Bitcoin Forum

Ok this post is for people who have the slightest intelligence in business economics, and a portion of intelligence in Currency Trading, so if you have neither dont even bother replying because I will call you out on your bullshit.


Knowing business we know what about this time of year? We know huge corporations and businesses need a way to hide large amounts of money. To make a purchase and list it in the books but still have their money somewhere. Because of tax season coming up and 4th quarter fiscal, they need to hide money Anonymously. SO why has the value of bitcoins not gone up? What better way to anonymously hide money, make a legal purchase that can be shown in the books other than buying bitcoins? But it seems no one is doing this, and will not be doing it this year.


I had expected a pretty big jump last week as that is usually when companies have finalized what they would be ding to hide the cash they needed hidden. A lot of companies use the forex market to do this, however it is trackable for profits, so they would still be paying taxes on the money they earn while hiding it. But bitcoins is no a currency or on the forex, they can easily buy a bunch of bitcoins and hide their cash without paying taxes on the earnings made from it. Once they begin passing laws over bitcoin this will not be possible, but right now it is very feasible to buy bitcoins with a legal transaction on the books that no one knows in the IRS what really was bought. They will just see a purchase for X amount of dollars.

Rebound from what, even if 1 BTC = 1 USD Bitcoin still works and solves a problem.

Seriously bro you are not that naive are you? I should have self moderated this thread for stupidity like this!

People are scared of the volatility. Hide money in Bitcoin and the depreciation could be far costlier than the tax savings.

Rebound? ----------> ATH?

Sure. Block halving, ETF. Bring it on!

Why do you think a significant amount of companies would want to hide their hard earned profits in the wildly unpredictable Bitcoin when they can keep it in their own currency in Cayman Island bank accounts?

And the corporate cash is only hidden when it's in Bitcoin, as soon as its converted back into fiat (repatriated) it's on the record and the IRS can take their share.

This is a naive discussion, no?

Local governments are a lot more aware about Bitcoins than you think, you make it sound so simple...

If a billion dollar company is dumb enough to start hiding all their money into volatile assets I would question how they got there in the first place.

The real question is "Why wouldn't Bitcoin rebound?".  It can and should rebound.  It did after Gox, after Shrem, after Ulbricht, after Silk Road, after Russia and China banning it for the umpteenth time.

As far as companies and corporations stashing away large amount of money in Bitcoin unreported or unrecorded "off the books"...I'm no accountant, but I'm pretty sure that's illegal in any book.

I've never committed this and don't work for FINCEN or FINRA or the IRS, but I'm pretty sure this would be categorized as Money Laundering.

Bitcoin will hit four digits again in the next 6 months or so. The technology is way undervalued at current levels.

this ^^

What you say it's true BUT don't forget when the money get stashed away, eventually when the right time comes, you will still need to convert it back to fiat in order to spend. There are so many limitations right now on what you can buy with bitcoin. And what a coincidence that it's the holiday season right now and time to take the flight and go somewhere else in the caribbean to enjoy your life

Of couse.I belive it to the moon.

I do too, but only for qualified investors unless unless you work for your bitcoins. The days of unregulated trading will go away like torrent trackers and SR. Get them before the exchanges require a brokers license.

Bitcoin is digital gold take that as you will.

Why would it not?
Go make B.G. invest $1B in Bitcoin and I'll eat, wait no, swim in popcorn in my backyard while watching the price ticker. :D

You sure we're not riding this crazy horse straight to hell? All the smart money may have already been made, taken, and banked.

Blockchain, and blockchain technologies, may be the way the industry/community is heading. History might regard bitcoin and other altcoins as an early by-product left at the roadside when blockchain technology matured (losing many people and institutions millions in the process).

This forum may be the last death throes of bitcoin/alts as the currency side of the technology gets dumped for the true advancements possible from blockchain technology.

Just a thought. A FUD thought.

There is no way to go to hell. A currency is made to be used. It is not an investment.
As long as you see Bitcoin in the eyes of dollars, euroes.. you're looking at it in a very limited and wrong way.

Not at all. I'm not looking at it in any way in relation to dollar/euro etc. I don't see how my post gave that impression.

