State of the Real Bitcoin Economy

[PerfectAgent]

Wait, is eMule a project that came from eDonkey?

[N12]

There is no Bitcoin economy and there never has been, it's all lies and deception to justify higher prices in the minds of a few bubble driven speculators. ASICs aren't an economy. The only thing we have are Silk Road and Satoshi Dice.

Aside from that, all other economic indicators I know of like bitcoinstore.com, Humble Bundle sales figures, Reddit Gold figures etc. suggest that Bitcoin simply isn't a currency. If anything besides a store of value, it's a USD proxy to buy certain goods.

I do think that Bitcoin can work simply as a store of value, but actual uses would be a boost, and I'd suggest to look for uses where Bitcoin has not only an advantage, but uses which without Bitcoin would be impossible.

[AliceWonder]

PayPal is 15 years old. Amazon is 18 years old. It's not a level playing field comparing Bitcoin to a system that's three times older and more established. Bitcoin is also an open source system supported by good will and dreams not corporate backing. If you want to compare it with anything compare it to Linux. How old is Linux maybe 20+ years. In that time Linux has captured a whopping 1.26% market share. Sorry but corporate backing can push things a lot faster than good will and dreams.

Does that 1.26% include the tablet / smartphone market (Android is Linux), the router market (your wifi router is probably Linux), the server market, etc.?

Of course you realize you're making my point for me.

What point is that, that those who pay for marketing are going to sell?

Quick, call the presses!

The point is that a free open source software project has incredible penetration is many different markets and has in fact displaced many closed commercial *nix's.

When's the last time you saw a server running Solaris?
Just 13 years ago, Sun was the company that put the dot in dot.com

It was this free operating system by an international group of enthusiasts that provided something better and Sun is gone now.

[AliceWonder]

Of course you realize you're making my point for me.

What point is that, that those who pay for marketing are going to sell?

Quick, call the presses!

My point is Android chose Linux because Linux was already a success.
It isn't Android that made Linux a success.

Is that the point you were trying to make?

[TippingPoint]

There is no Bitcoin economy and there never has been, it's all lies and deception to justify higher prices in the minds of a few bubble driven speculators. ASICs aren't an economy. The only thing we have are Silk Road and Satoshi Dice.

Aside from that, all other economic indicators I know of like bitcoinstore.com, Humble Bundle sales figures, Reddit Gold figures etc. suggest that Bitcoin simply isn't a currency. If anything besides a store of value, it's a USD proxy to buy certain goods.

I do think that Bitcoin can work simply as a store of value, but actual uses would be a boost, and I'd suggest to look for uses where Bitcoin has not only an advantage, but uses which without Bitcoin would be impossible.

Yes

But those uses do not necessarily need to be practical uses in order to provide a huge boost to the Bitcoin economy.  There is great potential for the application that seamlessly ties in to social networking, "likes", trendiness, rebellion, or lottery.

[QuestionAuthority]

Of course you realize you're making my point for me.

What point is that, that those who pay for marketing are going to sell?

Quick, call the presses!

My point is Android chose Linux because Linux was already a success.
It isn't Android that made Linux a success.

Is that the point you were trying to make?

No, that's not it yet. Here it is in a shorter version.

Bitcoin would be more successful if it had big money behind it fighting legislators and promoting it. It's still young and this can happen. Be patient and give it time to grow.

[WaverleyStreet]

Silk Road and now Atlantis. It made online purchases convenient, easy and safe even for ILLEGAL AND DANGEROUS products and services.

[worldtreasurefinders]

There is no Bitcoin economy and there never has been, it's all lies and deception to justify higher prices in the minds of a few bubble driven speculators. ASICs aren't an economy. The only thing we have are Silk Road and Satoshi Dice.

I disagree. If you look at all the products and services you can buy with bitcoins, and compare it to what you could buy with all of the other currencies ever invented and used by mankind throughout history, the bitcoin economy is one of the most successful economies in history.  You can buy food, clothing, gadgets, services, consumables, etc. with bitcoins.

[WaverleyStreet]

Wait, is eMule a project that came from eDonkey?

ePills = MDMA = RAT POISON

more likely

[WaverleyStreet]

There is no Bitcoin economy and there never has been, it's all lies and deception to justify higher prices in the minds of a few bubble driven speculators. ASICs aren't an economy. The only thing we have are Silk Road and Satoshi Dice.

Aside from that, all other economic indicators I know of like bitcoinstore.com, Humble Bundle sales figures, Reddit Gold figures etc. suggest that Bitcoin simply isn't a currency. If anything besides a store of value, it's a USD proxy to buy certain goods.

I do think that Bitcoin can work simply as a store of value, but actual uses would be a boost, and I'd suggest to look for uses where Bitcoin has not only an advantage, but uses which without Bitcoin would be impossible.

