The hard part to replicate about bitcoin is the community. It took two years to build up the community, and I think that it would be difficult to replicate that just by tweaking the code a bit and starting a parrallel blockchain. The community is relatively small and two years is not all that long. See what Facebook did to MySpace as an example. And MySpace was significantly more entrenched in the mainstream public than Bitcoin currently is but that didn't make much of a difference. That said, anyone is welcome to try it. If it has features that make it superior to bitcoin, it would probably eventually win. However, they must be features that are obviously superior to a large percentage of the Internet using population. I agree. I don't really think that is going to happen, myself. If Bitcoin does become even moderately successful, I don't see how it would not happen. Where profit can be had, competition will grow. I find it hard to believe that an open source project that has no protection (via patents, trademarks, etc.) would not garner competition. The barriers to entry are just too low. The two year headstart is also a bit of a misnomer. Growth was rather stagnant for the majority of that time, with a high rate of growth over more recent periods. Really Bitcoins major advantage is being first to market and having a small geek community base. First to market doesn't matter if the model can be copied and the Bitcoin community is nominal in scale. I'd be curious to hear of any serious barriers to entry by a competing crypto-currency because I don't see any. |
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Diversification is always a good idea. It also happens to be one of the things the deflationistas overlook. Even if you think bitcoin has a bright future, it's not very prudent to put everything you have saved into it. Just as it wouldn't be prudent to put everything into gold, silver, or some stock or a particular bond. Exactly. There are some here that are way too black and white. You don't have to be long Bitcoin and short everything else, there is such a thing as a happy medium. Bitcoin is still an experiment in its infancy. |
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Should generate some interest. Any news is supposedly good news. Even if they end with the typical, "illegal", "money laundering," and "ponzi scheme" mantra that is in every mainstream BTC article.
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It's true, the dollar is about to break. It's big news. I don't know about this report? There are a load of "reports" by "experts" coming to light at tge moment. The truth is it's very obvious the dollar is about to collapse. Because of this I've invested 97% of my wealth into silver & the other 3% into bitcoin. Bitcoin is one of the best money systems ever created. I have full faith in it. Today Silver is $38 per ounce. It's going to $1500. And.... that's about the point I stop reading. Go sell crazy somewhere else, we're plenty stocked up here. |
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The market is about to skyrocket tomorrow.
The mining difficulty is about to go up tomorrow, July 19th. Which means less bitcoins being created by miners and less supply which means a huge upturn.
Plus, most people can not get their Dwolla money processed until around 6PM EST after the weekend so they are all sitting there wishing that Dwolla would get them their money already so they could buy in this downswing.
I did the same thing last Monday waiting until just before close of business for Dwolla before my funds were available.
Wish I had bought this Monday instead of last, right before the rise in difficulty.
And 17 was a floor.... No 16... No wait 15.... No 14, really.... Okay strong support at 13. But Bitcoins always drop on weekends. Except its Monday, and we're at $12.5..... We may see a short sucker rally but the writing is all over the wall. |
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QE2 is done. Assuming you're expecting a QE3?
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could be that someones interest are more long term, and a stable bitcoin helps it get adopted. This is what I'm thinking. Maybe an early adopter trying to provide a support. Looks to be a losing battle though, the ask side is swelling up. If that wall gets taken down or out, it's going to be very interesting. |
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I can receive BTC's just fine but when I tried to send, it's been stuck on 0/confirmations for days.
Status: 0/Unconfirmed
Date: 07/11/2011 17:51
To:16U6zvTH3UKP8EHT6mPZod8C2FrS4oVyy5
Debit:-0.25
Transaction fee:-0.0005
Net amount: -0.2505
Initially I tried to send it with no fee (the client default). It prompted me if I wanted to pay the fee, and I clicked yes. Since then its been stuck on unconfirmed.
Edit: Now it's at 2/Unconfirmed so at least some progress. But any idea why it took 4 days to move? Do I need to up the fee? Leave the client running longer?
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I have to ask. Why do some people get no fees at Mt.Gox while others get .3% fees? What is their justification for this? Seems unfair as shit, especially because I am in the .3% camp.
Compensation for those who had money and/or Bitcoins tied up at MtGox during the hack and subsequent shutdown. Nope, I have .3% fees, and I had both USD -and- BTC over there at the time. I would let them know. Maybe you were overlooked. |
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I have to ask. Why do some people get no fees at Mt.Gox while others get .3% fees? What is their justification for this? Seems unfair as shit, especially because I am in the .3% camp.
Compensation for those who had money and/or Bitcoins tied up at MtGox during the hack and subsequent shutdown. |
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what is gonna happen if us debt > us gdp ? japan looks ok to me  any thoughts ? It's already happened twice in recent history. During World War II and the 2008 financial crisis. so US is never gonna pass 100% because US is the printer machine ? = usd inflation ? Iam not accountant so really don't know. is my conclusion correct ? Debt to GDP exceeded 100% during both those periods I mentioned. |
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what is gonna happen if us debt > us gdp ? japan looks ok to me any thoughts ? It's already happened twice in recent history. During World War II and the 2008 financial crisis. |
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I agree with the OP. Also, Apple should liquidate all of their shares and redistribute them evenly because it isn't fair that early adopters in 1980 were able to buy their shares so cheap. If Steve Jobs sold all of his stock within 5 minutes, he could make the price go down a lot and it wouldn't be fair to the people who got in after.  You're twisting my words and adding no value. I never once said the current situation is not fair. In fact, this is what I said: Let me start off by saying this is not a thread about "early-adopter" envy. They took the risks and had the foresight. High risk should reap high reward. Obviously a lot of what I said in that original post was based on mistaken information (ie. the MtGox situation). I've subsequently come out and said I was mistaken. |
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One of the barometers that I'm using is to try and sell goods here on the forum. Afterall, everyone here understands Bitcoin so if I can't sell here, then the rest of the world surely isn't ready yet. So far my result has been less than impressive. No minimum bid, 80+ views, no offers. I know my goods have value because I have a locked in price from Amazon as to what they would be willing to give me for my item.
