31–40 of 48 posts
I correctly called the peak at 1200 (although I did not think it would peak there twice), and I'm calling the bottom at 300. This article has a very poor opening: Bitcoin is based on the idea that money gets its intrinsic value from its scarcity, which is a misconception since money gets its intrinsic value from the volume of transactions involving goods and services that use it No, bitcoin is based on the idea that…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, my arguments do not fall down. You are making the terribly flawed assumption that bitcoin will always be this volatile. Bitcoin is less volatile than it used to be, and with greater adoption will continue to decrease in volatility. The volatility in bitcoin today is nothing compared to 2011. Is it still bad ? Yes. Will it continue being bad ? Probably not. The long term trend supports the assumption that volatili…
> Euros have also swung around by 15-20% over the past 2-3 years. In relation to the dollar. Which is totally irrelevant for day to day transactions inside the Euro zone. I still pay the same price for a coffee I did 2-3 years ago. But at the moment Bitcoin volatility is still huge: It's currently not reasonable to offer coffee for a fixed number of Bitcoins, that, say, stay stable over a year. Your analogy between d…
I wasn't drawing an analogy between bitcoins and debit cards. I was taking about how a bank lets me access my money vs me having direct access to it. I cannot get cash in a foreign country without my bank cooperating unless I carry a world recognized currency (USD, Euro) in cash and try to exchange it somewhere.
The problem is that you read a comparison as an analogy. It's a comparison of our current dependency on the banking system vs bitcoins relative independence from the same.
I correctly called the peak at 1200 (although I did not think it would peak there twice), and I'm calling the bottom at 300. This article has a very poor opening: Bitcoin is based on the idea that money gets its intrinsic value from its scarcity, which is a misconception since money gets its intrinsic value from the volume of transactions involving goods and services that use it No, bitcoin is based on the idea that…
I think the latter is naive. I think bitcoin is the first currency whose perpetual deflation is ensured by the contract that defines it.
If you and your whole family live in the U.S. and you have a couple credit cards, a debit card, and a bank account, Bitcoin is going to seem pretty useless. For you, the US dollar does just fine. But the rest of the world isn't like the U.S. I visited Latvia recently, and my bank refused to let me withdraw money. Florida is full of Cuban Americans who want to send money to Cuba. Many people are imprisoned. The world…
I'm cautious about your Latvia story - its sounds to me like the bike was worried about fraud. Thats pretty common - about half the times I go to the US, I have to ring up the bank and get the card unblocked. That being said, there are countries attempting to control the flow of money. Argentina wants to enforce its price for the dollar. Cyprus wants to prevent everyone taking their money and running. and so on. Howe…
Marc, are you aware that Satoshi referenced you by name? I always found that unexpected and hilarious. http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/bitcoin-satoshi/email-p2presearc...
So is the mailing list p2presearch@listcultures.org?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly what Ripple is attempting to solve, acting as a open, global payment network where transactions are nearly free and you can use any currency (including bitcoin) you want. More at https://ripple.com/about-ripple/ .
Ripple is a petty scam. Please don't advertise that horse dung to HN, we are smarter than that. Ripple generated 10 billion coins, they call them XRP. Of course this amount and even XRP aren't mentioned on that page you linked, an obvious bait. Ripple started giving away millions to generate buzz and use, they've yet to even give away 10% though, and the idea is to create enough value that they can eventually dump al…
But let me quickly say:
* there's no mining in Ripple, so Ripple isn't pre-minded and there's no "genesis" currency
* they created 100 billion XRP, not 10 billion as you wrote
* they're committed to give away 55 billion XRP to non-profits, users and business partners for the foreseeable future: https://ripple.com/ripple_primer.pdf
* XRP certainly isn't derivative of Bitcoin, but the original Ripple system that this is partially based on started in 2004: http://archive.ripple-project.org/Main/HomePage
* Apparently you don't actually know what a pyramid scheme is or how one works, otherwise you would know that Ripple isn't one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_scheme.
* It's also not a Ponzi Scheme, incase you wanted to go there next: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme
What Ripple is: a company, an approach and a currency you don't like and you clearly have an agenda to spread misinformation about it for reasons that are not clear.
I have no affiliation with Ripple Labs, other than being impressed with their approach of addressing our archaic, fragmented payment system that works almost exactly the same as it did 20 years ago. I also have received XRP in a couple of giveaways.
Don't get me wrong—I think Bitcoin is an incredible technology that changed the way we think about money, in ways we're just starting to grok.
What Ripple enables—being able to pay anyone anywhere anytime with whatever currency you wish to use for essentially for free--is the killer app right now.
This is what I mean by essentially free: I paid 0.000025 XRP to exchange USD for XRP: https://ripple.com/graph/#2EF43881B82AE8FBA31A2C3272E61CBC2E...). That's $0.00075 USD.