YOU ARE THE MAN!!!

we <3 >>

Blitz­
Donator
Hero Member


SPREAD WORD BUD!!!!


>>>YOU ROCK!!!!!

[WaverleyStreet]

There is no Bitcoin economy and there never has been, it's all lies and deception to justify higher prices in the minds of a few bubble driven speculators. ASICs aren't an economy. The only thing we have are Silk Road and Satoshi Dice.

I disagree. If you look at all the products and services you can buy with bitcoins, and compare it to what you could buy with all of the other currencies ever invented and used by mankind throughout history, the bitcoin economy is one of the most successful economies in history.  You can buy food, clothing, gadgets, services, consumables, etc. with bitcoins.

ya man = consumable BATH SALTS maybe hand delivered by the feds!!!


>>OUCH!!!!

[N12]

There is no Bitcoin economy and there never has been, it's all lies and deception to justify higher prices in the minds of a few bubble driven speculators. ASICs aren't an economy. The only thing we have are Silk Road and Satoshi Dice.

I disagree. If you look at all the products and services you can buy with bitcoins, and compare it to what you could buy with all of the other currencies ever invented and used by mankind throughout history, the bitcoin economy is one of the most successful economies in history.  You can buy food, clothing, gadgets, services, consumables, etc. with bitcoins.

And who actually USES Bitcoin to perform such transactions? The supply side is there, but the demand side not.

Like I said:

all other economic indicators I know of like bitcoinstore.com, Humble Bundle sales figures, Reddit Gold figures etc. suggest that Bitcoin simply isn't a currency.

[westkybitcoins]

There is no Bitcoin economy and there never has been, it's all lies and deception to justify higher prices in the minds of a few bubble driven speculators. ASICs aren't an economy. The only thing we have are Silk Road and Satoshi Dice.

*shrug*

Whatever perspective suits you, I guess. The Bitcoin community continues developing, regardless.

Aside from that, all other economic indicators I know of like bitcoinstore.com, Humble Bundle sales figures, Reddit Gold figures etc. suggest that Bitcoin simply isn't a currency. If anything besides a store of value, it's a USD proxy to buy certain goods.

What does it matter that it's not a currency? Gold isn't either, yet it's still valuable, and won't be going away anytime soon (despite decades of anti-gold propaganda, no less.) Why is it that if there's not an overwhelming abundance of goods and services available solely for bitcoins, something must be wrong?

I do think that Bitcoin can work simply as a store of value, but actual uses would be a boost, and I'd suggest to look for uses where Bitcoin has not only an advantage, but uses which without Bitcoin would be impossible.

It's a digital currency. If you ignore it's key features (pseudonymous transactions, limited amount, decentralized,) then any other digital payment system can do what it does just as well, better in many cases. About the only thing that can be done that's impossible without Bitcoin is storing wealth anonymously without needing a third party (EDIT: and pseudonymously sending it across the planet without a middle-man.) That's it, it really has no other advantage. Because that's the one primary feature set it was designed to have.

The inevitable conclusion is, there's not going to be any trick or secret key, no undiscovered catalyst to accelerate the growth of the Bitcoin economy. Other than in the area of anonymous wealth storage (which doesn't require any real infrastructure,) it's just going to have to grow at the same slow, steady pace as anything else.

(EDIT: Also, private transactions are a potential, Bitcoin-only growth area, I suppose; the tricky part there is that we live in a society where most people don't value privacy very much, except those trying to evade societal controls. Guess that means we should be focusing on North Korea as our growth market?)

[WaverleyStreet]

There is no Bitcoin economy and there never has been, it's all lies and deception to justify higher prices in the minds of a few bubble driven speculators. ASICs aren't an economy. The only thing we have are Silk Road and Satoshi Dice.

I disagree. If you look at all the products and services you can buy with bitcoins, and compare it to what you could buy with all of the other currencies ever invented and used by mankind throughout history, the bitcoin economy is one of the most successful economies in history.  You can buy food, clothing, gadgets, services, consumables, etc. with bitcoins.

At least people are trying.  It's like gardening: plant a lot of seeds and pull the weeds.  I have young men and women down here in South Florida trying their hands at working with the unbanked locally, and small-scale traders in Latin America and the Caribbean.

It will be very interesting to see if Kipochi gets any traction in Africa, where Bitcoin addresses an real problem.

People in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa already use their telephones to make purchases.  However, because of over-regulation at the behest of IMF and World Bank advisers (read: Western/Northern government agents), a Kenyan using a Kenyan telephone cannot make purchases from a seller in Tanzania, whether the Kenyan is in Kenya or Tanzania, and vice versa.