I've seen estimates of Amazon conversion rates of 20-25% for their own products. So even if you had the same level of credibility and trust as Amazon, and your views were from visitors you are targeting that are interested in buying the products you sell, you couldn't expect more than 20 sales. But you don't have the credibility and trust that Amazon has. If you had a professional website with good product presentations, visible mailing address, telephone number, and e-mail address and other credible websites around the Internet speaks positive of you, you could probably expect 2-5% conversion rate, and up to 4 sales. If you don't even have that, then I'm not surprised that you don't have any sales after just 80 views. It doesn't mean that Bitcoin is at fault. Try split testing BTC/USD and compare the difference in conversion rate. I doubt you will see much difference. You make some good points but how do you build credibility based on a currency that uses anonymity as one of its advantages? I could construct a website but I'm not in the market to be a larger seller. I guess what I'm asking is, if the most bullish of Bitcoin users (presumably those here on the forum) are unwilling to use Bitcoin due to its anonymity, how can we expect the mainstream public to embrace it? Other than face to face transactions, I see this as a potential problem. I do recognize that it is a very small community and it could very well be that no one is particularly interested in what I'm trying to sell. Although if that's the case why would you click the link when the product for sale is very clearly stated in the title? Curiosity I suppose but surely a fraction of those 80 views must have been some interest? |
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Even if new forum registrations could be used as some sort of correlation to Bitcoin's overall interest, you would need to also know the number of inactive accounts to draw any sort of conclusion. We can only see the inflow but none of the outflow and it would be foolish to assume everyone who has joined this forum continues to be actively interested.
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One of the barometers that I'm using is to try and sell goods here on the forum. Afterall, everyone here understands Bitcoin so if I can't sell here, then the rest of the world surely isn't ready yet.
IMHO the forum is an awful place for buying and selling goods - I spend Bitcoins nearly every day but I have not looked here in the respective forum-sections for a long time. It is just not the right interface for finding stuff. Also the audience at amazon.com is orders of magnitudes larger than in our forums here - add one additional order of magnitude for everybody who, like me, simply doesn't bother to wade through tons of forum posts in order to find something they want to buy. So you would really have to offer a _lot_ here to be able to compare it to Amazon. Anyway - you could probably deduce something useful from the total number of successful trades here on the forum. Anybody has statistics about that? The Bitcoin economy is still young - good trading sites are rare and we don't have anything close to Amazon.com in terms of usability. Give it some time - it will develop. People are spending their coins, even though many just don't really know how to deal with this new things just yet. Eventually it will be just money to them and they will spend it accordingly. Don't worry - everything's gonna be alright  Oh and I agree: this thread has probably turned into a worthy candidate for the Speculation section. Apologies to the OP for this obviously unintended development. I think you may have misunderstood me, I wasn't trying to make comparisons to Amazon. The only reason I brought up Amazon is to state that I know the product I'm selling has value. Maybe I should have omitted Amazon and just stated that I have a contract in place with a vendor that will pay me X amount, guaranteed, for my product. It was simply used to show that I'm not selling junk. You may be right in that these forums may not be the best avenue for sale but I don't have enough for sale to start my own website nor do I see any well established Bitcoin auction sites I'm fond of at the moment. As I said, this is just one of my personal barometers and I won't draw conclusions too hastily. |
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One of the barometers that I'm using is to try and sell goods here on the forum. Afterall, everyone here understands Bitcoin so if I can't sell here, then the rest of the world surely isn't ready yet. So far my result has been less than impressive. No minimum bid, 80+ views, no offers. I know my goods have value because I have a locked in price from Amazon as to what they would be willing to give me for my item.
Obviously one item isn't enough to make any sort of conclusion, but I think as I put more items up for bid, it will give me a better sense of if this Bitcoin truly is just for speculators or a viable medium of exchange.
The stories of so and so bought a car or house with Bitcoin is irrelevant to me. A guy bartered a red paper clip into a house. Doesn't mean I should go out and buy red paper clips. Anyway, that's one of the current metrics I'm using for my personal bullish/bearish long-term outlook on BTC.
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The profanity and constant attacks on people who oppose your views isn't strengthening your position. You would have been better off taking the high road and sticking to your points than allowing this thread to degrade into.... well this.
I actually agree with your basic premise, the amount of fanaticism by some Bitcoin posters is almost cultish. But to paint the entire community with such a broad stroke would be wrong on my part because there are some very intelligent and rational people here as well. However, the way you're conveying your point is not going to get those types to engage in a reasonable debate, you're only going to encourage hostility.
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Bumping this once for interest before it gets sold on Amazon.
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i think its much higher than this. It was just an arbitrary number to use in the example. You could be right. this is not even close to being correct. there was no market during those 30 min. i witnessed the entire crash firsthand and all new buyers, except for Kevin Day, could not log on which would have blunted the fall. i believe the hacker blocked all access to prevent this. and how does the creation of 500K fake BTC represent a market event? I was not aware that the hackers prevented all access. The 500k, fake or not, would be a market event in that it quantifies the amount of coin that it would take to move the price substantially. However, if buyers were blocked by the hackers then obviously the data is corrupt. But as I said, I wasn't aware of this, my understanding was they just flooded the market and ate up all the bids. |
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