Bitcoin Forum

When valued against USD or GBP.

I know a lot of people believe it's gonna go to the moon.. or at least rise steadily into the 1000's of dollars and a lot of people believe it's a Ponzi scheme which will eventually leave Bitcoin worthless but what if Bitcoin does nothing, it just sticks around the £200 - £250 mark forever?

Why do people think it's a Ponzi scheme?  Isn't the whole point of a ponzi scheme that it is centralized? Bitcoin is decentralized and no one owns it or manages it.

It certainly would make it more usable!  If I buy some bitcoins today and dont get them for 4 business days (I usually use coinbase) I could end up with 10-25% less buying power.  If price stabilizes, I think it ultimately would be good, although a lot of people are here ONLY cause they think the price will go back up

and now ... suddenly got paranoid  :'( seriously , each time I decide & say "I will just buy 1-2 BTC & hold them, I'am pretty sure the price will rise" ... then I found simillar thread like yours  :'(

Anyway , idk I guess it's a good thing if it get stable value but I would like to see the price rising & rising to earn some money

My attitude is that 999 trillion topics about this subject are...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07So_lJQyqw

It would mean Bitcoin is slowly losing value at the same rate as GBP.

Did you ever saw stable USD versus GBP, and these currencies have very high trading daily volume.

True but I didn't read the other 999 trillion threads.

I have another question. irrelevant what happens to the price in 10 years time will still have to buy bitcoin with fiat or can I buy bitcoin another way?

What if? Well a lot of people will lose some money but a lot of people will be disappointed that this revoultionay system didn't work.

I guess normal people could just earn Bitcoins instead of local currency in ten years.

stock market is a bigger Ponzi scheme ;)

yes you can buy bitcoin with ANTHING.

infact overstock right now buys bitcoins by handing people goods and products
infact dell right now buys bitcoins by handing people computers
alpaca socks buys bitcoins by handing people socks
foodler buys bitcoins by handing people fast food.

if you are a business selling products, you too can buy bitcoins, not with fiat but by handing people your goods and they hand you bitcoins.

a future vision many people have is that at some point grocery stores will swap bread, milk and toilet paper for bitcoin and pay their staff in bitcoin

and in turn sells bitcoins for fiat.  so essentially just more selling of bitcoins

I don't really care if it doesn't rise in value. As long as it doesn't drop in value I'm good.
If it goes down to $1 then I'll be sad, but then happy as I can buy more than 1 btc. :)

Overstock actually holds a portion of their BTC profits. (can't remember the actual % rate)

Also, if/when BTC's price finally stabilizes, more people would actually use it more for day-to-day transactions, and those who are getting/going to be hit with "negative interest rates" at banks and countries with seriously mismanaged currencies (Zimbabwe, Argentina) will turn to Bitcoin as a store of value.

This cannot be said often enough:

- The value of a single Bitcoin is no indication of the value of the Bitcoin technology. If the USD/BTC rate is 1 or 1000, it does not really matter. What matters is the fact that you can use Bitcoins to purchase services and goods. And you could also use it to store value, with no 100% guarantees of course.

The fact that some people want their bitcoins to increase in value in relation to traditional fiat currencies, means they might be more concerned with their personal wealth, than contributing to the bitcoin system as a whole. This is not surprising, as human nature is largely egoistical.

Personally I think regression or standstill is preferred, as that keeps the noise down, once a lot of people starts to have dollars in their eyes, we get to experience a circus again.

My advice would be to stay patient, as traditional governments and financial institutions are gradually failing. Learn about bitcoin, and the implications it has for humanity, instead of only thinking of increasing of your personal wealth by buying bitcoins, doing nothing, and hoping they will increase in value, so you can cash them out in the failing dollar.

If you want to make bitcoin work for you, start offering something and get bitcoins in return.

*THUMBS UP*

/me offers fucktons of somethings, gets bitcoins in return, that almost always drop in value relative to the somethings

If anyone's wondering how that ^ happened, bitcointalk takes and formats the text following it like an IRC message.

/me says Hello World!

Totally agree... anyone who says bitcoin is a ponzi scheme:

does not know what a Ponzi scheme is.
does not know what money is.
does not know what Bitcoin is.

