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Novogratz Halts Hedge Fund, Says Bitcoin May Drop to $8,000

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Re: Novogratz Halts Hedge Fund, Says Bitcoin May Drop to $8,000

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin never got hacked, unsecure middlemen did (or pretended to have been)

My entire wallet was stolen [i] -- all that hard work. But that is great news Bitcoin never got hacked -- I got nervous there. /sarcasm http://www.cryptsysettlement.com/ [i]

Cryptsy was a middleman, he specifically covered this case. Bitcoin never got hacked.

Re: Novogratz Halts Hedge Fund, Says Bitcoin May Drop to $8,000

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin never got hacked, unsecure middlemen did (or pretended to have been)

My entire wallet was stolen [i] -- all that hard work. But that is great news Bitcoin never got hacked -- I got nervous there. /sarcasm http://www.cryptsysettlement.com/ [i]

I'm sorry you lost funds but there is a finer point separating the bitcoin network and the bitcoin protocol and an exchange losing their funds.

Re: Novogratz Halts Hedge Fund, Says Bitcoin May Drop to $8,000

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's too technical to be used casually In casual use with your mobile phone, you are shown a QR code, scan it, tap "OK", and it's done. Not that technical. Billions of people with smartphones could handle that perfectly. You're right about transactions being slow and expensive, and that is certainly a much bigger problem. That and the fact that there are still very few places accepting it.

> That and the fact that there are still very few places accepting it. This is one thing I don’t get. In countries like China and India (to name the two countries I know about) mobile payment apps are ubiquitous. You go in to a shop, scan a QR code, and boom your payment is done. This is what crytocurrencies promised, but instead more closed apps came to fill the market. What happened?

I doubt it's about the government like another poster mentioned. Cash works great to subvert the government and that's exactly what a lot of little shops do. It's probably because as a merchant:

1. You don't want to _ever_ wait 45 minutes for a transaction to potentially be confirmed on the blockchain. Even before the recent craziness and high fees this would sometimes happen.

2. The price fluctuates wildly. Pretty hard to reason properly about whether or not you'll be able to pay your employees this week if your "store of value" could drop 20% or more at a moment's notice.

3. The fees charged by exchanges to convert to fiat are exorbitant. Unless all of your suppliers and handymen take Bitcoin, you will get screwed by this on the regular.

The bulls usually scream "Lightning network, scaling, store of value" or some other nonsense, but the truth is, today Bitcoin is garbage as an actual currency.

Re: Novogratz Halts Hedge Fund, Says Bitcoin May Drop to $8,000

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People always forget to include future innovations in their projections. It's as if they don't believe (or know) that software can rapidly improve. And you posted that comment while driving your flying car on your way to alpha centauri, right? Foolosh cargo cult beliefs such as the ones you've illustrated do not serve as any basis to make investment decisions.

Everyone thought Netflix was a useless mail-order DVD company until it dominated streaming video. Everyone thought Amazon would never make a profit until it revealed the profit monster that is AWS. No one can predict the future, all you can do is take the information you have available today and come to your own conclusion. If you don't understand the implications of cryptocurrency on society and money, then that's y…

If "everyone" though Netflix was "useless", then its win came out of the blue. Meanwhile you're trying to argue that the current hype around Bitcoin is justified because of something that _might_ happen in the future. There were a lot of massively over-hyped Internet companies too. They _could_ have developed technology and a big business. But the opposite happened - they went bankrupt.

Re: Novogratz Halts Hedge Fund, Says Bitcoin May Drop to $8,000

#76

It could also go back to $100. Bitcoin has no mainstream use right now. It's too expensive to transact in terms of money and time, it's too volatile to be a store of value, it's too technical to be used casually, it's too fragile since it gets hacked every which way, and it's too easily copied to be rare.

And yet it moves

Re: Novogratz Halts Hedge Fund, Says Bitcoin May Drop to $8,000

#77

It could also go back to $100. Bitcoin has no mainstream use right now. It's too expensive to transact in terms of money and time, it's too volatile to be a store of value, it's too technical to be used casually, it's too fragile since it gets hacked every which way, and it's too easily copied to be rare.

[deleted]

Re: Novogratz Halts Hedge Fund, Says Bitcoin May Drop to $8,000

#78
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Being hacked every which way Do you want to clarify this? If you meant what I think you meant, you're incorrect.

I assume he meant people have had their coins stolen, usually from exchanges, really not much different than your bank getting robbed, although in this cause your money is gone and the exchange doesn't cover the theft.

There is no FDIC for Bitcoin exchanges. Also a distressingly large percentage of the exchanges to date have been either fraudulently or incompetently run and lost the user's bitcoibs and/or fiat money.

Nobody would use banks if 4 out of 5 were completely cleaned out by crooks and went out of business.

Re: Novogratz Halts Hedge Fund, Says Bitcoin May Drop to $8,000

#79

It could also go back to $100. Bitcoin has no mainstream use right now. It's too expensive to transact in terms of money and time, it's too volatile to be a store of value, it's too technical to be used casually, it's too fragile since it gets hacked every which way, and it's too easily copied to be rare.

>it's too easily copied to be rare

What do you mean by this?

Re: Novogratz Halts Hedge Fund, Says Bitcoin May Drop to $8,000

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That and the fact that there are still very few places accepting it. This is one thing I don’t get. In countries like China and India (to name the two countries I know about) mobile payment apps are ubiquitous. You go in to a shop, scan a QR code, and boom your payment is done. This is what crytocurrencies promised, but instead more closed apps came to fill the market. What happened?

All these apps give the government more control, that is why their use is encouraged. Bitcoin "as app" (once or if it works) will be more like cash payments, privacy wise. That is were I see the main advantage. I find it spooky what Visa and Mastercard now about all of us... at least about me.

[deleted]
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