Bitcoin Forum

I have heard many people say things along the lines of "Just buy and hold and you're fine!" on IRC-OTC and elsewhere and must admit I, too, used to believe that was the magic formula to wealth. Well, I don't think that's true anymore!

Today, bitcoins are valued against USD, the EURO and other local currencies for lack of a better gauge.

Some people ask for bitcoins as payment calculated hard against the USD value, arguing "A Bitcoin is 5 dollars now, simple and true, and no more." Others still see a Bitcoin hovering up there at $30 and would rather wait for another appreciation before going on a shopping spree. Again others hesitate to spend their coins at all because they know they're a virtual 1 million dollars give or take 10 or 20 years and they might never be able to get their hands on one again if they spend it now.

I'd go as far as to say some people may be wetting their pants already imagining themselves as world dominating Bitcoin Quazillionaires in a Jetsons-like setting buying entire nation states at the click of a button with their early mining or buy-in successes.

There may be some truth to that belief, but it's also way off the chart if you take reality into account.

What's the real value of a Bitcoin you might ask. (Well, you might not, but I do..)

Somebody a long while ago has mentioned on the forums that Bitcoin value didn't seem to be affected much at all by ordinary speculative events such as good news/bad news. Rather, there seems to be a direct correlation between trade volume and Bitcoin price. The more is traded, the higher the price. This makes a lot of sense beyond the daytrading scenario which the buy&hold people aren't bothered by anyway.

Movement creates friction, friction creates temperature and the meter goes up.

Transaction volume, and therefore spending volume, I believe, plays on the very same note. And how many transactions do we have these days? A dozen per block?

One Bitcoin may very well be worth "10 million USD" at some point in time but they will only be if you spend them NOW.

Sounds ironic? It is.

Spending is key to value increase. You already have everything you need: money and people. You can use the money in very creative ways to change people's behaviour and shape human economy. My girlfriend wants bitcoins now and asks me what she can do for me to get some (and I won't go into details about it).

As far as I see it, if you're in possession of a bunch of bitcoins today, you're already playing in the major league. And whatever you do with them is part of the gods' dance on top the pyramid. Now as much as in the future.

You give some kid a bunch of bitcoins today and he can do some amazing things with them already as much as he can 10 years from now.

Local currencies will fade, inevitably. And there will be another great rush for bitcoins at some point, but only if we make them attractive to people NOW. By spending.

The more we spend, the more we distribute them among the people, the more we increase the value of those precious coins we will have left later - and those we get from others later.

Sitting on them won't do much. Neither shedding tears over the paper moneyz' value you've spent on getting coins. Because eventually, that's all they will have been: papers.


The first comment to give this article a +1 will have a Bitcoin sent to their address.


Happy spending!

Cheers.


edit: typo

You can get the best of both worlds by investing, either directly yourself or by giving the coins to someone else to manage, receiving either a set MPR rate (CD or bond), or buying a share in a fund.

This offers a few huge advantages over just holding the coins:

*The value of Bitcoin needs to fall over 30% to 400% in value (depending on who you loan your coins to [/ invest your coins with]) per year against various fiats for you to actually take a loss (assuming no scam) due to declining BTC value.
*BTC is reinvested (effectively "spent") in the community. Further, with investments in productive business, the economy expands even moreso than it would just purchasing goods/services.
*You don't need to worry about somebody stealing your .dat or .wallet files. Somebody handling exponentially more coins than you likely has exponentially better security. That said, there's also the risk of fraud on the part of the person you loan to, or invest with.

You don't know my girlfriend...

Bitcoin sent ;)

Wow that's several million dollars for a single +1

Oh what, wait, you're saying I haven't paid attention?  :D

Are you involved with Bitmit?
The single coolest offer there was the handmade baklava. I think by that guy who wrote an article on how he got laid for talking about bitcoins at a party. That and the stoner baklavas... can't find the link.

I should order myself some..

I'm not involved with Bitmit beyond using it for sales and purchases (and collecting very minuscule referral fees). However, I happen to know the fellow who sells the baklava (if we're talking about Mandrik -- never heard about that article, though  :D) from somewhere else -- he's a Ron Paul activist.

differemt guy perhaps...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47830.0

Man when will they learn..  ::) OP is another example of a central planner wannabe know it all.

