Watching amateur finance types flail

[digigalt]

You can buy anything on Amazon.com with bitcoins.

This is news.  How?  Without first converting to USD?

There's a few middlemen - you send them BTC and a wishlist, they buy it and (I'm guessing) sell the BTC. Amazon doesn't accept BTC directly.

That's clearly not the same thing as being able to "buy anything on Amazon with bitcoins." It defeats the whole purpose of a decentralized economy to involve someone else in my commerce with a merchant.

[elggawf]

That's clearly not the same thing as being able to "buy anything on Amazon with bitcoins." It defeats the whole purpose of a decentralized economy to involve someone else in my commerce with a merchant.

Yes.

[indio007]

Bear in mind that the Bitcoin system generates no revenue. All funds must come from new investors. 

John , with all respect , your flat out wrong. New coins are created by securing the authenticity AND accuracy of transactions. Bitcoins are NOT generated from dollars coming in. You obviously don't know how it works so why don't you stick to what you know or do some research.

[elggawf]

John , with all respect , your flat out wrong. New coins are created by securing the authenticity AND accuracy of transactions. Bitcoins are NOT generated from dollars coming in. You obviously don't know how it works so why don't you stick to what you know or do some research.

He's a Bitcoin outsider - what the heck makes you think he'd talk BTC when he says the word "revenue"?

He means no new value (currently being measured in USD) from the outside world unless it's through more investors - and at the present time he's mostly speaking truth. Mining secures the network, yes - but without some means of giving that network any sort of value it's all just meaningless bits... comparing e-penises in the form of GPUs.

My guess is you're alluding to that because mining costs you money your Bitcoins have to be worth something - no one gives a shit what Bitcoins cost to make, that's not what gives them their value.

[modrobert]

Nagle is a troll, don't inflate his ego by replying.

[indio007]

John , with all respect , your flat out wrong. New coins are created by securing the authenticity AND accuracy of transactions. Bitcoins are NOT generated from dollars coming in. You obviously don't know how it works so why don't you stick to what you know or do some research.

He's a Bitcoin outsider - what the heck makes you think he'd talk BTC when he says the word "revenue"?

He means no new value (currently being measured in USD) from the outside world unless it's through more investors - and at the present time he's mostly speaking truth. Mining secures the network, yes - but without some means of giving that network any sort of value it's all just meaningless bits... comparing e-penises in the form of GPUs.

My guess is you're alluding to that because mining costs you money your Bitcoins have to be worth something - no one gives a shit what Bitcoins cost to make, that's not what gives them their value.

Value is in the eye of the beholder and is completely subjective. My point about cost to make is that it is not creating something from nothing like fiat currency which is faith based. Nagle can redeem his Federal Reserve Notes for lawful money and then we can talk. He knows he can't even though it is Federal Law. They are the biggest scam ever. You have no legal recourse for non-payment within the US.

As far as meaningless  bits... how meaningless is ink formed in the shape of 100 versus 1? The ink is no more valuable . Whereas 100 bitcoins versus 1 bitcoins means the network is that more secure and the transaction (regardless of what 2 people choose to make them represent) that much more real.

[SgtSpike]

You can buy anything on Amazon.com with bitcoins.

This is news.  How?  Without first converting to USD?

There's a few middlemen - you send them BTC and a wishlist, they buy it and (I'm guessing) sell the BTC. Amazon doesn't accept BTC directly.

That's clearly not the same thing as being able to "buy anything on Amazon with bitcoins." It defeats the whole purpose of a decentralized economy to involve someone else in my commerce with a merchant.

Well, sure, but my point is, it's getting there.  Nearly every day, I see new services or products being sold for BTC.  There's more than 10,000 items indexed by some site that can be purchased using BTC.  And those are direct purchases too - no middlemen involved.

[indio007]

Wait till Christmas. I'm selling toys for BTC.

[elggawf]

Value is in the eye of the beholder and is completely subjective. My point about cost to make is that it is not creating something from nothing like fiat currency which is faith based. Nagle can redeem his Federal Reserve Notes for lawful money and then we can talk. He knows he can't even though it is Federal Law. They are the biggest scam ever. You have no legal recourse for non-payment within the US.

As far as meaningless  bits... how meaningless is ink formed in the shape of 100 versus 1? The ink is no more valuable . Whereas 100 bitcoins versus 1 bitcoins means the network is that more secure and the transaction (regardless of what 2 people choose to make them represent) that much more real.

