Bitcoin Forum

Are bitcoins just a temporary fad or are they here to stay? Apart from the anonymity factor,what else has it got going for it? And after seeing the kind of ups and downs it has had in the past few days,i really doubt whether they can ever be a viable currency. Moreover,people buy BTC with the intention to convert into cash later on anyway. So,yeah...

to understand it well enough, you need to know the current economic crisis around the world, and how printing money works.

watch this video: http://hiddensecretsofmoney.com/videos/episode-1

BTC is a store of value that serves as a hedge against the weakening dollar, which is caused by the overprinting of money (called Quantative Easing). people want BTC because its value, unlike the USD or other world currencies, is not guaranteed to be diluted in the future.

Wrong, tapering is happening soon. The USD is rising in value against major currencies. Stock prices are falling. Gold prices are falling. Bond Yields are rising.

This will lead to less US dollars in the market place, which will lead to higher interest rates. The money supply of US dollars will decrease. So whilst bitcoins are continuously being mined, the number of dollars will be reduced through tapering and then normal open market operations.

QE isn't a one way street. Be informed and not misled.

You can do more research on how Japan tapered in the 1990s.

Here are some words of wisdom from zerohedge:

btc

BTC is here to stay for a lot of reasons like its decentralized nature as a currency and the amazing advantages that brings to the table as a payment processing platform.
Anonymity is not among them. Maybe it was in the early stages but it becomes less of a factor as it matures.

btc grow and grow  8)

The price volatility is temporary.

Basically what's going to happen is more and more merchants will begin offering Bitcoin and other altcoins as payment methods. So when a consumer walks into a store there will be a traditional credit/debit card terminal and a digital currency terminal with a QR code. Over time these two POS devices will become integrated.

So when a customer walks into a store he can pull out his physical wallet and use debit or pull out his smart phone, use his virtual wallet, and pay with Goldcoin or Bitcoin.

Bitcoins can actually be less anonymous than cash if someone wants to attach their name to an address.  I think that's a great benefit over cash.  People can choose to either be anonymous or they can link their name to their address.  The fact that every transaction is public knowledge is also a big plus.  In the event of a dispute you can prove to the whole world that you sent money from your address to someone else's address.

Start to try move money worldwide, you will notice how slow (int bank wire) or expensive (WU) it is. You see, here are big oppurtunities for Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is the free market answer to governments/banks that steal your purchasing power. Inflation is a stealth tax.


Bull! Japan is in the same economic depression it has been in since it refused to let the housing market crash in 1990s.

QE is the suspension of capitalism and the bailout of a plutocrat landlord class. Japan proved it doesn't work!

Mortgages are so long in Japan now that they are passed through the generations from father to son. Children cannot afford to leave home and start a family of their own. They have to live with their parents until they die.

Low interest rates are your enemy, not your friend, they increase asset prices and turn you into a debt slave for longer!

Capitalism requires idiots who fail, to lose their assets, not get a transfer of wealth from the prudent! That way lies Communism and Fascism.

Likewise when interest rates rise, the opposite happens. You do realise it's not going to stay low forever.

Japan tapered. Then they got deflation, but merely holding their japanese fiat led to a 1% real return each year. Go do some research rather than spread your FUD. Until recently when Japan decided to play games again, but they will still return to 1% real returns in the near future once the temporary effects wear off.

Low interest rates aren't your enemy. Japan had low interest rates and they received 1% real return a year because goods are getting cheaper each year. How do you fight against that? Your argument is not sound. It's interest rate compared to inflation that you should be analysing. Otherwise you fail at simple economics.

Typical scare tactics about debt being passed from generation to generation. That's only relevant if you have borrowed too much. Otherwise if you go to work, hold onto your money in low-risk fixed interest products, it becomes worth at least an extra 1% each year.

They are going to stay alone with other things like bitcoin :)

+1

Totally agree.

To not get into fiat vs  btc, there are many reasons why btc is great and getting even better. But not to pin it up VS fiat, at the very least it is an amazing option to have. In the future people will decide, hey do I want to use my credit card that is loaded with fees, but gives me great insurance or do I want to use my crypto coin, with low fees, quick transactions, anonymity and all its other perks.

Also noone said that bitcoin will completely replace FIAT. Traditional mail services are still around although we have emails and magazines and news papers are still here as well...