At the moment there's no killer app.

When's someone gonna code up a true P2P marketplace, silkroad without any servers using distributed hash tables and a democratic escrow system or do I have to do it my damned self!

I wouldn't mind if its very stable and adoption goes through highs!

That can't happen, price rises with adoption.

The killer app is bitcoin itself. If you look at the growth it has had since the beginning, that's proof enough. The  all time bitcoin transactions statistics (https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=) is a good example of bitcoins uptake.

Growth does not happen overnight, so everyone has to be patient. Remember this was created out of nothing. Cryptocurrencies are completely new. Check out market share (http://www.coinometrics.com/bitcoin/btix). Not sure if that's completely accurate, but if it is, I think being not too far off from Western Unions marketshare is not bad.

The killer app is bitcoin itself, and how do I explain that?

- You can send value to anyone with an internet connection without asking anyone for permission.
- That same value is transmitted without it being stopped forcefully by some party, that will 'investigate' the transaction, possibly reject it outright or reluctantly let it pass, after you've answered all kinds of elaborate questions and provided an awful lot of personal identifiable information. In addition information about your transaction is possibly relayed to a 3rd party which in all honesty has absolutely no business whatsoever peaking into your personal private financial transactions. If you have 1 BTC you want to send to your brother in Turkey, that's nobody's business except you and your brothers.
- The bitcoin address/account cannot easily be blocked by a 3rd party, which we see is  happening all over the globe every day of the week at a bankers whim these days.
- The transaction is fast, and with low fees.
- You do not have to leave your house to make a bitcoin transaction, you can do it from anywhere you have an internet connection, or even issue the transaction offline and then send it with traditional mail for someone to put it onto the network somewhere else.
- While the transaction is broadcasted on the blockchain which is open for everyone to have a look at, the only thing onlookers can see is the amount sent, and the addresses involved. I would think more analysis could be made as well, but it's not like a bank where if you send 20000 USD to someone, that's automatically added to databases of other government agencies. And there's also other projects in the works, that I haven't looked closely into, but take Darkcoin as an example.
- If you get stopped by the police, they can readily connect to any bank where you have an account and read your balance and any other information they might require. This is lack of personal freedom. With bitcoin you don't have to reveal anything. Just keep whatever balance you feel confident with on a normal banking account, and attach some credit card to it, so whenever asked, you just show your card with 3K USD on it or whatever. This so you don't arise any suspicion. The finances of an individual should be private. It's like your thoughts. Sometimes you have 'bad thoughts', and if those 'bad thoughts' were posted on twitter, or facebook or anywhere else under your full name, you would probably immediately receive a visit by some law enforcement officiers, because you're a 'threat'. Lots of the throughts you have in your mind at certain points are governed by emotions, if someone does something really bad towards you, for example some government officials which can basically do whatever the hell they want with you without any consequences whatsoever, it's only natural to have 'bad thoughts' reflecting the situation. In a future, governments might make it mandatory to wear a thought-collecting device, that would monitor and collect all of your thoughts, and once some 'unacceptable thoughts' were discovered, some robotpolice would immediately be dispatched to rectify the unwanted behaviour. Many people would approve such behaviour, as they'd gradually be accustomed to their privacy rights being invaded and eroded, bit by bit, part by part. The government want power and control, that's their main concern. So the people need to fight them every part of the way.

So just be patient, and let the services develop, and let's have the bitcoin economy mature.

You as an individual should be free. Free to think what you want, and free to do what you want, as long as you don't harm others. In today's society we no longer have freedom. If someone does not like you, and have the right powerful position, for example as the manager of your local bank where you have your mortgage loan, try pissing of your local mayor, which is his friend. The bank can come up with any excuse whatsoever to make life difficult for you. You could always fight it, but that could be taking so much of your life that it's not worth it. So as a consequence, most people just keep their head down low, and plug around in their daily lives, and they live in fear. What if I say that or this, will I loose my job, will I loose my house?

Even if you had some justified important discoveries you wanted revealed, you could still be punished. Truth and justice is not something that everyone subscribe to, some people rather just want to stay in power, at the cost of others.

