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81  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Will Satoshi Nakamoto become the richest person on earth? on: June 03, 2014, 04:00:50 AM
You need to clarify your question.

If you are asking will Satochi have assets valued at an amount that is greater then anyone else on Earth, then quite possibly. The value of BTC would only need to appreciate ~100x from where it is now for that to happen. That would not be unreasonable when comparing the market cap of Bitcoin to other stores of value (the dollar, Euro, other currencies, Gold, Diamonds).

If you are asking if Satochi will have the most purchasing power with his assets (Bitcoin) then the answer is almost certainly no. If Satochi were to attempt to spend any substantial portion of his Bitcoin then the price of Bitcoin would likely subsequently fall substantially. Granted it is not known which addresses are controlled by Satochi exactly, so if he were to spend a few hundred Bitcoins (4-8 50 BTC mined blocks worth) then it would be reasonable to believe that the selling was being done by another early adopter. However if he were to sell several thousand coins for goods/services/property/fiat then it would be obvious that it was Satochi doing the selling. 

82  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Apple Approves Bitcoin Wallets on: June 03, 2014, 03:36:12 AM
This should help increase the adaption of Bitcoin by the masses.
83  Economy / Economics / Re: Surely the Government has the right to tax fiat? on: June 03, 2014, 02:38:28 AM
The government right to impose taxes does not stop with fiat.

When you buy a car or a house you will owe taxes on this property.

Taxes should be used to fund government functions that cannot easily be done on an individual level. One example of this is national security/defense. It is not feasible for an individual to purchase national security so taxes should be paid to the government to fund the DoD, military, DHS and similar agencies. The same concept for consumer protection agencies like the SEC, law enforcement for the FBI.

On a local level, it is not feasible for an individual to purchase a fire department or roadways, so local taxes pay for these types of government programs.

The problem the US has is that it has overstepped it boundaries in what the government will pay for. It has created much too many social programs that use taxes merely as transfer payments from people that work to people that do not work. This is extremely inefficient as it creates an incentive not to work, or to not use existing skills, or to work as hard/much.

Paying taxes to pay for things that protect our country is a very good thing, while paying taxes so others do not need to work is a bad thing.
84  Economy / Economics / Re: Bitcoin Price Forecast - Independent Variables Wanted on: June 03, 2014, 02:24:32 AM
Over the medium term, the price of Bitcoin will be based on how many companies accept Bitcoin for payment.

Similarly the level of consumer adoption of Bitcoin will also drive the price, however this variable is directly related to above.

As mentioned by previous posts the price is driven primarily by speculation.
85  Economy / Economics / Re: Quantitative Easing on: June 03, 2014, 02:14:26 AM
QE is likely the cause of at least the initial runup in the price of BTC.

The initial runup in the price of BTC likely caused media hype that caused other people to see what an awesome idea that BTC is, causing even more increases in price.

if by runup in btc price you really mean the lowered buying power of the USD which "appears" to make the BTC price higher then you are probably right.

a declining dollar = increasing BTC price.

maybe one day we will collectively stop referring to btcs value in dollars and rather refer to the dollars value in BTC.

as of this writing;

$1.00 is worth a measly  0.0016 BTC

That but QE also attempts to get people to take greater risks with their money then they normally would. Both in time to maturity as well as risk of principle investment. For example if someone were to (prior to QE) invest in a 6 month CD then (during QE) they would invest in a 12 month CD, or maybe a 12 month investment grade corporate bond. The people who would normally invest in a 12 month investment grade corporate bond would invest in something that carries more risk and more time to maturity. This extends all the way out of the risk spectrum until you reach alternate investments (where Bitcoin lies).

