Bye bye bitcoin

[afbitcoins]

And my central bank, the Bank of England, is not a cartel of private banks.

Are you sure about that? I've just been researching the banks own web site and the wikipedia page and found no mention at all of who own it? Who is the owner then?

[murraypaul]

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/about/Pages/default.aspx

The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom. Sometimes known as the “Old Lady” of Threadneedle Street, the Bank was founded in 1694, nationalised on 1 March 1946, and in 1997 gained operational independence to set monetary policy

Edit: The legislation nationalising the BoE is available here: http://legislation.data.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/9-10/27/enacted/data.htm?wrap=true

[davidgdg]

...But bitcoins hyperdeflationary nature do not allow it to happen...

This makes no sense. This year the quantity of bitcoins will actually increase by > 10%. That is actually quite a high rate of inflation. In time the rate of inflation will reduce to something close to zero and it is true that as coins are lost, there will then be a very slow fall in the quantity of spendable bitcoins. But that is hardly "hyper" deflationary.  Presumably what you really mean is that the price of goods when measured in bitcoins is falling. But this has nothing to do with deflation (which is a reduction in the money supply). It is simply a reflection of a rapid growth in the demand for bitcoin as its revolutionary possibilities become apparent to more and more people. Eventually however that process will stop at which point the price of goods measured in bitcoins will level off.  

[davidgdg]

The problem is that bitcoin has a centralized ownership. You can pick 10-20 persons out there that is holding abt 50% of all the bitcoins that exist. And even if you count the 1000 persons that holds 80%, the problem is the same.

You could create a new cryptocurrency and give 10 coins to every person on the planet and in a few years the distribution would look very similar. It is not the job of currency to evenly distribute itself and I would argue that it is not even desirable.

But is it the job of currency to be pre-distributed unevenly? Should that not be the job of capitalism?

The job of capitalism (or at least the job of free markets - I don't like the word "capitalism") is to direct resources to where they can be most efficiently used to satisfy the needs of consumers (aka "people"). This works best with a fixed money supply. The distribution of that money supply is irrelevant.

[smoothie]

These thread types always make me laugh when then OP gets proven wrong in a matter of days...not weeks.

 

[pedrog]

These thread types always make me laugh when then OP gets proven wrong in a matter of days...not weeks.

 

Bitstamp @ $135.81

Nice!

[monkeybars]

OP dumped just in time for Baidu's announcement. Up 8%.

Talk to you in a year, sir. $1000/XBT

[Hfleer]

My last bitcoin finally sold! It's a relief. Bitcoin is doomed to fail. It has a price, but it has no value. It has made a few people rich, but most people shall loose. A currency? It is only speculation and nothing more. Bitcoin has not and will not become a real medium for exchange. What remains for bitcoin now is the large holders to sell out their coins, but in a tempo that does not crash the 'market'. It will be interesting to see how bitcoin's decline plays out. Good luck, either buying or selling, but if you do the former, you need it most.

Just checked the chart, and Bitcoin is headed up again.  I'm not sure you had the best of timing.  Let's see where price goes now.

[relmeas]

you are probably right it is doomed to fail but not for the reason you mentioned.

imho here is why

1. reliance on internet. if some global cataclysm happens it might dissolve. for example what if governments start to tax any traffic that goes across the border? or something similar happens.

2. no solution for growth. there is no even talk about getting rid of having to store all the transaction on each node's medium. how can it grow when there is no space to grow into?

3. big players will never adopt bitcoin because they will never rely on a handful of individuals who control the source code. even though adepts claim bitcoin to be decentralized, most (all?) crysises were solved by centralized authority that de-facto controls the source code emission.

[wingding]

you are probably right it is doomed to fail but not for the reason you mentioned.

imho here is why

1. reliance on internet. if some global cataclysm happens it might dissolve. for example what if governments start to tax any traffic that goes across the border? or something similar happens.

2. no solution for growth. there is no even talk about getting rid of having to store all the transaction on each node's medium. how can it grow when there is no space to grow into?

3. big players will never adopt bitcoin because they will never rely on a handful of individuals who control the source code. even though adepts claim bitcoin to be decentralized, most (all?) crysises were solved by centralized authority that de-facto controls the source code emission.

