Happy Birthday Bitcoin!
- Thread starter lukep
- Start date
or maybe some CryptoPal buttons where the buyer will be able to pay with one of the 50 top digital currencies
Other digital currencies: Completely irrelevant. Bitcoin has the network effect going for it and can assimilate the best traits of all others. There will never be another with mass appeal.
If you ever feel like buying a non-bitcoin digital currency outside of your favorite video game, read this first: The Problem with Altcoins
If you ever feel like buying a non-bitcoin digital currency outside of your favorite video game, read this first: The Problem with Altcoins
lukep I admire your confidence in bitcoin, I can only wish I was that confident about every investment but do you seriously think world governments can't severely push down the value of bitcoin and destabilize it simply by outlawing it? It's not an entirely new concept the UN has passed numerous resolutions against countries like Iran, Liberia, North Korea, etc that has put severe limitations on their currency and banking. It's not too far from outlawing bitcoin to the point where the only people who would legally be allowed to buy/sell/exchange it are rouge money transfer agents in Tehran or Pyongyang (inb4 HBWA Cash4Coins offer). I know the whole point of bitcoin is that it's decentralized and outside the reach of government but if it was outlawed do you seriously think any profit seeking individual/corporation such as coinbase, bitpay, or Mt.Gox would risk jail time or decide to move to a OFAC sanctioned country such as Sudan or Cuba just so they can buy/sell/exchange bitcoin?
i learned that lesson the hard way with Neteller back in the mid 2000s. the US doesn't bother with legal basis before they come in and wreck what they want to wreck.
The huge majority of chargebacks are fraud. I have 3 personal credit cards and 2 company credit cards and I've only filed 1 legitimate chargeback in my entire life (when I was 18 and in college, I got drunk at a party and lost my wallet, and someone bought a TV on one of my cards). As a merchant, every chargeback I've ever received has been fraudulent. Sure, without the ability to file chargebacks, some people will be purchasing less, however these people are parasites who do nothing to help the economy or the country anyway. All they do is hurt the economy by causing businesses to waste time/money/effort dealing with disputes that could have been better spent producing value elsewhere.
My speculation: Buy tons of Ripple when it first becomes available, watch it every day and sell it off fast. It will rapidly blow up when the public bandwagon hops on it for the "google" name, and then when they realize it sucks and they have to link their google+ accounts and phone numbers and shit with it, it will disappear.
This is the part I'm unsure about. If bitcoin becomes extremely mainstream and takes over, I doubt we're going to run on a single currency forever. People like to flock to "the new cool thing" whether it actually provides any new value or not. Whichever currency is marketed better will be the one that dominates.
I look at it like this - Facebook sucks. Myspace has more features, it's easier to use, and they don't invade your privacy or sell your information anywhere near as much. But Facebook took over, simply because it was marketed as a cool new exclusive thing. When dealing with "the general public," they don't make rational/intelligent decisions or predictions like we do when we're speculating about investments. They just do stuff. I believe that if bitcoin really does become as huge as you think it will, there will surely be at least one other crypto very close behind it.
lol.
How you look at it is irrelevant. You can't redefine volatility to support your opinion. A positive drift does not reflect only positive returns in every period. Standard deviation isn't up to your interpretation lol. Calling collapses to 1/4 prior value, "blips" doesn't make them any less relevant. BTC is extremely volatile, with both extremely positive and negative movements. It does have a positive drift, but again so do the S&P 500 and NASDAQ Composite. Would you say these indexes have no negative volatility simply because they have a generally positive drift? Nonsense.
Because of the extreme volatility BTC holds no unit of account yet. That will need to occur before it can be accepted as truly viable currency. Do you purchase anything with BTC without first considering the current exchange rate and evaluating the cost in dollars (or another more stable currency)? At this time BTC trading is highly speculative because a huge portion of individuals are viewing it as an investment rather than a liquid currency. If anything this extreme volatility exposes the underlying lack of liquidity of BTC.
