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Bitcoin breaks $200

coinbase.com

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Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#91

Post by jaggederest »

mrb wrote: post #80
ap22213 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not surprising that it's rising in value. People are holding on to ~12M coins (worth approx. $2.4B) and are hyping it up so that more people buy them. The more people that buy them, the more the price will go up, the more that they'll be worth, the more that people will buy them....

Ah, the old and false "holding" argument. 2 million coins have changed hands in the last 30 days: http://bitcoinity.org/markets/list?currency=ALL&span=30d And that is just on these exchanges, not even counting other places of exchanges (coinbase which is probably the 2nd largest coins seller in the US), or purchases (Bitpay signed up 10 thousand vendors!), etc. If this rate is kept, the entire existent volume of bitc…

> It doesn't matter if it is 1 coin changing hands 12 million times, or 12 million coins changing hands one time each. Volume is volume.

Correct

> And it proves that not that many coins are being hoarded.

False. There's nothing in what you said to give any logical or empirical evidence that coins aren't being hoarded.

You'd be better off making the argument that it doesn't matter that they're being hoarded because the market is still liquid.

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#94

Post by Datsundere »

I tried to buy bitcoins when they were $60. I look for sites that would sell me bitcoins for USD. It was so hard and the ways to buy them were so damn complicated. I had to sign up for a 3rd party site to import bitcoin to mtgox. The 3rd party site needed me to upload my personal identity information to verify my bank account. I was ready to do that as well, except they said it'd take 10+ days to verify. Also someone explain to me how that is anonymous when they have all my information if I had uploaded my driver's license and my bank account information.

I got frustrated and just stopped looking to buy bitcoins. I was aware of irc channels too but I just don't trust them. And then there was money gram, what the actual fuck, the fees were so high. I could buy them, if I send my money to an account in a foreign bank in japan. Such bullshit. And this fluctuating price isn't very impressive either.

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#95

Post by notahacker »

meowface wrote: post #60
TylerE wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That looks very similar to this one: http://www.ecotao.com/holism/add/enron/Enron_whole.jpg If you look at it up to about end-of-year 2000.

The difference though is that Enron insiders were engaging in immoral and illegal activities. Bitcoin on the other hand is provably not a scam; it is an existing and backed commodity. Market manipulation as an insider is impossible, as there are no insiders; manipulation is only possible by attacking infrastructure or accumulating enough BTC. Future bubbles and crashes are likely, but I predict it's going to continue…

It's not backed[1], and it's not a commodity. It's a collection of bytes that has value because a small minority of them are being accepted in exchange for real products, and at present a much larger number of speculators are willing to bet on more people wanting them in future. And as you've pointed out yourself, there are two very obvious and likely future scenarios in which it would become very difficult to buy anything with BTC.

[1]The "mining" is a clever hack against crashes in that it makes speculators reluctant to divest their BTC holdings for less than they've spent acquiring the BTC. But if you can't reliably convert the BTC back to GPU time (assuming you actually wanted it) it's still intrinsically worthless.

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#96

Post by dan1234 »

ksrm wrote: post #92

So is there a good exchange for UK people that doesn't require ridiculous amounts of identification like mt.gox?

It's not an exchange (more of an escrow), and I've not used it but https://bitbargain.co.uk looks OK. They make the right noises regarding security and the prices seem reasonable.

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#97

Post by jaekwon »

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #72

Who wants to talk about china? Over the last few days the volume of transactions on btcchina has doubled. Gov run chinese media outlets have been surprisingly positive about btc. What is going on? One of the potential uses of btc is capital flight, and that is something that china has been incredibly strict about with their capital controls. Why aren't they clamping down? edit: some commentary from someone in china f…

Speculating, that China has more to gain from Bitcoin adoption than not.

* The Bitcoin mining industry is based on Chinese manufacturers (AFAIK... I'm no expert on mining).

* Bitcoin is a honey badger. Might as well accept it sooner than later.

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#98

Post by JulianMorrison »

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #72

Who wants to talk about china? Over the last few days the volume of transactions on btcchina has doubled. Gov run chinese media outlets have been surprisingly positive about btc. What is going on? One of the potential uses of btc is capital flight, and that is something that china has been incredibly strict about with their capital controls. Why aren't they clamping down? edit: some commentary from someone in china f…

I wonder if it's because they anticipate capital flight - from America, and the dollar. They would dearly love a de-dollar-ized world.

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#99

Post by nazgulnarsil »

betterunix wrote: post #41
zachlatta wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will only ever be 21 million bitcoins. I recommend giving http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin a read.

Nothing stops anyone from making their own personal variant of Bitcoin, however. Or 10 of those variants. Or a million. In other words, the limit applies only within a single system, and there is no limit on the number of such systems.

Winner seems to take all so far in terms of network hash rate. No alt-coin has anywhere near the security that BTC does.

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#100

Post by tslathrow »

_3u10 wrote: post #75
csomar wrote: post #36

If anything to like about Bitcoin is that it has proved that almost everyone else is wrong. * SilkRoad shutting down? Bitcoin is doomed. * Mt.gox is not paying in time or at all? Bitcoin doesn't work. * Asics? There will be a flood of new coins. And yet Bitcoin value continue to raise. If history repeats itself, we should see 1 Bitcoin levels at around $2,000. I think Bitcoin is an interesting phenomena to watch. Bei…

> And yet Bitcoin value continue to raise. If history repeats itself, we should see 1 Bitcoin levels at around $2,000. It's 2007 I have a house I bought for $300,000 which is now worth $600,000, would you like to buy my house and in two years you will make another $600,000? If there's one thing about real estate in the last 10 years it's that it's proven all those naysayers like Shiller wrong.

I'm not sure we've waiting long enough for Shiller to be proved correct.

If monetary policy wasn't blowing the roof out on equity valuations, we'd be seeing mean-reversion as we should.

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