Why people are still buying BTC?

[Jutarul]

I might be lacking imagination but still can't understand what makes you that over confident. You can't compare btc and internet...
Still reading hundreds of posts in this section, and can't configure out why people are still buying above 1 euro (which is according to me, something like a "fair price").

Confidence grew over time. Right now the majority of the people are in bitcoin because somebody told them to and they expect a price increase. That's why you see crashes - those sellers are the weak hands who base their bitcoin position on the latest twitter news. With time, bitcoins get accumulated by people who know the fundamentals and see their competitive edge in the few core businesses in which they operate. But that wealth transfer is a common phenomenon in all disruptive industries.

If you think 1 euro is a fair price, then you're obviously trolling.

Is it possible to actually trade btc? (I mean sell btc before actually buying it)
If not, it might explains why people are keeping buying atm.

Yes - the inherent feature of bitcoin to be able to be rapidly settled in combination with its scarcity is what allows the free market to operate more efficiently. Any exchange which would try to "short" bitcoins by full-filling trades with no BTC backing would go out of business quickly in case of violent price movements. At least you would have troubles "withdrawing" your bitcoins from the exchange, while it would try to manipulate its way out of the misery.

The bitcoin currency model in a sense encourages a constant bank run on steroids. That's what disrupts the current business model of banks, because they operate on the assumption of being able to short deposits. There may be bitcoin based banks in the future - but they will have to state clear terms on when you can transfer money out and there will be no FED to bail them out if they screw up.

[Peter Lambert]

I might be lacking imagination but still can't understand what makes you that over confident. You can't compare btc and internet...
Still reading hundreds of posts in this section, and can't configure out why people are still buying above 1 euro (which is according to me, something like a "fair price").

Is it possible to actually trade btc? (I mean sell btc before actually buying it)
If not, it might explains why people are keeping buying atm.

Do you mean shorting bitcoin? Try taking a look at bitfinex, they let you borrow bitcoins there to trade them.

[BitcoinAshley]

Don't worry, guys, I think this one's a troll. A good one, though:

So, make it simple: what makes that high price? High supply.

See, he has it backwards! Naptha, economics 101. High supply:demand ratio = low price. Low supply:demand ratio = higher price. That's why, here in 'MURICA, we burn millions of kilograms of corn and wheat when there's a surplus - to keep prices high. Supply and demand, baby.

Furthermore, your statement that bitcoins can't be used for anything is categorically false. Here are some things that I can do with bitcoins:

-Buy tons of random shit, computers, clothes, etc. on bitcoinstore/bitmit/etc
-Buy ANYTHING from an individual who sells bitcoin (I've had people buy items from me on Craigslist and pay in bitcoins)
-Buy food at restaurants (one service contracts over 1,000)
-Buy a car
-Buy from one of many thousands of merchants through bitpay (yeah, it's not strictly end-to-end... your point?)
-Pay for internet services such as VPN, domain names, hosting, etc
-Order ANY consumer good via bitspend
-Buy PMs - gold, silver, copper, etc
-Buy drugs and guns (yes, a black market exists, GASP)
-Place bets, gamble
-Purchase high-end porn on MetART or sign up for the online dating service OKCupid, or download shit on Mega, or tip people on Reddit, or pay for your blog on Wordpress, the list goes on.
-Donate to your favorite charity that accepts bitcoins, or your favorite open-source software project (there is a rather long and constantly-growing list of Bitcoin-accepting NPOs on the bitcoin Wiki)
-Invest, share, send, receive, put, hold, call, trade, speculate, hold, buy, sell, give, donate, color, flip, mix, save, hoard, spend, piss off Ben Bernanke
-Heck, Elwar just bought dog food with Bitcoins
-A guy I know teaches guitar lessons and a couple of his students pay in Bitcoins (no idea how he pulled that one off)
-I buy hay for my rabbits with turnips (barter 4tw, I am the master of the juicy turnip), and the seeds for the turnips I ordered with Bitcoins. Did I blow your mind yet?

So you're like 1 1/2 years late with your "bitcoin can only be used for buying drugs on silkroad" diatribe. People who say bitcoin can't be used are people who just don't want to use it.

[manfred]

The price BTC is at is due to speculation, from people who don't care about the cryptocurrency itself and (much like it sounds you feel) just want to be able to make some money off of it.

+1

Yes, the true price is made up of:
cost of production + cost of distribution + cost of retail + cost of marketing everything else is just speculation, like u can speculate on any commodity on the futures market.
Why anyone would want to pay several hundred of dollars for a single coin now is hard to understand. seems like most people think if they dont buy now they going to miss out, after all its limited. Similar to an ice cream sales guy on the beach would say quick get it now before its sold out. Then later in the day its finished and he says dont worry my littler brother LTC (Lite Coin) will now take over, but be sure to buy quickly because he has limited stock as u can see.
Bitcoin as a currency the price does not matter i can buy product X if the price is 10 or 100
If you need to buy product X and need to pay with bitcoins  then buy them at the right price.

