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Virgin Galactic to accept Bitcoin [video]

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Re: Virgin Galactic to accept Bitcoin [video]

#41

Post by fat0wl »

gst wrote: post #31
fat0wl wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah the fact that the Bitcoin scam is spreading raises eyebrows. Companies want to accept it to sound futuristic but they should really be shutting it down. Notice how none of the tech-giants want to get involved with it. Bitcoin isn't for the technologically advanced who are "being rewarded for being sooooo smart and adopting early", it's a scammer platform. I heard a suggestion for a gold-backed digital currency o…

> The platform would never tank because people know roughly what it's worth. So what exactly is the worth of one ounce of gold? The current market price? Or another price? What's the difference to Bitcoin in regards to pricing?

Eh I'll be honest I'm not sure exactly how the gold standard works but I'm pretty sure it's priced individually against many currencies, whereas Bitcoin's whole pricing system is fantastical.

I'm pretty sure Bitcoin just takes it's sticker price (whatever it's currently been bid upto) and then does a bunch of arbitrary currency conversions.

Again, I THINK this, do not know... but i THINK if you took the amount of gold and multiplied by its USD price to arrive at some figure of how much the "gold pool" is worth (bitcoiners do this all the time) gold traders would laugh their asses off at you. The medium needs to be tightly interwoven into individual economies through usage and growth/settling.

Bitcoin is like this thing that is sitting out in the ether totally untested and people are making random claims about how much its worth, supported only by bidding wars in trading.

Re: Virgin Galactic to accept Bitcoin [video]

#42

Post by nullc »

grey-area wrote: post #14
cs702 wrote: post #9

It seems that with every passing day, another prominent institution or business starts accepting Bitcoin for payment, Virgin Galactic being the latest example. In just a few years, Bitcoin has gone from experiment to global phenomenon. I wouldn't be surprised if in coming years at least some bitcoin users start measuring their wealth in bitcoins, and therefore also evaluating exchange rates, not in terms of how many…

Since the beginning of this year, the price of a US dollar has declined by more than 98%, from BTC 0.074 to just over BTC 0.001! Consider the last month: 2013-11-01 212.87 USD = 1 BTC 2013-11-22 733.71 USD = 1 BTC If you think Bitcoin is a great investment and can sell your BTC to get other assets in at a high point, this is a good thing, though slightly worrying because of the boom and bust pattern and extreme volat…

> I like the idea of a currency which doesn't allow politicians to introduce inflation, but perhaps we should have one which has a finite set of tokens on setup, and doesn't attempt to also attract people as some sort of investment with mining etc.

Bitcoin _does_ have a fixed set of tokens on setup: 21 million of them... but you need a way of giving out those tokens without handing a windfall to a centralized decider that gives them out.

Mining isn't an "investment" thing: It's the @#$@ fundamental consensus process that makes the whole thing possible: Node autonomously validate the rules, but transaction order is not decidable autonomously and so mining produces a hard to rig / cheap to verify 'vote' on the order of transactions.

Bitcoin smarty aligned these two processes by making participation in the consensus also accomplish giving out the original tokens.

Re: Virgin Galactic to accept Bitcoin [video]

#43

Post by iand »

fat0wl wrote: post #39
drewblaisdell wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google invested in Buttercoin (buttercoin.com). You don't understand the virtual currency space. There are many good arguments against virtual currencies or bitcoin specifically, but the lack of Silicon Valley interest is absolutely not one of them.

It's not that I am against virtual currency and think there is no interest in it -- I just think the Bitcoin scheme is so f__ked that respected corps don't wanna be involved. I'm not surprised at all that Google invested in an alternative. In fact, maybe that will catalyze Bitcoin's demise.

You are mistaken if you think it's an alternative. From their site: "Buttercoin is a free, white-label bitcoin exchange"

Re: Virgin Galactic to accept Bitcoin [video]

#44

Post by dragonwriter »

nilkn wrote: post #36
lambda wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the volatility has been entirely in BTC. Volatility should more accurately be measured against actual real-world goods that you can buy. Since pretty much all actual goods are priced in currencies other than BTC, with the BTC price merely set based on the current exchange rate with the currency that the goods are bought at, it's BTC that's volatile, not the USD. This kind of volatility is actually really harmful…

> It's pretty dumb to actually spend bitcoins if you could just hold onto them A similar question can be asked about USD: why would you ever save it instead of spending it immediately, since it's only going to lose value over time due to inflation? Of course, the difference right now is that the deflation rate in bitcoin is much higher than the inflation rate in USD. But clearly, if bitcoin ever becomes a major curre…

> A similar question can be asked about USD: why would you ever save it instead of spending it immediately, since it's only going to lose value over time due to inflation?

Except for relatively small amounts for liquidity for known or potential immediate needs, it doesn't make sense to hold US dollars (or any other modern fiat currency), it makes a lot more sense to invest them in productive assets which can be converted easily back to US dollars (or other fiat currency) when necessary.

This is not an accidental feature of modern fiat currency, its pretty much the whole point of the transition from commodity-based (e.g., gold standard) to fiat currency -- so that broad downturns don't have a dangerous positive feedback effect where poor investment market conditions lead to currency being a more attractive place to hold money than the investment markets, which leads to even poorer performance in the investment markets and even more people pulling money out of those markets and into currency, etc.

> But clearly, if bitcoin ever becomes a major currency and the deflation levels off [...]

Please explain how increasing interest in using bitcoin is going to cause the price increase relative to other currencies or goods to slow down.

> [...] there will be plenty of motivation to spend bitcoins, the same way there is currently plenty of motivation to save USD.

What motivation to save USD?