If nobody can touch your financial assets, then you're more free. If you have 10K USD in bills in your house, and then you spend these for groceries, having the lawn moved or whatever, you spend your personal money without anyone else looking at what you spend the money for, whereas if you use a credit or debit card, there's a whole bunch of entities looking over your shoulder, collecting your expenditure patterns, and doing whatever actions they see fit. For example, if you purchase a pressure cooker to use with traditional cooking, you might as well get a visit from the FBI. Or if your purchase pattern match up with those deemed 'suspicious', you might receive a visit, or perhaps have the entire bank account frozen pending investigation.

The trust that people are putting in bank is really not worth a dime, on the press of a button, the bank can block you from accessing and spending your funds. This can be done because the bank thinks it's a good idea, or it could be because of political pressure, or pressure from law enforcement. And using a centralized payment system like a traditional bank represents, you never know when their services goes down and are unavailable. In addition, many people who's gotten in trouble with the law, has seen their bank accounts being confiscated, and thus being unable to pay for their defense. This is a concious strategy that's been levied upon the culprint.

In short, it's the tremendous flexibility and freedom that's the 'killer app' of bitcoin. People will start to see this gradually, and as more services spring to life and make it easier to spend bitcoins, more people will flock to it.

The people of a country is the most powerful entity, it's important to realize this. The millitary, the police, the politicians is not the most powerful entity. If people act in a group, they're the strongest force. Always. Fear, lack of knowledge and a passivity towards life is what often prevents the people to act.

Have a look at how hungarians stopped the internet tax (http://news.yahoo.com/hungarys-orban-says-scrap-draft-internet-tax-law-091304949.html).

In conclusion, bitcoin has come a long way, and it will continue to grow. The very fact that governments and banks are controlling our lives is very wrong. We're not free. We are slaves. This we must change.

Sure, there's perhapps no killer app built on bitcoin technology, like the spreadsheet was for the personal computer, that everyone needs to have immediately.

- Henry Ford

Many people are not educated, they know in reality nothing about how the world works. And our overlords, intend to keep it that way, by making it mandatory to have large loans that you need to spend the better part of your life to pay off, only to have a roof above your head. In addition keeping control of the financial system, means that the overlords have power over you as an individual. You are not a free man.

So the ones, complaining that there's no 'killer app' - it's right there - in front of your nose, and it's called Bitcoin.

I think OpenBazaar could be it, or I hope it would. It uses the Kademlia DHT (similar to BitTorrent's Mainline) to distribute the marketplace to its voluntary participants. Its escrow system is based on an 2 of 3 multisig wallet. (I'm not entirely sure what you mean about a "democratic escrow system", though)

Bitcoin is a tool: perfect p2p money.

We need an application that uses that tool in a p2p way. Riding centralised systems can only take us so far and they are vulnerable to adversity.


Boy you write alot, but yes I agree with you, bitcoin rocks and fuck the old sytstem!

Bitcoin was fully matured pretty much on its first release.


I admire your championing of Bitcoin, I like it too.

Again I think bitcoin is a tool: that being perfect money.

For the bitcoin economy to grow then there must exist an application in the spirit of bitcoin: decentralised.

Bitcoin needs to be passed on to the GUI designers, as you say the masses are thick, they need not be troubled by keys and hashes, they just want to sell/buy stuff.

Its value will rise from a demand, since the amount is limited, the price will rise surely. It may never drop below 1k$ in the future, who knows.

Haha we're getting WAY off topic, but it may be good for the value of Bitcoin right! ;D



Written in Python ??? that's a strange choice for an open source project of such significance.

What I mean by democartic escrow:

2 of 3 multisig can stall if you're dealing with a vandal, someone can list an item they do not own, someone clicks "buy" and pays into multisig, seller says "you been scammed" and runs off, money is locked up in multisig. Vandal does not get money but he gets a kick out of shafting someone, because he's a dick!

So I think a real person third party escrow will be needed to step in when multisig fails, would be very annoying to lose coin to a punk.

The escrowers would also run supernodes, meaning if you wanted to sell an item on the system then you could simply list it up and then turn off your computer, just like ebay.