Kipochi is a layer built atop Bitcoin that works not only on smartphones, but on more primitive 'feature phones' (i.e., text-only interfaces that can access the Internet).  If it gets any traction in Kenya and other parts of Africa, it could spread and become a de facto standard for 'the world's second-largest economy'.

small-scale drug traders in Latin America and the Caribbean love bitcoin?

>>WTF!!!!

[ex-trader]

Comparisons to the internet and it's growth are utterly irrelevent.

The internet allowed people to do so many things that just weren't possible before the internet and it has utterly transformed peoples lives and the methods of interactions, shopping, entertainment etc.

By comparison Bitcoin does virtually nothing that cannot be achieved already with money. It is a potential store of value/speculation, but at its heart was designed to be a payment mechanism and it has yet to prove to the masses that it is a better or cheaper payment mechanism than that which exists already.



As for the state of the Bitcoin economy, there are a number of BTC evangelists (mainly on here) who do buy stuff with Bitcoins, but the rest of the use is either gambling, illegal purchases or the biggest use of Bitcoin - buying it hoping that some other people will use it and it'll go up in value. Until that changes it's a rough-ride folks.

[WaverleyStreet]

Comparisons to the internet and it's growth are utterly irrelevent.

The internet allowed people to do so many things that just weren't possible before the internet and it has utterly transformed peoples lives and the methods of interactions, shopping, entertainment etc.

By comparison Bitcoin does virtually nothing that cannot be achieved already with money. It is a potential store of value/speculation, but at its heart was designed to be a payment mechanism and it has yet to prove to the masses that it is a better or cheaper payment mechanism than that which exists already.



As for the state of the Bitcoin economy, there are a number of BTC evangelists (mainly on here) who do buy stuff with Bitcoins, but the rest of the use is either gambling, illegal purchases or the biggest use of Bitcoin - buying it hoping that some other people will use it and it'll go up in value. Until that changes it's a rough-ride folks.

Bitcoin and TOR was intended to be used to support the U.S.A. to encourage whistleblowing and take down corrupted governments >> foundations etc!!!

.


>>>GOOD WORK!!!!!

[cr1776]

Gambling is another market for people in places where online gambling is not legal, but where people wish to be free to do so. 

Personally, I think that gambling and micro transactions, similar to Silk Road, are going to be growth areas for bitcoin.  Kind of like porn was for VHS.

Bitcoin features should be used to enter existing markets but also to create new markets where payments would be impossible or very difficult/dangerous/impractical to do.

This is what happened with Silk Road and now Atlantis. It made online purchases convenient, easy and safe even for difficult products and services.

[johnyj]

The bitcoin is valued at current price just because there are still many uncertainties, if everything has settled well, the price will be magnitudes higher due to very limited amount of coins in circulation

It is very funny, the purchase power of USD is maintained stable by people's belief that FED will follow their mandate to ensure the price stablility, although they know nothing about what FED is doing

Similarly, the purchasing power of bitcoin will always rise in long term, this consensus is also achieved by people's belief that bitcoin's total supply is fixed. As long as that belief do not get shaken, the consensus will not change easily

Current bitcoin investors hope to get as much coin as possible before the majority join the game, regardless of price. They are currently heavily invested in mining equipment instead of buying, because the historical return is higher, but when more mining equipment were made and the per equipment return dropped below the cost, some of them will start to buy coins

[WaverleyStreet]

The bitcoin is valued at current price just because there are still many uncertainties, if everything has settled well, the price will be magnitudes higher due to very limited amount of coins in circulation

It is very funny, the purchase power of USD is maintained stable by people's belief that FED will follow their mandate to ensure the price stablility, although they know nothing about what FED is doing

Similarly, the purchasing power of bitcoin will always rise in long term, this consensus is also achieved by people's belief that bitcoin's total supply is fixed. As long as that belief do not get shaken, the consensus will not change easily

Current bitcoin investors hope to get as much coin as possible before the majority join the game, regardless of price. They are currently heavily invested in mining equipment instead of buying, because the historical return is higher, but when more mining equipment were made and the per equipment return dropped below the cost, some of them will start to buy coins

Silk road crime scene is fun for them however difficulty is rising selling bath salts due to customers aggressive use of drug testing kits!!!!


>>>BUMMER!!!!!!

[d'aniel]

You know, for a group of people using a currency supposedly built on a rejection of the "bubble-economics" of central banks, you guys sure sound like a bunch of dot-com investors claiming that the "old rules" no longer apply.

Here's a simple insight that I enjoyed:

Money and a bubble are the same thing.  Both are anomalously overvalued assets.  Both obtain their anomalous value from the fact that many people have bought the asset, without any intention to use it, but only to exchange it for some other asset at a later date.  The two can be distinguished only in hindsight.  If it popped, it was a bubble.  If not, money - so far.

Source: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.ca/2013/04/bitcoin-is-money-bitcoin-is-bubble.html