Bitcoin Forum

Although the bitcoin lovers claim that one of the benefits of BTC is as a safe haven for your money, recent days events have no proved that.

While gold and swiss Francs have climbed, just look at BTC. Still hovering around the 13-14 mark. It's definitely not a safe haven currency yet and the lack of movement means I'm putting off using it as one e.g. hedge against the euro.

Lack of movement! EVIL!

Too much movement! EVIL!

To be fair, BTC isn't really an investment used by investors. It's still a toy used by geeks, even our BTC speculators are just geeks with money to play with.

Climbed compared to what? My time? Moondust? Barbie dolls? USD?

Different things are important to different people. On the list of why I value BTC "safe haven" isn't even in the top 10 :)

In the past year gold has increased in value for 1 oz. from about $1160 to $1500 or so, an increase of about 30%.

In the past year a Swiss Franc has increased in value for 1 CHF from about $0.97 to about $1.20, an increase of about 24%.

In the past year bitcoin has increased in value for 1 BTC from about $0.005 to $14, an increase of about 280,000%.

Of course, the past is not a reliable guide for future investment, so do what you think is best.

this is just not true.

Not stable enough to be a currency!  EVIL!
Not volatile enough to be a currency!  EVIL!
Everywhere i see EVIL!

LOL!

Euros are traded at far less than $13/Euro. Doesn't that mean they suck even more, by your extremely logical standards?

Good post.

It will be interesting if bitcoin ever gets picked up on the FOREX exchanges, those guys are used to making highly leveraged trades, which isn't directly possible with bitcoin.  Until then I wouldn't expect it to trade like a normal currency.

And we have a winner.

Why aren't leveraged trades possible? I can leverage-trade myself right now by getting a loan in USD and buying BTC with that money. What kind of leverage are you talking about?

@bitcola

The parent post is just plain embarrassing. In the age of the internet, you could easily research a few things and see you are way off the mark. Lets deconstruct, shall we?


"Recent days events" eh? Care to provide, you know, some elaboration to your claims? I really detest open-ended fluffery. Give what you are saying some weight, or don't post it at all.


Again, priced against what? If we have to assume from your statement that it is in US Dollars, fine - but make it clear. This will save you future heartache when people dissect your logic.

I shake my head when I see the 'lack of movement' rationale. You're saying that a currency that has some kind of plateau of stable pricing isn't good enough? Do you realize the markets you are comparing are several orders of magnitude off from each other?

What exactly compelled you to put your foot in your mouth? I'm at a loss to even attempt explaining it.

Bitcoin's rise this year is a one-off due to it's infancy. If you honestly think it will perform like that for eternity then you are lost, my friend!


Absolute value of a currency doesn't mean anything. No offence, but you should do some basic reading on currencies.


Not sure why the insults are flying here. My post was brief and to the point. Any longer, and it may not have gotten any responses. Don't jump to conclusions or make assumptions and flying insults are no help for a good discussion.

Yes, let's assume against the USD. This was my original assumption but I did not want to complicate matters. An assumption against the world reserve currency can safely be made.


Of course I realise they are several magnitudes of order different.


But what I am trying to say is that when there is a gloomy outlook or bad news, possible "tits-up" scenario on the horizon within weeks or even days, then it is normal for there to be a flight to CHF or XAU. As one good example, the last week or so has seen such rises. Whereas BTC has not moved at all. So there is no serious, even small critical mass who believes that BTC is a safe haven. If there were even a few, the price would have budged.

Anyone in Europe wanting to get into BTC right now is going to have a hard time doing it, at least at MtGox. I have heard a lot of complaining from people in Europe who want to buy but can't. I expect to see some movement as soon as it becomes possible for them to get money into MtGox, which is going to be next week at the earliest.

The rest of you should get in now before the big buying spree. :)

lol you just won against OP, good post.

I want to do naked trades (not bothering the hassle of borrowing money or bitcoin...non-naked trades are so 90's :)  Any ideas?

Here is the deal, just becasue gold and the franc have gone up doesnt mean that BTC isnt a haven.

People are flocking to gold and francs as it is the traditional haven when the dollar eventually drops.

right now gold and francs are rising on the POSSIBILITY of a major dollar drop. Not that it has happened but becasue of the ammount of people flocking there.

BTC is nowhere traded at the same level, you would not expect to see such a rise before the dollar collapse. It just doesnt have that many people that use it yet as a safe haven. THAT DOES NOT MEAN IT ISNT ONE.

(personally I dont think it is as we tend to peg items to the dollar before selling them IN BTC)

Undress before you walk into the bank.

i see the lack of correlation to the USD market as positive development for BTC.  you name an asset class; stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities, and even gold/silver and they all have a negative correlation to the USD.  and this is to be expected since the more USD's Berspankme prints, the more they flow into speculative assets such as these.  this is called the "all one market" theory.

let us not forget that BTC has had a HUGE run since October and it needs a rest, aka consolidation.  as i pointed out in another thread the technical indicators are strengthening and starting to turn up.  the fact that it is not correlating or participating in this "all one market" theory says to me that it indeed does have the potential to become a major threat to the USD and fiat currencies in general.

Bitcoin is a currency for buying things over the Internet. You can buy/sell without giving you personal info. The person you buy/sell with can be in a far away place. And you can store it on your smart-phone. Those are reasons why BTC will succeed. The other activities BTC is being used for are a distraction, IMO.  Satoshi never claimed it would be a good "investment", and it was not designed to be one.
Buy some, keep them handy for purchase, then replace them when you get low. Do that and you are not likely to ever worry about their price.

I'm just musing about how they'd probably create some kind bitcoin options, similar to the way options trading works for precious metals on the COMEX where the paper markets seemingly exceed the actual physical amounts in existence by several orders of magnitude.

(Not that I have any direct experience with it, but...)  Probably everyone knows that there are a *lot* more IOU's for PMs than there are PM's to back pay up.  Most people are OK with this because 1) nobody is expecting much delivery, and 2) delivery is a genuine hassle.

An interesting thing about bitcoin is that there is no real reason not to hold the actual coin.  So my #2 and thus the reason for #1 vanishes.  This, I expect, will manifest itself in significantly different market organization and dynamics than most other commodity or semi-commodity markets.

I would hope for a market which was much more difficult to game by market makers.  And even better, captured regulatory agencies would be a thing of the past (since there is no need for such agencies at all!)

My idea which I am working on and off on:

I have some number of bitcoin.  As I envision things, I can transfer them to someone else to play with quite easily and safely if I (or and escrow) holds collateral.  If there is a margin call (the short lost his bet) then I can have my bitcoin automatically bought in on an exchange and I lose nothing.  The level at which the buy-back happens would be proportional to the collateral put up by the speculator.

I'm finding the same problem with BTC and I have with USD...there is just not very much that I want to buy no matter what 'currency' I hold.  I can drop a few on Wikileaks, buy a Tee-shirt or some such, but that's not cutting it.

I fully expect to _not_ have this problem at some point in the future, and that is what I care about and spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about and dealing with.  I am taking a bet on BTC with some of my resources in part because I have more confidence it holding it's value and retaining long term usefulness than I do with USD.  I hope that that would not offend Satoshi and/or end up being bad for the project or whatever.

You do realize it's 20x the price it was 4 months ago, right?

You do realise this has NOTHING to do with investors flocking to a safe haven currency, right?

You do realise that the 20x in 4 months is unlikely to be repeated again and is irrelevant to this entire discussion, right?