Bitcoin Forum

That's right, I speculate we're going to see some bitcoin-related suicides, and the mass media will lap it up, ruining a perfectly good crypto-currency with tons of potential.

In fact, I reckon it will be promptly countered by the holier-than-thou reddit crew explaining that it wasn't a 'bitcoin suicide' but a 'finance-related' suicide, trolling their heart contents that this and that person shouldn't 'have invested more than they could afford to lose', and that the MSM is out to get the cute, innocent little bitcoin. Oh and by the way if it falls back at 50, then it's all OK, because it was at 2 one day, so it actually didn't crash at all, it multiplied its value by 25x. What? You bought at 150? What an idiot, loser, they'll say. They mined theirs you see? It was all a big laugh for everyone, didn't you know?

That's the same people currently haranguing the newbies into investing blindly, posting 'spartans, hold' meme pictures as the price fluctuates wildly, and berating everyone who might dare to have 'sold early'. You can't even post on reddit any opinion that vaguely deviates from the group-think 'BTC AT 1,000,000 LULZ' party line, without being downvoted to nothingness.

At this point bitcoin is a hoarding game. No one seems to care about the potential of the technology, or even the technology itself. It's all 'ra-ra it's passed 160, ra-ra told you so 180'.

Yes guys, it might even hit 500. The questions is why do you care so much if it does? The 3 btc you mined making you feel like a big shot hedge fund investor? Because that's what it is - a vocal minority with no real skin in the game going into full 'revenge of the geek' mode while the mass market consists of people too greedy or too dumb to realize that a currency with nothing to buy is not a currency, but an e-metal.

Everyone seems to forget what an exchange really is. More and more of the people holding BTC have bought it at 100+. I'd be curious to know what proportion the 150-200 buyers represent in the total market cap. 1%? 10%? 50%? The only thing that's sure is that it's increasing everyday, and these aren't the same people buying porshe caymans with their 300 coins.

So, back to the point, why suicides?  Once the panic sets in:
- companies that have regularly converted their BTC balances to FIAT will become insolvent, unable to disburse balances (bitzino I'm looking at you)
- because of the decentralised nature of bitcoin, trading curbs are impossible to implement
- the exchanges have proven to be unreliable. It's not even about not being able to place a sell order without lag, it's about not being able to login the website, period

There's going to be one hell of a moment, in my view (again, here, speculation) when people realize the enormity of that 2B market cap, maybe it might even reach australian-dollar level market cap. The guys who are talking about putting 1M+ in the game will pull when they get bored of the low retailer adoption (they don't have time for spartan memes I'm afraid), it will freefall 50%, and all of a sudden here goes the mortgage, here goes the dream, and the newbs won't even get to press the sell button when it's all said and done.

Anyway, rant over, have a nice evening and keep cheering to that woop woop 200 bucks 'new floor'

"In the long run, we are all dead." - John Maynard Keynes
Probably the smartest thing he ever said.

Fixed it for you.

This is an interesting thread because I too am predicting many deaths related to bitcoin, but not so much on the sui-side, rather on the assassination side. Libertarians here who crave a free market will soon realize exactly what that means.


"BFL hasn't delivered on time. You know what to do."

Yeah head on over to the marketplace, or project development section. Tons of new businesses and ideas who aren't worried about speculation.

What you fail to realize is that we are still in the early adoption phase and Bitcoin is still in its infancy.  It is only 4 years old and could be the currency of the internet...

It could be the currency of everything, not just the currency of the internet.

I've already pulled many figurative hernias and an increased blood pressure.

The 4000 year old bubble (http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/21/136474556/are-we-in-a-gold-bubble).

...which I think caused a lot of tragedy along the way as well.

Thanks for reminding me of that :) Actually I'm working on a project myself and I find it very interesting and educational! Cheers!

Suicide is not a concern of ours, only the person committing the deed. It's your life, and you are (should be) free to end it should you so wish, as long as you don't take anyone else with you or harm them physically against their will.

People need to be free to make their own decisions concerning their own lives, and take responsibility for their actions, and that includes financial risks. Suicide is a sad occurrence, but morally I think it is always OK. Murder, of course, is evil.

but but the Internet IS everything

In that case many large-scale scams will stop happening here, and the world could be better maybe.
But I don't expect that it will happen, unless the Russian mafia starts dealing in cryptocoins, and get scammed too.

Well, there is BTC-e... ;D

(Just kidding, I've found it to be a pretty well-run exchange. In my experience.)

Of course there is also the risk that bears that sold their Bitcoins early will attend suicides if the price will hit 100K$/BTC.

