Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion

[Frozenlock]

C'mon, as nerds we all know the cake is a lie. 

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[EuroTrash]

It worries me to a certain degree that there doesn't appear to be a steady growth of services and stores accepting bitcoins.

So what?

Let's be honest , most people in this thread have no desire of spending their hard earned coins anytime soon. BTC is more like an electronic improved version of gold. And it's not like I can go to a shop with half an ounce of gold in my hand and buy me a smartphone... at least not for the moment. And I don't care... gold is a commonly accepted store of value nevertheless. Enough for me to hold it and change it back into fiat at need.

If anyone quotes this please save me the lecture about BTC having no intrinsic value as opposed to gold. Perception is value.

[bobdude17]

It worries me to a certain degree that there doesn't appear to be a steady growth of services and stores accepting bitcoins.

So what?

I agree. I think many idealists were hoping that Bitcoin would have a very grassroots community based adoption proceeding to rise and change the economy around them. Besides we early adopters who were willing to take a crazy idea serious, I really don't see this happening. Corporations and global transactional business are going to take Bitcoin and run with it, simply because it works better, faster and cheaper. Other business will have to adopt or get left behind. Most of the populace of the world puts trust in products that backed by large corporations, they will respond to advertising. Bitcoin will trickle down to the common people in this way.

[BitcoinAshley]

Rogoff? Is that the "Excel Error that changed the world" guy? Who singlehandedly influenced much of the Western world's current fiscal policy based on an errant spreadsheet calculation in a 2010 research paper? And of course after the error was discovered, the policies were not revisited? 

If Rogoff says this time is not different, I'm not sure that I should believe him 

[BitcoinAshley]

It worries me to a certain degree that there doesn't appear to be a steady growth of services and stores accepting bitcoins.

Did someone actually say this? This is 2011 talk. There IS a steady growth of services and stores. It's not a matter of "appear," it's verifiable using hard statistics (number of businesses and services currently accepting, number of charities accepting, less linear measures such as tx volume, blockchain tx, etc etc etc).

There IS a steady growth of services and stores accepting bitcoins. Your perception and the way it "appears" to you doesn't matter - go look on the internet, it is impossible to make the case that adoption is flatlining or decreasing using verifiable data. Feel free to make up some data to support your claim, though. Here, I'll do it for you:
"Lol, guys, last month, 1,000 businesses on earth accepted bitcoin. This month, only 754 businesses accept bitcoin."
There, I said it. Doesn't make it true.

[fitty]

It worries me to a certain degree that there doesn't appear to be a steady growth of services and stores accepting bitcoins.

So what?

Let's be honest , most people in this thread have no desire of spending their hard earned coins anytime soon. BTC is more like an  electronic improved version of gold. And it's not like I can go to a shop with half an ounce of gold in my hand and buy me a smartphone... at least not for the moment. And I don't care... gold is a commonly accepted store of value nevertheless. Enough for me to hold it and change it back into fiat at need.

If anyone quotes this please save me the lecture about BTC having no intrinsic value as opposed to gold. Perception is value.

+1

Bitcoin is a great transaction currency. That will never go away. Whether BTC is $200 or $2, people somewhere on the internet will use it to transfer value anonymously across the globe.

But it also works as a digital container to hold value, securely, that is impossible to track. In theory it might end up being the ultimate off shore/tax haven/swiss bank account, ever. It can hold millions, it's easy to secure, and no one can ever prove how much of it you own of it or even that you own it at all.

Obviously it's a lot better at the first option, but the 2nd option is coming. The rally to $266 happened because people started hoarding Bitcoins. There will be a point in time where that happens again. The next extended rally, people will simply refuse to sell. There will be no supply. Which is why the price skyrockets. SR peeps start holding instead of selling. Businesses start holding instead of selling. Miners hold a little longer before selling. The price goes up every day people keep hoarding  until it's too tempting not to sell (turns out that was $240-$260 ish). An extended rally turns everyone into a bullish speculative investor.

Turns out, same thing happens to gold. It will just take time for BTC to mature, but that time is coming no question. It is the new digital gold.

[zemario]

It worries me to a certain degree that there doesn't appear to be a steady growth of services and stores accepting bitcoins.

So what?

Let's be honest , most people in this thread have no desire of spending their hard earned coins anytime soon. BTC is more like an  electronic improved version of gold. And it's not like I can go to a shop with half an ounce of gold in my hand and buy me a smartphone... at least not for the moment. And I don't care... gold is a commonly accepted store of value nevertheless. Enough for me to hold it and change it back into fiat at need.

If anyone quotes this please save me the lecture about BTC having no intrinsic value as opposed to gold. Perception is value.

Valid point, but in my opinion it is a tad naive to just believe that without a bit of skpeticism. I for one want to be more cautious than that. Gold has been used as a store of value and as a currency thousands of years. Today it lost its utility as a currency for the most part, but it's still a rock solid value store because it's so well established and has an undeniable proof of reliability in price storage.

Ancient physical coins were made of valuable metals, gold being the most prominent. To this day, the value of physical coins is, at least by principle, tied to the value of the material they are made of.
Gold might be mostly a value store today, but t has been a very active currency in the past.

