Bitcoin Forum

Today, BTC acted like a real reserve currency. 

Over the past few days, BTC was clearly ignited by concerns over the dollar.  As soon as word of a debt deal was announce, we tanked. Whether or not a hyper inflated dollar would have had any real economic effect on BTC is irrelevant. The perception was there... and enough people familiar with bitcoin actuated a price movement.  I was one of them.

Most interesting, is that the media hasn't picked it up yet.  I've seen them connect dots that simply weren't there (Cypriot and Spanish financial crises), but this was real.  It looks like we get to do it all over again in a few months, so maybe the media won't miss it next time.

BTC is officially a safe haven.

Yes, we "tanked" over news that everyone already new.  That obviously the US wouldn't be defaulting.  It would be political suicide for all parties involved, particularly the GOP.


 ::)

I like how now when we "tank" it means we went back to the price we reached just yesterday.

This mimics attitude from the bubble so perfectly. Like 1 week after people started saying that, collapse.

more like the kind of movement you might expect from a commodity huh? ;)

Superstition is not useful for pricing bitcoin.

I don't thing that the dollar had nothing to do with the price movement. Is there anyone that really thought that the dollar might crash or something?
It was the chinese that made the price explode...

When I took my position I sure didn't think it was because an apocalypse was about to occur. I thought this bull market was about bitcoin adoption. If the U.S. collapsed, I'd have a lot more to worry about than bitcoin or money - why on Earth would I want that?

Yes.  I am perfectly content with a $10 drop in price and having congress approve a deal.  I have a feeling it may have been pretty catastrophic for the US otherwise.  It will probably still cause some lingering pains for a while as it is.  Hopefully the distrust will feed the fire needed to get more Bitcoin adopters.

Its better than the us is more safe now than if there had be a default.

There is going to be a default. All they are doing today is ensuring the we have to suffer through another 3 more months of bad economy and bad politics first.

3 months to default? I'm really not sure about that. I used to underestimate the government's ability to sustain this monstrosity... not so much anymore. It'll be a while. It's okay -- a US default down the road gives us all more time to pick up some more coins on the way.   :)

The US has already defaulted. Germany asked its gold back last year and the US refused to give it back before 2030 or something.

Muahahahaha!  ;D

What? where are you getting this from? How do we owe Germany gold?

Many countries store their gold in NY. Germany requested a large portion to be moved back last year. The US refused and negotiated with the Germans and offered them money if they could hold it until 2030 (which they were going to do anyway). They even refused the Germans inspection rights of their own gold (they could only check one of the many vaults).

Many people believe the gold is not there.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/business/global/german-central-bank-to-repatriate-gold-reserves.html?_r=0

http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2013/01/19/the-germans-want-their-gold-reserves-back-in-germany/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/16/why-germany-wants-its-674-tons-of-gold-back/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/gold/9804444/Bundesbank-to-pull-gold-from-New-York-and-Paris-in-watershed-moment.html

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-politicians-demand-to-see-gold-in-us-federal-reserve-a-864068.html

And then immediately afterwards, the US found it necessary to send military aid to France in Mali:

U.S. steps up involvement in Mali (http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/26/world/africa/mali-unrest/index.html)

Coincidentally, Mali produces about 80-100 tons of gold per year.

Coincidentally, the Germans also asked the Banque de France, which also holds significants amounts of German gold (or does it), and they similarlu refused and stalled. Shortly after, the French found it necessary to get involved in the minor conflict in Mali for no clear reason.

Mali currently produces the largest annual amount of gold in the the world.

Then why are they so poor?

I'm pretty sure that while the gold comes from Mali not a single person from Mali "owns" the gold. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

The reason was, of course, terrorists. That's as definite a reason as you'll get though, other than the fact that they were, of course, Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. What was their cause? The usual terrorism stuff, I seem to remember.

Does anyone actually believe that terrorists conveniently show up terrorisin' in exactly the place and at the time that the West has a strategic reason to turn up themselves, use military force to save everyone from the naughty terrorists, then leave once their political influence is installed to achieve their strategic goal? Oh no, that's right, every idiot believes it. Including the mercenaries that get paid to be the terrorists. Paid by whom? Bah, will we ever know for sure, but it stinks, that's all I'll say.

