Sibos seems like a big deal. Organized by SWIFT.

A few days ago:


It’s because the price did not make a new low below the 4.18 capitulation selling with 220k BTC volume, the largest volume ever since the decline from 25 to 10 USD.

The weaklings with 20k BTC each to dump are out now.

Nagle, how do you feel about Gold? It doesn’t pay any dividend either, and its industrial and economic use is very limited.

Is this a pyramid scheme as well?

Ah, so how’s the gold economy doing?

So when has the bubble begun in your opinion? February? Or at the first price spike to 50 cents?

Is it not possible that Bitcoin can simply evolve into a long term store of value, given its pre-defined, decreasing inflation rates?

There are guesses that Satoshi owns 0.5-1.5 million BTC, as he mined from the beginning, and difficulty was 1 for a whole year.

Nice. So are the expenses fixed and not subject to any exchange rate?

I think that paying as much of expenses as possible in Bitcoins is one of the things that can really make it a currency. One area where I already see this being done a lot is domains, hosting etc.

I don’t think price stabilization is possible at all in the near future (it only will be once Bitcoins are worth a lot), and I don’t consider the example I gave "artificial price setting". It’s just an incentive for using Bitcoins, and if it is done enough, then the market will arbitrage the exchange rate if it falls too low.

I agree that all it takes is such a service, a "killer app" we are searching for. Silk Road in my opinion is one, though it can’t really provide price backing.

Currently, almost all shops and services tie their Bitcoin prices 24/7 to an exchange rate which changes every second.

By doing this, the consumer cannot know how much a product generally costs in Bitcoins. He has no sense what a Bitcoin is at least minimally "worth". It results in what is a major problem with Bitcoin: it is not a unit of account. Merely a payment system or a Dollar proxy.

Today, I have noticed that on what.cd, a private torrent tracker accepting Bitcoins for donations, it is cheaper to acquire a Bitcoin to be a donator than it is to pay with 5€. It is currently cheaper by more than 40%! Now everyone has an incentive to buy Bitcoins to pay with it.

Imagine if everybody did that. Of course this is not feasible with most products/services, but there are examples in which it is possible due to low marginal cost. Or, if you have a monopoly and lots of demands for your product, you can simply make the other payment methods a bit more expensive.

If we could achieve a sort of community agreement on a certain base price and have it for lots of things in demand, we could indeed have true backing for Bitcoin, as currency arbitrage will occur and influence the exchange rate.

Thoughts?

Thanks, cypherdoc.

I hope to see soon whether we are right. At current prices + overall infrastructure and development, Bitcoin has become a splendid bet once again for investors who see things the same way.

Netrin, the interview is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9MHp_dwFN0

Well, the mood has changed because the people left are pretty much the core plus a few trolls/critics. Anyone who’s bought even at 10 has certainly been burnt if he didn’t actively manage the investment or at least averaged down.

It’s not directly related to this thread, but I’m more interested to hear your thoughts on Bitcoins as I’ve been reading some of your posts. Interestingly, you seemed bearish on the PMs as well as Bitcoins in the beginning (April).


Basically my very compressed fundamental analysis is that as long as block chain technology is the only thing known to man which can enforce pre-defined monetary rules, and Bitcoin is the dominant block chain in terms of community and difficulty backing, then even one BTC unit is bound to be worth a whole lot eventually.

Unfortunately I find it hard to predict if those conditions will apply in the future as well, and for how long. The infrastructure is doing better now, in terms of exchanges, mobile apps, etc., but the Bitcoin community and difficulty are on a slow decline. Also, the risk for competitors coming up with good branding, PR, financial backing exists. Do you have some reasons for Bitcoin being "the one" to take off in the next 5-10 years?

It’s always interesting to have a look at the Bitcoin inflation: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_Currency_Supply#Projected_Bitcoins_Short_Term

If Bitcoin can dominate even until 2013, its yearly inflation rate would start to converge to those of fiat currencies, and with 12.5% would really be easy to surpass with more rising demand. I consider even the current inflation rate of 50% quite low when you look at how much growth has indeed happened alone from January (with price ranging from 0.3 to 0.95$) until now, justifying a significantly higher price.

It’s the efficiency of the market; buy high, sell low.

I have thought about the same thing ever since it became apparent to me that this correction is not a normal one.

Here’s a try. The result is pretty terrifying, as it shows a potential to ~0.5.



Thoughts?

Bitcoin is not (yet?) a currency, it is a payment method = USD proxy and a speculative commodity.

Why? Because noone actually accepts Bitcoins, as people tie the prices to the current exchange rate in FIAT money, making it impossible to know how many Bitcoins a certain product is going to cost in a day or even in a few hours. A functional currency is also something you can hold to preserve most of your purchasing power for hours, days, weeks and months. This is not true for Bitcoin, counting since June.

Problem?

More subtle next time please, this is no fun at all. Maybe a new account too, as this one generally hasn’t been subtle.

You don’t really sound like the libertarians here, you’ll also have to try to speak more pretentiously.

I mean, you could ask the same question for old people, women and poor people.

It’s true that the demographic of Bitcoiners is currently quite limited, and it is indeed an issue in that diversity could help us.

At least Bitcoiners are more diverse in political and economic ideology now, as far as I can tell.

I guess it’s because nerds are dominated by white males?

Good ideas. If you don’t have one yet, a MtGox Yubikey should do the same job.

Haha, indeed. It happened when Bitcoins started being worth non-trivial amounts. Seeing how we are returning to past valuations, it will be interesting to see if the climate changes.

What the fuck is "the manipulator" you people are afraid of? If someone buys up 15k of BTC, then he is a manipulator?

Are you afraid of ghosts too?