The supernodes would mantain the details of the ad with photos etc on their higher level DHT. Only the titles and prices would percolate through the entire network DHT.

The supernodes can only handle transactions <= X BTC, where X is proportional to trust that grows as they operate and handle escrow settlements.

Supernodes would take a tiny percentage of every transaction, MUCH less than ebay fees. Have free market decide these fees by allowing sellers to choose escrower based on trust/price etc. This way supernodes would be very much like miners, they will have to cover equipment, electricity and network costs and their physical time in handling stalled multisigs.

This is the truth.

I'm a bit stumped, as to the idiocy of the masses.

For example, in the nordic Country Denmark, in their capitol Copenhagen, a lot of people use bicycles, and in general this is a very bicycle-friendly city.

However, most people do not use bikes in this city because they're concerned about their environment, or because they're concerned about their own health, or because they want to save money. When surveyed most people simply reply that the reason they use bicycles is because that's the fastest and most convenient method to get from A to B.

While I understand that on a larger scale, I don't get it from an individual standpoint. So people are saying that if it was quicker by car, they would use a car, and fuck the environment and their own health and wallet? I know that's polarizing it, but still..

For bitcoin to become useful on a large scale, there must be built end user systems that are safe and convenient, which is not an easy task. And I guess for it to outperform other payment systems, it must be so convenient to use, that it's simply the easiest way to pay or sell anything.

And of course, the volatily issue is also a real issue for many people, whereas enthusiasts happily add twice the needed amount to their mobile wallet just to be sure, not everyone could afford that.

Personally, I think the privacy and freedom aspects of bitcoin far outweigh any usability issues, but as you say, the masses are just concerned with selling and buying, and that's it - and I think this is a bit sad.

what if it does nothing?  bits and bytes worth money because we say it is?  and 4 billion dollars nonetheless. that means it is a complete success in my eyes.  

I think Id still keep it as long as it has value with it. As long as its not dead, I will keep my coins.

if you keep mining w your cpu it can't ever be dead

Haha, yes most people just do as those around them do, if that's riding bicycles then that's great :), stuff like war etc... not so good :'(

Price will rise and volatility will subside when way before mass adoption happens.

Mass adoption won't happen until we can do something with bitcoin that we can't do with fiat.

Considering that current centralised marketplace solutions (ala ebay) all require users to have bank accounts and/or mobile phones, well hell there's a massive untapped market there.

When/if that happens then bitcoin will go "to da moon"

Imagine that all fiat currencies would be dead tomorrow. There was no EUR, no GBP, no USD, no JPY.

It was only Bitcoin. Would the world stop to exist? No.

There would be no other fiat currencies in existence. Imagine that.

Now - let's say we didn't have any knowledge about former exchange rates. We had to start from scratch.

Perhaps we now said that a cup of coffee costs 10 bits.

And everyone would be free to price their merchandise and services up in bits or bitcoins.

There would only be bitcoins. Think about that for a moment. :)

Yes, if all fictional promises were removed right now then bitcoin would still be here, as would silver, gold and memories (that person was nice to me, I will be nice to them).

Unfortunately it would also cause alot of unrest amongst the masses of bagholders.

That's the truth. Well spoken. What happend to bitmint really. They were hacked, and lost some coins and gave up easily,or was there any other reasons?

Also your quote:


I wonder, will not bitcoin succeed because it can do what fiat does, but more easily? I'm thinking about international wiretransfers. Bitcoins can do this easier, than the current bank system. Is that not reason enough for Bitcoin to get more market share than the traditional financial industry?

Also, I'm stumped as to why people always point to the 'full faith and backing by the government' when pointing to fiat currency. This currency is to the best of my knowledge created out of thin air, just like bitcoins - is there any money that's not created out of thin air? In my world it gets more respect to stand up for your own opinions, than to adhere to the view of the masses.

As for people doing what others do, isn't that some kind of self preserving protection, nobody wants to stand out, they wants to blend in and be accepted.

Bitmit problem in bold:

Bitcoins are not created out of thin air, alot of computing work is required. Work is time and energy expended, just like mining gold without as much environmental impact.

