Bitcoin Forum

http://www.oddballstocks.com/2013/02/another-oddball-investment-bitcoins.html

fail article

Thanks for saving my time.

+bitcointip Spaceman_Spiff 0.10btc

Actually I thought it was pretty fair.

Is that on reddit?  You are a generous guy, but I think you just tipped someone else  :D , I ll start using an address in my forum signature  :)

" The system is built so that each new coin created costs more than the last when measured in processing time.  This means that in theory the supply is limited."

and

"Watching bitcoins could be the modern equivalent of watching Dutch tulip prices. No matter how much market history exists humans still want to make a quick buck and let emotions rule their investment decisions."

I hate it when they bring up the tulip thing.  Maybe hindsight is easy, but you have to be pretty fucking dumb to buy a biological reproducibly thing, which by design can multiply exponentially, and then think it will be scarce and valuable in the future.  Compare this to bitcoins which have a fixed number, and you are comparing apples with oranges.

I may have been a bit harsh in my judgement though, he has some decent insights too (but nothing that hasn't been said 10 times before).

For what it's worth, I agree, spaceman... fail article is fail.

Sometimes I feel the same about the current price, but there were people including myself who stayed when the currency bottomed out after the mtgox hack.  The other people that held on give me faith that cryptocurrencies have a real future.  It may be a roller coaster ride for the time being, but the advantages cryptocurrencies bring to the table can't be ignored forever.  For now I may be a spectator, but I hope one day to be a user.

I too believe that the author comes to the wrong conclusion regarding BTC's future, but it is not a certainty that it will succeed no matter what we may want to think. At least the guy didn't mention Silk Road, porn and gambling like every other hack.
Also, I agree with the writer that most Bitcoins currently in existence are used as a speculative investment. Those holders could care less, at this point, what they could buy with it (other than other currencies). Yes, I know all about the increasing number of businesses accepting BTC but that's still a drop in the ocean compared to the rest of the economy.
Thirdly, this paragraph demonstrates more of an understanding of BTC than 99% of the other writers who have covered the subject:

"As I read about bitcoins I couldn't help but draw a connection to them and gold.  In a way bitcoins are a digital version of gold.  There is a finite supply although marginal supply increases are happening at an increasingly slow rate.  Gold is still mined but it takes more time and energy to find smaller and smaller amounts.  Gone are the days when you could stumble on a gold nugget walking the California beach.  Bitcoins are the same, for the first users running a computer for a few hours could make them thousands of dollars, now specialized equipment and increasing amounts of time are required to create the same value."

Compared to other drek written about BTC this article is relatively accurate.

The author in the comment: "Ah, very important point. So then why is it taking an increased processing power to mine each new coin?"

If you don't know how it works then why writing things like: "The system is built so that each new coin created costs more than the last when measured in processing time.  This means that in theory the supply is limited." ??