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Thoughts on Bitcoin

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Thoughts on Bitcoin

#111

Post by brown9-2 »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #42
notdrunkatall wrote: post #13

I've been watching bitcoin since $30, bought at $80, and sold last night. I think that Stefan Molyneux (or however you spell it) is right on when he says that bitcoin is "a revolutionary protocol for information synchronization." However, it is by no means unique, and as we've seen, anyone can start their own bitcoin-type cryptocurrency. Apparently, the Canadian government is working on their own, and I don't think i…

I wanted to buy right when it hit $850 a few days ago. I redeemed my $11k mutual fund, but the wire transfer took until Friday to go trough. By the time I was able to buy bitcoins, they were $1111 on coinbase. Bought anyway. Got 9.89BTC. Just lost $2k of that investment, according to the markets. Though it seems to be recovering somewhat. Ow. Anyway, I'm long on bitcoin. Maybe it will crash and I'll lose everything.…

It scares me that not a word in here has anything to do with wanting to own units of this "currency" for any sort of utility or actual use, but just blind belief that the "value" will continue to go up.

Re: Thoughts on Bitcoin

#112

Post by termain »

gnaritas wrote: post #60
emin-gun-sirer wrote: post #4

The post assumes that Bitcoins will fail if they are not suitable as a store of value. It overlooks the fact that a currency can succeed as a medium of exchange, even if it is not suitable as a store of value.

Being a good store of value is in fact a detriment to being a good medium of exchange. A currency should not be a good store of value, it should be a predictable store of value that inflates very slowly so as to discourage hoarding and encourage spending. PPC looks like a better currency than BTC for this very reason.

Is PPC PrimeCoin, PeerCoin or something else?

Re: Thoughts on Bitcoin

#113

Post by tpeng »

im3w1l wrote: post #108
tpeng wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A higher money velocity => lower BTC/USD, but yes, the current price implies a huge future growth of the bitcoin economy. This is what sam is saying and I agree. I happen to think that we will not see that growth/adoption, but that is a different question.

Oops, yeah, I meant the other way around.

There's no obvious reason why BTC velocity should go lower than USD velocity. If anything, its electronic nature and potential for fast settlement times should indicate a much higher velocity than USD M2.

Re: Thoughts on Bitcoin

#114

Post by scotty79 »

We've already seen few bubbles on bitcoin. Investing overshadows usage of bitcoin as a currency. Everybody knows that.

One title I haven't seen: "X no longer accepts bitcoin."

Re: Thoughts on Bitcoin

#115

Post by tpeng »

foobarqux wrote: post #110
tpeng wrote: post #79

The way I value bitcoin is to take the fully diluted market cap (21 million * $850 ~= $18 billion) and apply a money velocity which I assumed to be similar to US M2 velocity of 1.6 ($18 billion * 1.6 ~= $28.5 billion). Since global ecommerce transactions are about $1 trillion / yr this implies that bitcoin should penetrate 2.85% of ecommerce. Big assumption here is that bitcoin does not work for real-world transactio…

I don't understand what you are calculating but it's circular in any case: You can't use the current price of bitcoin to derive a value.

Price-implied expectations

http://www.amazon.com/Expectations-Investing-Reading-Prices-...

Re: Thoughts on Bitcoin

#118

Post by Udo »

banachtarski wrote: post #105
Udo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Though it seems to be recovering somewhat. Ow. As with most investments, you need to think medium and long term. Barring some kind of final(!) crash, there isn't anywhere to go for BTC but up. Mainstream media and ordinary people are just now starting to talk about it. Stay with your investment, and don't sell before it at least doubled. If it crashes temporarily, that's fine too: chaos is a ladder. Within reasonab…

"there isn't anywhere to go for BTC but up" this is utter rubbish right here.

The whole quote is:

"> Barring some kind of final(!) crash, there isn't anywhere to go for BTC but up."

That's quite a difference there to what you implied.

Re: Thoughts on Bitcoin

#119

Post by gnaritas »

termain wrote: post #112
gnaritas wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a good store of value is in fact a detriment to being a good medium of exchange. A currency should not be a good store of value, it should be a predictable store of value that inflates very slowly so as to discourage hoarding and encourage spending. PPC looks like a better currency than BTC for this very reason.

Is PPC PrimeCoin, PeerCoin or something else?

PeerCoin.

Re: Thoughts on Bitcoin

#120

Post by Udo »

notdrunkatall wrote: post #107
banachtarski wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"there isn't anywhere to go for BTC but up" this is utter rubbish right here.

Thread OP here. Any time someone says that, I immediately know to disregard everything else they say about investing.

I'll just quote you from a different thread:

> but there is nothing wrong with stating an opinion based on personal experience.

And that's really all I did.

Regarding investing: telling someone who just bought a shitload of BTC to sell at a loss after some minor and entirely expected market fluctuation is just malicious.

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