a decentralized currency that everyone wants to cash out to a centralized currency as fast as they can to make a profit. we have a winner for sure.
Bitcoins/Litecoins/Virtual Currencies
- Thread starter Tripamang
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
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Suppose that depends on what you're trying to win, doesn't it?
Like any speculative investment, this one is tugging at a lot of peoples' wallet strings as it hits the roller coaster. Hopefully it'll stabilize soon.
Edit: So far today on Mt.Gox, high 140, low 65. And it was closed for trading during most of that period. Ouch.
Like any speculative investment, this one is tugging at a lot of peoples' wallet strings as it hits the roller coaster. Hopefully it'll stabilize soon.
Edit: So far today on Mt.Gox, high 140, low 65. And it was closed for trading during most of that period. Ouch.
Does paper currency have intrinsic value (other than for burning?) I guess coins have intrinsic value as metal...
As such, bitcoins have instrumental value... just like other currency. You can exchange it for goods and services... you realize that, right?
As such, bitcoins have instrumental value... just like other currency. You can exchange it for goods and services... you realize that, right?
Elerion
N00b
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Except "real" currencies are generally the only accepted medium of exchange for goods and services in a given geographical area, and as such can't drop to zero value overnight barring complete economic collapse. If you want food in France, you need Euros. "Real" currencies can also be exchanged for other currencies quickly and at relatively low cost, giving value support, stability and aiding price discovery.
The value of Bitcoins is entirely dependent on the supply and demand for the currency, and there is not a single place in the world where Bitcoins are required to obtain goods and services (well, aside from some web sites dealing in illegal goods).
Bitcoins could be worth $0 next week. Unless you live in a country on the brink of economic collapse, the same is not true of real currency.
Feel free to gamble on Bitcoins, you could end up making a pretty penny. Just realize before you draw down your credit card that the risk is higher than 99% of investment vehicles.
PS: I wouldn't recommend trading real currency either.
The value of Bitcoins is entirely dependent on the supply and demand for the currency, and there is not a single place in the world where Bitcoins are required to obtain goods and services (well, aside from some web sites dealing in illegal goods).
Bitcoins could be worth $0 next week. Unless you live in a country on the brink of economic collapse, the same is not true of real currency.
Feel free to gamble on Bitcoins, you could end up making a pretty penny. Just realize before you draw down your credit card that the risk is higher than 99% of investment vehicles.
PS: I wouldn't recommend trading real currency either.
The value of the USD, or the CNY, or the EURO is entirely dependent on the supply and demand of that currency. If you are trying to spend EURO in the US, you need to find a money changer unless you can find someone that will accept EURO directly.
If you are trying to spend bitcoin in the US, you need to find a money changer unless you can find someone that will accept bitcoin directly.
The value of ANY CURRENCY is entirely dependent on the supply and demand for the currency, and there is not a single place in the world where ANY CURRENCY is required to obtain goods and services (well, aside from some places dealing in some goods).
Hrm... not so sure I agree with that statement... since there are places that both do not accept any currency... and places that accept all currencies...
Bitcoin will be worth one bitcoin next week, the same thing cannot be said about the USD. If you are using bitcoin as a speculative market... then its just a more volatile forex. Saying that the USD has intrinsic value because of its use as a currency while the bitcoin does not is wrong, especially if you are not specifically referring to PAPER currency but rather funds in an account. Considering that since the US moved off the gold standard... USD is just a centralized version of Bitcoin backed by the US Government. Sure you can go to your bank and request your funds in paper currency, just like you could go to an exchange and request bitcoins in a paper currency as well...
Both have INSTRUMENTAL value as being used as a currency...
If you are trying to spend bitcoin in the US, you need to find a money changer unless you can find someone that will accept bitcoin directly.
The value of ANY CURRENCY is entirely dependent on the supply and demand for the currency, and there is not a single place in the world where ANY CURRENCY is required to obtain goods and services (well, aside from some places dealing in some goods).
Hrm... not so sure I agree with that statement... since there are places that both do not accept any currency... and places that accept all currencies...
