy gold futures on the futures/commodity exchange which is a contract that specifies the other party has to deliver gold to you in the future. The risk is that the financial system collapses and the broker/clearing broker cannot uphold the contract anymore. So it depends on your inten…
Epic :)
Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Bitcoin would hurt Visa and Master Card very badly if it were adopted since it obsoletes their entire business practice. How do I do a chargeback on a purchase paid for via Bitcoin?
Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180
#168Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180
#169Yeah, 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…
Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180
#170Earlier 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.
https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate the hash rate doesn't grow on trees. why the hell would you doubt it would be worse? it does 7 transactions per second. http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/12/03/fascinati... here's on estimate: Bitcoin Mining Uses $15 Million's Worth Of Electricity Every Day