A currency needs to be stable in the short-term, and relatively predictable in the long-term, to be viable as a store of value. BTC can not act as a reliable store of value until the magnitude of volatility drops significantly. Unless you borrow LukeP's time machine there is no way of accurately predicting the purchasing power of BTC even in the near term. It could easily be worth double or half current value in a week.
Scarcity alone doesn't make something valuable, especially in cyberspace realms. Myself, Walmart, the Federal Reserve, or an 8th grader could all potentially create unique 1, 100, or whatever unit virtual coins or virtual unicorns.
I don't mind if Bitcoin has increased success, and actually a few years ago I owned a decent domain related to it, but it does sound like cultish fanaticism to say it's more important than things like anti-gravity, lol.
Some people fanatically warn about the US dollar losing intrinsic value because of being taken off the gold standard, but then some of these same people turn around and spread the gospel about how a virtual thingamagig is going to save the planet.
The growth though is mainly due to speculation, not currency usage.
Some were saying the same type of thing in response to warnings in the 90s about baseball cards, beanie babies, and comic books.
260+ now bros. betta get em with $ or free like https://twitter.com/igl00FTW/status/397884754055675904
$300 discuss.
Watching the chat on btc-e.com is hilarious.
New world order declared everyone. It's serious.
Watching the chat on btc-e.com is hilarious.
New world order declared everyone. It's serious.
“With the extension of traffic in space and with the expansion over ever longer intervals of time of provision for satisfying material needs, each individual would learn, from his own economic interests, to take good heed that he bartered his less saleable goods for those special commodities which displayed, beside the attraction of being highly saleable in the particular locality, a wide range of saleableness both in time and place. These wares would be qualified by their costliness, easy transportability, and fitness for preservation… to ensure to the possessor a power, not only “here” and “now” but as nearly as possible unlimited in space and time generally, over all other market goods – Carl Menger, 1892″
The answer to the volatility problem when BTC eventually trades at a price high enough where rises and drops won't represent a significant % of the total.
You are right but this seems to be changing.
Already a Silk Road clone dropped today, if it does the $1,000,000,000 in sales its predecessor did then thats a significant market risen from the grave.
China is jumping on the bandwagon which I think was why it started hitting $200.
It is interesting that you're equating holding currency as a store of value.
Holding something like silver and gold is a store of value.
Holding onto USD or any printed paper money is pretty much a long-term guaranteed loss.
You are right but this seems to be changing.
Already a Silk Road clone dropped today, if it does the $1,000,000,000 in sales its predecessor did then thats a significant market risen from the grave.
China is jumping on the bandwagon which I think was why it started hitting $200.
It is interesting that you're equating holding currency as a store of value.
Holding something like silver and gold is a store of value.
Holding onto USD or any printed paper money is pretty much a long-term guaranteed loss.
Exactly, its a lot easier to move a $3-$4 billion money stock than a $300-$400 billion money stock (or more). Even who thinks volatility is going to kill bitcoin doesn't understand that there is no other way this could happen. You don't get from worthless to a trillion dollars without some ups and downs.
I wouldn't consider it a hurdle, it's a slog.
I look at BTC more like a boulder at the bottom of a large hill. It seems in the past couple years more and more people are pushing the boulder to the top of the hill.
I come on WF, people are talking about bitcoins.
I go to the office, people are talking about bitcoins (this was really surprising at first).
What happens when the boulder gets to the top of the hill is what's going to be the most interesting.
It doesn't matter how many people are talking about it if you can't pay your taxes with it (legal tender). At the end of the day, that's the clincher.
Shit, tons of people were talking about gold and silver the last 9 years. They aren't any closer to being "money" than Bitcoin is.
As a speculation, Bitcoin is a little exciting because it's crazy volatile.
But no one doing anything legal (where they have to file and pay taxes) is doing business exclusively in Bitcoins. And before someone comes back at me about this, think about it real hard.
Shit, tons of people were talking about gold and silver the last 9 years. They aren't any closer to being "money" than Bitcoin is.
As a speculation, Bitcoin is a little exciting because it's crazy volatile.
But no one doing anything legal (where they have to file and pay taxes) is doing business exclusively in Bitcoins. And before someone comes back at me about this, think about it real hard.