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

bitcoinity.org

271–280 of 348 posts

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

#271
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say the problems only occur if you treat bitcoin like a credit card. I said the problem occurs. You said that you can not worry about charge backs because you can just ask for the money back. Problem solved. I gave you a list of occasions where no you couldn't just ask for the money back. You have ignored this and focused on this irrelevant argument to avoid having to face the main discussion. Just because y…

Hm... ok, guess I'll quote myself again then too...: Since you know there is no Chargeback mechanism wouldn't it be wise to demand product/service first or use an escrow service? What part of "Bitcoin is not a credit card, do not treat it like a credit card" is so hard to understand? Yes, if you send coins to some address which might belong to a scammer then those coins might be lost. Duh. You can now complain all da…

I actually responded to that above if you look. You ignored it when you went off about the credit card thing. Here is my response.

"How would I know? A company can seem fine and turn into a scam quickly. I could use an escrow service but then I'd have to arrange that for every purchase when currently I can have it handled for me automatically."

>You can now complain all day about Bitcoin not having a chargeback mechanism. Or you can just accept it as fact and refrain from sending your coins to random bitcoin addresses...

The point is though you either reimplement the security manually for each transaction or you only shop at a handful of companies and hope there isn't a mistake that they can't track on their side. Look at all the complaints about Tiger direct not refunding bitcoin payments early on for an example of a non-scamming company screwing people over not by maliciousness but by incompetence.

So yes. I could just hope I won't run into one of those problems while shopping or I could manually setup escrow for every purchase and hope the escrow solution I choose is legitimate. Or I could just keep using my credit card and not have to worry.

And people wonder why bitcoin isn't gaining traction?

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

#272
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Checklocktime + multisig + the reputable third-party arbitrage provider of your choice, if you want.

So, "you don't".

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

#273
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Tanzania :) I think you're overestimating the impact of bitcoin on poor countries by several orders of magnitude. People who don't have access to a bank account now don't have a smartphone, and certainly not a computer either. And internet access is rare and expensive (most people have dumb phones, internet at home is a rarity, and most coffee places charge you for wifi). On top of that the only way to buy…

but the reality is And wouldn't it be nice if Bitcoin changed that reality for the better, a little bit? So I come back to my original point, adoption is margnial, at best. Especially in poor countries. Which I never argued. I merely pointed out that Bitcoin has some additional useful properties on top of being a very volatile electronic gold equivalent.

> And wouldn't it be nice if Bitcoin changed that reality for the better, a little bit?

It would, for sure. But I'm not sure how - people need to become rich enough to afford smartphones/laptops and a reliable internet access first. That implies we'd have solved a big chuck of the other problems first :(

> Which I never argued.

You're right, sorry if my post was misleading. You just pointed out other advantages of bitcoin over gold (which are correct).

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

#274

Earlier 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…

> Actually I find the problem of stashing gold very tricky. This, and plus the fact that in almost every country on Earth now, buying Gold needs an ID of some sort so that governments know exactly where to look for Gold the day they want to seize it. I think one of the last places where you can buy Gold anonymously is Switzerland. EDIT: and you have to trust that the Gold you buy is real. There's always the risk it's…

That is interesting. Does it matter which amount of gold you're buying, or do you have to show ID in any case?

I haven't bought a lot of gold, but I've never been asked for ID here in East Europe. Go to kiosk, buy coins with cash and that's it.

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

#275
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…

> Actually I find the problem of stashing gold very tricky.

Put it in your teeth, facepalm, your teeth!

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

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Are all those statements "observations of sentiment", too, or was it only this one? If I use exact numbers they tend to be facts I can source you. If I use vague terms it is because I don't have the numbers or it is a sentiment claim. I've had a look through my comments here and don't really see too many bold claims at all. Do you have any specific ones you want an answer for?

