Bitcoins

I just found out that a college friend who I consider brilliant and who did very well in silicon valley has jumped aboard the bitcoin train. He's convinced it will be "huge" and "disrupt banking." I remain skeptical, but it at least prompted me to think about bitcoin more than I have in months.

http://www.businessinsider.com/someone-holding-bitcoin-sign-on-college-gameday-receives-over-22-bitcoins-2013-12

new thing is Litecoins

That dude with the sign on Game Day story is crazy. Wonder if I could go back in time and hold up a sign with a Pay Pal address.

miss u bitcoins
http://www.coindesk.com/price-crashes-china-outlaws-bitcoin-financial-institutions/

It seems like the other thread is more active than this one but is also annoyingly not searchable. Any way to merge the two under a searchable title? Mods?

yeah I'd be in favor of just locking the other one

Sure.

The new thread can be found at 13UAdioF8zEwb4uyAhq2VuhnRKizgJjoCoCe

lolz

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/12/how-and-why-bitcoin-will-plummet-in-price.html

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BcrKP88CAAA_YKg.png

otm

*slurps champagne*

cool sig

hrm

the main point is that I don't claim any special expertise in technology -- I almost never make technological forecasts, and the only reason there was stuff like that in the 98 piece was because the assignment required that I do that sort of thing. The issues about Bitcoin, however, are not technological! Everyone agrees that it's technically very sweet. But does it work as money? That's a very different kind of question.

And the fact that people are throwing around my 98 quote actually shows that they don't get this point -- that they're confusing technology with monetary economics.

http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/BACKWRD2.html

krugman's predictions from 1996 were amazingly prescient and help put his other technology prediction in context

yeah thats a great piece

http://bitcoinblogger.com/more-benefits-of-bitcoin/

the more u kno

lulz

btw I wish we could make this one the regular bitcoin thread, since the other one is unsearchable and I don't even know how the fuck to make the cent sign on my keyboard

"...most people have nothing to say to each other!"

Never seems to stop them saying it, though.

Not sure why people are bringing up Paul Krugman quotes in reference to a (very good) analysis by Tyler Cowen. I think a lot of people are hoping Bitcoin will fail since they missed the chance to buy in when it was cheap. Cowen isn't saying it will fail, rather that it's success will inspire competition, and once that happens the value of each unit will fall.

lulz (xp)

btw I wish we could make this one the regular bitcoin thread, since the other one is unsearchable and I don't even know how the fuck to make the cent sign on my keyboard

http://i.imgur.com/GeqM32m.png

whoops double post somehow

I think a lot of people are hoping Bitcoin will fail since they missed the chance to buy in when it was cheap.

If you really believe bitcoin will succeed, then it is by its nature still cheap, since it would have to rise a lot in value/market cap to be useful. I'm mostly hoping it will fail because it's favored by anti-government, anti-central-banking libertarian nutjob morons. I think it has a chance of taking off, but its road is fraught with pitfalls.

im hoping it will fail cause itd be funny and i hate nerds

If you really believe bitcoin will succeed, then it is by its nature still cheap, since it would have to rise a lot in value/market cap to be useful.

That's assuming that there won't be a lot of successful competitors. The total market cap of crypto-currency may have to rise, but that might be spread among lots of Bitcoin competitors, so the value of individual Bitcoins could potentially fall.

imho it has 0% chance of working whatever the fuck that would look like

Feel like a situation where a bunch of crypto currencies all exist at once resembles the stock market more than an actual system of currency

feel like it resembles something the government would seek to regulate thereby rendering its supposed advantages irrelevant

The total market cap of crypto-currency may have to rise, but that might be spread among lots of Bitcoin competitors, so the value of individual Bitcoins could potentially fall.

― o. nate, Wednesday, January 8, 2014 9:49 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that would be a really bad and stupid outcome for everyone involved. Having a bunch of different competing crypto-currencies would make them even less useful.

which is too bad cause everyone is super pining for a system to transfer money without any pesky fraud protection or way to even identify the entity on the other end of the transaction

i mean admittedly it would be cool for crime but theres the problem of the government again

Also for bitcoin to really work as a currency i think it probably requires a big enough critical mass of people willing to believe in the mass delusion it has value in the same way that people believe a piece of paper with a serial number printed by the government has value

Bitcoin's major flaw seems to be the enormous swings in its value. If someone could come up with a cryptocurrency that had built-in ways to prevent such large swings in value, that would be a serious competitor.

hmm almost like if you had some sort of central regulating body that could control the flow of cash in response to market pressures

also in the $1000 range it suffers from "holy shit that's a lot of money" syndrome, like apple stock. What they should really do is rename the redenominated 1000th bitcoins and call them "New Bitcoins" or something, then drop the "new" after a little while.

lol lagoon

Bitcoin has managed to solve lots of difficult coordination problems without requiring a central regulating body. Maybe there's a way to do that with the exchange rate volatility problem. xxp

well not as long as you have a fixed amount of the currency

ya its not a coordination problem, its a problem w the fundamental concept of the thing

its like the gold standard except worse cause theres not any actual stuff

That's true of bitcoin, but not necessarily true of any possible decentralized, P2P currency.

it would be pretty interesting if there were a way to "code" a currency that self-regulated its supply, but I don't know how the fuck that would work practically

where does money even come from, makes u think

someone just fiats it into existence or something, a wizard?

three wizards

maybe peter thiel can raise an army on his little private island nation and use it to force people to take bitcoin

i want that island to be real more than almost anything

it would be pretty interesting if there were a way to "code" a currency that self-regulated its supply, but I don't know how the fuck that would work practically

Feel like if this happened it would take approx .1 sec for somebody to hack it and flood the market for the lulz