Bitcoin price stability

[rayt5]

Bitcoin is designed to deflate over time, which I suppose is fine if it's a small and predictable amount. I understand the incentive this creates to adopt the currency, but it seems to be attracting a very large crowd of speculators that wish to use the currency as an investment vehicle instead of a liquid and stable medium of exchange, which causes the price of Bitcoins to rise VERY quickly, and then drop back down. But even without the drop, it still seems like a problem to me. Even if the recent price explosion had continued for years, wouldn't this amount of rapid value increase prevent people from effectively using Bitcoins as real money? It prevents people from:

• listing prices in Bitcoins
• agreeing to regular payments in Bitcoins
• effectively loaning or borrowing money in Bitcoins
• buying large purchases with Bitcoins, as they're strongly incentivized to keep the Bitcoins (Why buy a car when you could buy 2 next month?)

As an investment, volatile prices can make some smart individuals a lot of money. As a currency, volatile "prices" defeat one of the purposes of money, which is supposed to be a stable measure of value. So, what steps could be taken to minimize peoples' speculation of Bitcoins, and instead make people use them as actual money?

[epixam]

I really like the idea of bitcoin, but i agree with you that its volitality is going to be a big hurdle in the marketplace.  I think it will be a few years before it stabilizes in any real capacity, the main reason being that at this point in the game there is still a large influx of coins and of new potential owners of bitcoins.  Im really curious where the price will go over the next few days because of the massive drop.

[Tornston]

hey dude, people will use them as actual money when there is something they can buy for btc
so if you want to contribute to minimize speculations just offer your goods/service for btc

[rayt5]

hey dude, people will use them as actual money when there is something they can buy for btc
so if you want to contribute to minimize speculations just offer your goods/service for btc

Yes, that will certainly help, but imagine I decided to start selling, say, computer hard drives in BTC, and only in BTC. How often would I have to change the price? Probably daily. That's... less than ideal for a currency. That's not a stable or predictable store of value. If I neglect to change my prices frequently enough, nobody will buy the hard drives because they'll cost too much.

Now imagine that I'm renting an apartment from someone, and I'm using BTC to pay for it. I sign a year lease for BTC7. At the end of the year, that BTC7 could have increased in value several hundred percent. That could be disastrous to me.

So BTC's price volatility is actively working against it becoming a more useful currency.

[Malawi]

You are correct Rayt. But remember that Bitcoin is still a very new thing.

There will be more bubbles like this in the time to come. But eventually it will settle at some more stable price, and it will become more usable as a currency in it's own right.

ATM I would say that the natural thing is to use prices in traditional currency, but allow customers to pay with bitcoin that are exchanged on it's way to the merchant. Just like with EUR to a US site or vica versa.

It can work fine as an easy way to transfer founds with low fees across borders, while still being volatile.
As it matures and become stable enough, it might become the prefered currency online, in it's own right.

[No_2]

Bitcoin is designed to deflate over time, which I suppose is fine if it's a small and predictable amount. I understand the incentive this creates to adopt the currency, but it seems to be attracting a very large crowd of speculators that wish to use the currency as an investment vehicle instead of a liquid and stable medium of exchange, which causes the price of Bitcoins to rise VERY quickly, and then drop back down. But even without the drop, it still seems like a problem to me. Even if the recent price explosion had continued for years, wouldn't this amount of rapid value increase prevent people from effectively using Bitcoins as real money? It prevents people from:

• listing prices in Bitcoins
• agreeing to regular payments in Bitcoins
• effectively loaning or borrowing money in Bitcoins
• buying large purchases with Bitcoins, as they're strongly incentivized to keep the Bitcoins (Why buy a car when you could buy 2 next month?)

As an investment, volatile prices can make some smart individuals a lot of money. As a currency, volatile "prices" defeat one of the purposes of money, which is supposed to be a stable measure of value. So, what steps could be taken to minimize peoples' speculation of Bitcoins, and instead make people use them as actual money?

I've not seen any direct evidence of a true deflationary economic situation (please fill me in if you know of one).

In the instance you claim you can buy 2 cars next months is very unlikely to occur, unless you bought into BTC early, and are hence being payed off for your risk, you are more likely looking at "buy one car now or two in ten years time". I know which I would prefer.

[rayt5]

I've not seen any direct evidence of a true deflationary economic situation (please fill me in if you know of one).

