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Richest Bitcoin Addresses

bitcoinrichlist.com

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Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#171

Post by fat0wl »

pfisch wrote: post #161
fat0wl wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

heh so then how come when Bitcoiners are quoting the price of the ecosystem they always take the number of BTC * the highest standing OTB... i know thats kindof a tangent but.... seriously, i'm curious

That is how every commodity market in the world works.... How do you think an exchange rate between say USD->EUROS is decided? By the last trade price....

Yeah but nobody insists

last trade price multiplied by number of units in circulation = total value of ecosystem

Bitcoiners do this CONSTANTLY

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#172

Post by aestra »

kens wrote: post #135
mcherm wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like what happens when your wallet gets burned in a fire. That cash is gone forever.

Actually the Bureau of Engraving and Printing will replace damaged or destroyed US currency if they can determine to their satisfaction how much has been destroyed. They replace over $30 million of currency yearly. The most common causes of mutilation are are fire, water, chemicals, explosives; animal, insect or rodent damage; and petrification or deterioration by burying. See http://moneyfactory.gov/uscurrency/damag…

Read a story, man's dog ate several hundred dollars, man fished remains out of dog poop, US government printed man new hundred dollar bills.

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#173

Post by pedalpete »

droopybuns wrote: post #139
reconbot wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got 2 coins off a guy in a coffeshop about 1 year ago for $20. I sold them today for about $1600. About 2 years ago I almost dropped $1000 on bitcoins but was talked out of it by family and friends. It feels weird. I can't connect bitcoins to social or economic value. The "china explosion" of btc price won't last imho. And while I like bitcoin, it's just a currency and not an investment, as in it doesn't generate v…

I struggle with the word "currency." Any economy built on a currency that fluctuates this wildly is going to be unpleasant. I don't know how someone can genuinely believe that bitcoin is a currency with this kind of pricing turbulence. It is behaving like the focal point of rampant speculation.

I suspect the current fluctuation is only a result of newness of bitcoin and that over the years as it becomes more familiar, the fluctuation will mirror more common currencies. I suspect that in order for that to happen, it will need to become more liquid, with more places accepting bitcoin for purchases, and more people using bitcoin to purchase goods rather than as an investment tool.

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#174

Post by olalonde »

fat0wl wrote: post #162
pfisch wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about everyone who bought a .com domain early.... Or really anyone who buys a stock early for a company that becomes huge. I mean, if you buy bitcoins right now you are speculating that it will become a stable currency at some point. It offers a bunch of interesting and disruptive features that cut out a lot of middle men.

eh I hear what you're saying but i just don't believe this one. .com addresses appreciated in value because they are an actual good -- an address on the web that only 1 person can own. Bitcoin is a currency that isn't serving its purpose yet and whose function can be easily mimicked. All it is is an open source codebase & some infrastructure. If another coin (Litecoin, for example) were to take off, they would just a…

> Point being, it isn't the sole implementation of this concept. .com addresses are by nature unique.

There are alt DNS systems as well.

IMO, the best analogy for Bitcoin is gold. Gold is valued way beyond its intrinsic value and yet, few people claim that gold is a pyramid scheme.

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#175

Post by pfisch »

fat0wl wrote: post #171
pfisch wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is how every commodity market in the world works.... How do you think an exchange rate between say USD->EUROS is decided? By the last trade price....

Yeah but nobody insists last trade price multiplied by number of units in circulation = total value of ecosystem Bitcoiners do this CONSTANTLY

No, this is what everyone does for all equities. It is called the market capitalization, you probably hear it called market cap usually though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_capitalization

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#176

Post by dontblink »

hnha wrote: post #164
josephagoss wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could run vanitygen to guess the private key to any Bitcoin address. It might take a few billion years.

It could also take just one day if you are lucky. It impossible to predict, just like the future of bitcoin.

Equivalent of a bitcoin lottery?

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#177

Post by pfisch »

dragonwriter wrote: post #169
pfisch wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"One should not have to consult an exchange rate to figure out how much their currency is worth. They should know what it's worth by how much it costs for a dozen eggs. If that number changes rapidly (dozen eggs costs 1 BTC Monday, 3 on Friday, .5 next month, 100 in the future, .002 after that) well.... you don't have a currency, you have a speculative commodity." This is just not true for many currencies that have u…

> This is just not true for many currencies that have undergone hyper-inflation and hyper-deflation. When that happens, people tend to abandon them as currencies (though a currency undergoing hyperdeflation would be hoarded as a store of value).

Actually they often do not really abandon the currency, they just issue a new dollar that removes a bunch of orders of magnitude from the dollars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper_inflation#Currency

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#178

Post by nilkn »

pedalpete wrote: post #173
droopybuns wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I struggle with the word "currency." Any economy built on a currency that fluctuates this wildly is going to be unpleasant. I don't know how someone can genuinely believe that bitcoin is a currency with this kind of pricing turbulence. It is behaving like the focal point of rampant speculation.

I suspect the current fluctuation is only a result of newness of bitcoin and that over the years as it becomes more familiar, the fluctuation will mirror more common currencies. I suspect that in order for that to happen, it will need to become more liquid, with more places accepting bitcoin for purchases, and more people using bitcoin to purchase goods rather than as an investment tool.

The "problem" is that the number of bitcoins is asymptotically bounded from above, but there is so far as we know no similar bound on human productivity and output. So there's really no reason to think that the deflation of bitcoin would ever die off. At most it would slow down, as right now the upward trend is fueled not just by the "natural" deflation of the currency but also as it plays catch-up to the market cap of more established currencies, like the USD.

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#179

Post by nilkn »

im3w1l wrote: post #140
fat0wl wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole price of Bitcoin is an illusion that they use to get people to keep buying. It's the result of a bidding war. There is an article here about that basically explains (this is my interpretation not his words) how the price of BTC is kindof like the sticker price on an item in the store. It doesn't represent the real value, it's simply the value as perceived by consumers and is, in a way, fixed -- http://falkv…

Falkvinge thinks they will be worth 100k-1000k in the future. If we accept that (which I don't btw) is it so weird that people want to spend 700 today for something that might be worth 100k in a few years?

It's not weird. The problem is that at some point bitcoins must acquire an unambiguous intrinsic value which is not related so much to their possible future value. If they don't, that's the definition of a bubble--prices that are considerably higher than intrinsic value.

Consider tulip mania from the 1600s. Speculation drove up prices of tulip bulbs to the point where the only people buying tulips were other speculators who were willing to pay the high prices because they thought they could sell it for more later on--the exact reasoning you just posted. Speculators were just trading tulips--or worse, tulip futures--amongst themselves. When the time came to sell the tulips to people who wanted them for decoration, it was discovered that none of them actually valued tulips that much, and the bubble popped.

There are arguments for a bitcoin having an intrinsic value of $100k. If bitcoin were ever used for, say, something as large as the real estate market, it would be hard to imagine the price being any lower than that. But bitcoin is extremely far from being used as the dominant currency in any market that large.

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#180

Post by fat0wl »

pfisch wrote: post #175
fat0wl wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but nobody insists last trade price multiplied by number of units in circulation = total value of ecosystem Bitcoiners do this CONSTANTLY

No, this is what everyone does for all equities. It is called the market capitalization, you probably hear it called market cap usually though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_capitalization

a proxy for the public opinion of a company's net worth

vs.

current trading price of something with no intrinsic value

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