Bitcoin Forum

I am believer but one thing bothers me after the last weeks crazy price increases. Two of bitcoins main selling points is ease of transfer from one party to another and low fees. It will be great for merchants and consumers etc, but the fact is that any1 who has spent bitcoin since its birth has lost money. They would have been better off holding on to them.
 So in theory, you would imagine that more and more people will not spend bitcoin in the future and begin hoarding. This will drive up the price further for a time as supply runs dry (miners will hoard too of course).
So this leaves us only with digital gold with the only people buying are speculators and they too will become disillusioned as the promise of bitcoin taking on credit cards, cash, bank transfers western union fade.
Im sure this has been discussed many times here, but I had no good answer to a few doubters I ran into today
Also when they say bubble, responce ?

let me pop that bubble for ya: it's not the money of the future

that doesn't mean you can make great money from naive people though :D

it is money of the future

if you can't see that, i'm sorry for you...

If you're serious about your questions, you wouldnt have posted here in Speculation section

Second, this has been discussed to death.

a money that wastes energy on a permanent basis is not money of the future.

but hey, atleast we're making money selling the idea to naive people ;D

Frag,  as a small time miner I admit I am hoarding my coins.  I don't have many as I started very late and my equipment doesn't do the kind of mining compared to the larger miners out there.  I will agree with you that as the price keeps going up no one in their right mind is going to sell any.  It all depends on the person though.  I recently spent 2.5 btc to purchase some goods.  That was before the price had skyrocketed to 800+ in which I missed out in a large gain.  Still I don't feel bad that I spent it as I have some more available.  As long as the mining continues and the value of btc goes up, I'm satisfied.  

USD is the future of payment!

It was moved here by a mod :P

one world currency issued by world bank is the future of money actually

bonus of it will be that it will not permanently waste electricity

OR, if satoshi2 comes around, Bitcoin without mining will be the money of the future. But for now that doesn't exist ;)

its in times like these we see poeples true colors

Indeed , it's sick that there are people (miners being the first ones ine line) selling this non-workable idea to naive people on the street trying to make money off of their late-to-the-party money

Bitcoin is more than money. It is a speculative investment. Most importantly it is a transactional vehicle that requires no trusted third party. It is capable of being a deed, a trust, a certificate of stock. ALL of these things I have listed are rather independent of price, considering that taking the trusted third party confirmation out of a transaction can be done with a single satoshi in most cases.

You can use bitcoin as a backend system to payment transfers where neither consumers nor merchants ever touch a bitcoin, however it negates the need for an automated clearing house. Talk about a waste of energy! How much energy do you think ACH companies expend comprehensively? Do you really think bitcoin is a less efficient vehicle? Hint: It's not.

Don't expect all of these systems to pop up tomorrow. Patience young ones. Legitimate enterprises take many many years to develop, particularly when they are so incredibly unprecedented.

Go ahead and panic. I'll keep my bitcoins.

Not to mention micro-transactions offered by bitcoin payment processors can and probably will shift the way that internet content is monetized.

All those energy-consuming layers on top of the USD base money would exist if it was based on Bitcoin. So Bitcoin is just an additional permanent energy drain, that serves no functional purpose.

Also, think outside of your box. Kenya is already using e-float by M-pesa, which we would think is just ridiculous. But they have no legitimate banking structure, so WTF else are they going to do?

Argentina is seeing there peso hyperinflate to death while being exploited by capital controls. Bitcoin is a pretty dang solid store of wealth in such a situation where it is illegal to buy USD or more than a strict limit of precious metal.

A One World Currency with One World Central Bank would actually be infinitely cheaper and infinitely faster than Bitcoin :)

Saving merchants 2 - 4% on transactions serves no purpose? More efficient systems replace less efficient systems. It takes time, but it ALWAYS happens eventually. ACH will die like the dinosaur that is. Bitcoin won't exist on top of it. It will replace it.

And even IF bitcoin dies, something much like it will take its place.

You still need trusted third party systems to verify transactions.

Only the central bank needs to verify it

And the central bank can be controlled by the people through 100% transparency

How much control do you have over the interest rate set by the FED or the ECB?  Or the money creation? They are being very transparent about it though.  

You do realize this is more ridiculous than saying bitcoin is going to be the world reserve currency? I mean can you imagine China, Russia, US, Iran, Syria, UK, Africa, etc... all coming together and saying let's forget about all of our differences :)

I would gladly watch my bitcoins go to zero.

The "evil hoarding" argument has been getting thrown at bitcoin for years. That and the "OMG, look at how volatile it is!" argument.

Those making such arguments either have some alternate motivation to dislike bitcoin, or simply lack sufficient vision to see that these dynamics will eventually change. We are just at the beginning of the adoption curve for this new technology. Many of us have done the math on what bitcoin will have to be worth if it succeeds, and obviously choose to mostly hold on to it at present exchange rates. That said, we also spend it day-to-day (usually re-buying more to make up the difference). The increasing transactional economy (see blockchain.info's charts) shows that more people are actually spending bitcoin despite the savings motivation. As bitcoin gets closer to its equilibrium price, people will be more willing to spend.

Volatility will also drop tremendously at that point. We are in the raw, early, price-discovery phase right now, and it can be brutal. It will not always be so. Bitcoin will either succeed and stabilize in the thousands, or it'll fail and stabilize under $10. The current dynamics will be short-lived (though still years, probably).

It took 21 posts to get an answer that makes sense. ty sir