To the vast majority of people world wide, USD is very stable and BTC (to the extent they even know of BTC) is very volatile.
This is because USD IS very stable and BTC IS very volatile. While in a long-term monetary base sense, BTC is more stable, the current market valuation of BTC is incredibly volatile because it reflects the current BTC marketplace (small). In a long-term sense BTC are likely incredibly undervalued, but if anything that means that we should expect even more volatility in the future as the BTC 'GDP' grows and the market responds. -bgc I meant the stability comment to be more for the crowd here that refuse to admit any validity to USD at all. I, personally, view BTC as a supplement of sorts to USD and not a replacement (but that's a different conversation). But yes, they very nature of BTC makes it volatile in these early years. It will be very interesting to see how the markets respond to the first block reward decrease  |
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You'll know that BTC is viewed as stable in the eyes of the main stream when news stories about BTC stop referring to the $30 dollar spike and subsequent crash in the first paragraph or two.
Well the "$30 spike" stories are only going to stop after the price has been stable above $30 for a while. I'd disagree. I think that, while it might get mentioned, the spike will become sort of a side-story after the price stays stable for a good length of time. But, since we're talking about a future situation that cannot be resolved through math/science that'll just have to rest on a matter of opinion. But why the quotes around $30 spike? Are you suggesting that the spike didn't happen, or am I misunderstanding your use of quotes? |
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The question is how a layman measures "fluctuation".
If he comes today 1 hamburger = 1 USD, and tomorrow 1 hamburger = 1 USD it means for him USD is stable. In this layman sense USD is stable against almost everything.
Is it possible to sell hamburgers today at the same price as yesterday if we use BTC? Will it be good for seller? for buyer?
Are you suggesting that we use the Big Mac index as measure of volatility? Though I still prefer Pizza Purchasing Power: how many pizzas you can buy for 10000 BTC at a given point in time. It looks like we're up a few pizzas this week.  He was using it as an example. To the vast majority of people world wide, USD is very stable and BTC (to the extent they even know of BTC) is very volatile. It's easy for people on these forums and others like it to start thinking as if everything they know is common knowledge. You'll know that BTC is viewed as stable in the eyes of the main stream when news stories about BTC stop referring to the $30 dollar spike and subsequent crash in the first paragraph or two. |
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It will go down under $6.
Unless it doesn't.
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$6.40~ could also be some threshold for mining profitability.
All those stories about the BTC being safer than the Euro having an effect/
Aliens.
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What's an aol?  |
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Very cool. And the device their selling doesn't look half bad.
Their webpage, on the other hand, could use some work. Selling a device that is so technical and having such a poor website doesn't exactly inspire confidence for the consumer.
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I don't necessarily agree with you. I for one have been operating a small bitcoin marketplace in the last few months and am planning on expanding operations soon. I always do an immediate cash out (about 90%, the rest I leave for investment). Yes it isn't as easy as accepting cash only, but you have a HUGE almost untouched market to deal with. Being a miner myself, there are times I wish I could just grab something quick with BTC, instead of waiting for everything to transfer to my bank account (or taking a percentage hit by trying a more immediate option). Also, if you offer products in BTC you can get the impulse buyers and people that haven't really connected the BTC exchange rate to actual USD. All they know is they're making money by mining and want to spend it. You have to realize that most people on this board and in this thread really care and pay attention to the exchange rate, but there are many people just getting into this and do it casually that don't really pay that much attention.
I have the feeling that most people with any BTC have some passing knowledge of the exchange rate. We're still at the point where every news article and almost everyone on this board discuss BTC in direct relation to "fiat" money. And would you spend 10 BTC on an item knowing that there is a chance that you could get the same item for only 9.5 or 9 BTC tomorrow? It works both ways, for sure, and I'm not arguing that BTC isn't viable right now and that there isn't a market for BTC buying. I'm arguing that it'd be better if prices were more stable. |
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(Make a Rainbow Dash montage to this German folk song, ect) I am intrigued. How much would you charge for something of this nature? Depends on length/difficulty. Off the top of my head, something like the montage/music video like the Exo-Squad one I used as example in first post I'd say...2-3BTC. Also depends on how specific. If you have the scenes and an idea of what you want, that is easier on me and will be less. If it really is just "make something using this show/song" then I'll have to spend more time on it. Something more complicated/longer will obviously be more. PM and we can discuss specifics. |
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Forget the word bank, the official client is a ledger and a wallet.
If they don't want the ledger part, direct them to a wallet only client, if they also want a copy of the ledger, they can download the full thing.
Problem solved. (and I do believe this is a problem since I also feel like too many new potential users get discouraged after they unnecessarily download the official client)
I think "ledger" is a better choice of words, fo sho. |
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So smart to see so little. How are changes to the protocol made? They are voted on by the miners. It only takes a few THash miners to drive the difficulty so high everybody else gets squeezed out. So when a few control a majority of the network, it will be they that decide what BIPs get approved or not. And when those few miners decide they want 3% of every transaction there won't be a damn thing you can do about it. So much for a decentralized currency. This was your last chance to keep Bitcoin in the hands of the people, because once those ASICs start rolling out it will be too late. Hopefully Bitcoin 2.0 will address this issue (amongst others).
