Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin bubble: An online currency stumbles

On Jan. 26 Charlie Shrem was a featured speaker at a gathering of bitcoin enthusiasts in Miami. The next day he was making less-welcome headlines, after being arrested and accused of conspiring to provide $1 million worth of the virtual currency to shoppers on Silk Road, an online marketplace for illegal drugs.

Silk Road was shut down last year. Its alleged founder, Ross Ulbricht, has since been indicted. Now crimebusters are turning their attention to the exchanges that allowed customers at such black-market bazaars to trade traceable old-economy currencies for near-anonymous virtual ones.

Shrem’s arrest shocked bitcoin groupies. The 24-year-old has been one of the currency’s most vocal advocates, and was seen as having no links to its dark side. His exchange, Bitinstant, has financial backing from the Winklevoss twins, the Internet entrepreneurs who claim that Facebook was their idea.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/business/1183551-bitcoin-bubble-an-online-currency-stumbles

Thanks for the news.
People are still using "bubble" to describe bitcoin :(

If all the gold was equally distributed among the world's population, everybody would have ~3/4 a troy ounce.

If all the BTC was mined(it's not) and distributed among the world's population(likely to be much higher when BTC is fully mined), there would only be ~0.00294531BTC for each person.

If you want a bad investment, buy silver.
Silver is already mined is more than the world is likely to ever need.
Silver remains commonly available in mining operations.

LOL

i work in the newspaper industry. this WAS news, and it was yesterday's news.
every industry has it's crooks. You are free to dwell on yesterday's news, however.
happy new year.

that's 294,531 bits of a bitcoin. i'd be happy with that at the turn of the century.

 ;D

all i want right now is to buy a coffee in vancouver with my BTC ;D

You must like spending extra time at the register.
BTC = Incomplete for POS purchases.

incomplete is correct, yes but it is actually a preferential way for traders to take payments, so.. it should be up to those traders to get their heads together and come up with a universal solution to the problem. Currently, to make an in-store purchase at my local cafe, i need to first transfer btc funds from my main wallet to a mobile (blockchain) wallet before leaving the house. Which means I have to perform the buying transaction twice. I don't know of a good android or iphone app which mirrors a qt wallet, and this is just what we need, first and foremost.

The blockchain mobile app won't get info from my online blockchain wallet, it just throws back an error message when I scan the qr code to pair my device. And it seems nobody could give two hoots about sorting this... ATM's are all very well but if we don't have the very basics sewn up and usable from a mobile device, what hope do we have?

USD is a big bubble. Because it is actually pretty worthless.  So ya, you shouldn't use it, because it is bubble  ::)

Or: something goes from $200 to $1200 in a very short time period, then stabilizes at $800.  Yes, that is a bubble  ::) followed by a crash  ::)

Great news, few weeks too late. We already had a silk road crash, get over it.

USD will keep on crashing.

It is prefrential only for the merchant.
The consumer has very little incentive to convert their fiat to btc so they can pay a fee for any transaction smaller than 0.01BTC.

It may not be feasible for BTC to ever be used as a POS payment method, consumers do not, and are not likely to want to pay fees for transactions.

Didn't shop at Target last year, I take it?

maybe in the future we'll have transaction fees instead of sales tax?

seriously do we even NEED a damned government??

I hope this question isn't meant serious...

Despite many controversies bitcoin is facing, it did not become a hindrance for this currency to gain popularity and to become successful. Many people are still using it, and others are continuously accepting it.

It changes later when more and more people get paid for job in Bitcoins

"online marketplace for illegal drugs"

Not "for", WITH illegal drugs, just as craigslist is.

The governments are not likely to allow this to happen.
A good chunk of the governments income is based off income taxes.

Long before an average consumer would be willing to accept their pay in BTC they would need to be able to buy groceries/etc. with BTC and without a extra fee.


Course not, why would I spend more to get less?
The ineptitude of Target's security reflects poorly on them, not debit/credit cards.

Sorta like all the bitcoin scams don't reflect badly on BTC,
they reflect poorly on the individuals scamming(Mt. Gox?).