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How can you talk meaningfully about the support curve below 4.1 without looking at the order book? And weren't you the one ridiculing consideration of the order book a few weeks ago?
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The specialtys respondent almost certainly didn't understand the risks a bitcoin payment system carries. They probably thought it was a novel way to transfer US dollars. I would give five to one against the "further consideration and review" leading to an actual implementation.
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People have been asking that since its inception. Zhoutong's answer is that Bitcoinica's bitcoin/USD position, summed over its users, is relatively small. I.e., there is a relatively symmetric distribution of positions among its users, and bitcoinica can effectively arrange trades between its users which roughly cancel out. This is a decorrelation argument, so I find it fairly unsatisfactory, because in a crisis all correlations tend to go to one. (E.g., "What if every bitcoinica user decides it's time to sell short?") Relying on this kind of cancellation will probably work for day to day usage, but for trading on a volatile commodity like bitcoin, you really care about how your counterparty will handle a crisis.
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The way to assess a government currency is to look at the stability and trustworthiness of the government behind it. The way to assess something like bitcoin is to look at the stability and trustworthiness of the bitcoin community and the bitcoin infrastructure. That is harder to assess than a government is, but not by much.
That is one of many metrics to base your expectations of the future price of the good in question, but is not a reason for why the item became or will become a currency in the first place. Government fiat became a currency because a critical mass of people accepted the government's legitimacy, and the government put its legitimacy behind the currency. The question for bitcoin is whether it can establish a corresponding basis for legitimacy. |
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So bitcoin has utility for you because you can send them to someone else, and it has utility for them because they can send them to someone else, etc., etc..
Sounds pretty circular to me. It leaves out the original reason for anyone choosing to acquire a bitcoin in the first place.
People have used crazy stuff to keep account of who owes what since the invention of money. For instance, in ancient Ireland, the highest-denomination currency was slave girls. This continued centuries after the church ended the slave trade (i.e., long after there weren't actually any slave girls to exchange for.) The fact that bitcoin does not represent anything of intrinsic value is not a serious weakness. I have other serious concerns about bitcoin, but that is not one of them. You can actually make approximately the same argument about contemporary government fiat currencies (and gold bugs often do.) Government and fiat currencies do have the value that you can pay fines and taxes in them, and in doing so end harassment from government agencies, but I wouldn't call that an intrinsic value, any more than I would call the current widespread preparedness to exchange bitcoins for goods, services and other currencies an intrinsic value. The way to assess a government currency is to look at the stability and trustworthiness of the government behind it. The way to assess something like bitcoin is to look at the stability and trustworthiness of the bitcoin community and the bitcoin infrastructure. That is harder to assess than a government is, but not by much. |
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Yes, but from which point? Can it go lower than 4.40?
Of course it can. What do you mean? |
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Why so much naked hostility and contempt in this thread?
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You don't have to, the download will start automatically after a while.
Thanks; that didn't seem to be the case before, but it does now. The article says The truth is that most people don't spend the bitcoins they buy; they hoard them, hoping that they will appreciate. What's the evidence for this? Is it somehow verfiable in the block chain? He quickly identified nine ways to compromise the system and scoured Nakamoto's for an insertion point for his first attack. But when he found the right spot there was a message waiting for him. "Attack removed," it said. The same thing happened over and over again, infuriating Kaminsky. This does not seem to be literally true. Am I searching incorrectly, or are there actually explicit (but different) comments in the repository somewhere? met% git log | grep '^commit' 2> /dev/null | cut -d ' ' -f 2 | xargs -n 1 -i git diff -r {} | grep -C 3 -i remove | grep -i attack | sort -u
- - added blinding for RSA and Rabin to defend against timing attacks
+ - added blinding for RSA and Rabin to defend against timing attacks |
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Is it actually possible to pay 0BTC? When I try to enter 0 into the "spend coins" dialog of bitcoin version 0.4.0, I get the message "Error in amount." |
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I could no longer wait because the regulars seem to have no clue about the significance of today's New Yorker article.
I would be happy to forward your info on to whichever forum you think it should go to, with full credit to you. |
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Is that the real article? (The New Yorker one.) Parts of it read like a hurriedly assembled summary of an article. Then, in April, 2011, he sent a note to a developer saying that he had “moved on to other things.” He has not been heard from since. Tells about failed attempts to hack the bitcoin encryption code. Writer tries to deduce Nakamoto’s true identity from clues in his posts and his code. Describes the Crypto 2011 conference of cryptographers, where the writer went looking for Nakamoto. Writer speaks with two possible candidates, Michael Clear and Vili Lehdonvirta, both of whom deny that they are Nakamoto. Also tells about Kevin Groce, who runs a bitcoin-mining operation in Kentucky. Not the standard of writing I'm used to seeing over there.  |
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Of course you can say interesting things about volume in an absolute sense. Bitcoin is relatively thinly traded on MtGox at the moment. That is a significant fact for anyone assessing the market.
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What's the benefit of this arrangement? Getting more bitcoins in circulation?
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The newspaper article on him indicated that he lives in his girlfriend's 200K split home, and carries substantial personal debt from a largely moribund business. Not a paragon of financial strength...
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You're seriously only paying 6% on credit card debt?
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"Though no legislative efforts have yet been undertaken to restrict or ban the usage of Bitcoin digital currency, the United States will perhaps soon see efforts made to stop illegal drug trafficking through placing impediments on the usage of Bitcoin digital currency."
They used very weak reasoning, based on Chuck Schumer's rant about Silk Road. Definitely a plausible scenario, but they give no new evidence for it. |
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