Well played Atlas, well played.  :D

Seriously, I am not Atlas. Althought I love Atlas Shrugged.  :D

Sure.

Yeah, that's why I hope this thing crashes for good sooner rather than later. It's already served its purpose of piquing people's interest in the notion of digital currency and providing a cryptographic proof of concept, it can be phased out now in favor of a properly thought out digital currency system that takes more seriously the need for a stable price and tight correspondence between the amount of currency and the amount of real values (products & services) existing on the market at any given time (two crucial aspects that the Bitcoin system clearly does not address seriously).

When I tell about bitcoin, I always mention "invest wisely, or be ready to commit suicide"

The only thing he ever said that was fact based

facts?  such as "the long run" and "we are all"
Pretty well-defined technicals there.   ::)

Keynesians are not known for giving you dates to trade on.   more known for "I know better than you so be quiet because things are getting better"   

No, Bitcoin is plenty well thought out wrt money supply. A set, well-known inflation rate, with a known max limit, and a known date of reaching that limit ensure long-term stability. Short-term fluctuations in price are mostly due to demand for the currency itself, something even your MythicalCoin can't control.

tl;dr

I thought about too... in regards to lost wallets...

Aaaaand here is one:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1bx0ws/remember_to_backup_your_bitcoins_to_multiple/

At least he found a backup  :o

But we will hear similar stories more often in the future... including suicides...

I guess your main annoyance is with the Reddit crowd. Can't comment on that - haven't been there, biased against the site as a whole. But I may as well say that for what it's worth,I'm trying to speak out against this kind of counterproductive bullshit as often as possible. With prices rising exponentially for three months now, it needs to be drilled into everyone's head that Bitcoin is still a beta software suite, a speculative asset, and a foetal economy; if they choose to invest, good on them and best of luck, but they need to understand that that investment is speculative and liable to lose any portion of its value at any time.

It selects for naivete or predation in new users, and besides, means that it's Aunt Violet, and not people who understood the asset and its risks, losing her shirt when the correction arrives.

Not sure about suicides, but this bubble will end like all other bubbles: a lot of ruin for a lot of people.

Re: how the media might use a BTC crash and the possible suicides - yes, they'll be as sensational as possible.  It's a sad comment about news in general.
Though, it would a truly financially related suicide.  Not a BTC suicide.

Corollary neq Causality


Re:  BTC-based business insolvency.  Currency exposure doth suck in volatile markets. 

Sadly, volatility truly does detract from BTC's usefulness as a currency.

Just strolling through.
http://youtu.be/eujCeBC4Lh0

ITT: Silly newb OP who hasn't set foot in any other part of the forum, thinks the frat-boy mentality in the speculation subforum is indicative of the entire Bitcoin economy.


OP you are idiot, here is proof, QED (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=170807.0) Good luck with your fiat brah.

Reread the post. I'm pretty sure OP isn't even talking about Bitcointalk - they're talking about the Bitcoin section of Reddit.

People come for the bubble and stay for the bitcoin. That is what happened last time. Also, your post reminded me of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_%28Ponzi_scheme_company%29

Although its pretty dumb to bet your life savings on a social and technological experiment, I am sure many people have.

Which makes it worse, no?

You are obviously clueless about what you're saying. Inflation and deflation depend not only on the supply of currency but also on the supply of real values (products and services). While you can control the BTC supply through some pre-established algorithm, you CAN'T control the evolution of the supply of real values on the market, therefore you CAN'T set the inflation to a specific value for a specific future date.

I'm still waiting for the day when these psychotic fluctuations end so that we can finally be confident in calling them "short-term" or "growing pains" or whatever.

False. Look up Paul Grignon's "Digital Coin" concept and you will see that it controls inflation/deflation very well, better than any currency system I've ever heard of.

Clearly you're the clueless one here:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/Total_bitcoins_over_time.png/740px-Total_bitcoins_over_time.png

Some links that might help clear things up for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_inflation (what I was talking about)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_inflation (what you thought I was talking about)

No coin can control DEMAND for a currency, that's entirely dependent on the people who want (or do not want) the currency.

I read the brief. Some really interesting ideas there.

I don't like that the Perpetual Coin is premined (initial distribution controlled by a despot), though, and I'm unsure as to whether digital futures barter (the essence of CCs) can work without significant PC-based lubrication (which is, again, subject to inflation/deflation as normal).

Given the nature of bitcoin, its market price (Mt Gox etc.) is inordinately too low for any kind of stability in a rapidly growing bitcoin economy/ecosystem. If Bitcoin really takes off and becomes entrenched as the online currency, more than it already is, then its price may stabilize somewhat, but that will probably be well north of $10k/BTC, if not $100k+. The supply of BTC is kinda limited, y'know. ;D

I suffered through a couple of his books.  I can assure you that this was indeed the smartest thing he ever said.

