Bitcoin Forum

All of this speculation and hoarding is making Bitcoin too unstable for merchants. Wasn't the point of Bitcoin to create an alternative currency meant for commerce? But with its current volatility, I personally would not accept Bitcoin in my trade of business.

The irony of Bitcoin is that most people are hoarding it so that they might trade it back for fiat currency in the future... That is what really saddens me.

BUY

Yeah, if Satoshi had only built the protocol to be Greed-Proof like the USD and Gold, then maybe BTC would've had a chance...  sad...

I don't see it being a problem in the long-term. Once the market becomes more liquid instant cash transfer will be available to merchants. I think bitpay and coinbase already offer this option.

Greed is part of human nature, always has been always will be.

Actually, most merchants don't really care about the price of BTC because their prices are generally fixed to fiat values and they generally sell the BTC as soon as they get it.

greed is killing everything not only bitcoin. World would be totally different if people would took as many as they really need. Not as many as they can carry.

If greed killed bitcoin, then be it.
Since almost by design, bitcoin use human greed to bootstrap itself into a real currency.
Drama continues....

I think that if more people had "hoarded" yesterday, the price would not have dropped so much.  ;D  

This is the nature of a market change where you have a lot of new people buying, you're going to get days like this and I think long-term it will strength bitcoin to have weaknesses exposed to be fixed.  e.g. MtGox not being robust enough to handle a large volume.

I hope the Bitcoin system can stand the greed. Fiat money is nothing for our future!

What a stupid post. Maybe OP is Paul Krugman??? "ZOMG!!! PEOPLE ARE GREEDY"

Shut up and read an economics text book. Hoarding is a necessary function in markets. Without hoarding, aka saving, markets could not prepare for the future.

The next step of bitcoin is a decentrlized p2p based crypto exchange where you can exchange any asset against any other asset.

With that kind of real time barter system we dont even need to hoard or speculate in the same way we do today with coins.
The assets traded can be currencies, shares, animal, lumber, books, oil, gold or whatever there is a market for with at least 2 participants (buyer and seller).

That sounds kind of like Ripple.

Not really.

a) Ripple is centralized (owned by a few) even if their system is built on P2P
b) Ripple is a wallet to transfer assets between people, just like the bitcoin client, not an exchange where you put orders to sell at best possible price to anyone in the market.

I would put forward that we approach each others points of view in an open way. We get used to shooting down each others ideas without thinking them through.

I can understand that if you have a bunch of bitcoins now, you are all excited because you are making a lot of money (not talking to nuggets, i address us all). I think there many reasons why people approach bitcoin:

1. Because they need a way to transfer something valuable to another party, and love the anonymity of it all.
2. Because they are tired of government manipulation, and love unregulated market dynamics.
3. Because they are tired of manipulation in general (this is where most of my interest in btc is).
4. Because its a cool experiment.

If you believe like me that people and/or groups of people are manipulating people's greed and driving the price of the bitcoin up and down to sucker them out of their fiat money, it is in fact ruining bitcoin for some of us. Mainly its reducing the value of bitcoin for people who are interested in 1. and 3.

I wish that bitcoin would evolve to serve better the needs of users interested in 1 and 3. Id like to be able to use my fiat currency to buy a crypto-currency, and know that if I left it alone a year, I could still purchase roughly the same products. That is if I could buy my weekly groceries with 10 btc today, I'd like to be able to buy roughly the same value in groceries 1, 5 years in the future. Free from bankster/power group and government manipulation. If It could also be transfered anonymously I think a lot of people would be happy.

I have come to realize this can not be achieve with bitcoin as it stands today.

Of course, for those who want to make money out of nothing by just sitting in front of their computers, and playing btc lottery, it would be no fun, and I understand that. Also it would be no fun for people who want to see pure market dynamics working, untainted by any kind of self-regulation.

----
I might be totally wrong, please be kind when pointing it out, and I will understand your point of view a lot better.

Yeah, sadly currently it would appear OpenCoin, inc is practically the government that hands out their ripples (XRP) like charity and saves a bunch for themselves. I haven't even been able to figure out how to get my hands on a ripple without begging for it from someone who has some (like the dude at the park in the movie Falling Down http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwP2vV6Wm1Y )

Completely agree, bitcoin is a currency it shouldn't merely be a speculative agent.

