Bitcoins at $75

Actual thoughts on bitcoin

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Same luck here...

Can anyone recommend a good alternative? Ideally has the same type of features as coinbase.
Nix that. Maan, still a total noob with all this, but maybe the best way to go is to just follow the instructions here , download/create your own wallet, then only use services like BitInstant + Mt Gox to do all the buying/selling using your own pc/wallet. No real need for services like coinbase. Still learning...:Yahoo_29:
 
Not to derail this thread, but someone in here (can't remember who) made a similar post about this concept of not wanting to spend Bitcoins that made me question my Austrian Economic stance.

So if inflation wasn't happening right now (thanks to QE17 and whatever else is up their sleeve) then people would be hoarding money instead of spending it right? (Similar to what is going on with Bitcoins)

So that in turn would cause the economy to halt, which wouldn't necessarily be a good thing (I suppose this is where the debate is). Just trying to sort that out.
No. No, no, no, no, no.

First, none of what you posted has anything to do with AE as far as I can tell.

Second, people don't know what reason different people have Bitcoins. Hoarding is a very loaded word economically.

Third, inflation doesn't cause people to spend money. It incentivizes people to increase the velocity of money in order to save purchasing power.

People spend money in a deflationary environment (eg. the first 100 years of the US) just fine.

The notion of the economy halting is, I dunno, but it doesn't make any sense to me.
 
Not to derail this thread, but someone in here (can't remember who) made a similar post about this concept of not wanting to spend Bitcoins that made me question my Austrian Economic stance.

So if inflation wasn't happening right now (thanks to QE17 and whatever else is up their sleeve) then people would be hoarding money instead of spending it right? (Similar to what is going on with Bitcoins)

So that in turn would cause the economy to halt, which wouldn't necessarily be a good thing (I suppose this is where the debate is). Just trying to sort that out.

Ya I'm the one who has brought this up a few times in various threads. A deflating currency is not good for economic growth and innovation. This is why some economists consider mild controlled inflation a good thing. I don't think anyone agrees that inflation over 3% a year is a good thing though so QE is probably not good because high inflation is also bad for economies.

Before people start hating on me realize I don't necessarily agree with what these economists say.

The reasoning behind thinking that mild controlled inflation is good for economies and innovation is that economies grow faster when credit is available to businesses. It's hard to get a new idea off the ground if nobody is there to help you get started with a loan. Well, if the currency itself is a good investment then less people would take risks giving out loans with their money. We saw in 2008 what happens when there is less credit available to businesses.

Mild controlled inflation is a social policy that takes wealth from hoarders and makes them invest it in the economy. If they don't invest it they lose wealth by sitting on their money. It also forces the ultra rich (Rockefellers, Rothschilds) to stay on their game or eventually they lose power/influence. Once again I don't necessarily agree that this is the right thing to do.

If you look at inflation/deflation not just as a change in money supply but more like a change in money supply per amount of humans that use it on earth then you'll see why gold, if used as a currency, will almost definitely deflate. Because gold is getting harder and harder to get, and the population is continually increasing. It is also consumed in some industrial purposes. As more people use BTC it will also deflate heavily.

inb4 Guerrilla lobs a nuke at me
 
I smell a crash around the corner.
With all the people obviously hoarding, I don't see how bad that crash could be. I'm sure there'll be a correction of some kind, but even 50% down seems totally unlikely to me right now... And I certainly wouldn't sell a coin on the way down... I'd just be happy I could afford more when it gets to bottom.


DO I BUY BITCOINS?!?!?
Depends on who's argument you believe. I'm buying.


im just going to chalk this up as an opportunity missed. Too risky for my standards to jump in and buy now
Even if the room in the global markets for bitcoin is likely to be 13,000 times higher than $75?


Yes and BTC went up to to $14 after the wired article and ended up closer to $24 after all the associated silk road press.
And yet came back down to $3 after all the silk road press was done. The lowest point AFTER silk road's press came out was the best indication we have of the size of the Upside of the black market.


To say that black market dealings is last place is ignorant. That's only accounting for drugs, let's think about the weapons markets and money laundering as well.
1. There is no weapons market on the silk road. None. Their spin-off site to the silk road made only for weapons fell apart in 6 months flat.

2. Money Laundering now means "Move your cash into bitcoin." There are even services to "launder bitcoin" online making it truly impossible to trace where the source of your bitcoin came from. Truly disruptive tech, that.

3. The number of Monetary refugees in Europe alone vastly outnumbers the people trying to use the black market. You can clearly see upticks in bitcoin's price that coincide with these monetary events, just like Cyprus.