What if bitcoin is just a side attraction we've all gotten distracted by on the way to the true technological advancement - The Blockchain

I'm not comparing anything or seeing it in the eyes of investment return. Bitcoin may be a massive distraction (because people want to be rich - whether in fiat or crypto terms) that's blinded people to the advancements possible with blockchain technology.

BTC is too volatile to keep money in. The market capitalization is too small for big companies.

The rebound has just started from $310 to $330, who knows maybe we can see $350 again in few days :)

I dont think it will happen in few days, but in a week or two the price should raise

Rebound? It's gone from $1 to $300+ in 5 years. That's a 300%+ annual growth rate.

There have always been short term fluctuations. Remember when people bitched about the $18 to $4 drop? Seems laughable in hindsight

Most of that growth was only in 1 year that was in 2013, and wasnt each year.

Most of the people who now complain about it rebounding are those that have bought after the bubble and are still at a loss, so that's what rebound they're waiting for.

People are getting scared and losing hope, that is a great time to buy more Bitcoins.

Or 295$  :)

its dead. lets go home.

Its too hard to say this will be profitable. The fall from 600 to 300 made me think the same.
 But seemed too much hope was lost.

I cannot think of one major company that would invest it's end of year surplice in bitcoin. It's been an uphill battle to get companies to accept bitcoin, and even then they convert it to fiat.

And besides, bitcoin is taxable. And it's very hard to purchase without it being traceable somehow.

Almost everything else except oil performed better than bitcoin this year  :)

That is a fact. Many people spent money foolishly buying and consuming uranium or radium in Patent tonics before realizing their true value. There was a lull where there was little demand for them. Most lay people are in a state of confusion over the relationship between valueless bitcoin and the invaluable blockchain. Educated investors recognize the opportunity.

Well it certainly did.
Easy answer: It simply isn't. We also shouldn't ever let it become that.

But for the blockchain to be successful doesnt bitcoin have to succeed first?

Ahahahaha , no bitcoin is not dead :

https://i.imgur.com/9AlLY9a.gif

Calm down and see the price up again(in few weeks maybe ::) )
Hey this post should be in speculation section right ???

More and more small miners will shut down and dump their equipment due to unprofitability and the price/difficulty will level at about production cost for most of the survivours. Only some super low electricity cost miners will stay in the race in the long run, so BTC price will correlate with the production cost.

Well I don't see Bitcoin rising past $500 in the next 6 months unless there is some truly amazing news, the initial hype has died down and I think people are a lot more cautious these days.
Even the Microsoft announcement didn't manage to bump up the value. I don't expect BTC to go below $200 though.

That would be esclated next year when the halving happens.

They always say that history repeats itself, I guess we will really find out if that's true in the case of Bitcoin.

I've always said the price today doesn't really matter. It's what it's worth in the near future and for some of us we can see the potential value it truly has.

History repeats itself because people are deaf to its warnings. Deep, huh?

ACtually the price doesn't matter at all, I just think the technology does.
Just because its good, it doesnt mean it will keep increasing.

it means because people get more interested

Bitcoin will rebound, thats 2+2=4, just as the fiat crashing is 2+2=4
When? no one knows, it's too chaotic to predict.

Bitcoin's market cap has become too big for people with a few million dollars to manipulate it now.
Price manipulation becomes more and more difficult as the market cap increases.

He's right.

Here's the thing.  You, and everyone like you, need to stop looking at the market price of Bitcoin.  Do you realize that the whole "market" thing is just a bunch of speculators and hoarders playing a gambling / betting game?  It literally has NOTHING to do with what Bitcoin is.  Or does.  Bitcoin - the Protocol - the technology - the infrastructure - etc ... this is what Bitcoin is.  The market price is a bunch of enthusiasts playing and hoarding in hopes of future riches.  The bitcoin market is its own little world.  Off to the side.  "Over there" ----->  

<---- While bitcoin is over here, doing its thing.

That's why its both relevant and intelligent to point out that Bitcoin could go to $1.00 and still be 100% transformative in the world.  Because NOTHING changes "out there" if Bitcoin drops to $1.00.  Bitcoin still solves a problem, provides myriads of services, and remains unaffected.  Market price is irrelevant. 