Bitcoin will be worth one bitcoin next week, the same thing cannot be said about the USD. If you are using bitcoin as a speculative market... then its just a more volatile forex. Saying that the USD has intrinsic value because of its use as a currency while the bitcoin does not is wrong, especially if you are not specifically referring to PAPER currency but rather funds in an account. Considering that since the US moved off the gold standard... USD is just a centralized version of Bitcoin backed by the US Government. Sure you can go to your bank and request your funds in paper currency, just like you could go to an exchange and request bitcoins in a paper currency as well...
Both have INSTRUMENTAL value as being used as a currency...
Bitcoin DOES have intrinsic value though-- as a service. It's free to transfer funds to anyone, anywhere. The world shares it, so if your country blows up, bitcoin will remain about as stable as it normally is. (which will get better over time) It's fast. It's convenient. It's private. No entity controls it so it's harder to manipulate. It protects sellers instead of buyers.
I don't see it dying unless governments outright outlaw it. It's not likely to be successfully attacked electronically. Even if something were to kill it off, that doesn't necessarily mean it will blow up overnight. We would probably see it coming and have time to move our assets elsewhere, depending on what killed it. And unless you use it to hold significant amounts of capital, it won't matter if it dies or not, because you're just using it to conduct transactions.
Bitcoin's big problems of ease of buying in, wallet theft, and and clients with a massive block chain to manage will all be solved eventually. Then watch bitcoin get huge.
I don't see it dying unless governments outright outlaw it. It's not likely to be successfully attacked electronically. Even if something were to kill it off, that doesn't necessarily mean it will blow up overnight. We would probably see it coming and have time to move our assets elsewhere, depending on what killed it. And unless you use it to hold significant amounts of capital, it won't matter if it dies or not, because you're just using it to conduct transactions.
Bitcoin's big problems of ease of buying in, wallet theft, and and clients with a massive block chain to manage will all be solved eventually. Then watch bitcoin get huge.
I think you missed the 2 biggest problems:
1. Mt.Gox controls around 80% of the bitcoin transactions. This is terrible because any hit to them, easily destabilizes the currency. In addition, lacking protection on transaction bot spamming and trader lag issues are also present, this adds up to be a major problem. For example if there were 10-20 exchanges all controlling a small fraction of transactions, 1-2 taking a hit would have a pretty negligible effect on the overall currency.
2. When big money players come to speculate, they are able to use the above mentioned Mt.Gox issues to heavily influence the rates. As I mentioned before, it was quite possible that someone with a big wallet caused the entire fiasco that occurred this week. Sell majority of your bitcoins, spam Mt.Gox with thousands of tiny transactions, drop the rate/cause panic selling, re-buy low, sit on your current profit while bitcoins hopefully slowly recover. Mt.Gox need to instantly implement some kind of Captcha system as an early protection against transaction spamming while they figure out a long term solution.
You're right, those are big problems right now, but they are so easily fixed. Mtgox is the biggest right now because it's simply the best exchange. When people handle this much money, they want to give it to the most reputable sites. As bitcoin gets bigger, you'll start seeing more professional websites for it. I wouldn't count on an ex-magic the gathering web site to remain #1 forever.
Also these early adopter sell-offs and bubbles actually serve to get the coins out of the hoarder's hands and into new users' hands. In that way I see them as a healthy thing. The difference between bitcoin bubbles burst by DDoSing botnet owners and risk hiding securities fraud bubbles caused by bankers is which asshole gets to profit from it. At least bitcoin's assholes are more easily dealt with.
Also these early adopter sell-offs and bubbles actually serve to get the coins out of the hoarder's hands and into new users' hands. In that way I see them as a healthy thing. The difference between bitcoin bubbles burst by DDoSing botnet owners and risk hiding securities fraud bubbles caused by bankers is which asshole gets to profit from it. At least bitcoin's assholes are more easily dealt with.
I have a question about withdrawing limits. Mtgox for example, has a $1000 per day withdraw limit. Does that mean you can only sell that much worth of bitcoins per day, or just that you can't withdraw more money than that. For example, if you have $2000 worth of bitcoins, can you only sell $1000 in a day? Or can you sell them all in an instant, then withdraw the dollars over 2 days?