The real comparison is between EFTPOS "debit cards" 20 cents transaction fee versus Bitcoin "3% transaction fee". An average transaction is usually above $10, so bitcoin loses already.

I doubt bitcoin will work competitively unless we starve the miners and exchanges...

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Paypal 30 cents fee on international transfers.

Ebay fees don't count. If ebay started to accept bitcoins, expect their share of bitcoin fees to rise.

We should be looking at websites that use paypal for e-commerce.

Either way we need to see miners earn less fees and exchanges earn less fees. Furthermore, the ponzi element of bitcoin needs to be removed otherwise it will lose the mainstream audience.

Here's a crazy thought.  What if the US government were to outlaw BTC? Or attempt to screw things up with violating regulations?

How you end up with 3% transaction fees in bitcoin   :o ???

Where did you get those 3%?

I dont think Bitcoin and fiat can be really compared. Sure, there are bazillion fanboys who tell you how great is Btc for spending, but who would do that? Only crazy person would use btc for spending when its value rises exponentially. Why spend your bitcoin for buying tv, when in a month you can have two or three televisions for that same coin? Even using physical gold makes more sense. It is still in hoarding phase (and maybe stay there).

We all know disadvantages of fiat, but its networking (universal acceptance) and the way it supports consumer way of life ensure, that it remains predominant form of payment for years to come.

What do you mean by saying that it will stay there. That the price will continue to increase exponentially? Or that it will fail?
Obviously things will slow down at some time.

What makes economy tick is an exchange system, that is slightly inflationary (perfectly logical as both number of consumers and number of goods keeps rising). Deflationary one actually stops bussiness in its tracks as no one in their right mind wants to spend such "currency", again, if I have to choose between television today and mercedes c-klasse next week, guess what I will choose?

You are right about slowing of growth in the future, however how slow is slow enough? Price of gold is extremely stable next to bitcoin, yet it isnt used as currency anywhere but perhaps Somalia. I am not saying bitcoin wont attain perhaps 100k USD per coin, I just dont see it as a viable payment system.

Yeah gold isn't used as currency but mostrly because of practical concerns.

It should be 4% actually, but I decreased it. It actually forms part of an argument involving the zerohedge article http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-22/bitcoin-or-bank-heres-how-they-stack.

The problem with an analysis like this is that a bank wire costs a different amount in each area. An international bank wire in Australia only costs $22, Western Union is like $5. There are also many other wallets like perfect money and so on that the Indians in my workplace use to send money back to India.

In fact you must add an exchange rate fee of approximately 2% to the exchange fees (mtgox and so on). A quick example is the difference of 0.94 on MtGox when the true exchange rate is 0.917. These values may change but the fees are a consistent 2% extra. (I'll do the analysis again on another exchange if you can find one that will payout in various fiat currencies, rather than USD. You have to realise that if you withdraw in USD, when you deposit the cheque in a bank in another country, you still pay something around $20 for international cheque clearance.)

Thus bitcoin's true cost of transaction 1%+1%+2% = $40 (4%) transaction fee versus SWIFT ($22). I don't know why american's are price gouged... But international transaction fees should be much lower and the banks can reduce them if they see bitcoin is taking over...

Until these fees by exchanges decrease we shouldn't expect any further uptake by people seeking to minimise international transaction fees.

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Mind you, speculators can still push the price beyond anything we can see. That's the only thing going for bitcoin at the moment. Using Secondmarket's analysis, I found a price target of $100 because it only captures 10% of Western Union's market due to the block size issue. It's going to be a wonder if Secondmarket's Bitcoin Investment Trust will start dumping next month in accordance to lifting of sale restrictions (Someone mentioned this will be an issue but I'm not sure.). That's fundamental analysis. However, using technical analysis that involves a straight line, MACD, candles and more, so the price could be much higher. But then again technical analysis can also go in a straight line downwards...

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/11/17/bitcoin-bubble-or-value.aspx

Source: SecondMarket. <<<< Bitcoin Investment Trust

Remember, at the moment the maximum number of transactions daily is around 90,000 due to mining pools only choosing to mine 250kb blocks. Due to the mining process, it's actually unwise to increase the block amount as it could mean less rewards if someone solves a smaller block earlier. That's what the developers are saying. That the problem lies with the miners and so even if the developer removes the 1mb cap, it does nothing.

