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The first Bitcoin post on HN

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#131

Post by DanBC »

moocowduckquack wrote: post #129
jk4930 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The costs of producing BTC or USD are not their backings. You can't exchange your BTC back into electricity. The USD (and usually most other currencies) aims to be indirectly backed by the corresponding amount of goods they represent within the currency zone and their legal status. BTC isn't even indirectly backed. It just exists. And that's okay for its purpose.

You can't exchange your BTC back into electricity. Huh? Why not? Surely you could just buy some solar panels with bitcoins, or convert them to another currency and then buy electricity from the grid.

That's a tortuously inefficient way to get electricity.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#132

Post by cylinder »

mrb wrote: post #93
pg wrote: post #75

How much money would you have made if you'd bought $1000 worth of bitcoin on that day?

No Bitcoin exchange was running on May 8, 2009. But there is this one famous trade of the guy who bought 5000 bitcoins with $26.06 in "2009" and then bought an apartment in 2013 [1]. This puts the value of one bitcoin at $0.0053. With $1000 you could have bought 189,000, which would be worth $113 million today at $600 per bitcoin. But there is no doubt that buying that many bitcoins at that time would have been diffi…

Except if you tried to unload 189,000 bitcoin you would crash the value back down significantly. The BTC's low volume is th reason why the price rises and falls so quickly.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#133

Post by [deleted] »

DanBC wrote: post #131
moocowduckquack wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't exchange your BTC back into electricity. Huh? Why not? Surely you could just buy some solar panels with bitcoins, or convert them to another currency and then buy electricity from the grid.

That's a tortuously inefficient way to get electricity.

[deleted]

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#134

Post by Jtsummers »

sliverstorm wrote: post #126
sentenza wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is not that black and white, is it? While it is quite clear that Bitcoin has "value" as long as people are willing to trade it (i.e., indefinitely), there is still no reason to assume that it will ever stop having these extreme fluctuations. To the contrary, I'd say that, as time progresses, we observe Bitcoin having the same problems that the gold standard had, mixed with an additional proneness to speculatio…

there is still no reason to assume that it will ever stop having these extreme fluctuations. Actually I was thinking about this yesterday, and I think if/when goods start to be priced in BTC (not just "fixed USD value converted to current BTC equivalent") that could help anchor the value of BTC.

This is likely the key to BTC value stability, but at present it's still over the horizon. The number of users continues to increase, the supply of BTC continues to increase. It's still being used as a speculative investment/commodity. Once the number of users becomes more stable (or the growth rate is less jumpy) and the speculation quiets down (to be more like a forex market?), then it'll be feasible for vendors to stick to a price with less risk of getting hosed or hosing their clients.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#135

Post by sejje »

dublinben wrote: post #65
j_s wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Dropbox as a glorified large email attachment distribution system, touching only the web interface. Edit: obviously not clear enough, I'll try again: Is it true that ' You need to install propietary software to use it '? No.

The web interface is proprietary too.

Which is largely irrelevant to the claim of "forced proprietary software install."

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#136

Post by antocv »

cfinke wrote: post #114
jeffasinger wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was posted in May 2009. On October 5th, 2009, $1 = 1,309.03 BTC [1], so you'd have bought about 1.3 million bitcoin. Which means you'd have over $500M dollars in Bitcoin. I bet that spending $1000 back then would have considerably changed the exchange rate though, and selling $500M now would definitely aversely affect the economy. 1: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/History

so you'd have bought about 1.3 million bitcoin There weren't even 1.3 million bitcoin in circulation at that point [1]. If you bought every bitcoin, you could have accumulated about 1.1 million BTC for $850. [1] http://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins?timespan=all&sh...

Weird, and people are now paying close to that 850usd just for 1 coin.

However, if someone had bought coints for even 100usd back in 2010 that would have been weird too and affected the network perhaps a little too negatively.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#137

Post by rybosome »

pg wrote: post #75

How much money would you have made if you'd bought $1000 worth of bitcoin on that day?

I'm curious what the legal/tax consequences would have been, assuming someone had the luck or foresight to be aware of the money they could have made. There's no way someone could have just gotten away with making hundreds of millions of dollars on this, right?

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#138

Post by tomasien »

DigitalJack wrote: post #91
tomasien wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skepticism is different from hating, absolutely, but the user didn't say they were skeptical - they said there was "no way". That's hating and you have to ignore it - skepticism and critical feedback you value, treasure, and seek out.

It's a just a firm opinion.

No, it's a haters opinion. Being a hater doesn't make you a terrible person or mean you can't or shouldn't be allowed to have opinions, it just means you're a hater and your opinions should be ignored.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#139

Post by mrb »

cylinder wrote: post #132
mrb wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No Bitcoin exchange was running on May 8, 2009. But there is this one famous trade of the guy who bought 5000 bitcoins with $26.06 in "2009" and then bought an apartment in 2013 [1]. This puts the value of one bitcoin at $0.0053. With $1000 you could have bought 189,000, which would be worth $113 million today at $600 per bitcoin. But there is no doubt that buying that many bitcoins at that time would have been diffi…

Except if you tried to unload 189,000 bitcoin you would crash the value back down significantly. The BTC's low volume is th reason why the price rises and falls so quickly.

You are mistaken. In the last 30 days, on the top 3 exchanges (btcchina, mtgox, bitstamp), there has been more than 3 million bitcoins sold [1], and yet we saw the exchange rate increase over the last month. So it would be relatively easy to sell 189,000 bitcoins, spreading the trades over 30 days, even on only 1 of these exchanges, without causing a big crash.

[1] http://bitcoinity.org/markets/list?currency=ALL&span=30d

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#140

Post by slg »

sliverstorm wrote: post #126
sentenza wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is not that black and white, is it? While it is quite clear that Bitcoin has "value" as long as people are willing to trade it (i.e., indefinitely), there is still no reason to assume that it will ever stop having these extreme fluctuations. To the contrary, I'd say that, as time progresses, we observe Bitcoin having the same problems that the gold standard had, mixed with an additional proneness to speculatio…

there is still no reason to assume that it will ever stop having these extreme fluctuations. Actually I was thinking about this yesterday, and I think if/when goods start to be priced in BTC (not just "fixed USD value converted to current BTC equivalent") that could help anchor the value of BTC.

The problem is that few people are willing to fix their price to a BTC value because it is so unstable. It is a chicken and egg problem.
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