The 30 plus percent return that the stock market had last year was not the result of strong economic policy, nor strong economic performance, it was investors taking on more risk.
86  Economy / Economics / Re: what caused the rise to $1100 last year? on: June 03, 2014, 01:55:21 AM
hello, i'm relatively new to the bitcoin scene and wanted to ask a kind of noob question to introduce myself to the forum.

what is the general consensus around the cause of bitcoin reaching a valuation of around $1100 in november 2013 - looking at this chart it seem like a pretty accelerated spike in a short period of time.
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg730ztgTzm1g10zm2g25zv

i'm guessing the 50% drop in january was related somehow to the mt.gox fiasco but i wasnt too sure what had caused the price to go up so much in the period of roughly 1 month around november 2013, any insights would be appreciated!

The primary reason behind the dramatic rise in the price of BTC was the media attention that was given to silk road. In this attention bitcoin was discussed. The discussion of bitcoin lead to more public awareness which lead to greater public adoption. 
87  Economy / Economics / Re: What would happen if BTC was accepted for gasoline? on: June 02, 2014, 05:24:49 AM
This is actually a great use for BTC micropayments.

If for example a driver wanted to buy exactly $10 in gas then they could send $10 in BTC to a QR code at the gas pump  that would distribute the appropriate amount of gasoline. 

This would benefit the gas station as the fees to receive payment would be much less then the cost to accept credit cards, chargebacks and the potential for robbery of cash receipts.

This would benefit the consumer as they can buy an exact amount of gas without having to go into the store.
88  Economy / Economics / Re: Would it be possible to create a distributed bitcoin price stabilizer? on: June 02, 2014, 05:15:28 AM
This would work to prevent the price of BTC from rising too quickly, but you would need a massive amount of fiat to prevent the price of BTC from falling.

In theory this software could "print" BTC and sell the BTC when the price rose too quickly, however real fiat would need to be used when the price of BTC is falling too quickly, and users of the exchange would need to be able to withdraw the fiat to their bank accounts.

This would also create one problem that BTC attempts to solve, centralization. By pegging the price of BTC to a certain range on only one exchange will cause even more volume to be attracted to that exchange.
89  Economy / Speculation / Re: How many bitcoins do I need to retire in 20 years? on: June 02, 2014, 05:04:39 AM
Lets say I want to buy bitcoins today and store them for 20 years to use a my retirement fund.  Live comfortably, but don't need to buy a yacht or anything.  How many do you think I would need to buy?

0, this is a horrible investment for your retirement. BTC is a highly speculative investment. Much more speculative then what should be invested in a retirement fund.

If you wanted to use BTC to possibly retire on then you should use your BTC "investment" as more of a lottery ticket.

IMO BTC will be much more widely adopted in the medium term future and the price would increase in the medium term however this is far from guaranteed.

One major risk to BTC is that an altcoin will solve most/all of the problems associated with BTC causing the price of BTC to decrease and the price of this altcoin to increase/replace bitcoin.
90  Economy / Economics / Re: Cex.io: the largest Bitcoin cloud mining service, not a profitable investment on: June 02, 2014, 04:54:48 AM
The profitability of GH/s purchased on cex.io is based on how much you pay for it.

If you pay a low enough price for GH/s on cex then over the long run you will earn more BTC then what you paid for them. If you pay too high of a price then you will incur a loss.

The problem is that the price has consistently been above what the GH/s are worth, and the price has not adjusted appropriately to the increases of difficulty. 

It is also possible to sell GH/s at a price that is above the "market" price on venues such as ebay and craigslist.
91  Economy / Economics / Re: If transaction per second increased dramaticaly does it solve miner crisis? on: June 02, 2014, 04:27:26 AM
The "miner crisis" will not happen for a very long time, several years from now when block rewards half again (probably not until they half a 2nd or a 3rd time).

The "reason" for the "tx caps" is behind the technology that BTC uses to transmit transactions and the size of blocks.

Having a large number of transactions would use up a lot of bandwidth due to the nodes would need to receive and retransmit each transaction. A lot of transactions would also cause both the blockchain and individual blocks to become very long.

As of now the theoretical max miner reward (7 Tx per second times 600 seconds between blocks, assuming .0001 BTC per tx) is 0.42 BTC however the average block has much less in tx fees now so this is really not something that is an issue.