"Most" is hardly a vague term, as it definitely means "more than 50%". Some would say it means more than 75%. So you're boldly claiming that the company has lost over 50% of its community support. That's an incredibly damaging statement. And you're basing it on shamefully weak evidence. If you really wanted to be vague, then the appropriate word might have been "some". So you could have said "Some people in the commu…

You seem fixated on my choice of wording. I've explained my meaning. I could have also said "many" and been factually correct and with the same impressiveness. I've apologized for confusing you but if you're just going to keep going on about it there is really no point in us continuing to discuss things.

>Frankly, after this discussion, absolutely all of them, because you seem to be prone to exaggeration, to put it mildly.

Well go ahead and copy any paste any of the ones you are unsure of here and I'll reply.

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

#277
post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually I find the problem of stashing gold very tricky. This, and plus the fact that in almost every country on Earth now, buying Gold needs an ID of some sort so that governments know exactly where to look for Gold the day they want to seize it. I think one of the last places where you can buy Gold anonymously is Switzerland. EDIT: and you have to trust that the Gold you buy is real. There's always the risk it's…

That is interesting. Does it matter which amount of gold you're buying, or do you have to show ID in any case? I haven't bought a lot of gold, but I've never been asked for ID here in East Europe. Go to kiosk, buy coins with cash and that's it.

I think there is a minimum quantity for buying Gold anyway, most of the times. When you purchased Gold in East Europe, how did you make sure your Gold was authentic by the way ?

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

#278
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't see adoption becoming anything more than anecdotal." Well the value of the whole blockchain is over $2.5Bn, so it's more than anecdotal. http://coinmarketcap.com/

2.5B is the price Microsoft paid for Minecraft. There is approximately 1.3 Trillion Dollars in paper/coin form, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York: http://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/fedpoint/fed01.html , and that's just USD. So yeah, anecdotal.

a) market cap is meaningless for currencies - you want to look at transaction volume

b) you're comparing apples and oranges - the market cap for USD is not the total value of printed currency

c) btc transaction volume currently averages about $65M per day, which is $23.7B p.a - about 4x the size of the Apple App Store and about one-eighth of PayPal's $180B p.a and larger than all but the top 3-4 online payment providers

d) it is still very, very early days for btc. it's goal is to not replace PayPal, but to have these payment gateways build on top of it.

e) there are dozens of blockchain based applications currently in design, draft, development, beta test etc.

f) the current implementation of btc for payments is horrible yet despite that it has established itself as a viable payment backend with a non-insignificant portion of the market

g) comparing bitcoin with any fiat currency, let alone the worlds major reserve currency, is very flattering

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

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>power usage of cpus, then gpus, and then asics, you'll see that in general power consumption for bitcoin constantly increases. That does not tell the whole story though, power usage per gigahash is a more accurate measure, because the higher the GH the more secure the network. From CPU, to GPU to ASIC the power use per gighash has fallen significantly. If you really want to compare it to the banking sector then you…

The higher the GH the more secure the network. The lower the cost per GH the less secure the network. These two will generally cancel out.

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

#280
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm... ok, guess I'll quote myself again then too...: Since you know there is no Chargeback mechanism wouldn't it be wise to demand product/service first or use an escrow service? What part of "Bitcoin is not a credit card, do not treat it like a credit card" is so hard to understand? Yes, if you send coins to some address which might belong to a scammer then those coins might be lost. Duh. You can now complain all da…

I actually responded to that above if you look. You ignored it when you went off about the credit card thing. Here is my response. "How would I know? A company can seem fine and turn into a scam quickly. I could use an escrow service but then I'd have to arrange that for every purchase when currently I can have it handled for me automatically." >You can now complain all day about Bitcoin not having a chargeback mecha…

Or I could just keep using my credit card and not have to worry.

It's starting to get hilarious...

Yes. If you want to use a credit card then please, by all means, use a credit card.

And in addition you may use Bitcoin in scenarios where it works well (e.g. to transfer money to people you know), for ecommerce through services like Bitpay, or just retain it as your favorite strawman... ;-)

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