In the instance you claim you can buy 2 cars next months is very unlikely to occur, unless you bought into BTC early, and are hence being payed off for your risk, you are more likely looking at "buy one car now or two in ten years time". I know which I would prefer.

This may be true when Bitcoin's price stabilizes years from now, but it's certainly not the case now. And imho, it won't be the case for many more years. As long as BTC's market cap is growing, which if we want it to succeed we should be hoping for this, its price will be rising. And since the rate of BTC generation has nothing to do with the demand, the bigger BTC's market cap, the more BTC will be worth. That's the way it was designed. The faster the adoption rate, the faster the increase in value. Doubling in ten years' time comes out to about 7% annual increase in value. If this was actually how it worked, it would be great. But from what I've seen, the increase in value is much, much faster. And if you expect more people to use Bitcoins, the value MUST increase by a large amount simply due to demand.

[rayt5]

Dude, i'm gonna type as sober as possible, that honestly looks fcking pathetic and digusting compared to my bitcoins. and I'm being one hundred percent serious. Sorry we dont cook sht that was perviously in cans. you're a fuking joke dude, and im dead fuking serious. get areal family that cooks good food, drinks beer and wine and winecoolers and has a good fuking time, and has a milliondollar house on the beach, im seriously.. dont eever potst your fuking poverty dinner on these forums ever the fuk again bro, and by bro i mean never my bro, fuking phaggot.

This is the best post.

I'll be sure to throw away my cans, acquire a beach house, and get an areal family. Then, perhaps one day, STLmisc, we can be bros.

[BitTarget]

I think that indexing by standard-currency prices will be the solution in the short run. It is unfortunate but for a few years only speculators will actually hold Bitcoins, I think, which would be disastrous.

Fortunately Bitcoin as an alternative to Visa/Paypal is enough of a killer app to keep Bitcoin afloat until it reaches critical mass and becomes a real economy.

[TheDukeUSMC]

hey dude, people will use them as actual money when there is something they can buy for btc
so if you want to contribute to minimize speculations just offer your goods/service for btc

You would be stupid to do this.

I can't think of any reason why any seller of any good would accept bitcoin. It is way too volatile to set a price. You sell a good one day for 1 btc, and the next day you see that the btc value took a bad hit. I do a lot of business online selling parts and I would never accept bitcoin in this environment.

Key word is this environment. Hopefully it changes in the future, but stabilization will come in the long term like another poster said.

[Mike Christ]

hey dude, people will use them as actual money when there is something they can buy for btc
so if you want to contribute to minimize speculations just offer your goods/service for btc

You would be stupid to do this.

I can't think of any reason why any seller of any good would accept bitcoin. It is way too volatile to set a price. You sell a good one day for 1 btc, and the next day you see that the btc value took a bad hit. I do a lot of business online selling parts and I would never accept bitcoin in this environment.

Key word is this environment. Hopefully it changes in the future, but stabilization will come in the long term like another poster said.

Stabilization can only occur when more businesses accept it as-is.  Though one may be stupid, they could also understand exactly what they're doing, and be doing it because they actually believe in BTC.  Nobody can say they support Bitcoin yet won't accept it as payment.  Bite the bullet!  Take one for the team!  Be the change you want to see!  And all that encourage stuff.

Btw, there's also BitPay, where merchants can accept BTC and immediately transfer it into fiat, meaning there's no downside to them taking it.  The downside to us, however, is the merchant can't turn around and buy things with BTC.  I'm guessing BitPay sells the coins off and it gets back into the economy that way.  So it's still heavily tied to fiat.

[rayt5]

So, I have no idea how to actually do this, but what if someone created a Bitcoin-like cryptocurrency that tied the mining difficulty to its value? Meaning coins get easier to mine when the value increases over some target value, and harder to mine the more the coin's value is under target value? This would have the effect of making the value of the currency trend towards a pre-determined rate of change over time. The hard part would be measuring the real value of the currency in a decentralized way, apart from any other currency value. That's what I can't figure out how to do.

Edit: if we can do this, the currency would be resistant to large fluctuations in price by design. It's like a built in self-correcting system because the supply will change to match the increasing demand.

[dakelv]

Although I am new to the bitcoin scene, I wish bitcoin were not getting the kind of publicity it started to get recently. When speculators step in, it stops to be a level playground.