Transactions of small amounts are penalized with bitcoins, set a low reward value on your client and it will take forever to get a  decent number of confirmations. This wasn't even discussed pre lates bubble, and even today it is somewhat a taboo. So we are left with medium to large value transactions, and to be optimistic we say that bitcoins is more like gold. In other words, we fast forward the utility part of a currency and jump in directly to the value store stage.
I'm skeptical about this. Would I see adoption by average joe, I would be much more sure about bitcoin's success.

[ChartBuddy]

[bobdude17]

Just look what the intense competition between miners has lead to: The biggest computational network in the world created, biggest by a fair margin. Bitcoin naturally incentivises competition, due to its fast transfer times (making switching between competitors easy) and its open-source nature (meaning one competitor can't monopolize some part of the client in some way). Now with miners the competition is induced in the protocol itself.

I think its important to note one of the very cool features of Bitcoin economy : Bitcoin incentivizes competition and cooperation.

For instance ASICMiner is going to remain only 30% of the mining force because they know if they got greedy and took it all that other Bitcoiners might be upset and fork off. Then their profits would mean nothing.

It is actually more profitable to maintain the competition than to win the competition. Bitcoin really blows my fucking mind.

[molecular]

And who is to say this might not happen again, but for instance with "Bitcoin is illegal and it's dead"? Remember that those sentiments only are created once the price has already fallen for a longer time. Bitcoin was only declared dead by Wired near its very bottom at 2.

I'm willing to bet that we are going to see 4 digits within a few years, but boy, do most of the newcomers here have unrealistic expectations.

Here's a bottleneck for you "singularity" guys that ultimately limits the height of parabolic rises: Infrastructure. Remember when MtGox had an order queue of up to 75 minutes filled with market sells? Think this can't happen again in some other variation? Think again.

What kind of variation? "Order queue filled with 75 minutes worth of market buys?" ;-)

[420]

IMG isn't loading fo' me

[molecular]

Let's be honest , most people in this thread have no desire of spending their hard earned coins anytime soon. BTC is more like an electronic improved version of gold. And it's not like I can go to a shop with half an ounce of gold in my hand and buy me a smartphone... at least not for the moment. And I don't care... gold is a commonly accepted store of value nevertheless. Enough for me to hold it and change it back into fiat at need.

If anyone quotes this please save me the lecture about BTC having no intrinsic value as opposed to gold. Perception is value.

I know, right?

Listen to these guys (especially maloney) struggling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRpwRpLdLDc

The mental anguish is palpable.

[molecular]

It worries me to a certain degree that there doesn't appear to be a steady growth of services and stores accepting bitcoins.

So what?

I agree. I think many idealists were hoping that Bitcoin would have a very grassroots community based adoption proceeding to rise and change the economy around them. Besides we early adopters who were willing to take a crazy idea serious, I really don't see this happening. Corporations and global transactional business are going to take Bitcoin and run with it, simply because it works better, faster and cheaper. Other business will have to adopt or get left behind. Most of the populace of the world puts trust in products that backed by large corporations, they will respond to advertising. Bitcoin will trickle down to the common people in this way.

I don't care wether it trickles down or grass-grows up. As long as it forces all entites to suffer the consequences of their own actions (including governments and banks) a great goal is reached.

Money is what the people use as money. We have the power and we're starting to realize it. Bitcoin really is a tool for the people to take back power and freedom. Let corporations embrace it and governments be faced with the fact they can't print it.

It's a long way, but we're fucking on it.

[molecular]

It worries me to a certain degree that there doesn't appear to be a steady growth of services and stores accepting bitcoins.

So what?

Let's be honest , most people in this thread have no desire of spending their hard earned coins anytime soon. BTC is more like an  electronic improved version of gold. And it's not like I can go to a shop with half an ounce of gold in my hand and buy me a smartphone... at least not for the moment. And I don't care... gold is a commonly accepted store of value nevertheless. Enough for me to hold it and change it back into fiat at need.

If anyone quotes this please save me the lecture about BTC having no intrinsic value as opposed to gold. Perception is value.

+1

Bitcoin is a great transaction currency. That will never go away. Whether BTC is $200 or $2, people somewhere on the internet will use it to transfer value anonymously across the globe.

But it also works as a digital container to hold value, securely, that is impossible to track. In theory it might end up being the ultimate off shore/tax haven/swiss bank account, ever. It can hold millions, it's easy to secure, and no one can ever prove how much of it you own of it or even that you own it at all.

Obviously it's a lot better at the first option, but the 2nd option is coming. The rally to $266 happened because people started hoarding Bitcoins. There will be a point in time where that happens again. The next extended rally, people will simply refuse to sell. There will be no supply. Which is why the price skyrockets. SR peeps start holding instead of selling. Businesses start holding instead of selling. Miners hold a little longer before selling. The price goes up every day people keep hoarding  until it's too tempting not to sell (turns out that was $240-$260 ish). An extended rally turns everyone into a bullish speculative investor.

Turns out, same thing happens to gold. It will just take time for BTC to mature, but that time is coming no question. It is the new digital gold.