Very well put.

The context of that quote was utter stupidity. If I remember right it was a response to an argument that Keynesian policies are harmful in the long run.

Yeah, it was. Which makes it even more telling that this was the smartest thing he said, don't it?

The long run has arrived for fiat money.

Maybe you shoud read them yourself, they might clear some things up for you as well:
"Monetary inflation is a sustained increase in the money supply of a country. It usually results in price inflation"
... which I fully expect it to do given the crazy rate of BTC inflation we're seeing these days, hence I find it natural to talk directly about price inflation and not waste time distinguishing it from monetary inflation. And, as already pointed out, the BTC system has NO CONTROL over price inflation and this makes it suck as a currency.

I took your phrase as "Short-term fluctuations [...] something even your MythicalCoin can't control", hence my reply.

You don't seem to have paid enough attention to Grignon's paper. It's clearly stated that Perpetual Coin is not "mined" or "distributed" at all, but serves only as a reference:
"The essential purpose of Perpetual Coin is to be the unit of value. Functionally it could just be a
definition and not need to exist as an object at all."

Not sure what you mean here, but if it's based on the faulty assumption above it doesn't even matter. :)

The only coin that is actually used in transactions is CC and while CC is still subject to inflation/deflation, it will only fluctuate for one issuer (producer of goods and services) at a time and not hit the whole economy. The different producers on the market - who are also all issuers of their own brands of CC - are insulated from eachother's monetary policy mistakes.

Funny that we're seeing such a huge price DEFLATION, then, huh?

On the contrary, BTC has eliminated price inflation. Most long-term worries of the Bitcoin economy have to do with price deflation, and the (very real) problems that it poses (if it's severe enough, which I don't anticipate that it will be). Severe price inflation typically occurs when a money supply is inflated beyond the capacity of the market. This devalues the currency, causing prices to rise. Since Bitcoin has, as I said, a known, predictable rate of monetary inflation, and this rate is set to slow and stop, again predictably, price inflation is not a problem I expect to ever have to worry about, unless demand for BTC drops precipitously, which, given the current socio-politico-economic climate, I don't see happening.

Maybe you should read the whole sentence, then, you'll get a better idea of what I'm actually saying than if you read the first phrase and then just skip to the end. Here, try again:

That middle part is important, skip it at your own peril.

No, I was paying attention. He talks at the beginning about selling PCs at a price determined by a basket of world currencies (held in trust to be redeemed if the holder so decides). And later on, he talks about PCs being the only suitable coin in the system for long-term savings (since CCs demur).

PCs may not be the instrument of trade 99% of the time, but they definitely exist, and whatever their final value, the initial distribution and guaranteed face value is handled by the "trust" (a monopoly).

This is what I was sort of misunderstanding when I first read it - I didn't "get" how CCs were tied to their PC face value. I've got some other confusions about the whole design, but I feel like I understand how CCs are used for trade a little better than I did the first time through. Mainly I'm worried about fungibility (all CCs are not created equal, and you accept CCs that are not current at the risk that nobody but the issuer will recognize them).

Yup.

And fat returns for the old-timers who sold a few.

That's what I find so weird: I doubt even 20% of the people buying in now will come out of this okay if a bust comes. They're at more than tenfold the risk former Bitcoiners were at. Why do this? If someone buys BTC for speculation, how about doing it at 5 dollars, or 14 if you're slow, but >200? Smart money whoo.

20 years from now, you're going to wish you could buy a bitcoin for $200.

This.

20 years from now $200 will get you 0.002 BTC

This is crazy talk, yes.

Why, because you don't think Bitcoin will be worth that much, or you don't think the dollar will be around anymore? :D

OP here. I hate to say it... but told you so.

Guess what? The reddit forum is full of 'you should not have invested more than you could have afforded', as well as 'oh well, I only had 300 bucks in there, half of which I mined'.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1c51ck/i_think_this_subreddit_should_seriously_consider/

I am little scared for the people who told that they took huge loans to purchase BTC  :o

In at the very most a month or so (probably much sooner) they should be able to at least fully pay the loan+interests back.

IF they didn't sell...

That's why i always tell: you only lose if you sell below the buy price...

so how much did you borrow then? only highly experienced traders should be trading on margin on an asset like bitcoin.

I don't think you're quoting the right person...either that or you need to work on your reading comprehension...

Im sure there are a lot of people who lost bigtime today.

I didn't borrow any thing. I said that I am scared for the people who did that.