$1.00 obviously wouldn't be the price if Bitcoin was starting to transform the world, but the point is simple: you shouldn't give a rats ass what the market price of Bitcoin is.  It has nothing to do with Bitcoin in the real world, until the real world starts using Bitcoin.  Then *organic* price will begin to rise.  Right now?  This $320 Bitcoin price is the Bitcoin community.  Hoarding and playing their arbitrage.  Whales playing their games.  etc.  Nobody else is using Bitcoin yet.  So for now, the market price is irrelevant. And everyone needs to stop talking about it.

-B-

To play devils advocate:   It aint going nowhere unless someone figures out a way to incentivize consumers to start buying it.

Undervalued or not, it will be dead in the water if nobody feels like using it. 

-B-

OP, good thought but there are more readily available and plausible tax shelter mechanisms...besides the market is still very tiny.  and yes, Bitcoin will "rebound.". it's in it's infancy if you ask me.

I don't understand this logic. If Bitcoin drops to a buck doesn't that mean the total possible market cap is like 21million? What good would it be then??

people don't like buying things on the way down. Especially  crypto. Everyone will be hiding all they got in bitcoin once it rises again (if it ever does).

Right now people see a significant downside risk and a big bearmarket and no confirmed change in trend yet. So nobody actually is interested in coins as potential downside is as dramatic as the upside so buying crypto on the way down has been shown in alts can be desastrous - the industry has a very high rate fo failure - but that's  not discussed a lot around here of course...

Bitcoin can rebound anytime, just believe in yourself, no one can help us or show us what is exactly happening.

The incentive will ultimately be that merchants will charge lower prices for goods/services paid for with bitcoin because the merchant incurs lower costs in processing these payments (and has less fraud related expenses)

I think he means that "Bitcoin the blockchain technology" will be no less functional, which is partially true.  The part overlooked part is that miners will shut down, as they say around here, "en masse," since they are already on the verge of unprofitability.  This will cause a cascade of bad stuff to happen.  Imagine difficulty plummeting wile factory farms that drove the hashrate sit idle, waiting for the flick of a switch?  Yeah, 51% nothing, try 99% attack :D
And, of course, there's the confidence thing.

TL;DR: Survival of Bitcoin technology != survival of Bitcoin the coin, the implementation of the blockchain starting with satoshi's genesis block.

Thanks for the clear explanation. It really is a fragile experiment isn't it :o

NLC makes a tautology statement. Every cryptocurrency has their own genesis block but they are not all successful. The fact that hashrate continues to increase overall is because bitcoin is the first mover. If bitcoin fails then it shows that they all will fail. Fortunately it is simply a matter of engineering to address any concerns detractors have and miners know this. That's why they stay with Bitcoin.

Maybe in this case being first mover is a disadvantage? The media is having a field-day with this "worst investment of 2014" stuff. People don't forget that sort of bubble-bust easily. I know I wont :-\

That... :D That's so inane it borders on brilliance.  What in the world made you say that? :D  

1. Bob made a coin that didn't work well.
2. ? ? ?
3. Therefore, all coins made consequently aren't going to work well either.

Bitcoiner logic.

Well... Bitcoin lost 75% of its value in 2014, let's see if it can repeat the same outstanding feat next year.. lol..

Gox may have been responsible for us hitting a new all time high so quickly after the april 2013 bubble

From what I've read, most of them are nowhere near unprofitable yet. What don't I know?

Hard for me to say, stranger.
What you should know is that, for the first time in a coon's age, we had two consecutive difficulty drops.  Two.
The only way for difficulty to drop is for hashrate to drop.
The only reason for the hashrate to drop would be miners taking their gear offline.
The only reason for miners to take gear offline is ... ?

..is it has become unprofitable for them. I get it :-\

No he's wrong. And you're wrong.

It's quite amazing really that it's nearly 2015 and you people still want to entertain that line of thought.