Western Union  2.5 million transactions a day
Paypal 4 million transactions per day.

Notice how the Paypal number is twice the Western Union one (more transactions = higher value). But the real fundamental price is only $100 if a maximum of 360,000 transactions can take place on the bitcoin network. It's actually $25 if you look at a realistic transaction limit (caused by mining pools).

It would be fantastic for everyone if the price stablised at $100, the developers would be millionaires. Most people that are true bitcoin enthusiasts that are not it not for the money would be happy. No offence, I'd rather have high uptake of Bitcoin at a lower stable price and for it not to fail rather than have my name "Satoshi Nakamoto" or "Gavin Andresen" and so on connected with the ponzi elements. Even Einstein quoted that he did not like that his name as tarnished by involvement with Nuclear Weapons.

But returning to technical analysis, it can go higher... So in the meantime, as an speculative vehicle, BTC all the way (in comparison to cash).

You have it all wrong.
Bitcoin trasaction fees are 0.0001/kb. That's all.

If you want to convert bitcoins to another currency that' a different story and it varys based on the infrastacture you use to do so.
For all i know you may even do it for 0 added cost or even for a profit by reselling them locally. And the process of turning bitcoin to fiat and vise versa will only become cheaper as new businesses will provide new options.

Also you compare tps of WU and Paypal with bitcoin to determine its value, like if WU and PP are decentralized digital currencies  :P :P

The amazing things (like minimal transaction fees and almost instant tx times across the globe to name a few) that Bitcoin brings to the table as a payment processor are only a part of what Bitcoin is.

The problem is naturally if you bought something with your BTC. You would be less well off as it has moved up. Vendors will just charge more BTC if they believe the BTC price will fall. There isn't a proper way to hedge bitcoins yet and when that method does come, everyone will have the ability to short bitcoins... The devil is the cure.

It's all good when it's going up, but you would have been angry if you bought at $30 and then watched it fall to $1 and then subsequently bought a t-shirt. The same happens with the housing crisis, everyone is happy when it's going up, but when it comes down, everyone is doom and gloom. As for business cycles and speculative bubbles, they all cycle... It's human nature.

Watch closely at what those Winklevoss Twins are doing.

It doesn't really make any difference whether it is decentralised or not. You would know that western union and paypal are actually decentralised entities with various stores and entities around the world. Bitcoin itself is centralised through the main website where you receive updates to the main client. Bitcoin is centralised through it's exchanges. You can say bitcoin is P2P, but isn't the printing of money which is outsourced to firms also decentralised, that's P2P too? I know the reserve bank of australia doesn't print the money, it gives the contracts out in a decentralised manner. So, it's all the same, except bitcoin is very unstable at the moment.

Bitcoin can be forked if the current developers don't wake up about the transaction limit issue. All there needs to be is a majority that decides to use the new system. It's open sourced and destructive in this manner. I'd rather transparency and trusted parties rather than open source where anyone can come in and decide to change the protocol. If you say this cannot happen, then it really isn't open source at all. In fact you can argue Bitcoin has closed it's doors.

Whilst with the cash system you can vote your politicians out, create governmental inquiries, audit your institutions and more. Everyone knows what is happening if they want to ask for it. I'd take cash and a transparent central bank over BTC to store a portion of my true wealth. At least we know how to game the central banks.

Don't forget whose analysis that transaction fee comparison is.

It's SecondMarket's Bitcoin Investment Trust - One of the biggest wallets with bitcoins.

I merely changed a few constraints with the transaction limits.

Bitcoin is just wonderful, even compared with cash. The fact that I can repay my friend for a short-term loan (for a can of Coke or a chocolate bar) literally anywhere, at any time beats even cash, which most people don't even carry nowadays, and when they do it's usually in too large a denomination to be useful. It's annoying having to round a 60p drink up or down to 50p or £1 because there's no way of retrieving exact currency on demand like there is with bitcoin.

I do think that the current USD/BTC price makes transaction fees a little too heavy, but then it's skippable altogether if you don't mind waiting a while. Then I guess that negates the advantage I was talking about earlier w/r/t the "immediate payment" thing.