[wingding]

"Bitcoin is useless"

Then go somewhere else... ?

Why?

Look up at the name of the website you are using: bitcointalk.org

If you have no use for bitcoins, then maybe you should ask yourself why you are here on a bitcoin site? Trolling perhaps?

Could you go into a bit more detail what you were spending hours on that gave you such a low return? Then you should ask yourself what you did to get any dollars you have? Maybe you could do the same thing in exchange for some bitcoins?

So you mean that posts bringing sceptcal views on bitcoin are not eligible here? I disagree. Although I am very interested in bitcoin, I think this forum has enough hallelujah about bitcoin. I welcome and join the minority of heretics.

[Birdy]

Hello guys,

To me, it seems pretty strange that people actually continues buying btc now...
I understood why they wanted to invest in btc before, after the Chyprus crisis, and all the articles in the media. But now?

I don't get it.

Let me help you.

Bitcoin is useless, and will most likely never be used as a currency. I spent hours trying to get my first bitcoins (satoshi actually), and after working for ages, I only got 0.002 btc, which does not even allow me to proceed to a transaction (the fees are higherthan that amount  ). When you compare it with CC or paypal, it seems that they are free to use in comparison! Not to mention the time required to actually proceed to a transaction which can be anything between 1 minute and ... 1 year (or more?).

You aren't supposed to gather Bitcoins from freesites, they give amounts that are worth way less than cents (in short, absolutely useless atm).
The transaction fees are low, if you put them into perspective of real money amounts.

When paying a fee for your transaction the time until it takes place is reasable, too (not years). But yes, it can still takes a day, if you are really unlucky.
Still way faster than bank transfers.

An other problem is the "mining" part. Soon, the difficulty will increase, CPU and GPU mining will be useless. People will stop mining bitcoins and try LTC or something easy to get... The interest in btc will decrease.

Miners gain the fee - so it's worth it, but you shouldn't mine on normal PCs.

Other issues:
- security. Not a single company was able to provide a "professional" service. Bitcoin-24 has a serious problem ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174600.0 ). Even mtgox was critized for the lags, problems with missing coins, money, delay, and so on ... The hacks are countless (you can see new topics about that every day ...).

It's true that there are a lot of problems.

[Lethn]

If you're spending 'hours' earning only 0.002 BTC then you're either being ripped off or you need to study economics, I suspect as well that you've been to one too many advertising sites thinking that you'll get rich off them, you won't, those sites are pretty dodgy. I know some of the owners are clearly just handing them out for the hell of it but I personally believe others are trying to data farm for peoples receive addresses like with emails, you simply won't earn money on them, I particularly dislike the way a certain group of them are re-inventing words and mathematics to describe 0.00001 BTC to make it seem like you're getting a lot.

If you want to earn money, get a skill set and earn it by offering services or goods for Bitcoin, I think the beginning stage of mining for millions worth of Bitcoins is over too.

[naphto]

Don't worry, guys, I think this one's a troll. A good one, though:

So, make it simple: what makes that high price? High supply.

See, he has it backwards! Naptha, economics 101. High supply:demand ratio = low price. Low supply:demand ratio = higher price. That's why, here in 'MURICA, we burn millions of kilograms of corn and wheat when there's a surplus - to keep prices high. Supply and demand, baby.

So you just assumed that I am a troll because I made a mistake and wrote "supply" instead of "demand" in one post?
So if I find 1 spelling error in your message that means that you are the worst deadbrain cocksucker in the whole world ?
How can that make sense?

I stopped reading your message after this line ...

[Birdy]

To be fair, I also spend some hours on some free bitcoin sites, although I knew the amount wasn't really worth it.
And I was also kinda frustrated, when I couldn't send the coins after I have gained ~0,002
Wanted to try how the Bitcoint client works and couldn't do anything with the coins. At least I could try out how receiving coins works.

[naphto]

To be fair, I also spend some hours on some free bitcoin sites, although I knew the amount wasn't really worth it.
And I was also kinda frustrated, when I couldn't send the coins after I have gained ~0,002
Wanted to try how the Bitcoint client works and couldn't do anything with the coins. At least I could try out how receiving coins works.

Same lol

[Peter Lambert]

"Bitcoin is useless"

Then go somewhere else... ?

Why?

Look up at the name of the website you are using: bitcointalk.org

If you have no use for bitcoins, then maybe you should ask yourself why you are here on a bitcoin site? Trolling perhaps?

