Bitcoin Forum

In 2000, the smart move was to buy gold.

In 2010, is it to buy bitcoins ?


Could it be the winning trade of the century ?

if more people buy bitcoins than sell them, .... YES

Bitcoin has most of the advantages of gold and few of its disadvantages.

I think that some manner of cryptocurrency is likely to become the next gold. However, it might not be Bitcoin and it might not be the current block chain.

Once cryptocurrencies enter the mainstream, the price of gold will probably drop to something that reflects only its usefulness in jewellery, electronics, etc., as people stop perceiving it as useful currency.

This is likely to be a slow process, because the perception of gold as a currency is ingrained into most cultures.  It could take a couple of generations.  

Why not bitcoin.

If the bitcoin developers and this very community here continues to develop it further, without any compleceny, BTC will always keep the first mover advantage.
Gillette was the first proper razo in most countries and still it dominant market leader, despite all the competive pressure.

On the other hand:

Google vs. Altavista
Facebook vs. Friendster
IE vs. Netscape

I'm not saying that Bitcoin won't become the market leader; I think it has a good chance.

All I'm saying is that the first mover advantage can be overestimated.

Agree 100%.

We need to use this advantage rigorously. The more we slow down the more likely someone will overtake us.

This could take a couple thousand years.  Gold has a history as a stable form of money for all of recorded human history.

The first mover advantage is not like getting an 18 month head start, it's way more than that. If someone is interested in doing something similar they're very likely to join than to restart the project. And even if a few do start over unless theirs is way different newcomers will prefer to join our established infrastructure.

If someone comes up with something totally better, that a different story.

Companies like those mentioned can get first mover advantages and lose only later once they get oversized and bogged down. I don't see how that can happen here. As more people adopt bitcoin it just gets better.

This is not meant to mean "Go slow no worries" There are lots of reasons to develop quickly, including personal gain. I think the world really needs something like this to flee to or else life is going to suck big time. Trade makes awesome shit possible. And at this point on of those awesome things is life imo.

I am so selling my gold now.

Indeed maybe the winning cryptocurrency won't be bitcoin.   But it's the first one, in what I consider to be a new area in history of economics.

2009 will be written in history as the year when cryptocurrencies were invented.

I enjoy your enthusiastic posts about bitcoin :).

Maybe you will be able to buy and sell the competitor for bitcoin using bitcoins . :D

Honnestly it must be difficult to be bigger a fan of bitcoin than me, for I've been waiting for such a currency to appear for years now.

I remember something called "Yodel" from a few years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yodelbank (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yodelbank)

I remember Yodel. It was centralized and it wasn't online for very long.

Well it is/was anonymous banking, it's not cryptocurrency, is it ?

Gold is on its way down from 1430 $ towards at least 1150, and then potentially further into the 650-800 $ area.This is based on my technical analysis.

However, the dollar will strengthen at the same time, hence, I'd not recommend to sell physical gold and move into other risky assets.

If one wants to trade the gold decline, better use futures and keep your physical gold.

... and I forgot,.. trading gold into butcoins is the only trade that may be the exceptions.. as bitcoins may be getting even more stable and stronger vs. everything on earth  :-*

agreed. I'm a big fan of bitcoin but also try to keep a cool head here. there are just too many unknown factors that may have huge impact on the fate of this currency, both technical and political.

another question： since bitcoin is open source, what will prevent another similar or slightly different(better?) system come out to compete?

If you want to accept P2P money for your business you choose the one that actually has people securing the chain and people spending and accepting it. There would need to be a pretty compelling reason to start a new system.

Imagine if a new fax machine was invented 5 years after the original fax machine, but it didn't work with any other machines already in use. It would have to be a lot better to overcome that. I think it would have to be a whole new thing not just an improvement.

I'm sure it will be tried though so we'll see. I bet there will be an inflatocoin tried.

it won't be easy for late comers, unless they have some other advantages, such as the backing of Google, or Chinese government. we shall see.

I have no idea who this finn guy was, but Sonny Vleisides had his hand in the creation of YodelBank. Millions more people were scammed for.

Wow.  Talk about necrothreading.