4. Those who really paid attention to the Election season of 2012 can tell you without a trace of doubt that the number of liberty-minded folk on this planet are not a minority of any kind. Given that, keep in mind that the polling taken of bitcoin users are quite clear that this demo makes up the largest # of BTC adopters.


So if inflation wasn't happening right now (thanks to QE17 and whatever else is up their sleeve) then people would be hoarding money instead of spending it right? (Similar to what is going on with Bitcoins)
There would still be no reason for people to be attracted to USD if Bernanke wasn't throwing it out of helicopters. It would not be similar at all. (No correlation.)


Can anyone recommend a good alternative? Ideally has the same type of features as coinbase.
This subject is going to be the next post on my blog... But a quick list is:

Aurumxchange.com
Bitinstant.com
Bitstamp.net
OKPay.com

A more complete list is here.



The only thing I would seriously worry about is if someone were to replicate the 'bitcoin'.. as a competitor. Wouldn't that screw everything up?
No.

Devcoin, Litecoin, Solidcoin, Ixcoin, PPCoin, & Terracoin are all trying but they've run into a real problem; These technologies all need miners to keep the currency safe and flowing, but these miners are all mining bitcoin... And that's not only more profitable for them to do, but they are personally invested in hardware that doesn't work with all of those other technologies!

The coin with the most processing power behind it is always going to be the one, safe coin. It would take decades to change from one coin over to another.


SR has grown exponentially. Me thinks the ease of use for illicit activities is one of the main reasons for it's usage and growth.
See my answers to tencentpeice above. I just can't agree at all.
 
No. No, no, no, no, no.

First, none of what you posted has anything to do with AE as far as I can tell.

Second, people don't know what reason different people have Bitcoins. Hoarding is a very loaded word economically.

Third, inflation doesn't cause people to spend money. It incentivizes people to increase the velocity of money in order to save purchasing power.

People spend money in a deflationary environment (eg. the first 100 years of the US) just fine.

The notion of the economy halting is, I dunno, but it doesn't make any sense to me.

When I brought up AE, I was talking about economics in more holistic/abstract terms which probably was not communicated well on my part.

What I meant was that if people think the value/purchasing power of their money will increase (as is happening with Bitcoin and assuming it was our normal currency), they are more likely to hold onto the money/currency as an investment, instead of spending, which would slow down the velocity of money.

Also I'm trying to understand why would people still spend in a deflationary period. I suppose if they have to for necessities, but why invest in somewhere with risk like a business or other areas if they can just wait for their dollar value to increase? I guess if they thought they could beat the value of deflation by investing somewhere else it would make sense.

I'm not questioning your statements, just trying to understand it a bit more. I agree with most of AE, but I'm always curious. Hope that was explained a bit better.
 
So as energy/power becomes more expensive (scarce?), bitcoins would become more valuable and bitcoin mining would become more profitable?

I'm curious to learn why it's impossible to counterfeit a bitcoin... I know it is discussed it linked to in one of these threads, ill find it when I'm not on my phone.

The fact that bitcoins are already so 'in-place' makes me truly believe that it could be revolutionary. At the very least... It will cause a LOT of ruckus.
 
So as energy/power becomes more expensive (scarce?), bitcoins would become more valuable and bitcoin mining would become more profitable?

I'm curious to learn why it's impossible to counterfeit a bitcoin... I know it is discussed it linked to in one of these threads, ill find it when I'm not on my phone.

The fact that bitcoins are already so 'in-place' makes me truly believe that it could be revolutionary. At the very least... It will cause a LOT of ruckus.

From what my understanding is, all nodes see all transactions and because of that, it's impossible to see.
 

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The only winners will be Avalon and whoever has acquired BTC on the cheap.
There's also the arbitrage guys.


It's the whole exchanging USD for BTC thing that gets me. It makes them expensive tokens which have no value in themselves. I want BTC not BTC pinned to the USD.
That's temporary. Their marketshare is growing incredibly... Over 250 Million USD has been NET transferred into BTC this week alone.

BTC will find it's marketshare and level out, because arbitragers are growing in strength and services that only take BTC are popping up in greater numbers every day. -At some point the people will trade it for services without quoting USD anymore, because it'll be pretty steady. (But still always deflating, since more ppl will use the same amount of coins forever.)


That's why I'm excited about these ASICs. I don't want to buy BTC, I want to mine it and keep it as BTC. I might sell some to cover the costs, but probably not.
I'm right there with you bro.