Sure, you can lobby for people to spend their money now rather than save. But you can't show a single shred of evidence that bitcoins aren't going to get spread around without people spending them now. That is merely you making baseless statements.

Actually I'm going to go a step further. It is precisely because people tend to want to save Bitcoins that they will get spread around more than we can even imagine. Just look at gold. It's super limited in supply, people tend to save it, and yet people own it all around the planet (even I own 2.6oz).


Good thing this experiment is by design a free market and so it doesn't matter what any one person thinks should or shouldn't be done. I can't wait for about 15-20 years down the road where all these prophecies and central plans will get demolished by the cold hard reality and evidence.

bah!
I'm right, you're wrong. Face the cold hard reality!

i have to agree with hazek.

look at rare art.  it tends to hang on walls in ppl's homes for years on end and has a high value.  this is a form of hoarding which Bitcoin will be subject to.

when the owner dies or the value gets so high only then will it be sold off at an auction.  the key to the value in this case is its fixed supply and rarity.  i strongly believe Bitcoin will be seen in this same light.  Bitcoin has the added advantage in that it can also be used as a currency to buy goods and services in small micro tx's.  the infrastructure has been built; its just a matter of time.

Exactly but unlike say diamonds or rare valuable art, bitcoins are highly divisible, so as their value and scarcity rises people can sell only a small fraction which is why I made the analogy to PMs as they are similarly divisible.

i know you know pm's are not similarly divisible in that how do u slice up a gold bar to pay for a candy bar?

Sturdy tin snips.

I thought I expressed myself fairly accurately by using the adjective "similarly" instead of "equally". And if you think buying say a loaf of bread with gold is impossible because it's not divisible enough then I suggest you watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ubJp6rmUYM

i'm willing to bet your gold comes in no smaller denominations than a 1oz coin.  if it came down to it how comfortable would you be to shave off a small bit for a loaf of bread?  totally impractical.  Bitcoin is way more precise.

Are you seriously going to argue about this?

If he won't, I will.  Bitcoin has a massive advantage over gold in this area.

Actually, I think the problem with gold is the counterfeiting.  1/4 grain is no problem.

unless you want 1/8 grain

the problem with this analogy is that those small grains in the video were panned out of a stream.  as i said, here in the Western world which is the frame of reference from which i am coming from, 1 oz coins tend to be the most common form of gold that most of us hoard.  even if it wasn't, you and i would have a hard time shaving off just the right portion to buy a loaf of bread.  with Bitcoin and its ability to divide down to the Satoshi level, i submit it is so much more practical and divisible.

heh

Why so hostile.  His point is it is hard to accurately divide, and you haven't countered that point.  Yes, it is theoretically divisible to a single atom, but practically it is a pain in the ass to divide.

heh

heh

Right... and with the 10 5 gram precision that thing has, your value will be within $500 250 of the actual value you are trying to obtain ::).

In situations like this, when the gold runs out it usually isn't long before there is a high frequency exchange of lead instead.

the difference between gold and bitcoin is that the global market and support system for gold is and has been in place for many many years, and its huge.

bitcoin is still fragile.  if it doesn't continue to develop a strong business transaction base, and value transfer function, it will either fail, take considerably longer to increase in value, or stagnate.

businesses will be more likely to accept bitcoin when they see more bitcoin being spent.  the more businesses accept bitcoin the easier it will be to spend bitcoin, which will increase the demand for bitcoin which will increase the price of bitcoin.

its a virtuous circle.

right now bitcoin is a niche at best and far from assured survival let alone considerable increase in value.  it doesn't take a know it all to see that spending bitcoin is required to get it a stronger network, it just takes a little bit of understanding of human nature, a little business sense and a cursory understanding of economics.

The gold-cannot-be-tangible-enough-for-real-world-application argument again.

Complete bogus.
Gold foil can be encased in polycarbonate for as low a demonetization as you like. For all practical purposes as well as bitcoin.