I really can't imagine a scenario or fix where miners with more resources don't have more advantage over "the people". Just kinda how these things work. People with access to dozens of GPUs are going to dominate miners with a dual-core CPU. Eventually difficulty will increase and payouts decrease that only a handful of people will be able to mine successfully even WITHOUT ASIC coming into being. Also, there's something funny about people arguing that bitcoin should be changed to keep some people out for the sake of "the people". And that said, BFL does look like a whole lotta vapor ware to me anyways. |
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No one is going to want to spend BTC on anything if there is a high chance that price go down/BTC value goes up by 10% within the hour. Well my sales would indicate otherwise but what do I know I am only selling services in BTC everyday. Trading = selling BTC for fiat. Buying = selling BTC for goods. Your belief that people will trade (selll BTC for $$$) but not buy goods (sell BTC for goods) due to volatility is kinda silly. Of course volatility hasn't been 10% in 10 minutes in a long time. If you spent more time selling and less time trolling you might realize that. Feel free to have the last word I won't be here. I guess we're talking about two different things. You are obviously a user who is very involved in the community and market to users who are likely very involved. I thought we were talking about widespread adoption of BTC to other merchants and more average users to grow BTC adoption. I didn't realize that you were arguing the "keep BTC niche" position. My apologies. Again, WE know that volatility hasn't been 10%. But my most measures it's still pretty high. A lot of people who don't yet use BTC but know OF BTC have the $30 spike/crash as a schema in their mind of what BTC. Only long periods of slow change will remove that incident from the mainstream mind. |
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Because it isn't a very good selling point for BTC? "Hey, accept BTC so you can waste your time converting it to USD anyways! Oh, wait..."
Are you just trying to troll? How about accept BTC as a payment SYSTEM because it is cheaper than VISA, protects you from chargebacks/fraud, and has no merchant account holds/reserves. Warning! Conflicting viewpoint! Danger! Cannot computer! Conclusion: must be troll No son, a system that requires you to immediately move around your money and make conversions and pray to the god on Mt. Gox that prices don't drop .50 USD in the next 10 min is really actually a huge headache. Of COURSE you're right that BTC as a system is way way better than Visa, etc. Don't ever believe I argued that, son. But it'd be BETTER x2 with stability. I really can't believe that this point would cause you to flip out so much. EDIT: And that's from the merchants point of view. As BTCCHINA pointed out, people like stability. No one is going to want to spend BTC on anything if there is a high chance that price go down/BTC value goes up by 10% within the hour. |
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No. People do not want to run their own bank. They want banks to be banks.
It's ok, then we should let them know somehow that by using official client they will be attempting to run the Bitcoin Bank node! Currently they might think it's something small and simple like maybe a BitTorrent client. It is not! I still think using the term bank in any form will just confuse people. Remember, we're talking about people who most likely don't know zilch about economics, banking, or bitcoin. And they probably won't really care to know (they're busy people). The term bank makes people think of large, complex, and expensive institutions. Wallet is something they hold onto that stores their money. Wallet is very easy to understand and personable. |
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Killing GPU mining is probably a good step forward for BTC.
Get people to stop thinking of BTC as a chance to print their own money and make it, you know, a currency to be used and exchanged.
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No. People do not want to run their own bank. They want banks to be banks.
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It sounds like they already do cash-out immediately. Otherwise, why would they care?
Because it isn't a very good selling point for BTC? "Hey, accept BTC so you can waste your time converting it to USD anyways! Oh, wait..." Exactly. But I'd go further and say that even if the media supports it such as a web store, the buyers would be confused by the quickly changing prices.
I can say from experience as I have tried running a web shop where the prices changed daily according a many factors such as market price and currency exchange rates.
The result was low sales, which immediately improved once I stabilized the prices and stopped treating my shop like a market and more like... a shop!
One of the issues I'd often run into was angry customers demanding a refund once they saw a price drop of something they had just bought.
I'd get an angry e-mail complaining why this price has fallen, I'd explain why it happened and that it could have gone up as well. They didn't care, they're not used to this. I could make them understand if the order had already been shipped out I couldn't do anything about it. But if the order had not yet been shipped, they'd demand a refund, period. And might or not use the money to order again and keep the difference.
Anyhow was a major annoyance. We initially thought our customers would enjoy a market-like shop, where they could get always the latest price for the goods, but most people didn't like this idea at all.
Hence my belief that exchange rate stability is important to make bitcoin more palatable to the average buyer.
It's good to hear common sense and real-life experience on these forums. Too many people here think that everyone in the world thinks MARKETS!RALLYS!GOLDDOWNDOLLARUP! all the time. People want stability and predictability in their financial planning. |
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We cannot have stable exchange rate as I described above but we don't need it either. We only need less volatility - 1% daily rate change must be quite acceptable for merchants and service providers.....
I really don't understand why merchants seem to have a problem with volatility. If they really want to peg their prices to the US dollar or some other currency, then why don't they do it themselves and apply a script that gets the latest exchange rate, and calculates the correct prices from that? I do know some BTC merchants show BTC conversions relative to Mt. Gox, but with fluctuating prices they have to either immediately spend their BTC somewhere else or convert it into USD in order to not potentially lose everything. That really isn't a good selling point on why merchants should except BTC. |
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Back to THIRTY!!!
Please, no. This this this this this. Anyone who wants BTC at $30 or close any time this year should GTFO these forums. |
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If my predictions are correct $7 is now approaching FAST.
And if my predictions are correct we are fast approaching taco. But seriously, please slow down my bitcoin! We don't need the shadow of another $30 and bust to prove our detractors right. |
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