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Bitcoin value falls from above $33 to below $3

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Re: Bitcoin value falls from above $33 to below $3

#151

Post by runn1ng »

Tichy wrote: post #144
runn1ng wrote: post #79

Every bitcoin opposer repeats, that the money will artificially start going up and that is why it will crash. Right now, it is going down, for a long time. So that is not why it will fail. It will fail because noone actually needs it. It has no real value over other means of electronically exchanging money - paypal, for example, is much faster, easier to use and, dwhile it is not free, thanks to the wild exchange rat…

PayPal is definitely not faster and easier to use, it is a huge PITA.

From a buyer view? It is super easy. I just fill in my credit card and pay. It's instantly confirmed.

Compare it with transferring money to bitcoin wallet, then paying, then waiting hours until it is confirmed by 6 consecutive blovks

Re: Bitcoin value falls from above $33 to below $3

#152

Post by hippich »

wanderful wrote: post #128
hippich wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sold my motorcycle for coins. I was buying a lot of article writing service (0% payment fees is nice!) I shipped several orders from international customers in my http://store.gifti.us and accepted payments in bitcoins (0% foreign transaction fees is nice too!). I bough steam codes. I built somewhat profitable for short period of time site - http://betco.in and used some profit in bitcoins to pay for development wo…

I'm curious, how have you found the currency value volatility for buying and selling goods and services? I envision a bitcoin meme: 0% fees, 1000% volatility :)

It is stable enough to be able to convert bitcoins to usd at predicted rate (marked is liquid enough - and this is where speculators are good evil).

I am converting to usd only part needed to pay suppliers and rest leave in coins for now. Agree, income is fluctuating. But I am ok with it since so far I did not see technical issues with bitcoins itself.

But you are right - as I said below, huge fluctuation (although, what time period you used for 1000% fluctuation claim?) is a problem. And I will welcome stabilization at any level. Although market is too small to be stabilized soon.

Re: Bitcoin value falls from above $33 to below $3

#153

Post by Tichy »

runn1ng wrote: post #151
Tichy wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PayPal is definitely not faster and easier to use, it is a huge PITA.

From a buyer view? It is super easy. I just fill in my credit card and pay. It's instantly confirmed. Compare it with transferring money to bitcoin wallet, then paying, then waiting hours until it is confirmed by 6 consecutive blovks

Not my experience. I tend to get hassled by PayPal a lot. Either they pressure me into using my existing account (which I often don't want to do, because it has all sorts of issues, lost passwords or whatever - I don't even want to think about it), or they want to pressure me into registering. Even if I don't register, they will send me email on a regular basis suggesting I do.

I'll probably end up using a new email address for every PayPal purchase I make (otherwise the almost unavoidable 'login with your email' problem), which means even more PayPal spam over time.

Most BitCoin vendors accept the payments before the blocks are confirmed. You only have to wait for the blocks if you want to be extra, super-sure. Likewise with credit cards the vendor can also not be 100% sure that they buyer won't just cancel later on or the credit card was a stolen one.

Re: Bitcoin value falls from above $33 to below $3

#154

Post by pessimizer »

netcan wrote: post #147
adgar wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If bitcoin became commonly used as a way of transacting, but not of storing value or denominating prices it could still be a good enough starting point. Even if the only markets in which it was "commonly used as a way of transacting" were illegal ones, as a means of money laundering? Is that really a "good enough starting point," a way for drug dealers to clean their money?

I'm not sure that makes any difference. I'm not sure how big this market is, but it could plausibly be big enough. It would probably leak into other markets too. Drug dealers comfortable with bitcoin might also buy shoes with bitcoin etc.

And I'd be able to buy bitcoin from drug dealers trying to convert bitcoin into cash, buy shoes from someone with the bitcoin, and that someone could sell that bitcoin to someone looking to buy drugs from a drug dealer. The demand for bitcoin naturally smears over the entire market for bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin value falls from above $33 to below $3

#155

Post by pessimizer »

nhaehnle wrote: post #148
dolphenstein wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Value is arbitrary. None of the major world fiat currencies have any inherent value. They are backed by nothing. Reminds me of an episode of This American Life. Brazil's currency was down the toilet, so they invented a new currency and tricked the populace into thinking it had value. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/423/t...