I have an order in for the 30 GH/S ASIC from Butterfly Labs. I'm not really worried about when they will deliver, but I'm hoping for July or August.

Despite what people say, they seem legit enough though I've been surprised before. The biggest risk seems to be actually receiving a working machine that does what they claim. That's another reasons I don't mind waiting. Hopefully, I'll get a less buggy ACIS.
Why doesn't anyone get in a freaking car and drive to Leawood, KS to see their operation for themselves?

It really sucks that this is all happening after I moved out of there... The BFL office was like 4 miles from my old apartment! ...So I had a friend who still lives there drive by and tell me what they saw: They said it looked legit, with a nice big sign on the front and lots of cars in the parking lot.

Still, can't be sure if that's just a front... If I were you I'd go there and find out personally.


I'm happy to have 50-100 BTC whatever the exchange rate is, but if I had to guess I expect we'll see it soar as high as 150-300 USD, but then come back down to 30-50 USD or less. That's total guess work. I have no fucking idea.
Not bad though; sounds legit. -I'd just amend that with the fact that there is a larger future for bitcoin after that cycle plays out.


No surprises in the content here, but I find it a little surprising that the gubmint responded to the existence of bitcoin at all... They should be denying its' existence as complete policy... Oops. More legitimacy for the good guys.

What I'm actually hoping for is for a congressman or obomba to directly condemn a legit merchant or someone that takes Bitcoin for the sake of taking bitcoin, therefore creating a Streisand effect. They probably aren't that dumb, but it's happened in the government before on other subjects.
 
I then tried to acquire some acid on the silk road around the time of that Wired article, but they wanted like 3-5 BTC a tab when the exchange rate was 1 BTC to 10 USD. :disgust:http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/how-washington-plans-to-regulate-your-bitcoins-20130321
SR was screwed up around the time of that article, because BTC was rapidly rising. Shortly afterwards, they changed it so you set your price in dollars, and it's automatically adjusted to the current BTC price, so now it's reasonable (although not for weed, weed's a fucking ripoff, unless you catch a seller when they're just starting out)

I wouldn't touch bitcoin at the moment, except very briefly, for specific transactions. It's an incredibly risky investment. Could shoot up, for sure, or could come crashing down.

I remember when it was $0.60 and these threads were getting posted:

http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-shit/119509-how-access-hidden-wiki-deep-web-secret-internet.html (got my SR account immediately after seeing that, I think I'm in the first 1000 user ids)

http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-shit/125828-silk-road-bitcoins-buy-drugs-online.html
 
This subject is going to be the next post on my blog... But a quick list is:

Aurumxchange.com
Bitinstant.com
Bitstamp.net
OKPay.com

A more complete list is here.
Thx. btw, was Mt Gox left out on purpose?

I wouldn't touch bitcoin at the moment, except very briefly, for specific transactions. It's an incredibly risky investment. Could shoot up, for sure, or could come crashing down.
It's risky for sure. I kinda liken this to the penny stock craze. You'd only wanna invest maybe 5% (10% at the most) in speculative products in your investment portfolio. Money you can afford to lose, but the payoff potential could be great. At least until bitcoin stabilizes and/or is being used more widely, wouldn't go batshit crazy and put it all on the line.
 
Thx. btw, was Mt Gox left out on purpose?
These aren't currency exchanges. MtGox would use one of these to upload your dollars first onto their site (Still in the original currency) before it exchanged them.

These may have currency exchange properties, but you'll notice the lack of charts on these sites... They specialize in turning cash in your hand into BTC asap.
 
I heard some guy bought a pizza for 10,000 bitcoins when they were worthless. I bet he regrets that...
 
Thx. btw, was Mt Gox left out on purpose?


It's risky for sure. I kinda liken this to the penny stock craze. You'd only wanna invest maybe 5% (10% at the most) in speculative products in your investment portfolio. Money you can afford to lose, but the payoff potential could be great. At least until bitcoin stabilizes and/or is being used more widely, wouldn't go batshit crazy and put it all on the line.
Agreed. :) Although, see where it goes. I think at $70 (mtgox average price) it's worth putting a reasonable amount in until $80 (maybe $85), but that's as much as I'd go, except maybe if you do 5%. (5% is fine providing you monitor and don't get too attached to cut your losses)
 
And yet came back down to $3 after all the silk road press was done. The lowest point AFTER silk road's press came out was the best indication we have of the size of the Upside of the black market.

