Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#131

Post by wmf » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 3:39 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #90

acabal wrote: post #72

I added a Bitcoin purchase option to Scribophile to test the waters. But I'm interested in a Bitcoin economy, not a USD cash alternative--the situation where a Bitcoin has its own value, not a value dependent on a different currency. For that reason, I decided to fix the price of an upgrade to 2 BTC, not peg it to the dollar like most other sites do. Unfortunately it seems like that's just not going to work at this p…

Give it time. I happen to think that bitcoin is still stabilizing. Whether it will stabilize at an even higher price than it is now, or "crash" and stabilize at a much lower price, I think it will eventually stabilize.

Since Bitcoin's monetary supply is totally disconnected from economic activity, I wonder how it can ever stabilize (except perhaps by accident).

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#132

Post by betterunix » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 3:40 PM UTC

morroccomole wrote: post #103

betterunix wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold and silver are not currencies anymore, except in a few highly niche places.

Money != Currency. Gold and Silver are Money. Bitcoin and USD are currencies. Huge difference.

Gold and silver are not money either, except in a tiny minority of countries. Wages are not being paid in gold or silver, debts cannot be settled with gold or silver, and neither gold nor silver is commonly traded for other goods. Nobody uses gold or silver as units of account. The only resemblance either metal has to money in this day and age is as a store of value, but if that is your only requirement to consider something to be money then you would need to include land, buildings, and various collectible items too.

Gold and silver are commodities, traded like any other metal, and the historically-motivated obsession people have with using gold as a store of value makes it more difficult to acquire gold for industrial uses (which would be a real, productive use of the metal).

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#133

Post by MacsHeadroom » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 3:41 PM UTC

balakk wrote: post #80

What would it take for somebody like Amazon or eBay to (even partially) support bitcoins? How much of a risk could it be?

Lots of online retailers have implemented accepting Bitcoin. For everywhere else, Amazon and eBay included, there's BitSpend- which allows anyone to buy anything with Bitcoin from anywhere for as little as 0.5%

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#134

Post by kiba » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 3:41 PM UTC

saalweachter wrote: post #116

kiba wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that is only one side of the coin. If people are hoarding BTC, then they aren't spending them on goods / services. Sure they are. BitPay reports 2 million dollars in sale this month. The rate of transaction is accelerating too. What you meant is "they will horde more and spend less on goods / services", but sales and transactions are clearly accelerating. How do you account for this?

Is $2 million really significant? BTC famously passed $1 billion in the money supply recently. That means that about 0.2% of the money supply is turning over each month, and 99.8% being hoarded from month to month. The US GDP is about $15 trillion, so about $1.25 trillion in transactions happen in a month. If you take M2 of about $10 trillion as the US money supply, about 12.5% of the US money supply turns over each…

It's one company's business. I didn't cite any other businesses such as silk road, transactions on bitmit, and businesses that's outside bitpay's sphere of influence.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#135

Post by napoleoncomplex » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 3:42 PM UTC

acabal wrote: post #72

I added a Bitcoin purchase option to Scribophile to test the waters. But I'm interested in a Bitcoin economy, not a USD cash alternative--the situation where a Bitcoin has its own value, not a value dependent on a different currency. For that reason, I decided to fix the price of an upgrade to 2 BTC, not peg it to the dollar like most other sites do. Unfortunately it seems like that's just not going to work at this p…

Out of curiosity, did you see any uptake on that option? A lot of places seem to be adding the BTC option lately, but I haven't managed to find any good sources on how much use there is once the option is provided.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#136

Post by MacsHeadroom » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 3:43 PM UTC

xhrpost wrote: post #79

Everyone keeps saying that a crash is around the corner and the current price is unsustainable, been hearing it since $40/BTC, maybe earlier. I don't completely disagree, the question I keep pondering though is, if there is a big sustained crash coming, is it from $100 to $30, or $900 to $300?

MtGox verification cue for people who want to buy more than $50k USD in a month is almost 10,000 long right now. You do the math.