They're both equally meaningless - one is given value by decree, that you can use it to buy a shit-ton of things all across the country. The other is given value primarily through speculation, but also a miniscule but steadily growing market of things you can buy with it also. Without that steadily growing list of things you can actually buy directly with it, the only value it has is in your ability to find a greater fool to pass it on to.

Look at it another way - what do you think would happen to the USD if everyone outside the US's legal jurisdiction suddenly decided they didn't want to accept USD anymore? Even discounting the fact we'd still have a domestic market for them, there would suddenly by a whole load of people on the planet wanting to get rid of them in exchange for something more useful to them. Bitcoin's value is kind of like that, except you don't have the most powerful armed force in the world forcing you to use it.

[BkkCoins]

You just described all money systems. They all depend on another fool to accept them.
It is 100% true that BitCoins need more utility if they are to survive it's infancy.
People are working on that.

But it does have some utility as well for people wanting to hide money. It just is a bit risky for that. At this point I would not consider BitCoins as an investment vehicle at all. That's just crazy. As a short term method of transacting it is becoming more viable as time goes on.

But it is battling a perception by most sane onlookers as a pyramid or ponzi scheme. That's only if you are silly enough to think that putting your life savings into BitCoins is a good idea currently.

[indio007]

We agree for the most part. My point was there is more intrinsic value in bitcoins (even though they are digital) than there are in paper USD. That's more of an indictment of US currency than anything else. However, USD does not have to be accepted at all by anyone. FRN's are not the only legal tender. The gov't just like you to believe it is.

[elggawf]

Okay well whether it's by law or merely convention, and right or wrong, the USD currently has value in the USA. Pretending that Bitcoin is just as good now is folly - as I've said in multiple threads, the value of BTC right now is in what could be, not what is.

[indio007]

Uhm... it is just as good now. I've bought the exact same things I would normally buy with dollars. I've exchanged them for dollars. Right now they have the identical utility as far as I can tell. I can't use them as collateral for a loan but so what? You don't get rich being in debt.

[CurbsideProphet]

You can buy anything on Amazon.com with bitcoins.

This is highly misleading.  Amazon.com does not accept bitcoins, an UNAFFILIATED entity conducts the transactions.  

Hey guys, send me your BTC's and I'll buy whatever you want from Walmart.  Does Walmart accept Bitcoins now?  

[hawks5999]

Hey guys, send me your BTC's and I'll buy whatever you want from Walmart.

WOOHOO! Wal-Mart accepting BitCoins now!!! Sam would definitely be a BitCoin fan!!!

[elggawf]

Uhm... it is just as good now. I've bought the exact same things I would normally buy with dollars. I've exchanged them for dollars. Right now they have the identical utility as far as I can tell. I can't use them as collateral for a loan but so what? You don't get rich being in debt.

When you've lived 12 months as an adult* without touching your local currency, post a thread reporting on it. Until then, they're not "as good" unless you take an extremely narrow definition of "as good". Anecdotal stories of "I bought Widget X with it" aren't helpful. If you are being paid in USD then every year the buying power of one year's income drops a little bit, so hopefully you got raises to counteract that. If you are being paid in BTC, your buying power fluctuates wildly.

* Are you able to pay your rent in BTC? Living with your parents and surviving off beef jerky and whatever your friends will sell you for BTC doesn't count. A functional adult must be able to conduct 99% of their day to day business in Bitcoin before it'll be "as good" as $LOCALCURRENCY.

Edit: Note that I don't think it's required that Bitcoin be "as good" as any other given currency for it's survival, it just needs to be better than it is now - we need a functioning economy that is a major player so that speculation doesn't give it 99% of it's value. I'm only arguing this point because the claim that Bitcoin is "as good as" the USD is complete bullshit if you are an adult living independently in the USA.

[Piper67]

Uhm... it is just as good now. I've bought the exact same things I would normally buy with dollars. I've exchanged them for dollars. Right now they have the identical utility as far as I can tell. I can't use them as collateral for a loan but so what? You don't get rich being in debt.

When you've lived 12 months as an adult* without touching your local currency, post a thread reporting on it. Until then, they're not "as good" unless you take an extremely narrow definition of "as good". Anecdotal stories of "I bought Widget X with it" aren't helpful. If you are being paid in USD then every year the buying power of one year's income drops a little bit, so hopefully you got raises to counteract that. If you are being paid in BTC, your buying power fluctuates wildly.

* Are you able to pay your rent in BTC? Living with your parents and surviving off beef jerky and whatever your friends will sell you for BTC doesn't count. A functional adult must be able to conduct 99% of their day to day business in Bitcoin before it'll be "as good" as $LOCALCURRENCY.