What will need to change is the incentive (or lack thereof) in running a node. If TX fees are shared with nodes (maybe 90% to miners, 10% to nodes) then there will be a larger incentive to run a node and the issue of using a lot of bandwidth will not be an issue. The blockchain would still need to be hard forked to allow for more TX per second, but the underling issue would be resolved.
92  Economy / Economics / Re: Losing private key with tens of thousands of BTC on: June 02, 2014, 04:11:48 AM
Say someone lost their private key containing 10000+ BTC... How long would it take for that to affect the market price of bitcoins since there will be less of a supply of bitcoin and more demand?

It would not have any effect.

The only way this would change the price of BTC is if this person were to buy more BTC to replace his/her holdings.
93  Economy / Economics / Re: How divisible are bitcoins and other market/economic questions on: June 02, 2014, 04:04:35 AM
You can divide BTC up to 8 digits. You can in theory send 0.00000001 BTC to someone.

This can potentially be changed in the future if it is determined that the price of BTC is too high. This could be done via a hard fold in the BTC protocol.
94  Economy / Economics / Re: Facebook accepts Bitcoin? on: June 02, 2014, 03:50:29 AM
Facebook is not accepting/utilizing BTC itself, however there is an app that is going to integrate with FB to allow for sending BTC via FB messaging.

Personally I would not want my BTC associated with my FB account.
95  Economy / Economics / Re: Do you think China will completely BAN bitcoin? on: June 02, 2014, 03:41:53 AM
No. They do not have the ability to ban bitcoin.

They have attempted to censor the media and the internet however have not been successful.

It would be much more difficult to censor a particular payment method.

They may attempt to regulate it further.
96  Economy / Economics / Re: Coinbase buy price is pegged to Bitstamp on: June 02, 2014, 03:33:22 AM
This is not surprising.

Do you have a negative consequence to this?

Coinbase provides a valuable service to many (including newer) BTC users. They should be compensated for this service (buying/selling BTC). 
97  Economy / Economics / Re: Bitcoin price vs. hash rate? on: June 02, 2014, 03:19:53 AM
As long as the cost to run a specific bitcoin miner is below the USD equivalent of bitcoin that the miner produces then the machines will continue to be used.

There are too many preorders for bitcoin miners for the hashrate grown to slow substantially.
98  Economy / Economics / Re: Quantitative Easing on: June 02, 2014, 03:11:02 AM
QE is likely the cause of at least the initial runup in the price of BTC.

The initial runup in the price of BTC likely caused media hype that caused other people to see what an awesome idea that BTC is, causing even more increases in price.
99  Economy / Economics / Re: Would people pour their cash into bitcoin given a stock market crash? on: June 02, 2014, 03:01:30 AM
People would probably not pour their money into BTC after a stock market crash.

They would likely put money into ultrasafe investments.

The price of BTC and stocks (very risky investments) are correlated at least in the short term, and in the absence of other BTC related news.
100  Economy / Economics / Re: Data on how many times FDIC saved someone? on: June 02, 2014, 02:16:08 AM
Quote
How many times have they actually been used to recover money?

The FDIC has been used a relatively small number of times. This is true when comparing against both the total amount of deposits insured and the total number of insured institutions.

The FDIC will not take over an institution until it has failed. During the time when it is close to failing the bank will be given the opportunity to attempt to turn things around and try to increase capital ratios.

The purpose of the FDIC is to prevent bank runs. Without the FDIC when there are signs of trouble depositors will attempt to withdraw their funds, forcing banks to sell assets at a potential loss. This will spill over into other healthy banks that hold the same kind of assets, but have better/safe capital ratios. The safe banks that hold the same assets will have to write down the value of assets to below what they are likely valued at because other, non-healthy banks are essentially panic selling. This would then cause the healthy banks to appear and become unhealthy, causing a bank run and the same problems of the original unhealthy bank, spreading the problem. 
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