Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin will never gain credibility if people can't use it as a currency that retains its purchasing power. It's like selling a TV one day then the next day all you have left is enough to buy a bigmac.
If you have a store that sells goods or services for btc you're better off closing up shop while value drops and re-open after the bottom is seen and the value goes back up. Unfortunately one whale with a lot of fiat can cause these drastic swings and that's exactly a tactic that will be used by those who wish to see bitcoin fail.

I always say Bitcoin isn't a currency because of this. You measure Bitcoins by dirty fiat money to know how much they will buy you at any given moment. That seems a token/proxy to me, not a currency.

This because those  earlier adopters are panic ,they just selling regardless the price ,because at whatever price level they are making profit...
And those speculators , because MT.GOX itself is too essay to be manipulated, since the market size is too small....liquidity is not meet the needs.

More like commodity to store value,but its volatility is scaring potential investors... We got 1:99 ratio...this pretty nice.....1% BTC in the exchange changes price affecting 99% of others....this just unbelievable and seems unfair to the rest 99%....

what is bitcoin, if no currency? Simply a value?

I think a lot of the problem is our expectations of what Bitcoin is supposed to function as and part of that expectation has to do with its name - Bit COIN. I think the analogy to being like gold is right on but gold never comes out of the mine as coin. There are a number of necessary steps after mining such as assaying, smelting, refining and lastly minting that still have to be done. I don't think Bitcoin is quite "coin" yet. Soon, but not now.

A merchant that wishes to eliminate exchange rate risk can convert bitcoins to fiat by using a payment processor (or by selling by themselves all their BTC revenues to an exchange with each sale).   Or if a merchant has Accounts Payables in which Bitcoins can be used as payment, those bills can be paid when the BTC revenues occur.

But one reason we have such volatility is that there are so few usable methods for going short.   The ability to go short helps put resistance to any rallies (since bets against the currency are more profitable if sold high) and gives support during a selloff (when short covering occurs).

Perhaps the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust (ETF), the BitcoinFund.eu and other methods make shorting possible and this volatility quiets down.

It leaves quite a bit to be desired in its current form, but the ICBIT exchange also provides futures on Bitcoin vs. USD. Protection of a merchant's cashflows from currency exchange risk is a textbook usage case for futures and forward contracts.

Tradable commodity - like stocks?

Currently it's a better PayPal alternative but only if you have a local exchange in your country which can quickly move your money between BTC and your bank accounts.
I wouldn't put my any substantial portion of my savings into Bitcoin though, and I don't think anyone should.

Is your dollar token still worth more than 10 millies?  It's been extremely variable lately. 

Seriously though, the only real answer to this issue is to wait a few hundred thousand blocks and see how you feel then.   

In order for Bitcoin to become a currency individuals must start spending rather than hoarding their Bitcoin. As of right now I'd view Bitcoin as a store of value and not a currency.

A commodity that you can either use it to store of value or spending for exchange stuffs, I do not think that less people spending BTC for buying stuffs will affect its growth significantly,at least at this stage.
As long as it can storing value constantly and it can protect people's fund out from War, inflation, possibly government seal up. It will be growth for sure.

I was pondering this last night, I think a seller of BTC who always had a set rate, say $75/coin could stand to gain alot.. In a dip his stock still goes for $75 (or it *doesnt* lol) and in a rise it goes for $75 with ease.. If I had access to a LOT of btc this is what I'd do, fuck trying to squeeze every last drop of fiat from each coin, I'd rather be a reputable/consistent source of btc than a day trader.. That being said, people are using btc as currency, they are just not average people. Average people love paypal/credit cards because of how simple and easy it is.. I feel if there were the same kind of relative ease in acquiring btc you'd see more and more people accepting it as payment. I am investing in a screen printing company with a few others, I'm trying to get them to accept btc as payment and set all our prices by a set rate of USD conversion (rather than having prices change daily), for example a $50 minimum, with the option to go higher when the market will bear it.. What merchant wouldn't want currency that is liable to explode in value? We obviously haven't seen a drop to $0/btc, so I don't see how this could be a daunting idea (accepting it as payment for services/goods) when all you must do is be patient and they can easily fetch you double what the commodities you traded for them would be worth..

