Bitcoin Shrinking - The Long View

[BTConomist]

With bitcoin, the game is different. There are no loans, just payments. Hence, if you can't convince others (right now that's mostly techies) to pay for the implementation of your idea, you will never get it off the ground. Beautiful setup, isn't it?

There's also savings, which in this context some people mistakenly call hoarding.

Yes, savings (hoarding) is part of the bitcoin economy. In fact, savings is the tool with which bitcoiners regulate the rates of deflation and inflation (note: not referring to the exchange rates with fiat currencies) in the bitcoin economy. It's just too bad that hoarding is plaguing the bitcoin economy at the early days of its development. Today, everyone should be spending, not hoarding.

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With bitcoin, the game is different. There are no loans, just payments. Hence, if you can't convince others (right now that's mostly techies) to pay for the implementation of your idea, you will never get it off the ground. Beautiful setup, isn't it?

There's also savings, which in this context some people mistakenly call hoarding.

Yes, savings (hoarding) is part of the bitcoin economy. In fact, savings is the tool with which bitcoiners regulate the rates of deflation and inflation (note: not referring to the exchange rates with fiat currencies) in the bitcoin economy. It's just too bad that hoarding is plaguing the bitcoin economy at the early days of its development. Today, everyone should be spending, not hoarding.

In the absence of too-easy credit, savings is the tool with which bitcoiners come up with enough money to start large projects.

[BTConomist]

With bitcoin, the game is different. There are no loans, just payments. Hence, if you can't convince others (right now that's mostly techies) to pay for the implementation of your idea, you will never get it off the ground. Beautiful setup, isn't it?

There's also savings, which in this context some people mistakenly call hoarding.

Yes, savings (hoarding) is part of the bitcoin economy. In fact, savings is the tool with which bitcoiners regulate the rates of deflation and inflation (note: not referring to the exchange rates with fiat currencies) in the bitcoin economy. It's just too bad that hoarding is plaguing the bitcoin economy at the early days of its development. Today, everyone should be spending, not hoarding.

In the absence of too-easy credit, savings is the tool with which bitcoiners come up with enough money to start large projects.

How large are we talking about? Perhaps it's best to start small, since bitcoin economy is still in its infancy?

[johnyj]

up

[Synaptic]

up

hehehe, down  

down down down....

[film2240]

Overall, I agree with the OP's sentiment.  I've been quite frustrated with how slowly things have been progressing.  In the last 6 weeks, I have worked with two separate sites to begin accepting Bitcoin as an alternative payment method.  These aren't little mom and pop operations either.  One of the sites is hard coding the exchange rate at $20.  The other is using market price + 0.5, so there is already a huge discount being factor in.  Yet sadly, fewer Bitcoin orders have come in over the last 6 weeks combined than either of these sites typically receives by credit card over the course of a single hour.  The vendors I've talked to absolutely love the idea of getting out from under Visa/MCs thumb, but there's just not enough incentive to accept this form of payment if no one's using it.

However, I also think there are a few relatively minor developments that could turn the trend very rapidly upward.  There is still presently no effective way to introduce the average consumer to Bitcoins.  We're facing a major chicken and egg problem, and this side of it is just as important as getting the merchants to accept it (if not more so).  The only solution I see for this is for someone to build a very professional online wallet service that also sells at least small units of bitcoin (even at 2x market price).

One of the sites I've referred to above is an online game that sells monthly subscriptions.  They have expressed an interest in selling the service on a per game basis (for something like $0.05), using Bitcoin for micro-payments.  They won't move on this until they can also link to a wallet service where their customers can sign up for a Bitcoin account and immediately fund it, even with just $5-10 worth of coin.  Once these initial road blocks to growth are overcome, things could expand very quickly.

I wonder how values can be hard coded for the exchange rate? Are there any exchanges that have done this (as I don't fully know how sites and exchanges can do this)? So I can protect myself from the crashes (by holding on to my btc) and profit in the good times as well (if they return by quickly selling if my exchange allows it)

[Synaptic]

So,

A month and a half on, anyone still want to take a blind stab at my facts again?

Because if you'd like to try, there's plenty of new ammo for me to fire away with. This little community project has become such a joke...

And I'll just pleasantly watch the price slide, slide, slide.

And laugh at all the maggots who have come out of the woodwork and into my threads to lambaste me whenever I dare speak a shred of truth about the scam that is bitcoin in this holy temple of shit.

[S3052]

indeed, trend is down

[Synaptic]

Heheh,

Just a month ago, this thread would have been over-run with short-sighted fools with an eye on the prize, all deriding me for me "crystal-ball gazing."

How silent it's gotten here...

Thanks for all the laughs guys, it was a fun ride.

[grod]

It's not over yet.  We haven't had capitulation yet (plenty of perma-bulls still calling for $100/btc by year end, no "all is lost" sentiment at all), but there is now a possibility of that in the next 2-3 months.

After that is over -- who knows.  There's still long term upside potential, especially if the algorithm changes from sha-1 to a memory-intensive algorithm + sha-1 and opens the bitcoin ecosystem participation to the general public again.

If it becomes a small club of FGPA and ASIC hardware owners as the entire bitcoin community IMO the odds of mass adoption go to zero.

[Synaptic]

It's not over yet.  We haven't had capitulation yet (plenty of perma-bulls still calling for $100/btc by year end, no "all is lost" sentiment at all), but there is now a possibility of that in the next 2-3 months.

After that is over -- who knows.  There's still long term upside potential, especially if the algorithm changes from sha-1 to a memory-intensive algorithm + sha-1 and opens the bitcoin ecosystem participation to the general public again.

