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Bitcoin Price Pressure

blog.samaltman.com

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181–190 of 191 posts

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#181

Post by logician76 »

pmorici wrote: post #38
logician76 wrote: post #7

Mt.Gox is going to liquidate all their bitcoins for the bankruptcy proceedings. So factor that in, and creditors of Mt.Gox (especially bitcoin creditors) will get even less than the value today. I'd say get ready for a big bubble burst.

No they aren't. A plan to buy out the exchange settle the pending fraud lawsuits and divide the remaining Bitcoin among the creditors as well as give them a % stake in the new business was announced a couple days ago. No Mt.Gox Bitcoin is getting liquidated by the bankruptcy court. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/29/us-bitcoin-mtgox-s...

No mention of this on the Mt.Gox website, where the last article was talking about liquidation. But thanks for the heads up, as I am also one of the creditors I should look into it.

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#182

Post by grinnbearit »

vijayboyapati wrote: post #114

Sam writes: "It just means that for it to succeed, we’ll need significant external buy pressure. As I wrote awhile ago, I think the key thing we need for this is people actually using bitcoin for transactions instead of speculation (and merchants willing to hold bitcoin balances). " I think this is a very common meme about what success means for bitcoin and it's tied up with a misunderstanding of what money is; most…

The blockchain makes Bitcoin less fungible than gold, think of blacklisted addresses for example. Of course using something like open transactions improves things substantially.

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#183

Post by VMG »

dublinben wrote: post #120
VMG wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://reason.com/blog/2014/04/28/doj-operation-chokepoint-a... > Under "Operation Choke Point," the DOJ and its allies are going after legal but subjectively undesirable business ventures by pressuring banks to terminate their bank accounts or refuse their business. The very premise is clearly chilling—the DOJ is coercing private businesses in an attempt to centrally engineer the American marketplace based on it's o…

That specific article is spreading FUD and perpetuating a hoax. There's no evidence whatsoever that Ms. Presley's case is related to the DoJ. >Bitcoin on the other hand doesn't care about these things. Bitcoin certainly has made itself quite a reputation for being the currency of choice for scammers, hackers, drug dealers, online gamblers, and child pornographers. Merchants who consider accepting BTC might care about…

You can either claim that Bitcoin is evil drugpornmoney, or that it doesn't provide additional freedoms.

It's inconsistent to claim both.

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#184

Post by a_c_s »

vijayboyapati wrote: post #121
a_c_s wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...it is superior to gold is almost every way" Except for the part where you can actually make things with gold: it is shiny, easy to work with and highly conductive. So worst case, if the value of gold plummeted you could still make some awesome jewelry, electronics, dental fillings, etc. While it may not be proportional to the current price, gold does have intrinsic value: Bitcoin has none.

Gold's use value is much, much lower than the current price reflects. Most of the price of gold is explained by its reservation demand - i.e., monetary demand, both by individuals and central banks. And you're incorrect that bitcoin has no "intrisic value". As this author explains: http://blog.oleganza.com/post/42262765318/direct-use-value-o... ------ Bitcoin network has very interesting properties that allow you to…

If somebody has a single bitcoin they can't sell, there is nothing else they can do with it. Therefore, the bitcoin itself has zero intrinsic value.

The value of the idea of the blockchain is not relevant to the value of an individual bitcoin, just as the value of the patents behind autonomous mining trucks (these really exist) has no bearing on the price of an ounce of gold.

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#185

Post by gnaritas »

logicallee wrote: post #169
gnaritas wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be so simple minded. It can succeed as a remittance mechanism without succeeding as a currency. If it does nothing more than eliminate Western Union for international wire transfers it'll be massively successful.

I think by definition it is a currency if it succeeds as a remittance mechanism - because you can really only send BTC using the bitcoin network, it can't track USD values directly (as a network.) Using the Western Union network you can literally "send dollars" (or euros or pounds) but the same isn't true of bitcoin. It's a remittance network tied to a currency, and that currency is bitcoin. In this sense its use as…

No, IMHO it can fail as a currency and succeed as a remittance mechanism. It can fail as a stable currency and thus not be a valid unit of account while still succeeding for remittance.

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#187

Post by sanswork »

Aqueous wrote: post #3

We're talking about something that was worth less than $200 a a year ago, and $0 5 years ago. So if you believe that BitCoin is following an uneven adoption cycle, where there is a boom period followed by a pullback, which is what has been the case so far, then we're still at the beginning of its adoption curve. Additionally when mainstream markets for trading BitCoin open up - like Second Market's planned BitCoin ex…

Merchant adoption is a bad indicator since almost all of the benefits of using bitcoin in a commercial transaction are on the merchants side. So while they can do it for free adoption will go up even if actual usage by customers stays at or near 0.

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#188

Post by sanswork »

dnautics wrote: post #8

"This spurs occasional bubbles..." Actually, no. Bubbles have very clear and consistent price patterns which (so far) has not characterized any of the elevations in bitcoin price. One not mentioned in this chart is that for bubbles, the post-mania drop tends to be 2x faster than the rise, which has never been true for any of the bitcoin corrections. http://www.theeestory.com/files/price_bubble_chart.jpg It is certain…

http://imgur.com/D9rrl0g

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#189

Post by etherael »

mynewwork wrote: post #135
VMG wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most alternatives for storing wealth have many restrictions attached to them when it comes to transferring ownership. Whether you agree with those restrictions or not, Bitcoin does not have them.

When you say bitcoin doesn't have them, you just mean bitcoin is currently making it possible for you to commit tax fraud, right? Bitcoin hasn't magically changed the laws of the world, it's not freeing anyone from restrictions. If you're using it in a manner to avoid taxes, launder money, fund terrorists or whatever, that's still just as illegal as if you were doing it with a briefcase of cash or gold.

Would you say the same thing about technology that allowed people to defy apartheid, evade slavery, escape genocide, concentration camps, blasphemy laws, execution for cowardice in war because they won't kill and die for a bandit with a pretty title, not have to sit at the back of the bus due to the colour of their skin, or any of the other thousands of examples of the egregious and obvious abuse of political power throughout recorded history?

Anyone opposing those things was breaking the law. The law is not as important as you imagine. Cryptocurrencies enormously erode the ability of the state to enforce tax law, this is a simple fact. The world may not like it, the world may not even realise it, but this is the state of reality now. Throwing up objections in the form of laws is beside the point entirely.

I truly do not understand people who in light of the history of the abuse of political power can honestly expect "it's against the law" alone to be taken as a serious objection to anything.

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#190

Post by etherael »

VMG wrote: post #183
dublinben wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That specific article is spreading FUD and perpetuating a hoax. There's no evidence whatsoever that Ms. Presley's case is related to the DoJ. >Bitcoin on the other hand doesn't care about these things. Bitcoin certainly has made itself quite a reputation for being the currency of choice for scammers, hackers, drug dealers, online gamblers, and child pornographers. Merchants who consider accepting BTC might care about…

You can either claim that Bitcoin is evil drugpornmoney, or that it doesn't provide additional freedoms. It's inconsistent to claim both.

Propaganda does not have to be logically consistent.
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