The problem with your argument is that the number of bitcoins is extremely fluid, when the BTC:USD goes up, the incentive to mine also goes up. Looking at the price of bitcoins tells you nothing about the size of the silk road market, you need to see the amount of USD exchanged to get a clear indication (as all the dealers have their prices fixed to USD, not to BTC).

I don't think it's unreasonable to think that after the silk road press, the number of people mining also increased. I also don't think it's unreasonable to think that the number of speculators also increased which lead to a crash back to the $3 level.

You still have no idea how much is being exchanged on that market place.

1. There is no weapons market on the silk road. None. Their spin-off site to the silk road made only for weapons fell apart in 6 months flat.

Yes, because the silk road is the only BTC illegal market place.

2. Money Laundering now means "Move your cash into bitcoin." There are even services to "launder bitcoin" online making it truly impossible to trace where the source of your bitcoin came from. Truly disruptive tech, that.

Exactly and once it's been laundered, it's easy to convert it back to USD or any other currency and claim it as mined/any other BTC source.

3. The number of Monetary refugees in Europe alone vastly outnumbers the people trying to use the black market. You can clearly see upticks in bitcoin's price that coincide with these monetary events, just like Cyprus.

Obviously people permanently putting currency in BTC is going to cause an uptick, that doesn't mean the majority of volume isn't in the black market.

The spikes are going to be large at the moment because the total value of BTC compared to other foreign markets is relatively low (e.g for an uptick in the AUD it's going to need to be around 100x the size as it would need to be for BTC).


Now somewhere tell me where I can short BTC so when the inevitable crash comes I can bank.

It's such a surprise that the majority of the people in here hyping up BTC are the same people that were hyping up gold and silver when they were $1750/$34.
 
When I brought up AE, I was talking about economics in more holistic/abstract terms which probably was not communicated well on my part.

...

I'm not questioning your statements, just trying to understand it a bit more. I agree with most of AE, but I'm always curious. Hope that was explained a bit better.
My first response was meaner, but I deleted it because I didn't want to turn you off. I get it. You want to understand. That's admirable.

What I meant was that if people think the value/purchasing power of their money will increase (as is happening with Bitcoin and assuming it was our normal currency), they are more likely to hold onto the money/currency as an investment, instead of spending, which would slow down the velocity of money.
The velocity of money is elastic. It's not meant to be a constant, or at a particular rate. This is why we have markets. When people [sic] "hoard" then prices fall. When people spend, prices will rise again as inventories are depleted.

After some time, production will rise to meet the increased economic activity and prices will begin to fall again.

Think of prices in a free market economy as following a sine wave type pattern.

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Also I'm trying to understand why would people still spend in a deflationary period. I suppose if they have to for necessities, but why invest in somewhere with risk like a business or other areas if they can just wait for their dollar value to increase? I guess if they thought they could beat the value of deflation by investing somewhere else it would make sense.
Because their purchasing power is increasing.

Try to look at economics like it's a seesaw.

When there is deflation, interest rates fall. People are incentivized to spend their savings because their savings are earning smaller returns.

When there is inflation, interest rates rise. People are incentivized to save. This pulls money out of the economy (puts breaks on velocity) which cools things off.

Now, where this is upside down is that the current statist economy has fixed interest rates by the central bank. So even though we may be in a deflationary period, the central bank maintains a low interest rate policy, showering the economy with new money and credit. In fact, the US Gov has been fixing interest rates at a very low (non-market) rate for 40 years, with a brief period where they fixed them high in the early 80s to drain inflation out of the economy.

The current economy, to anyone who understands classical or Austrian school economics, is horribly distorted from a free model right now. What we see is a Frankenstein economy where up is down and down is up.

Also I'm trying to understand why would people still spend in a deflationary period. I suppose if they have to for necessities, but why invest in somewhere with risk like a business or other areas if they can just wait for their dollar value to increase? I guess if they thought they could beat the value of deflation by investing somewhere else it would make sense.
Because interest rates fall in a deflationary period. When everyone saves, the supply of money for loans increases, which lowers the price of borrowing money.

This means more people spend than save, because their interest earnings aren't there. Conversely, when there is high inflation and everyone is spending, there is little money for loans, and the price of borrowing money (interest rate) will rise, as people compete for loanable funds.

This stuff about hoarding is based on a fallacious notion of how people act economically. The empirical evidence doesn't support it. Economic theory doesn't support it.

hth

As an aside, this sort of dichotomy with prices is essential to understand if you want to do any economic analysis. And you should, because economics is pretty fucking cool.