:: drops the mic ::
Here's something I've never seen addressed by bitcoin apologists. Tell me why I should "adopt" BTC if I'm not: (a) speculating (b) interesting in buying drugs or circumventing regulations around international money transfers. I see no utility in paying for software or coffee in BTC. Getting hold of bitcoin is not a straightforward process, and even once you acquire them, your coins are fluctuating in value all the ti…
You're doing well with your credit card because your bank allows you to do so. Just a few days ago my debit card was blocked because I was traveling internationally and the bank suspected that it was stolen. That's great, they're trying to protect me. But then, the only way to get it unblocked was to visit the bank in person.. but I was 10,000 miles away! I tried to reason with them over the phone but they wouldn't l…
If this is all there is to it, I'm not sure I see the utility. I travel internationally somewhat often, not only has my credit card never been blocked, I also usually carry some amount of cash in the local currency so I wouldn't be screwed even if it were.
Transferring money internationally is a bit of pain, you're right about this. But it's also a regulatory minefield. I simply don't want to risk - (a) the IRS coming after me and (b) all the problems associated with bitcoin purchase and sale - just because I'm trying to save a few bucks in transfer charges.
This is the most interesting part of your comment.
> I usually have two options to get paid by advertisers. Paypal or Bank Wire. Paypal charges huge fees, so I opt for wire.
Now, paypal are enormously profitable and they don't give a shit about small businesses which is probably why you end up getting screwed. Maybe bitcoin can help you there, but it's probably better if you could get dollars instead of bitcoin through a bitcoin like protocol. I think it's important to distinguish between the bitcoin protocol and the currency itself. I think the former has some good ideas which will almost surely make in to many many other protocols and applications. The latter, I suspect, is best avoided by "normal" people.
Here's something I've never seen addressed by bitcoin apologists. Tell me why I should "adopt" BTC if I'm not: (a) speculating (b) interesting in buying drugs or circumventing regulations around international money transfers. I see no utility in paying for software or coffee in BTC. Getting hold of bitcoin is not a straightforward process, and even once you acquire them, your coins are fluctuating in value all the ti…
>Getting hold of bitcoin is not a straightforward process Actually, it's pretty straightforward these days: http://howtobuybitcoins.info . By now, everyone should know the advantages of bitcoin: * low or no fees * transactions are nearly instant; confirmations take a few minutes * payments are irrevocable - no chargeback issues * you can pay anyone anywhere at anytime - no bank holidays, no paying Western Union fees…
> transactions are nearly instant; confirmations take a few minutes
This is true for my credit card too.
> payments are irrevocable - no chargeback issues
As a customer, I prefer the ability to make a chargeback.
> you can pay anyone anywhere at anytime - no bank holidays, no paying Western Union fees to send money oversees and have it still take days
I specifically excluded international transfers in my question. Anyway, these are heavily regulated and risk and volatility of bitcoin simply aren't worthwhile in comparison to the few dollars I would save.
> pseudo anonymous - you don't have to provide personal information to a financial organization to make payments
Could possibly be an advantage but isn't really true because coinbase would know all about me and all my transactions could be traced back to them by just traversing the block chain.
> many vendors give a discounts for users willing to pay in bitcoin vs. dollars
I would think about using bitcoin for this reason if I could convert USD -> BTC and quickly buy whatever I needed using BTC. But again this is something that takes days and who knows what the USD->BTC rate would be when I eventually do get my bitcoin. It's simply not worth it.
Here's something I've never seen addressed by bitcoin apologists. Tell me why I should "adopt" BTC if I'm not: (a) speculating (b) interesting in buying drugs or circumventing regulations around international money transfers. I see no utility in paying for software or coffee in BTC. Getting hold of bitcoin is not a straightforward process, and even once you acquire them, your coins are fluctuating in value all the ti…
Your (b) sounds suspiciously similar to "if you've got nothing to hide, then why do you want privacy?" Having control over your money is valuable on its own merits for a lot of people.
When Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft or the NSA say "why do you want privacy?", they specifically mean us and not them. It's not like we can look into Apple's servers and make sure they aren't abusing all the the private data they store about us. It's not like we're allowed to analyze the NSA's hitlist to determine if there's racial profiling going on there. These companies won't let us look at their source code to see if there are backdoors in supposedly secure products. And we're never going to be able determine exactly where a politician's campaign funding is coming from.
I would buy the argument "if you've got nothing to hide, then why do you want privacy?" if people making that argument were willing to apply those standards to themselves. They never want to do that, so I'm forced to conclude it's just a rhetorical device used to trick the naive into giving up their information for free.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
currently, sending money over the internet without getting charged fees is non-trivial. with the number of players in the payment space, i don't expect that to be the case for very much longer, and i don't think it will be bitcoin that solves this problem.
Curious--how/who will solve this problem?