Bitcoin Forum

I am beginner,
Bitcoin is good product for speculation but is risk:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
What is guarantee of coins? If will be invited new system, all coins lose in value to zero ?

Tulips aren't scarce, they aren't easily divided, they don't travel well, and they go bad quickly.

Those are all bad things with regards to currency; Bitcoin has none of those problems.  If Bitcoin fails, it won't be for the same reason that tulipmania went overboard.

I agree - and note that the difficulty level in 'mining' (read: growing) them never changes.

On that note... I've been reading a lot on this forum about people who want to change the difficulty level, or introduce inflation, or in some other way deflate the value of Bitcoin held by early adopters in order to - theoretically - make the system 'more fair' for late adopters (of which, incidentally, I am one).  Bunk.

It's working just as it should.

The early adopters clearly have a position to defend - and so they actually act as agents for Satoshi, in maintaining the system as originally conceived.  It seems unlikely the early birds will hoard (as is commonly believed), as their perception of the value of Bitcoin was forged when Bitcoin had none, and they have much more to spend.

A devilishly and admirably clever human, that Satoshi...

Yeah, that would be stealing from early adopters.

If you find use in bitcoins, buy them or mine them.  If not, don't.  No big deal in the long run either way.

If you have early adopter envy, start your own Bitcurrency, and good luck I suppose.

Inflation might exist if we get copy-cats, my guess is that there where more than one tulip-system. The fun thing is that it is not likely that a small-scale initiative will launch a worthy competitor as long as bitcoin is efficient enough. The big fish would and are probably be to busy defending their own systems to be able to launch something competetive.

This are advantages.
But if I paint 10 abstract images, I can claim several million per image? (for simplify, images never was expensive; in real world abstract images have sometimes big price and investor think he not risks) This images are rare but someone can buy another images.
On the other hand, domain names are really rare and good name helps to Google positioning. Therefore good names never go to zero. Bitcoin can not fail if it will be one possible system; if will invited newer, savings will damn ?
System of far future can use quantum cryptography for example.
How to protect against this ? How save savings and move it to another system?
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Never split or make more money than 21 million, no inflation!
They should be works to never in the future be possible inflation.
This is good moment for investing, it will be well if future (if mining ends) price will (high) stable and coins be used to exchange not collection and not fails to zero.

why do you think that all coins would lose value to zero, as soon as a new currency arrives?
it wouldn't actually have a big impact on Bitcoin,
Bitcoin would still be as functional and useful as it is today.
people would just trade bitcoins for that new currency and vice versa and maybe (!) over time bitcoins will lose value, but people also might choose NOT to use the new currency for whatever reason, noone can tell.

If bitcoin does not crash or hacked there will be no reason to start another currency.  No shop will switch.  The reason as any object be it alpaca socks or paypal is sold or bought as time goes on bitcoin will get more and more fair.  You going to screw a shop out of their savings gl. 

Imho they goofed when they started it they should have just given everyone 1000 coins on such and such date, then after that date no more bitcoin.  Someone maybe in a window of within 2 years will do that and end bitcoin.  Mining is one of the most unfair ways to distribute bitcoin, such a brain dead idea.  However, it is better than giving it all to the founders.

If you figure out a cheat-proof, distributed, fair way of doing that please let me know.  I need that magical solution for the Bitcoin Faucet.

In-person DNA testing.  I wonder whether the energy costs of doing that would be more than the energy costs of mining 21 million Bitcoins.

That would require a central database.

That fails the fairness test, too-- identical twins won't get their fair share.

DNA test + fingerprint? :)

Maybe if there was a serial number attached to every 0.000001 BTC?  ???

Put ink on everyones finger.

How is it fair giving all the coins to people with the best equipment.  Yes I can buy the equipment but I live in California and have to pay the high electricity prices since it is run by unions, government, and monopolies.   

Did you miss Toecoin? This is solved  :)

Mining isn't there to provide a fair and equitable distribution of wealth. That's what poverty is for.

Mining is there to pay back independent mints willing to spend their CPU cycles minting coins for the economy. It's a sideline and not something to focus on for income unless you want to specialize in being a mint. Instead you could club a seal or sell crack or something and use that money to buy bitcoins.


I suggest you invest them with me. I'm paying 0.02 bitcoins for every bitcoin received. :)
with proper identification and whining. Offer not good in all solar systems, one speculum per customer, product may have settled in shipping, may cause rash and incoherence in some users, please do not call after 10am on Tuesdays

What about the cost of production of that much ink?

There is no way to prove your physical identity electronically.   The human body contains no identification nor signature algorithm.

Epic concept is epic.

How about this.  You start with a Japan donations site say 10 people donate, one donates $5, the other $4, the third $1, ...
You take the total after 2 months deadline say total is $50.  Set the total bitcoins at $10 million BTC.  The guy that donated $4 gets 4/50*10000000 bitcoins.  Up to a maximum of 1%.  

All and all it is over and kind of fun the way you did it.  

Is it possible to freeze the number of gpu coins at the end of the year.  End that method.  Hold the Japan relief lotto for the rest of the year.  Then on New Years Eve distribute the rest of the bitcoin and then cap total bitcoins at $20 million BTC or $10 million BTC.  End the inflation.  It actually might increase interest.

This is a reasonable analogy.

Regardless of the merits of BTC...
Since probably 90% of transactions are miners/speculators...
With minimal actual commercial transactions...
That means BTC = BUBBLE.

All the orgasmic tech press you see day after day...
Is just gonna keep feeding the Bubble.