Re: historical day for Bitcoin, yes, I think some people were thinking like that, but we're still a minnow in terms of absolute money supply convertibility. But we are at least on the right trajectory, and I expect more people hedging their bets with BTC holdings when you consider the direction of all the other trends. The snowball is picking up speed, but it's not avalanche time yet.

Since we were talking about the U.S. defaulting on gold on the previous page... it has defaulted 4 times in the past.

-The first was directly after the Revolutionary war. We had significant debt. One of Alexander Hamilton's first acts as treasury secretary was to meet our financial obligations.
-The second was in 1933, which hopefully you all know about.
-The third was in 1971, which again, hopefully you all know about and understand why it was not a default and not just an obscure meaningless piece of legislation as the likes of Krugman would pass it off as. Convertibility was removed because we could not meet our obligations. Admission of this via removing convertibility was a default. Removing convertibility means the government is attempting to change the terms of its own obligation, which is illogical. "Actually, I only owe you this market rate, not the amount we previously agreed to." The obligation still stands as it stands. Just because one party decides to change it does not mean the obligation itself (as originally agreed on between two parties) changes.
-The fourth was, as mentioned, last year when Germany requested that their gold be repatriated and we said "Um... you'll have to wait like 10 or 20 years."

Remember, "default" is not some technical accounting term that we can argue about. It simply means that one is not able to meet one's financial obligations. And in all four cases, the U.S. defaulted on its gold obligations. It has never defaulted on its USD obligations because it can simply print more.

Take 1933. If you own USD and it is backed by X amount of gold in the treasury, this is an obligation on the part of the government. Just because the government has the power to change the terms of this obligation at will, doesn't mean it is not a default. Pay attention to that because this is where a lot of people err in their thinking. You go to the treasury expecting X amount of gold. You are told that recent legislation means you will only receive X-Y amount of gold. So unless one is of the extreme, virtually non-existent minority opinion that one can simply change the terms and amounts of one's obligations at whim - that is a default. They can't do that and not call it a default any more than a student loan-ridden college graduate can turn to Sallie-Mae and say "Actually, I'll only be paying you $24,000 instead of $30,000" and not call it a default.

Cue some government-loving weenie trying to argue with me that the government actually IS almighty and can just change the terms of gold convertibility because they never signed a promissory note with the previous holders of dollars, or some other bullshit. A default is a default! A default is an inability to make good on one's obligations. No ifs, ands, or buts. It's a very simple definition.

Costs a lot to produce gold. I'm quite sure the gold production is highly privatized leaving little to no social benefits for locals.

Well, it costs a lot because it requires lots of labour, correct?

If we're mimicking the markets, how come we're not up 3%+ today like gold and silver?

Gox is up ~ 8-9% since the low about a day ago. So, what are you saying?  :)

At the time I wrote that, I hadn't watched the last hour of change. Also, the last three days of gold/silver don't really match BTC, IMHO. That said, the price has been more stable and not as prone to rapid fluctuations as we've seen in the past, but it's still far from what I'd call "currency stable". Still based on M1 it's just as stable as some of its peers:
https://www.resallex.com/bitcoin/bmix

That's why Bitcoin is really so fascinating..  you can't strictly compare it to gold, or to other currency.  It does a little of both (better than anything else) and some stuffs that's completely new (programmable escrows, wills, etc).  

Well, we're up like 2.7%, that extra .3% could theoretically just have come from shortcovers considering gold is down so much this year.

Yeah, interestingly-enough, Gold was up about 3.15% and Silver up about 2.44%, the average being %2.795. But most days there isn't a direct comparison, Bitcoin often heads in opposite directions to commodities. The biggest known exception to this was April of 2011, when both Bitcoin and silver were going nuts. But then silver crashed while BTC kept going up till mid-June. Same thing during August 2012, when gold and BTC were both increasing, but then Gold fell over the last year while Bitcoin has increased ten-fold.

I guess one could say that maybe when physical commodities are bubbling then Bitcoin is always very rapidly growing too.

The game they play is called Kick the Can

Remember when you where kid, used to kick the can as far as possible, then your friend neighboor kick it farter... until after a week or so, the can was back in front of your home, you kicked it again.

This game will last until a car made in China will cruch the can.