That was a mini-rant, I really have a very weak grasp of economics as a science but this is how I've simplified the idea for myself.

Look at the all-time price graphs, the volatility is decreasing as total Bitcoin value goes up.

I bought some honey caramels yesterday with Bitcoin, I have also been selling T-Shirts and other items and I haven't been doing to badly using it as a online currency  ;D. At the moment Bitcoin cant function as a typical currency which I think should be expected, we are still at an early stage of development so people are looking at it as an investment opportunity instead. Providing growth continues Bitcoin will transition more into a currency. All new markets will face the same problems we face now and FIAT will continue to cause suffering around the world. I think without Bitcoin there would be a void which alt coins at the moment would not be able to fill, so you then have to ask will everyone just forget about crypto all together or will Bitcoin just continue to draw in a wider audience?

Exactly this has been the problem since day 1. What happens is that most bitcoin "stores" right now are only proxies to Amazon/eBay. They are still useful though to get out of eBay 5% fees and you can do tax evasion. This results in the Bitcoin stores being 5% cheaper than the fiat equivalent.

What we need is a closed loop. a production facility that makes profit in BTC. The problem is that there needs to be big investments to produce something. For example, what can you produce by yourself right now that you can sell? A lemonade stand?

The honey caramels are the best example right now. A farmer who has his own bees that he feeds with his own food. (a full closed btc loop in production).

Bitcoins main advantage is that it moves value so quickly

I see bitcoin as a currency.

Yes the price fluxuations make many people shy away from using it that way but I believe those price fluctuations are largely because the currency is new, operating in a world market, and is not manipulated for stabilizing it.

Since I've started talking about bitcoin elsewhere, a very common fear I hear expressed is that they will buy a bitcoin one day and then the next it will drop in value and may not have the same spending power for some time.

That fear is valid.

I think part of the problem is that early on, a lot of mining took place when it was easy and not worth very much putting a lot of bitcoins into the hands of people who don't know how to manage money. When the value gets up they sell much of what they mined so they spend their wealth. This creates a surplus on supply and the price goes down.

That will correct itself over the next few years (my speculation) as supply created by mining reduces and supply from early adopter miners is spent leaving them with nothing left to dump when prices move up.

The result will be fluctuations are not nearly what they are now and the value will be much more stable compared to fiat currencies, with a general trend of deflation versus fiat (increase in spending power of unspend bitcoins).

Totally agreed ...as we can see that Price isn't like 2011 again ,that can go as low as 0.01 ,because more and more people start to recognized it has Value...

The problem with the whole currency/store of value argument is that it assumes bitcoin is in anyway equal to other currencies. All currencies are used as a store of value from time to time (some more than others, like the US$, CA$, Euro and to a now much lesser extent, the Yen). What's different is that they are used more as a currency due to the number in circulation. Only a fraction of any currency is used as a store of value and usually only for a period of days. Bitcoins, on the other hand, have a much larger percentage of the total in circulation being used as a store of value, and for periods of weeks, months or years.

The question with no easy answer then is, How do we get people to spend their bitcoins instead of hoard them?

Answer is very simple. I decided that I will buy Bitcoins for 1/2 of amount which I spend using my Visa/Mastercard. After every buy I calculate medium price of Bitcoins. If current exchange price is lower as meduim price + 20%, I buy daily stuff with local currency, otherwise I use prepaid Visa loaded with money from Bitcoins.

Using that approach I automatically get 20% discount on all stuff.

Some parallels with another mined currency:
http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa729_web.pdf

When government attempts to use asset backed currencies, they invariably eventually debase as fiscal policy disciple fails and they resort to monetary policy.

I use "tangible" keyfree bitcoins as a payment instrument.