You should buy BTC to use them not to try and profit off fluctuations.

I've decided I'm going to take the jump and trade goods purely for Bitcoins, I think the problem isn't greed, it's the fact that we have a deflationary currency tied to an inflationary currency and we also don't have many people adopting it for common use yet, people will probably have to not be so finicky about Bitcoin prices as well in regards to the exchange rate if they want to see more merchants around.

I see many people are sad about bitcoin, but one thing must not be forgotten.

Bitcoin gained wide acceptance for the first time. This was the first time that it was shown in mainstream newspapers. These wild swings are to be expected, along with the relevant technical problems that were bound to come from its only single point of failure, the exchange that has 80% market share!!!

I am not against gox but I would prefer more exchanges, which I believe will come with time.

A deflationary currency is not a viable option for economy, period. So you must keep yur eyes on the way out -sooner or later. Solve this, and I will buy much more.

Gee. I just can't figure out how the U.S. economy managed to survive until 1971 with a deflationary currency seeing how it is not viable, period.

USD was not deflationary until 1971, I guess. It just was less abused, but abused it was.

Greed is a term that is really ridden with emotions. I don't think 'greed' is the problem, but the driver of all this. Without greed, no incentive to do something more. But Gordon Gekko can explain it a lot better.


Greed for seamless, instant, low to no fee, unrestrained transactions all over the world will make crypto currency a big hit. Ignoring this simple fact will not change reality.

_{Hell, even making a BTC payment after 5.30pm knowing it will arrive instantly (subject to confirmations) is an amazing experience and we are for god sake living in the 24/7 economy for 15 years now...... Either International payments will be made free and instant, of banks will lose this part of the payment system to newcomers. Bitcoin: it's inevitable.}

It's being traded more like a commodity than a currency. And will continue to be this way until people can do more things with them or alt coins join bitcoin at different value levels which also can be used for day to day purchases.

It's being traded like fucking pokemon cards.

Hell, gox used to be a magic the gathering exchange, that's probably why.

LOL, + rep.

Speculators will keep pumping and dumping until there is a reason for people to spend these things on and not just hold for a price hike.

I am a believer though, think it will get there eventually.

That why we need a p2p based exchange to trade bitcoin against fiat. Its crazy that a decentralized currency trades through the bottleneck of a centralized small exchange.

Be sad all you want. Your Keynesian philosophy and desire for magic unicorn money that never experiences price swings isn't going to stop the progression of crypto-currencies.

I'm pretty new to the bitcoin thing. If the price becomes stable at say 50$, just as an example, will the mining difficulty come down?

No. It's not proportionate to it's perceived value. It was $20 only months ago

Terrible exchanges are killing Bitcoin.  I would be happy to watch Bitcoin fall to $0 if I could at least watch it in real time!

No it isn't, it is a reaction to scarcity. If everyone had access to all the food they could ever want, none would be stolen.

BB.

Hoarding serves a market function that actually stabilizes the prices and brings resources from places of excess to places of shortage...
Additionally, by raising the price of a particular item, it sends the signal for more entrepreneurs to enter the market....

Greed is neither good nor bad. It is merely one person's subjective perspective on another person's behavior and preferences.

In fact it isn't greed at all. It is merely human nature to satisfy one's wants, and some of those wants are most easily satisfied by buying that satisfaction with money.

-wolv

Greed is killing greedy cowards, those "stop-lossers" who are now selling cheaper than bought. Bitcoin is not for them.
It's just natural selection. Smartest and strongest will survive. True bitcoiners not affected.

Too many bitcoins were given out too easily at the beginning. Whenever bitcoin starts attracting interest there's a huge sell off that drives investment away. I guess the bitcoin economy will keep crashing down until people who got in early can cash out their million dollars.

I don't blame people who got in early, who doesn't want 500k for doing pretty much nothing? It was a design flaw. Not much can be done to fix it now.

Saying greed is killing Bitcoin is like saying that wrath or gluttony are killing Bitcoin.