This is a bit silly to anyone who's ever lived in a country outside of the G8... there are entire areas of the world where the local currency, while strictly used for local, small scale transactions, is not the de facto currency. In much of the world, when people assign value to anything of substance (a house, a car, the monthly rent), they do so in USD, because their local currency is ineffective.

In that sense, the only thing preventing BTC from being "as good" is a lack of exposure.

[elggawf]

This is a bit silly to anyone who's ever lived in a country outside of the G8... there are entire areas of the world where the local currency, while strictly used for local, small scale transactions, is not the de facto currency. In much of the world, when people assign value to anything of substance (a house, a car, the monthly rent), they do so in USD, because their local currency is ineffective.

In that sense, the only thing preventing BTC from being "as good" is a lack of exposure.

Touché... but I never said (I don't think?) that BTC can never be as good, or anything like that - I simply said it isn't now. Which is the crux of my argument - that real work needs to be done before BTC will become anything other than a geek toy and a speculative vehicle, and the majority of the community don't appear to want to do it. It's massively inconvenient to buy things with Bitcoin at the moment (beyond small person to person trades, particularly for digital goods, at which it's terribly convenient) and the only other argument for Bitcoin's utility is that it's a "good store of wealth" which is bullshit because the only reason it's keeping it's value hinges on it's possible future utility.

I guess the root of my point is that if you've invested in Bitcoins and you aren't actively working to make the Bitcoin economy better, you're actively sabotaging your own investment (or delusional, there seems to be a fuckton of that going around these forums).

[elggawf]

You make it sound like we are all just sitting on our asses, waiting for the value to go up. Have a look in the project dvelopement board, lots of people are working on ways to raise the value of the community, infrastructure, etc. There is value in the future of bitcoins because alot of smart people are *working* on adding value.

My apologies, I didn't mean to imply that no one is doing the heavy-lifting - simply that if you step outside those boards and go look at what Bitcoin evangelists are saying elsewhere on the web, the majority of it boils down to: "invest in Bitcoins, nowhere to but up" and "we need to figure out a way to attract more investors", intermixed with the occasional "you should be mining Bitcoins too, it's the new gold rush".

I wholeheartedly agree that Bitcoin has value because of it's potentially bright future. I have, however, witnessed at least two people on this very forum say things like "who cares if the Bitcoin economy never takes off, it's still a great store of value" which is idiotic because that value hinges on the assumption of the bright economic future.

[finnthecelt]

This is a bit silly to anyone who's ever lived in a country outside of the G8... there are entire areas of the world where the local currency, while strictly used for local, small scale transactions, is not the de facto currency. In much of the world, when people assign value to anything of substance (a house, a car, the monthly rent), they do so in USD, because their local currency is ineffective.

In that sense, the only thing preventing BTC from being "as good" is a lack of exposure.

Touché... but I never said (I don't think?) that BTC can never be as good, or anything like that - I simply said it isn't now. Which is the crux of my argument - that real work needs to be done before BTC will become anything other than a geek toy and a speculative vehicle, and the majority of the community don't appear to want to do it. It's massively inconvenient to buy things with Bitcoin at the moment (beyond small person to person trades, particularly for digital goods, at which it's terribly convenient) and the only other argument for Bitcoin's utility is that it's a "good store of wealth" which is bullshit because the only reason it's keeping it's value hinges on it's possible future utility.

I guess the root of my point is that if you've invested in Bitcoins and you aren't actively working to make the Bitcoin economy better, you're actively sabotaging your own investment (or delusional, there seems to be a fuckton of that going around these forums).

Aren't those investing in silver and gold (moreso gold) counting on it's future utility value (currency)? Or is that bullshit too? I suppose you'll say next that BTC is not a store of value like silver and gold is? True but only because a proper amount of time has passed. Silver and gold are largely recognized as they are due to the fact that they were the best alternative.

We are in a digital age now. BTC may develop to have it's value in a niche for certain types of transactions. Currency for others. Silver and gold yet for others.

I have no problem right now selling my metals if I need cash bad enough. I have to convert that into currency. Did I error in my ways when I bought silver at $9.00 and sold it for currency and then bought stuff with it? Trust me, I wasn't complaining.

Real work does need to be done and time needs to pass.  The fact that it's a speculative vehicle doesn't invalidate it. Au contraire, it demonstrates that there's a demand for it. Patience is the key, grasshopper. Trying to rush this into the mainstream is also delusional.