If it becomes a small club of FGPA and ASIC hardware owners as the entire bitcoin community IMO the odds of mass adoption go to zero.

Well, there will never be an ASIC or widespread FPGA adoption due to cost. Never.

And capitulation isn't necessary to call the ToD on this project.  It's obviously winding down, losing steam, and spiraling into obscurity.

Such are fads.

[ElectricMucus]

It's not over yet.  We haven't had capitulation yet (plenty of perma-bulls still calling for $100/btc by year end, no "all is lost" sentiment at all), but there is now a possibility of that in the next 2-3 months.

After that is over -- who knows.  There's still long term upside potential, especially if the algorithm changes from sha-1 to a memory-intensive algorithm + sha-1 and opens the bitcoin ecosystem participation to the general public again.

If it becomes a small club of FGPA and ASIC hardware owners as the entire bitcoin community IMO the odds of mass adoption go to zero.

Well, there will never be an ASIC or widespread FPGA adoption due to cost. Never.

And capitulation isn't necessary to call the ToD on this project.  It's obviously winding down, losing steam, and spiraling into obscurity.

Such are fads.

Quoting a troll in a troll thread.

[wumpus]

And capitulation isn't necessary to call the ToD on this project.  It's obviously winding down, losing steam, and spiraling into obscurity.

You must be so happy now. With the "fad" forgotten all your time spent on this forum writing 565 posts will be as wasted as our development time. But at least we trained our skills doing so.

You lose either way. If bitcoin lives, you are just another angry man with a stick preaching about the "end of the world" which never came. If bitcoin disappears, this forum disappears and you will have accomplished nothing.

[S3052]

It's not over yet.  We haven't had capitulation yet (plenty of perma-bulls still calling for $100/btc by year end, no "all is lost" sentiment at all), but there is now a possibility of that in the next 2-3 months.

After that is over -- who knows.  There's still long term upside potential, especially if the algorithm changes from sha-1 to a memory-intensive algorithm + sha-1 and opens the bitcoin ecosystem participation to the general public again.

If it becomes a small club of FGPA and ASIC hardware owners as the entire bitcoin community IMO the odds of mass adoption go to zero.

+1
Agree with you. Most often those longer term downtrends like the down we have seen since June 2011 end with a capitulation "crash".

We probably need to see this in BTCUSD before we make significant progress on the upside.

[Synaptic]

And capitulation isn't necessary to call the ToD on this project.  It's obviously winding down, losing steam, and spiraling into obscurity.

You must be so happy now. With the "fad" forgotten all your time spent on this forum writing 565 posts will be as wasted as our development time. But at least we trained our skills.

Nah, not wasted time, it's been very entertaining.

And recent history is replete with programmers hammering out code on dead end projects, nothing new.

[wumpus]

it's been very entertaining.

Yes, it is.

[2112]

And recent history is replete with programmers hammering out code on dead end projects, nothing new.

This is true. In case of bitcoin it was particularly compounded by the fact that the various side projects are/were building wrappers around horribly bad central engine.

But the central idea still seems interesting. Even if it isn't completely innovative, it is/was an innovative combination of earlier ideas.

And no matter what will happen to Bitcoin itself, the education in scam detection and avoidance will have a lasting positive effect on many people. I would never expect that such a variety of emotions could be stirred by a piece of badly written C++ code.

[Synaptic]

And recent history is replete with programmers hammering out code on dead end projects, nothing new.

This is true. In case of bitcoin it was particularly compounded by the fact that the various side projects are/were building wrappers around horribly bad central engine.

But the central idea still seems interesting. Even if it isn't completely innovative, it is/was an innovative combination of earlier ideas.

And no matter what will happen to Bitcoin itself, the education in scam detection and avoidance will have a lasting positive effect on many people. I would never expect that such a variety of emotions could be stirred by a piece of badly written C++ code.

Cryptocurrency is definitely interesting. I'm just disappointed Bitcoin had to be the first incarnation and that it achieved such popularity. It's a shame because the fact is that Bitcoin fucking sucks. It's poorly thought out, and horribly implemented.

It was a wonderful proof-of-concept, and would have made an EXCELLENT academic paper for some aspiring undergrad. However, becoming the fad phenomenon of a mockery of some new global alternative currency is purely the result of a bunch of poorly educated get-rich-quick maggots and the nature of open source software.

Cryptocurrency as a concept has been irreparably HARMED in the near term because of this shithole backwater project...

Of course, it has served its purpose in the darker seedier sides of transaction processing...I'm sure there's plenty of anon very happy that bitcoin has made purchasing child porn, scheduled drugs, and who knows what else, an easier reality for them...

But that doesn't really help the rest of us on the sane side of the global economy.

[Synaptic]

the sane side of the global economy.

That's a good one!

Sane as in not wanting to pay to see children raped or murdered, etc...

[2112]

It was a wonderful proof-of-concept, and would have made an EXCELLENT academic paper for some aspiring undergrad.[...]

Cryptocurrency as a concept has been irreparably HARMED in the near term because of this[...]

It still may be a good subject of some dissertation. In fact I hope it will not pass into obscurity, but it will stay an active subject of research and academic writing.

In addition I consider "short term irreparable HARM" a good thing: it is an excellent and fresh source for an examples of wide variety of scams. Sometimes it is hard to keep explaining to young people how scams work using the cases from 19 and early 20 centuries. Now we have really neat 21 century scam: all digital, all new-genaration, all Internet. No need to keep invoking tired, old references to "dog and ponny show" & "snake oil salesmen".

Most importantly, it doesn't appear to have been designed from the start to be a scam. It evolved into it.