Could you go into a bit more detail what you were spending hours on that gave you such a low return? Then you should ask yourself what you did to get any dollars you have? Maybe you could do the same thing in exchange for some bitcoins?

So you mean that posts bringing sceptcal views on bitcoin are not eligible here? I disagree. Although I am very interested in bitcoin, I think this forum has enough hallelujah about bitcoin. I welcome and join the minority of heretics.

Quite the contrary. I was merely explaining Viceroy's point of view.

I still would like OP to better describe what he was actually doing to get the few mB over a couple hours. Was it visiting dodgy websites that promise to pay out bitcoins, or was it mining with a cpu, or something else?

[takagari]

Two issue's I see you have,

One you went to an advertising site "daily bit what ever" and hoped to make a fortune after only a few clicks in an hour or two.
These site's also exist that pay real money and you will only make pennie's doing it. Don't kid yourself.

Second calling them Bitcoins is where a lot of this issue comes from.

Stop looking at them as a currency in the FIAT sense.
This is not the euro, CAD, USD etc.

Think of a coin more as a precious metal. Compare it more to the likes of an oz of silver or gold etc.

We know silver exist's. most of it's use is cosmetic and wasted, we know in a Finite metal along with all the others.

People still buy it, still hoard it, I have bars in my safe of silver. It's just a metal bar. and in the term's of money/spending it's the exact same thing as a bitcoin. The bitcoin is just a new aged version of silver.

The entire world could decide silver as useless aside from the electronics side of it's use, and it would plumit.


The biggest issue is that it's called a coin. damn currency should be referred to as a bitounce lol. As it's not really a coin/cash currency more like a gold/silver currency.

You can buy and trade in 1/100 ounce of gold right now....

[Hfleer]

Hello guys,

To me, it seems pretty strange that people actually continues buying btc now...
I understood why they wanted to invest in btc before, after the Chyprus crisis, and all the articles in the media. But now?

I don't get it.


Bitcoin is useless, and will most likely never be used as a currency. I spent hours trying to get my first bitcoins (satoshi actually), and after working for ages, I only got 0.002 btc, which does not even allow me to proceed to a transaction (the fees are higherthan that amount   ). When you compare it with CC or paypal, it seems that they are free to use in comparison! Not to mention the time required to actually proceed to a transaction which can be anything between 1 minute and ... 1 year (or more?).

The only possible reason I see people are buying btc is that they (truly) believe that the price will increase, and want to make more profit. I think that 99.99 % of the bitcoins exchanged are never withdrawn from the exchangers, and the people are only waiting to make some profits. What makes them believe that the price will rise? Because the amount of bitcoins is limited? Because lost coins can never be recovered? I have no clue.


An other problem is the "mining" part. Soon, the difficulty will increase, CPU and GPU mining will be useless. People will stop mining bitcoins and try LTC or something easy to get... The interest in btc will decrease.


Other issues:
- security. Not a single company was able to provide a "professional" service. Bitcoin-24 has a serious problem ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174600.0 ). Even mtgox was critized for the lags, problems with missing coins, money, delay, and so on ... The hacks are countless (you can see new topics about that every day ...).


I can't see anything positive about btc, and still can't get why people are buying it. Can any captain obvious explains? Thanks.

There are other interests that have replaced the Cyprus hype, and more are likely to come.   As for mining, you could mine Litecoin, and buy Bitcoin with those.

[Jobe7]

It basically boils down to bitcoin solving a few niche problems, and it will go from there. Here are some:
1) wealth confiscation and reduced/no counter-party risk (brainwallets and free market valuation)
2) quasi-instant trade settlement (no delivery games)
3) financial privacy (user adjustable)
4) batteries included (payment processing)
5) separation of power (money supply governance, miners vs. users)

This stuff, but the most important is how amazing it is for businesses. It is MUCH more profitable for a company/business to use btc than fiat due to the extremely low costs in comparison and especially because of the non-refundable side of it. Don't get me wrong, big companies using btc still have (and will) setups to refund people using btc. But with btc they can't be scammed so much. And the lack of charges from banks.. As businesses across the world recognize its various strengths, people/users of those companies/business get bit-curious and buy some, then use it for said company, and then probably others with their remainder of btc.


Hence bitcoin will not solve ONE BIG problem - it will solve many small ones.

This I slightly disagree with. Bitcoin will solve many small problems, and ONE BIG problem

[uMMcQxCWELNzkt]

I have 3 sites currently that will be accepting Bitcoin, you cant really compare generations of infastructure with a new technology spanning a couple of years. By your logic we might as well give up space exploration because it is easier to explore the Earth.

[takagari]

I've also launched a retail site on coingig for selling products.
Airosft in Canada with Bitcoins may be a small or damn small market, but I sell the product locally for cash I'll be sure to help the BT market out and offer them online as well!