+1. Bitcoin is sound money you can actually transact. That's a novel combination.

[gizmoh]

It worries me to a certain degree that there doesn't appear to be a steady growth of services and stores accepting bitcoins.

So what?

Let's be honest , most people in this thread have no desire of spending their hard earned coins anytime soon. BTC is more like an  electronic improved version of gold. And it's not like I can go to a shop with half an ounce of gold in my hand and buy me a smartphone... at least not for the moment. And I don't care... gold is a commonly accepted store of value nevertheless. Enough for me to hold it and change it back into fiat at need.

If anyone quotes this please save me the lecture about BTC having no intrinsic value as opposed to gold. Perception is value.

Valid point, but in my opinion it is a tad naive to just believe that without a bit of skpeticism. I for one want to be more cautious than that. Gold has been used as a store of value and as a currency thousands of years. Today it lost its utility as a currency for the most part, but it's still a rock solid value store because it's so well established and has an undeniable proof of reliability in price storage.

Ancient physical coins were made of valuable metals, gold being the most prominent. To this day, the value of physical coins is, at least by principle, tied to the value of the material they are made of.
Gold might be mostly a value store today, but t has been a very active currency in the past.

Transactions of small amounts are penalized with bitcoins, set a low reward value on your client and it will take forever to get a  decent number of confirmations. This wasn't even discussed pre lates bubble, and even today it is somewhat a taboo. So we are left with medium to large value transactions, and to be optimistic we say that bitcoins is more like gold. In other words, we fast forward the utility part of a currency and jump in directly to the value store stage.
I'm skeptical about this. Would I see adoption by average joe, I would be much more sure about bitcoin's success.

+1
Unless adopted by the masses, bitcoin won't be considered a safe store of value like gold, its inherent value will be mainly based upon speculation.

[Frozenlock]

I know, right?

Listen to these guys (especially maloney) struggling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRpwRpLdLDc

The mental anguish is palpable.

The problem with this discussion is that there's no one on the Bitcoin side.

Gold bug 1: "I think gold is good."
Gold bug 2: "I also think gold is good."
Gold bug 1: "Ah, question answered then!"

Please bring Jon Matonis to the discussion next time!

[molecular]

I know, right?

Listen to these guys (especially maloney) struggling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRpwRpLdLDc

The mental anguish is palpable.

The problem with this discussion is that there's no one on the Bitcoin side.

Gold bug 1: "I think gold is good."
Gold bug 2: "I also think gold is good."
Gold bug 1: "Ah, question answered then!"

Please bring Jon Matonis to the discussion next time!

Or trace meyer.

I don't think the goal of the discussion was to have a discussion.

Maloney had to answer because he was asked and other big metal heads had already voiced their opinion (Doug Casey, James Turk for example). Similar to the ones I mentioned (Turk seems to be moving faster toward bitcoin, though) he's upholding his heavy metal view cause that's his agenda.

[Its About Sharing]

It worries me to a certain degree that there doesn't appear to be a steady growth of services and stores accepting bitcoins.

So what?

I agree. I think many idealists were hoping that Bitcoin would have a very grassroots community based adoption proceeding to rise and change the economy around them. Besides we early adopters who were willing to take a crazy idea serious, I really don't see this happening. Corporations and global transactional business are going to take Bitcoin and run with it, simply because it works better, faster and cheaper. Other business will have to adopt or get left behind. Most of the populace of the world puts trust in products that backed by large corporations, they will respond to advertising. Bitcoin will trickle down to the common people in this way.

I think the government, or at least those that are directing them, have already shown their hand. The FinCen "guidance" was like getting let into a club because you know the bouncers. They want Bitcoin and going forward it is not a question of if BTC survives or not, it is rather who gets control over it, whether they can co-opt it. It is just too close to a digital currency that could be used to track people and it is also close to one (with plug-ins) that can keep people anonymous.

I am pretty sure though that they are underestimating all that it is going to be. It is a Black Swan and Anti-Fragile (See my sig.)

If BTC (and it's technology) has not profoundly SHOCKED you yet, then you don't understand it. 

[ChartBuddy]

[Its About Sharing]

Just look what the intense competition between miners has lead to: The biggest computational network in the world created, biggest by a fair margin. Bitcoin naturally incentivises competition, due to its fast transfer times (making switching between competitors easy) and its open-source nature (meaning one competitor can't monopolize some part of the client in some way). Now with miners the competition is induced in the protocol itself.

I think its important to note one of the very cool features of Bitcoin economy : Bitcoin incentivizes competition and cooperation.

For instance ASICMiner is going to remain only 30% of the mining force because they know if they got greedy and took it all that other Bitcoiners might be upset and fork off. Then their profits would mean nothing.

It is actually more profitable to maintain the competition than to win the competition. Bitcoin really blows my fucking mind.

I don't think many people honestly get what BTC can be. It is like back in the early days of the internet, but now it is ^2 . There is just too much infrastructure, ideas, technology, brilliant experienced people, etc. behind it.

The sort of ironic thing is that the valuation of BTC slips people for a loop and then they really miss the bigger picture.