The price of Bitcoin is arguably all that matters because it is reflective of the trust people have into it. We should all very much be concerned with what Bitcoin's price is. Now, is it possible to be confident and believe it is inevitable for the price to increase in the future? Of course, but there is no such thing as what you call *organic* price. The speculators/gamblers you so despise are the reason we have this "infrastructure". They are in fact very much part of this ecosystem and are vital to its survival. We owe most of the actual "organic" growth to them.

http://media.coindesk.com/2014/12/tumblr_inline_ngltzt9YIF1skrfia.png

http://nakamotoinstitute.org/static/img/mempool/the-bitcoin-central-banks-perfect-monetary-policy/bitcoinfeedbackloops.jpg

Bitcoin at 1$ doesn't work. It is neither transformative nor does it solve a problem, provide a service and much less "remains unaffected". At a 1$ market cap the network is not secure and therefore useless.

We need Bitcoin to increase its market cap by several orders of magnitude before it can be of real use to people in the "real world".

The confidence thing

Bitcoin is trust. The only relevant trust that exist in crypto atm is in Bitcoin. If Bitcoin fails than 95% of the trust in crypto fails.

When that happen good luck picking up the scraps and piece back together patchworks of trust.

No, it has become unprofitable for some.

Mining is a man's game nowadays. What's happening is the hobbyist are being driven out because they can't compete in the big leagues.

FTFY
Centralization will continue until morale improves.

No, if Bitcoin fails then Bitcoin fails.
The math behind the code doesn't fail, and other crypto can be built on the ruins of Bitcoin.
Like a new plant taking nourishment from the rotting remnants of the ones that came before it.

Things will work out, brg444, the day's yet young :)

I see you didn't address the trust issue.

You know.. "that confidence thing" is much more important than the math or the code

If Bitcoin fails the whole ecosystem suffers enormously. The mainstream doesn't give a shit or make a difference between your shitcoin and Bitcoin. If Bitcoin fails then in the eyes of the public all cryptocurrency is a failure.

Sure the idea might survive in the long run it will take tremendous innovation and efforts to rebuild the public's confidence.

Currently, fiat money has the first-mover advantage & confidence behind it.  If Bitcoin is going to compete, it's going to be on the strength of the code.
You're also unjustly limiting cryptocurrency.  Cryptocurrency doesn't need to be just another reitteration of Bitcoin code, it doesn't need to be "trustless" or even decentralized.
If it is backed by a major firms like Google, people will trust it--TRUST ME :)

https://consumermediallc.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/usedcarsalesman.jpg

 :D

That's why there is no point arguing with you. You are seemingly an intelligent (yet deranged) man but so clearly lack understanding of the fundamentals it is a lost cause.

Googlecoin is not cryptocurrency. It would be considerably less efficient to use cryptography in a centralized model.

Major firms like Google will never launch any sort of proprietary digital currency. See the case of E-Gold to understand why this is not likely and inevitably doomed to failure.

If Bitcoin is going to compete it is because of its economic model and decentralized structure, not the "code" which, quite honestly, doesn't mean much anyway.

Why?  Remember, it doesn't need to be a proof-of-work coin, so doesn't need to rely on burning tons of electricity on high-speed thumb twiddling.  No reason for V2.0 distributed ledger to be wasteful :)

Why bother with crypto in a centralized model? There's no risk of double spending or option for pseudonymous transactions with a central issuer.

Transparency, improved security, ease of maintenance, ease of KYC/AML enforcement, etc., etc.  Governments can get behind it :)
Remember, open ledger!

Transparency & openness are not features of proprietary, centralized ledgers.

Also, crypto has nothing good to offer in terms of security or "ease of maintenance" for a centralized network. 

It's like you're suggesting Paypal integrates cryptography, do you realize how stupid the idea is  :D

Sounds like Ripple scam.

Edit: In fact NLC is a brilliant critic and 'troll'. If he is not employed by Ripple Labs, maybe he should be :P

Software doesn't need to be proprietary to be centralized.
Payment processors can, and do rely on cryptography.
Your inability to conceive of cryptography benefiting payment processors?  Why, it strongly hints at you lacking that outside-the-box thinking, the daring to dream in paradigm-shifting, disruptive black swannish visionary manner of a truly exalted Bitcoiner :(

I can't wait for him to come around during the next rally. He'll be a fantastic Bitcoin evangelist  ;D