Fiat money IS created out of thin air, the fact is not hidden: the latin "Fiat" translates to "Let it be so" an imaginary thing created from a word.

Money is a record of debt, originally people held these records in their head, Jon gave me 20 apples on wednesday, I will give him 4 eggs on tuesday, free market trade without immediate barter, the debt record (money) is held in memory only, a p2p trust mechanism.

But nowadays we cannot trust each other, thanks to tyranny that's bloomed over the last centuries.


Yes it is perfectly normal and in a syndicalistic society it would be a beautiful natural thing. But it's a weakness in our modern state, some manipulate the herd into various traps via broadcasting methods, some traps can be lethal!

cortex7, good response. What do you think about meshnets? Darknet, cjdns etc?

I agree with the facts you presented.

Ie.

Fiat is created out of thin air - no work required.
Bitcoin is created by computing work - however this work is done by machines, not humans.
Gold is extracted from earth by industrial labour.

The original code for bitcoin was created by Satoshi, one or more individuals. You could say this was created out of 'thin air' as well, as there's no physical substance behind Bitcoin, as there's no physical substance behind Fiat money.

In that particular regards fiat and bitcoin is a bit the same, but still very different - you cannot fake a bitcoin to my knowledge, whereas fake dollar bills is not uncommon.

The most important difference is centralized vs decentralized.

Also one of the most interesting aspects is that Bitcoin has no judgement. To use fiat money, esp. online, you need to be approved by the bank. To use a bitcoin wallet, you need no approval whatsoever.

As for the bitmint case, if they were successful, why did they not move offshore? I understand they were successfull?

That would be great... That will mean that we finally have a cryptocurrency that can be used against any other currency with a fixed market value.

If it stays stable at a certain price range, then it should be a good thing. Business owners will have more confidence and this will certainly encourage use and adoption. forget about the speculator and day trader who hoped to see insanely increase in price jump. These are the people who caused all the uncertainty and creates doubt about bitcoin future

Bitcoin code required some work, Satoshi ( or the group working under that pseudonym ) needed to eat and push the correct sequence of keys. Original bitcoin code was nice work, most alts just tweak some vars and swap out the hash func.

As it stands cryptographically encoded data is allowed to flow on the internet (darknets), in the future maybe not?

Meshnets may be considered the only free path in the future, but they could be stamped out by RF laws. I think if the internet only allowed whitelisted packets (encryption for which gov has the key) then by that stage trying to setup a pirate radio data node would land you in trouble with RF detector police looking for non whitelisted transmissions.

But that point has not arrived yet and so perhaps someone should code up a p2p marketplace.

If this is the Bitmint you are referring to:
https://eprint.iacr.org/2014/244.pdf

That paper is nonsense to me, the author has no grasp of what peoples money needs to be. It seems written by a politician or a banker.

cortex, no my bad - I referred to bitmit.net.

Bitcoin will either increase or decrease.
Complete stability is not something that will happen for a very, very long time...if possible at all.

Oh ok, moving offshore would not help them, in such a "sensitive" case govs can order DNS to drop names and ISPs to drop static IP addresses.

Centralized server system is easier to create/debug but cannot be used for any potentially disruptive system, it will be swatted like an annoying fly.

P.S. very darknets can be made using stenographic data riding on whitelisted data, so do not despair, there will always be a free path even if it's a very slow baud rate.

edit: I enjoyed my exchange with you Cryptowatch, I'm going to sleep now, catch you later.

I agree with this. If the price is somewhat more stable then it is now, then it will likely see more long term adoption while will likely mean higher long term prices

Hope you slept well. Bitmit, being a marketplace, why would it be a problem if they were based in an offshore location?

Even if this is the case, I'll stick to btc. Cause USD is keeping decreasing in value.

I think mining is not for me.

if BTCitcoin stays low.  it is just a testament to how strong the actual economy is.

Any rogue system will be crucified if it threatens existing big business, even if it isn't breaking any "Laws".

Money can brute force all sorts of things to happen.

Don't get me wrong, a p2p system would also encounter pressure:

Antivirus would say app is dangerous.
Media would spread FUD.
Saboteurs would be employed.