As far as trading fees, bitcoin-24 and BTC-E seem to be the best largish exchanges, only charging 0.0005BTC and 0.01btc per transaction, respectively. Also, bitcoin-24 has no limit on deposits or withdraws. Their site has been down a couple days though, which is worrisome.
As far as trading fees, bitcoin-24 and BTC-E seem to be the best largish exchanges, only charging 0.0005BTC and 0.01btc per transaction, respectively. Also, bitcoin-24 has no limit on deposits or withdraws. Their site has been down a couple days though, which is worrisome.
The biggest problem with these coin is that anyone can start up their own. There is nothing stopping a major corporation or bank starting their own VC. Lets say Google decides to make Googlecoins making Bitcoins drop to nothing over night.
https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/coi...32830_29076940
amazon stating their own coin but its not mineable. since they have thier own VC i high doubt they will ever take other VCs.
only thing interesting about bitcoin and other mineable VC is that you can get them for free and sell them to suckers.
https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/coi...32830_29076940
amazon stating their own coin but its not mineable. since they have thier own VC i high doubt they will ever take other VCs.
only thing interesting about bitcoin and other mineable VC is that you can get them for free and sell them to suckers.
Yes... how clever you are. Bitcoin is a virtual currency, just like platinum in Everquest and Gold in WoW... nothing special about it whatsoever...
The only reason your stupidity bothers me is because it might be infectious.
The only reason your stupidity bothers me is because it might be infectious.
Thats why i stupid to bother people like you. An every chance i get i try to infect others, like a zombie.
Bitcoin doesn't belong to anyone but it has rules it needs to follow, especially when mining for them. It is also a pain to setup an account to trade for, even more so to set up miners for. It is way to complicated for the average joe. They are to easy to lose from technical problems, and have wallet security issues. easily hacked.
Now if Google came along and made mining, security, and trading easy people would forget about all other decentralized mineable coins.
The current VCs are just a testing phase and will be looked over when the big players come out with their own mineable/decentralized coin, after being simplified and polished.
a game changer would be google checkout letting you use their googlecoins as payment option.
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Too complicated to set up? Uh.
1. Go create a MtGox account (or whatever exchange you want to use, or a local encrypted wallet, or... whatever).
2. Create an account on a pool (like slush's).
3. Grab GUIMiner.
4. Fill in username/password. Hit "start".
5. ...
6. Profit.
If you can't do that, you shouldn't be mining anyway. Proof that it's doable by the average joe? My dad just set up a miner. Granted, he doesn't understand that his 4870 X2 will suck at mining, but... that's not the point.
I mean, hell, saying things like "easily hacked" is hilarious given the number of people that use their pets' names on Hotmail and whatnot. With almost every facet of the internet, people don't give a shit about security. Why would that change for decentralized currency?
Edit: By the way, I learned how to set up a mining rig by typing "mining bitcoins" into Google and reading a bit. If you can't be bothered to research your speculative investments even a tiny bit, you deserve to have the ceiling crash down on your head.
1. Go create a MtGox account (or whatever exchange you want to use, or a local encrypted wallet, or... whatever).
2. Create an account on a pool (like slush's).
3. Grab GUIMiner.
4. Fill in username/password. Hit "start".
5. ...
6. Profit.
If you can't do that, you shouldn't be mining anyway. Proof that it's doable by the average joe? My dad just set up a miner. Granted, he doesn't understand that his 4870 X2 will suck at mining, but... that's not the point.
I mean, hell, saying things like "easily hacked" is hilarious given the number of people that use their pets' names on Hotmail and whatnot. With almost every facet of the internet, people don't give a shit about security. Why would that change for decentralized currency?
Edit: By the way, I learned how to set up a mining rig by typing "mining bitcoins" into Google and reading a bit. If you can't be bothered to research your speculative investments even a tiny bit, you deserve to have the ceiling crash down on your head.
Chris
Potato del Grande
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How do you mine these things? Can we get a guide on page one or something?
I remember back on FoH a few years ago the discussion was if you got enough money out of mining to pay for the electricity used... well I may be moving to a house with electricity included in the rent...
I remember back on FoH a few years ago the discussion was if you got enough money out of mining to pay for the electricity used... well I may be moving to a house with electricity included in the rent...