Some very powerful interests don't like Bitcoin and want it destroyed - banks and governments. They're killing Bitcoin, not individual human weaknesses.

it was intended for early miners/investors to profit.

we are seeing things in the short term because things are moving so quickly.

in a few years most of the early investors will sell off, and that wealth will be spread as the markets decides after that.

Quit whining. Anybody that gets in now is an early adopter. Four years from now people are still going to be whining about early adopters and they will write the same thing about you.

100 % agreed

Greed is in human nature, but it can be managable. On the other hand, incompetent people running the biggest exchange is simply disapointing, and their greed is whats killing btc. Yeah, and again, the famous mt gox didnt do anything. They lag like hell, and its bots trading. The engine still has the same crappy algorith for calculating price ... If anything kills btc it will be mtgox and its incompetent people

If it's so bad, then why don't you get off your lazy ass and create something that it better instead of just complaining about it. It is easy to sit in front of your computer and bitch and moan, but the guys that have set up exchanges, web sites, forums, and businesses are actually doing something. They are creating and building the things that you use while you are sitting there and stuffing your face with Cheetos. Have some respect. These people have done more in the last couple years than you will ever do in your lifetime.

Guys lets not drive ourselves crazy and start insulting each other. This is what the people who are DDosing probably want to achive.
Stay strong, lets do this!

it may be greed, it may be jews...

who knows?

 I am not the one creating interest out of it. I do my job, and they are not doing theirs, but instead just make crappy anouncements. Its pure ignorance. This kind of bussines practice is unacceptable. So please sod off

You just have a little jealous flash my friend.

I advice you to listen to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMAI-OIxLPo  and CHILL THE F*** out  :) or make a better version of Gox... heh

 It is simply not my job, nor am I being payed to do it. I dont have a reason to be jealous, I settled myself for life via bitcoin. If you watch my posts closely, you will notice that I stepped out of the game few days before the price correction, so I really have nothing to loose, I simply pointing out where the problem lies. And thats is that gox simply abused the faith people had in it. Sadly, that is the problem with someone holding the majority of the trade. I hope these events will bring up some smaller exchanges to be stronger

You are speaking in quests my friend. Good for you that you cashed out. Now go outside and enjoy your fiat money instead of staring at your screen and ranting :D

1 BTC is as valuable to me as it was two days ago. The fact that the Dollar has tripled it's value the last 24 hours is a sign that the FED are not printing money fast enough. The pump currently exercised on the DOW, aided with war scare propaganda on North Korea, to draw home US investors, is exactly what happend in 1926 with "the new deal" monetary policy and anti Japanese Chinese propaganda.

The fact that Bitcoin is dropping against the Dollar is a sign that Bitcoin is the serious alternative, so big investors are dumping Coins to increase Bitcoin's liquidity and put pressure on the Dollar. If this is working as intended, the US stock market will crumble in the matter of days and US debt will impossible to pay back in Bitcoin.

If the FED are smart, and they are, they'll be Buying Bitcoin as fast as they can print Dollars!

(Had to write this to feel better)

tldr: bla

Never in history the US experienced a deflationary currency, let alone a SO deflationary one. Just saying.

http://www.theoildrum.com/uploads/12/inflation_history.jpg

Thanks to all the oldschool guys for making bitcoin what it is today!

Never forget the massive amount of time and work some of the best guys around the world, put into this project!!!

If greed is killing bitcoin, then it doesn't deserve to survive.
Luckily Satoshi understood human nature and used it to bootstrap this currency

The U.S. was on a gold standard until 1971. Gold is a deflationary currency, just like bitcoin.

I'm not arguing that more deflation is better, or that the current deflation rate of bitcoin is good. I have seen first-hand that it is not. My claim is that both high inflation and high deflation are bad, and that both low inflation and low deflation are tolerable.

You have to use a clear definition of deflation/inflation before discussing it. Bitcoin itself cannot be deflationary since no Bitcoins are destroyed. Bitcoins can be 'lost' or otherwise stuck without access but that does not change the core of the protocol.