Currency always fluctuates against each other, you can take a look at Japanese yen, which has lost 50% of its value in two years against USD and other major currencies

In the long run, there is only one sure thing: All the fiat money will losing value quickly, because the debt based money issuing will require exponential increase in debt and productivity, and eventually productivity will rise slower and slower (if bitcoin's value keep rising exponentially, the game could last another century or so)

johnyj, nice!
+1.

The question is preposterous.

1.  It's increased already from
fractions of a penny to hundreds
of dollars in a few short years.

2. How could it NOT increase in value,
given the limited supply?

Its funny how everybody wants to became rich by investing in bitcoin. Bitcoin will go to the moon and i will sit on my ass for the rest of my life, living off my 3 bitcoins. If you live with this kind of mindset, sour times await you.

Well if the same amount of people sold bitcoin as those that bought the price would stay the same. If less people bought bitcoin than those that sold the price would decrease.
How is this preposterous?

Where do banks figure in all of this?

Central banks loan out money to their respective affiliate banks money that didn't previously exist in the money supply, devaluating the value of every unit of said money. (Federal Reserve's QE is the best example for this.)

Wouldn't make a single difference to me.

I use Bitcoin because of the security it provides, not the value assigned to it. Yes sure it's a little bit hard to buy coins (you can use ATMs but at a high mark up) but if it means my credit card details won't be exposed when an merchant fails in protecting customer data then I'll deal with the inconvenience.

*Thumbs Up*

I read something that said (I can't remember where), that the DarkNets would use BTC as its currency regardless of its price, whether is $5000 a coin or $0.05, because its the only thing that allowed them to facilitate trade without having to use the existing financial system. n a large scale, this would really open up the rest of the world to online trade, not just card-totting members of the western world.

I still don't think that is going to happen no matter what others think

Having started to read more about OpenBazaar:

https://openbazaar.org/

I am thinking if these guys pull it off then it will be a killer app causing bitcoin to raise significantly in value.

They would need to be able to pull "it" off....as it make their marketplace be successful in order for this to be true. I would say that it would be a long shot at best due to the large number of scams they will likely see.

If the value never increases, then we'll have found a stable price, or the true value of 1 Bitcoin.

http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/241/5/7/old_man_by_barnulf-d488d6k.jpg
Then for the next 100 years we will hear "Bitcoin is dead" by the typical FUDster.

Bitcoin's "inflation" is way too high to support current valuation unless adaptation expands at a rapid pace.
Good news is, it creates an amazing buy opportunity for us until this period of time runs out.
Buy what you can afford, it'll come to an end before you know it:
http://bitcoinclock.com/

Bitcoin itself will never be stable. There will be other options which will be stable by design like NuBits and BitUSD.

If you are talking of somewhat stable like say gold then that will come through widespread adoption and will take time.

Well the way I see it is if they don't inflate the coin and there will only ever be 21 Million coins... As a Canadian that's not enough to give everyone in Canada a single coin let alone the rest of the world... SO if it makes it to mainstream adoption and everyone is using it... Getting paid in it... Buying their groceries with it... A single coin will have to be worth a shit ton and most people will never ever ever see a full coin not even if they throw their entire life's savings at it!! There will come a day when someone or many will say "You have a full bitcoin? You must be loaded!"

If all  goes as we hope it does!!  I'm guessing another 5 to 10 years!!

Cheers,

Ghosty

Having a set number of coins is the entire point of BTC to begin with. It makes sure the value cannot be debased by any fallible human and will always conform to what the free market thinks its worth. A single coin can be divisible into ten million parts! (1 satoshi).

Some patience if bitcoin never increases in value. Bitcoin is born to pay and use money with a freedom system, not to make you and all people rich, so, never mind if bitcoin doesn't increase its value.

I think they have a pretty solid scam prevention in place. Won't stop people from trying, but will make it damn expensive to do so. In time, with provable ratings system expanding, it will be less and less a problem. Give it a year or two and it just might happen to be what ebay will never be, being heavily regulated and segmented - The worldwide p2p market for anything.

BTC is more appropriate and efficient than cash in any transaction virtual ,this is the greatest "Value" of bitcoin for me

*THUMBS UP*