I'm going to go with something closer to $300 to $150 at least. If there's a pop coming, it is a long ways off.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#137

Post by jaibot » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 3:44 PM UTC

calinet6 wrote: post #121

grovulent wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a bitcoin fanboy - but I see this sentiment around a lot and I'm not sure I agree with it. The claim is that the value of a currency is supposed to also be somehow related to its utility in acquiring goods and services. And if this isn't the case - then people will go off it. When was the last time someone acquired a good or service with an ounce of gold? Perhaps we shouldn't consider gold a currency? Well I'…

If I see a currency rising in value faster than Gold itself, I'm going to want to get in on the value. Fact is, if I had "invested" in 100 BTC only 5 months ago when it was hovering around USD$10, that would have cost me about $1000. And now it would be worth $10000. There are not that many investments that have that kind of return in such a short time. You'd have to be dumb to believe that people aren't doing exactl…

What's a good way to short bitcoin?

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#138

Post by TillE » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 3:45 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #124

nawitus wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to adjust the price just like you need to ajust prices for any currency. It's just that the value of 1 bitcoin changes faster than other currencies, as it's now being adopted at a quick rate.

A new domain name has been 10 USD from Namecheap for the last decade. A new domain name in BTC however, has varied between 1 BTC and 0.1 BTC in just the past two months. BTC as a proxy for USD is still useful IMO, it gives us a way to avoid Paypal and other online processors. But for it to be a USD replacement, it needs to first settle down and stabilize.

> it gives us a way to avoid Paypal and other online processors

How do you buy and cash out your BTC? You still have to make all those real money transactions, just with the exchange rather than directly with the merchant. Seems a bit pointless to me.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#139

Post by nawitus » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 3:45 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #124

nawitus wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to adjust the price just like you need to ajust prices for any currency. It's just that the value of 1 bitcoin changes faster than other currencies, as it's now being adopted at a quick rate.

A new domain name has been 10 USD from Namecheap for the last decade. A new domain name in BTC however, has varied between 1 BTC and 0.1 BTC in just the past two months. BTC as a proxy for USD is still useful IMO, it gives us a way to avoid Paypal and other online processors. But for it to be a USD replacement, it needs to first settle down and stabilize.

"A new domain name has been 10 USD from Namecheap for the last decade. A new domain name in BTC however, has varied between 1 BTC and 0.1 BTC in just the past two months."

I agree that the value of bitcoins changes faster than other currencies. However, the fact remains that the prices for all currencies change. Domain names are the exception, but inflation adjusts prices upwards of almost all commodities.

"BTC as a proxy for USD is still useful IMO, it gives us a way to avoid Paypal and other online processors. But for it to be a USD replacement, it needs to first settle down and stabilize."

I disagree with your definition of "proxy". Bitcoin fits the definition of currency, not "proxy-currency" in my opinion. It's true that the currency will benefit when it's value will stabilize, as the currency is currently being adopted.

Re: Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC

#140

Post by grovulent » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 3:46 PM UTC

calinet6 wrote: post #121

grovulent wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a bitcoin fanboy - but I see this sentiment around a lot and I'm not sure I agree with it. The claim is that the value of a currency is supposed to also be somehow related to its utility in acquiring goods and services. And if this isn't the case - then people will go off it. When was the last time someone acquired a good or service with an ounce of gold? Perhaps we shouldn't consider gold a currency? Well I'…

If I see a currency rising in value faster than Gold itself, I'm going to want to get in on the value. Fact is, if I had "invested" in 100 BTC only 5 months ago when it was hovering around USD$10, that would have cost me about $1000. And now it would be worth $10000. There are not that many investments that have that kind of return in such a short time. You'd have to be dumb to believe that people aren't doing exactl…

Well - I was making the point that not being used as a currency of exchange does not hurt it's chances at serving as a store of value. In fact, volatility isn't necessarily bad either if you are using it to store wealth only and you take the long view. What would hurt its ability as a store of value would be a sustained and systemic trend downward in value (i.e. inflation). Short of complete collapse of the currency - this is unlikely given bitcoin's inherent deflationary nature.

Complete collapse is entirely possible. If governments crack down on exchange sites that allow for convertibility - that'll pretty much be it. I'd be very surprised this hasn't happened. I think they are waiting for all the major players to be massively invested in bitcoin so that when they pull the plug it'll take a very long time for an alternative to rise from the ashes.

I hope this doesn't happen. But what world do we think we're living in really?