Re: Virgin Galactic to accept Bitcoin [video]

#45

Post by drewblaisdell »

iand wrote: post #43
fat0wl wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that I am against virtual currency and think there is no interest in it -- I just think the Bitcoin scheme is so f__ked that respected corps don't wanna be involved. I'm not surprised at all that Google invested in an alternative. In fact, maybe that will catalyze Bitcoin's demise.

You are mistaken if you think it's an alternative. From their site: "Buttercoin is a free, white-label bitcoin exchange"

I think he is either a troll or has an axe to grind about this issue for some unmentioned reason.

Re: Virgin Galactic to accept Bitcoin [video]

#46

Post by nullc »

fat0wl wrote: post #22
Angostura wrote: post #21

Sounds to me as if Mr Branson has a bunch of Bitcoin and would like to cash-in early next week.

yeah the fact that the Bitcoin scam is spreading raises eyebrows. Companies want to accept it to sound futuristic but they should really be shutting it down. Notice how none of the tech-giants want to get involved with it. Bitcoin isn't for the technologically advanced who are "being rewarded for being sooooo smart and adopting early", it's a scammer platform. I heard a suggestion for a gold-backed digital currency o…

> I heard a suggestion for a gold-backed digital currency once.

Yep, and now go look up how that went.

It's not possible to "gold back" a digital currency without centralization which carries a multitude of risk, as has been demonstrated by the many failures along the way.

Re: Virgin Galactic to accept Bitcoin [video]

#47

Post by nilkn »

lambda wrote: post #40
nilkn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty dumb to actually spend bitcoins if you could just hold onto them A similar question can be asked about USD: why would you ever save it instead of spending it immediately, since it's only going to lose value over time due to inflation? Of course, the difference right now is that the deflation rate in bitcoin is much higher than the inflation rate in USD. But clearly, if bitcoin ever becomes a major curre…

Because it loses value slowly enough. That's the whole "stability" part. Holding onto USD for a year or two doesn't lose a significant amount of value, so you can save up effectively and plan on what you will be able to buy with it at the end. And you can put it in an interest bearing bank account or invest it to further offset or counteract the effect of inflation for longer-term savings. Unstable currencies you gen…

> Because it loses value slowly enough.

Yes, I agree and stated as such in my post.

My point is that I don't think you're pointing out a fundamental flaw in bitcoin. Deflation in a currency is not a deal breaker. Bitcoin is volatile right now because it is so young. People are predicting it will reach a huge market capitalization, which would necessarily entail a huge USD price per bitcoin because there are so incredibly few bitcoins in comparison to USD. Anytime something is increasing in value there will be considerable gambling and speculation to come along with it as random people jump on and off the train repeatedly.

What bitcoin really needs is a unique and innovative service which could not exist without it. This would encourage people to hold a small balance in bitcoin which they would be willing to spend in order to enable participation in this service not otherwise possible. As the currency stabilizes and more and more use cases emerge, people will slowly but steadily become more comfortable holding larger balances in bitcoin.

Re: Virgin Galactic to accept Bitcoin [video]

#48

Post by nilkn »

dragonwriter wrote: post #44
nilkn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty dumb to actually spend bitcoins if you could just hold onto them A similar question can be asked about USD: why would you ever save it instead of spending it immediately, since it's only going to lose value over time due to inflation? Of course, the difference right now is that the deflation rate in bitcoin is much higher than the inflation rate in USD. But clearly, if bitcoin ever becomes a major curre…

> A similar question can be asked about USD: why would you ever save it instead of spending it immediately, since it's only going to lose value over time due to inflation? Except for relatively small amounts for liquidity for known or potential immediate needs, it doesn't make sense to hold US dollars (or any other modern fiat currency), it makes a lot more sense to invest them in productive assets which can be conve…

> What motivation to save USD?

Seriously? How about buying a house? Buying a car? Going to college? Going on vacation? ... Most people cannot save up enough for these things overnight, and they aren't going to put their downpayment savings fund into stocks because it's not worth the risk of losing it for them.

Re: Virgin Galactic to accept Bitcoin [video]

#49

Post by [deleted] »

gabemart wrote: post #26
fat0wl wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah the fact that the Bitcoin scam is spreading raises eyebrows. Companies want to accept it to sound futuristic but they should really be shutting it down. Notice how none of the tech-giants want to get involved with it. Bitcoin isn't for the technologically advanced who are "being rewarded for being sooooo smart and adopting early", it's a scammer platform. I heard a suggestion for a gold-backed digital currency o…

In case you haven't heard of it before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold

[deleted]

Re: Virgin Galactic to accept Bitcoin [video]

#50

Post by JumpCrisscross »

drewblaisdell wrote: post #29
scott_meade wrote: post #6

"she paid in bitcoin, which was transferred into actual dollars "so there's a fixed price ... [and] we can actually pay her money back, if she changes her mind" Seems no different than if the buyer had sold her Bitcoin and paid Virgin Galactic in cash. The real trick will be when they can accept Bitcoin, keep the Bitcoin, and make any refunds and adjustments in Bitcoin.

> Seems no different than if the buyer had sold her Bitcoin and paid Virgin Galactic in cash. I'm not sure if this differs for six-figure transactions, but transacting fiat currency generally costs a vendor ~3%. Receiving bitcoins and immediately converting them back to USD/GBP can be done for less than one percent of the amount of the transaction.

> transacting fiat currency generally costs a vendor ~3%

1. Bitcoin is no less a fiat currency than the U.S. dollar or Japanese yen.

2. For small retail transactions, yes, 3% seems right. Larger transactions, however, are generally done by wire. These transfers carry a fixed fee and are generally a very small percentage of the transaction value.

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