The price level is more or less arbitrary, but the value of fiat money is not just a shared hallucination. It ultimately comes from taxes. MMTers say that Taxes Drive Money: http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/2011/07/mmp-blog... Some anthropologists say that this is how money got started in the first place around the palaces in ancient Egypt. In more modern history, there are stark examples of how "taxes dri…

Even non-MMTers. If you are from the US, you have to pay your taxes in US dollars, and judgments in court against you are payable in USD.

Re: Bitcoin value falls from above $33 to below $3

#156

Post by itsnotvalid »

powertower wrote: post #25

> It now appears the $3 to $33 prices for Bitcoin were due to speculation. Come on. Was it ever attributed to anything but speculation.

However the return of mining is hugely favored to the creator and the early adopters in a way that, if joined much later, there is little to no value in it.

So the early adopters could promote them and we can just wait and see. Since the rest of us won't earn much by promoting it, so just mine 1 or 2 BC (still takes some efforts given the massive amount of bot-nets out there) and speculate.

Re: Bitcoin value falls from above $33 to below $3

#157

Post by recoiledsnake »

dolphenstein wrote: post #136
runn1ng wrote: post #79

Every bitcoin opposer repeats, that the money will artificially start going up and that is why it will crash. Right now, it is going down, for a long time. So that is not why it will fail. It will fail because noone actually needs it. It has no real value over other means of electronically exchanging money - paypal, for example, is much faster, easier to use and, dwhile it is not free, thanks to the wild exchange rat…

Value is arbitrary. None of the major world fiat currencies have any inherent value. They are backed by nothing. Reminds me of an episode of This American Life. Brazil's currency was down the toilet, so they invented a new currency and tricked the populace into thinking it had value. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/423/t...

>Value is arbitrary. None of the major world fiat currencies have any inherent value. They are backed by nothing.

They are backed by a government which knows that once it doesn't honor the value, the economy (and probably the govt too) is finished.

Re: Bitcoin value falls from above $33 to below $3

#158

Post by mrb »

jquery wrote: post #132
mrb wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the exchange rate ($2.6/BTC) has still not fallen under the cost of mining for the average miner who selects the right GPUs ($1.8/BTC). The current difficulty is 1468e3. It takes 2^32 * 1468e3 Bitcoin hashes to solve a block of 50 BTC. The majority of people mine with HD 5000 or 6000 series. If you pick efficient ones, you can count on 2 Mhash per Joule. The average worldwide domestic electricity price is $.10/kW…

There's a lot more to computing costs than $/kh.

Everything else are sunk costs. So, for existing miners, all that matters is $/kWh.

Re: Bitcoin value falls from above $33 to below $3

#159

Post by [deleted] »

dpark wrote: post #64
DiabloD3 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the school of thought that anyone who says Bitcoin is a pyramid scam is trying to scam Bitcoin and/or intentionally depress the value of BTC for personal gain. I am an early adopter, I was one of the first 100 people to mine, and I've mined thousands of BTC (including 650 with a single CPU), and I wrote the most popular miner, DiabloMiner. If it was a pyramid scam, why would I currently be ignoring the current…

> I'm in the school of thought that anyone who says Bitcoin is a pyramid scam is trying to scam Bitcoin and/or intentionally depress the value of BTC for personal gain. That is ridiculous. Anyone who criticizes Bitcoin is automatically a scammer themselves?

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin value falls from above $33 to below $3

#160

Post by polynomial »

dpark wrote: post #64
DiabloD3 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the school of thought that anyone who says Bitcoin is a pyramid scam is trying to scam Bitcoin and/or intentionally depress the value of BTC for personal gain. I am an early adopter, I was one of the first 100 people to mine, and I've mined thousands of BTC (including 650 with a single CPU), and I wrote the most popular miner, DiabloMiner. If it was a pyramid scam, why would I currently be ignoring the current…

> I'm in the school of thought that anyone who says Bitcoin is a pyramid scam is trying to scam Bitcoin and/or intentionally depress the value of BTC for personal gain. That is ridiculous. Anyone who criticizes Bitcoin is automatically a scammer themselves?

http://www.youtube.com/v/cpPABLW6F_A

(Not taking sides here, just pointing out some people conflate economics and war.)

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