If Bitcoin is thus not deflationary, or at least nothing extreme (lets say below 1%), the deflation you seem to have in mind is decreasing prices. Well, that's the economy and not Bitcoin. Changing equilibrium is just what free markets are about. New balance will be found until market preferences change again.

The rumors of Bitcoin's death are greatly exaggerated!

One thing you have to realise is around that time the federal reserve was repeatedly trying to manipulate the price of Gold, Bitcoin can't be manipulated so easily and also Gold is used for a myriad of other things besides a currency, you can't claim you have seen proper deflation in action because there hasn't been a currency from what I'm aware of in existence that has been specifically developed with deflation in mind, that's where Bitcoin comes in.

The wacky thing is how intensely inflationary Bitcoin actually is in terms of supply.

http://oi47.tinypic.com/33p7zo9.jpg
In the first year, Bitcoin experiences a whopping 600% inflation.  We won't hit 1% amortized inflation until another 11-12 years from today.  At present we're still above 10% inflation.

+1

We simply need more businesses willing to accept crypto currencies as a means of pay. It will be difficult but it isn't impossible.

I think most of us simply need to leave gox to the professional speculators, and use weighted rates (http://bitcoincharts.com/about/markets-api/) instead of the bogus gox rate for the B economy reference rate. Right now, it's not found on any main data feed i've seen.

Those of us who were here through the 611 crash remember the atmosphere after it falling to 2 usd, when even many of the hard-core bitcoiners were doubting B the way they do now, and everyone else was celebrating the demise of B as the latest ponzi, bubble, scam, fad, flooz, etc. Less than 2 years later, B is bigger than ever, and stronger than ever against wooden currencies.

So, as we say in Russia, "It's not evening yet!" 

to quote Gordon Gekko

"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A."

What I'm thinking about is the old-fashioned rule that 'history rhymes' and that people tend to forget things after 2 weeks. If the hype remains absent, there will be buyers remorse and mined coins coming to the exchange each day. I think the next 2 weeks could be very dull with everyone staying put.

In my opinion the market cap of BTC needs to grow by a factor of 10 or more before the extreme volatility subsides enough for everyone to accept it.

Yes!  The computer would be able to see the $ in your eyes and then donate your BTC to charity before you could spend it!

+1

if you look at world economics right now, everything is in a bubble state. You can invent a new currency but you cant control how people use it. If bitcoin can survive the PR damage of this recent bubble, it could eventually reach ubiquity, but we will have to see. The inherent integrity of the thing itself remains, its just the uninformed now think its some sort of scam. I predict in about 4 years we will see renewed trust and interest in the idea of a bitcoin economy amongst the laymen, hopefully by there could be some sort of safeguards against wild fluctuation in price. Controls on the exchanges maybe? I'm holding my BTC and waiting to see what happens. I'd love to be able to pay my rent and buy groceries with BTC and I hope that one single BTC would be worth a huge amount of said food and shelter. I'm not really sure how the community can help this happen though.

jesus my iq dropped reading this biased bs

great argument! boy is my face red!
funny how last week this forum was all smug self-congradulations and digital high-fiving, now its just a cesspool of butthurt losers. whats the matter? gambled more than you could afford to lose? i didn't.

AND...the only reason I had to invest in the first place is because I liked the idea. I like to put my "dollar vote" on things I see as good for society.  Even before the "don't invest more than you can afford to lose" rule, I follow a rule I learned in the art market. Buy it because you like it, because that may eventually turn out to be its ONLY value. my bias is towards the greater societal good bitcoin might afford individuals in a collapsing civilization. Too bad speculators destroy these egalitarian notions.

Buyers and Sellers (Supply and Demand) make the markets, not "hoarding"...why are you telling people to read econ textbooks when you know nothing of the subject?

Greed is killing cowards.
Sold under 60 ? Looser! Now suck your finger and behold how it goes back to 100  ;D

I can't believe I got it at $59  :o

bitcoin is greed

http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/Business/ID/2375415659/
When Kevin O Leary Calls IN You know you can make money :)
A greed thread got to put up the dragon xd

 ???

No, Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency.  Greed requires emotion and I don't think Bitcoin is capable of that.

symbolism kthx