When commercial transactions start approaching some level...
Maybe 30-40-50% or higher...
One may be able to place a "fair value" on BTC...
Right now it's an almost pure speculative Bubble.

This is not a BAD THING... it's a normal process.

7200 BTC generated by miners everyday is insignificant on mtgox. Plus the fact that most if not all speculative transactions occur internally on exchanges.

If tulips could be sent via internet, if they could be divided like billions of times, if I could store them safely on my hard drive, etc...  then I would totally use them as money.

As a quant, I'm just trying to reach a point...
Where I can place a "fair value" +/- 20% on BTC...
*** And this value is entirely unrelated to "mining cost" ***...
Except among miners = speculators (ALL MINERS ARE SPECULATORS)...
50 BTC every 10 minutes will be produced regardless of "mining cost".

Value tends to correlate highly with what real goods one can conveniently buy.

Since there is negligible commercial activity at this point...
And don't tell me I can buy a pizza somewhere in California (if I show a credit card)...
It's fair to view BTC, at this point, as a Bubble...
We are surrounded by Bubbles, it's a normal human speculative process...
Any Bubble can go up 100% and go down 50% in a flash...
And the posters in this thread show no understanding of Bubbles.

Did you know BTC price has a 0.65 correlation with Wikipedia "BitCoin" views...
Some high profile article come out... everything spikes.

Can I please hear an some economic arguments...
That specifically address the dearth of meaningful commerce.

Also...
By what economic mechanism does BTC in circulation go from $6 million to $60 million...
It's not via "mining cost"... and we don't like Bubble talk... so what is it ???

With all due respect... your post is devoid of useful information...
Though it lends credence to the idea that BitCoin is, first and foremost, a Cult.

BTC has popped 40-45% from the mid-March to mid-April average of about $0.80...
With no meaningful change in the "mining cost" of idealistic, hard-working "BTC farmers"...
Or any other measurable parameter... other than publicity.

And why are you seemingly hostile to measuring level of BTC commercial transactions...
When every other conceivable stat is endlessly trumpeted?

So, perhaps, to someone else interested in commercial levels...

Assuming I use Gavin's tools, etc to scan all transactions in the database...
What are potential ways to screen out mining and trading transactions...
So that a BTC Commercial Activity Index can be approximated.
 

This is not possible. You can determine Coinbase transactions ("mining transactions"), but that is all. Every other transaction could be from one person to another, or one person to themselves, there is no way to tell.

Apparently it is not necessary for "miners" to have insider information about blockchains they "mine" for, "mining" is a commodity that can be separated from the details/internals of blockchains by "black box" pools.

Basically a pool can hire miners, paying them in whatever currency miners choose to accept.

So for "mining" companies, a proliferation of blockchains should be a good thing, helping free them from "dependence" upon any one specific blockchain-based currency or application.

With "mining" in place like that as a "commodity", available to anyone who wishes to process a blockchain for any purpose, people interested in different ways of distributing digital coins/tokens can maybe separate themselves initially from the perceived-by-some "problem" of allowing any tom dick or harry to mint the coins. The coins can be distributed first and then once all of them (o any chosen number of them) have been issued the possibility of opening up the network can be revisited.

Such an approach allows coins to be issued with goods they can buy already in place, because it allows issuing of coins to be correlated with provision of goods for those coins to buy. The providers of the goods no longer have to worry that more coins might be issued than there are goods waiting to be bought.

For example a "General Mining Corp" can issue its own GMC coinage to people who deposit resources and redeem those same coins for almost that amount of resources (that amount minus operating costs of operating the storage / transaction / trading / delivery system).

By making an online game accessible to pretty much anyone with a browser, anyone can build "resource" collection or mining or synthesis facilities to obtain "resources" to sell for such coins, and by means of "merely a bunch of games" distribution of coins can take place in an open market that values not only currency inputs (people who want to buy World of Bitcurrency coins or facilities or characters or whatever) but also human time (people who actually play the games, creating virtual world scenarios and events and economies and markets and so on by their activities).

In some number of years anyone who does in fact prefer to get their coins "free" simply by puttering around at their computer playing games burning up hours they maybe cannot do not or have no desire to "sell" in other markets can have coins, distributed in a way that is based on human input and time and playing skills instead of GPU cycles.

At any time that it seems worthwhile to weigh it down with the cost of "hiring" GPU farms to "secure" the network, block box pools can be used to hire however much GPU power seems worth the cost of paying for it.

Each and every player can issued their own coinage if they wish, competing on the markets with any other coinages on the markets.

It might well turn out that many coinages will not consider the cost of employing GPU farms worthwhile until/unless trade values of trade in their coinage exceeds, in various negotiable valuables, the cost of getting into GPU-power-wars or simply the cost quoted by their local GPU farm for jacking up the difficulty of their blockchain.

(Many might even ask why jack up the difficulty at all? Just how much overhead cost *is* there in opening up one's currency to the pseudonymous public to fight GPU-power-wars with?)

-MarkM- (Build your virtual resource mines free at http://galaxies.mygamesonline.org/ ! ;))

Hmmm, a quant who wants in on bitcoin action gets nasty.

Bitcoin could be devasting for the quants. those fair-headed, glory-boyz straight out of the best tech. colleges in the world to pimp themselves programming for Wall St., just in time to for biggest credit crunch in history ... could suck big to miss the biggest Phoenix ride from the Ashes of all time.

Get mining quants, it's where it at!!!!! ... digital gold, sweat from your brow.