Yeah, it's beautiful, but beautiful things can be dangerous.

Prostitutes and Guns are some well known examples. Gambling too. x_X

But yes, everything else makes sense. However, you would probably be interested in banking apps which your local banks provide.

Take a look at this. http://www.gomoney.anz.com/ Definitely worthwhile looking at how normal organisations will compete with bitcoin.

Seriously, bitcoin is up for some tough competition. Personally I don't believe it will flourish because there isn't enough R&D. The flaws in bitcoin haven't been solved yet, the biggest one is the transaction limit issue... Banks can just scale the number of servers they have. It's a bit like how we don't see any mini inventors, but large corporations like Sony, Samsung, and others are doing all the research...

Furthermore, Banks can lower fees, Bitcoin can't really lower them anymore without starving themselves. Australian banks used to charge for dishonoured cheques, now they don't. Most accounts had a monthly fee, now most of them don't.

Time is also money. It's easier to use the tradtional banking system. If your time is worth $20 an hour, then you will just use SWIFT. Take a look at the number of people that want ease. People choose Apple over Android.

This isn't even an analysis. Just a bunch of thoughts mixed with some numbers.
Anyway it seems that max_block_size really bothers you so you may want to take a look here
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=140233.0

usuallly tx fees are 0.0001!!

Yeah. well, ANZ P2P payment system is free. lol. You can't beat free. That's the future, it's probably in America, Europe, and China already. You can already buy items using direct deposit. That's like using bitcoin. Furthermore, most bitcoins sold on bitcoinlocal use this method too.


It is analysis. If you don't understand it, then I can't provide any advice other than to try and learn some valuation methods. It's all there and is conducted by one of the largest holders of bitcoin. It's one method of analysis, you can use technical analysis, but that too has flaws, it can be a straight line up or a straight line down.

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As for that link you provided, there hasn't been a solution. In fact there is evidence in that thread that states there will be a new fork, a new bitcoin chain. People will try and fork the chain but only if the miners consent to it. It could happen if everyone wants the faster system rather than the slow system. But if it doesn't happen, then we are stuck with the old clunky system that doesn't confirm enough transactions per day.


No rebuttal to this argument.

Then it goes on about forking and whether it will be successful.

It doesn't take into account which part of the fork will be most accepted but states that there will be two or more blockchains forked. But let me put it simply:

If there is majority consensus that the block size needs to be increased and the normal developers don't accept it, then the validating nodes will become the new nodes that are running the bitcoin-2.0/fast software to allow more transactions. This is kind of obvious. Majority rules. It will fork but everyone will lose confidence in the original one because it's flawed and limits the number of transactions. Only an idiot would stay with the old one and wait several days to confirm their transaction. Either way the original bitcoin would have lost enough confidence to screw itself over and the new one would be the one that would be used. Who would use the old one that is slow?


This doesn't take into account that if everyone pays higher tx fees, then it will just bid up the price and transactions will still be left unconfirmed... But there is a mention that ganging up could change the limit if there is enough consensus. Of course it wouldn't be called ganging up, but rather progressive change that makes bitcoin more user friendly. But then the developer comes in and says that it won't happen. Wrong I say, because majority rules.


No rebuttals. It seems like they don't care, but there will soon be a new thread with the same issues. All of the ideas would create a fork, but it doesn't go anywhere to determining which one would be accepted. It could well be the one that is not on bitcoin.org...


The only rebuttal is this:


But what if most of us decide to validate it? That's why it's either open source (Let us fork), or it's closed source (bitcoin.org only). So with this in mind, this software is more closed and totalitarian than I would have originally thought. The developers even believe that it won't happen, that's the kind of thinking that would imply we can't fork it and they want control... By why? What if that control hurts the users? Why would we then decide to use it? You don't hurt your clients and expect them to come back, that's just poor business management.

My opinion is with the white/black hats. Hackers would state, nothing can't be broken. We either let bitcoin be controlled like the Fed, like I mentioned above, it's centralised, or we fix it ourselves.

Oh , god , just accept that you were wrong and transaction fees are 0.0001/kb and stop sprouting non-sense.

The speed at which bitcoin has increased in price is remarkable. It has opened the door for so many other altcoins.

Thanks guys this forums is a great place!