[davidorentol]

Hello guys,

To me, it seems pretty strange that people actually continues buying btc now...
I understood why they wanted to invest in btc before, after the Chyprus crisis, and all the articles in the media. But now?

I don't get it.


Bitcoin is useless, and will most likely never be used as a currency. I spent hours trying to get my first bitcoins (satoshi actually), and after working for ages, I only got 0.002 btc, which does not even allow me to proceed to a transaction (the fees are higherthan that amount  ). When you compare it with CC or paypal, it seems that they are free to use in comparison! Not to mention the time required to actually proceed to a transaction which can be anything between 1 minute and ... 1 year (or more?).

The only possible reason I see people are buying btc is that they (truly) believe that the price will increase, and want to make more profit. I think that 99.99 % of the bitcoins exchanged are never withdrawn from the exchangers, and the people are only waiting to make some profits. What makes them believe that the price will rise? Because the amount of bitcoins is limited? Because lost coins can never be recovered? I have no clue.


An other problem is the "mining" part. Soon, the difficulty will increase, CPU and GPU mining will be useless. People will stop mining bitcoins and try LTC or something easy to get... The interest in btc will decrease.


Other issues:
- security. Not a single company was able to provide a "professional" service. Bitcoin-24 has a serious problem ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174600.0 ). Even mtgox was critized for the lags, problems with missing coins, money, delay, and so on ... The hacks are countless (you can see new topics about that every day ...).


I can't see anything positive about btc, and still can't get why people are buying it. Can any captain obvious explains? Thanks.

+1

totaly agree with you

[uMMcQxCWELNzkt]

Hello guys,

To me, it seems pretty strange that people actually continues buying btc now...
I understood why they wanted to invest in btc before, after the Chyprus crisis, and all the articles in the media. But now?

I don't get it.
If you understand the crisis you would also understanding Bitcoin has not changed, Bitcoin is still free from the grasp of the EU and the bankers

Bitcoin is useless, and will most likely never be used as a currency. I spent hours trying to get my first bitcoins (satoshi actually), and after working for ages, I only got 0.002 btc, which does not even allow me to proceed to a transaction (the fees are higherthan that amount  ). When you compare it with CC or paypal, it seems that they are free to use in comparison! Not to mention the time required to actually proceed to a transaction which can be anything between 1 minute and ... 1 year (or more?).
I just recently finished some work for a client, I got payed a couple of Bitcoins, you have to have skills or services unless you would rather rely on begging or hoping on lotteries. Sure transactions are slow compared to the likes of Paypal, this is due to the banks. You cannot just create Paypal overnight.

The only possible reason I see people are buying btc is that they (truly) believe that the price will increase, and want to make more profit. I think that 99.99 % of the bitcoins exchanged are never withdrawn from the exchangers, and the people are only waiting to make some profits. What makes them believe that the price will rise? Because the amount of bitcoins is limited? Because lost coins can never be recovered? I have no clue.
I have never used an exchange due to UK banks and regulations, despite this I have a gained a load of Bitcoins over the last few months. My main reason for suporting Bitcoin is not for profit however, I understand the flaws in FIAT currency and I do not want my children and the next generation growing up as slaves to imaginary debt.


An other problem is the "mining" part. Soon, the difficulty will increase, CPU and GPU mining will be useless. People will stop mining bitcoins and try LTC or something easy to get... The interest in btc will decrease.
As difficulty increases it technology will be driven further, regardless mining is an oppurtunity to make extra in my opinion, you cant mine $, or can you?


Other issues:
- security. Not a single company was able to provide a "professional" service. Bitcoin-24 has a serious problem ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174600.0 ). Even mtgox was critized for the lags, problems with missing coins, money, delay, and so on ... The hacks are countless (you can see new topics about that every day ...).
Like I said before, I have never used or deposited into an exchange. Alternatives although limited are already available, more will be available in the future even if they have to move underground.


I can't see anything positive about btc, and still can't get why people are buying it. Can any captain obvious explains? Thanks.
BTC has almost doubled my freelance positional, I expect my merchant channels to benefit greatly from BTC payment. Also... CryptoCondoms (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=181562.0;topicseen)

[Walter Rothbard]

When you pay something with your credit card or paypal, the fees are either negligible or acceptable.
When you pay something with btc, they are repulsive.

Not usually.  That only happened to you because you got suckered into the "free bitcoin" deal.  You accumulated a ton of tiny pieces of bitcoin ("dust") that cost money to merge back together.  It's like you showed up at a jewelers with a bag full of gold dust and asked for a ring.  There'll be a pretty hefty fee to melt all that gold down and craft a ring out of it!

Bitcoin shouldn't be gained in tiny near-worthless pieces.

[naphto]

+1

totaly agree with you

A lot of people lost, are loosing, and will lose a lot of money