Interesting, though:
1. If internet reliance fail, I think bitcoin would only be a footnote in the list of problems.
2. You do not need to store the blockchain locally. There already existvservices that stores blockchain that is accessed by locallystored wallets.
3. Who are the fewindividual that contol thevsource? Bitcoin foundation? Not sure I get what you mean.

[RodeoX]

you are probably right it is doomed to fail but not for the reason you mentioned.

imho here is why

1. reliance on internet. if some global cataclysm happens it might dissolve. for example what if governments start to tax any traffic that goes across the border? or something similar happens.

2. no solution for growth. there is no even talk about getting rid of having to store all the transaction on each node's medium. how can it grow when there is no space to grow into?

3. big players will never adopt bitcoin because they will never rely on a handful of individuals who control the source code. even though adepts claim bitcoin to be decentralized, most (all?) crysises were solved by centralized authority that de-facto controls the source code emission.

1. Yep. If the internet goes, so does bitcoin. I don't see how a "border" tax could work however. Your google search for a local barber could cross into many countries.

2. There are many solutions to this "problem". Wallet software does not have to DL the entire blockchain. Mainstream wallets of the future may be cloud based or use pruned trees instead of the whole chain.

3. Huh? There is no center. Do you mean the qt wallet? You could write your own software and not answer to anyone. The protocol is open source and anyone can use it however they wish. Gavin and his team are looked to because they have been at it for years, but anyone can trump them if they have something better.

[Melbustus]

Good question! My main issue with bitcoin is the immorality of it. Explained simply: When my government issues new money, those money are used to run schools, build roads, provide health care , etc. So fiat money has some moral basis. When you buy bitcoins, some people get rich from that, nothing else.

Oh that would be funny if it wasn't so naive.

Your govt doesn't issue money.  Your central bank does which is a private cartel of banks who has been given a monopoly on issuing currency.  When they issue currency they and only they benefit.  They benefit because more issuance means more inflation but inflation is a lagging effect and so the money they issue today won't have its purchasing power degraded until after they spend it.  You on the other hand well you get your money slowly after it has filtered through many layers from the banks on downward so the prices have already adjusted.  Ever notice that you get a 3% raise (not a promotion but an annual raise) but by the time you get the raise prices have already increase 3% (or more).   You never catch up.


Governments build schools and roads and healthcare (and bombs, and engage in terrorism, and build police states, and incarecerate people) using TAX REVENUE which has absolutely nothing to do with the issuance of currency.  There are many countries which don't issue their own currency.  Belize for example defacto uses the US dollar as their national currency.  How does belize build roads?  Simple people pay taxes (often in US dollars) and the government spends those to build roads.

Governments have no money.  Governments don't build roads.  Governments collect wealth (through the us of force) from citizens in the form of taxes and pay for goods and services just like you or I do ... by spending money.

Citizen (wealth) ----> Government ----->  Road Builder

The only difference between you hiring someone to pave your driveway and the government hiring someone to pave a highway is the first involves voluntary free exchange (you give some money and the paver gives you some driveway) and the later involves the use of force (monopoly on violence).


As for no longer owning Bitcoins, well it sounds like it is a source of stress for you and life is too short for all that.  You may have made the right decision for you.   However even if you never use anything other than "national" currency you might want to do some research on what money is and how it doesn't work they way you think it does.

+1 to this, since OP ignored it.

[David Rabahy]

The current block chain is about 12.5GB and it zips down to 8.74GB (a 30% savings).

[Odalv]

The current block chain is about 12.5GB and it zips down to 8.74GB (a 30% savings).

There are 7B people (1-5 transactions/day buying cigarettes, dinner .. ) ... 1 transaction is about 0.5 kB ...
= looks like when bitcoin will worth $200k/BTC then we will need 20 TB/day

[pedrog]

The current block chain is about 12.5GB and it zips down to 8.74GB (a 30% savings).

There are 7B people (1-5 transactions/day buying cigarettes, dinner .. ) ... 1 transaction is about 0.5 kB ...
= looks like when bitcoin will worth $200k/BTC then we will need 20 TB/day

When/if that happens, 20TB will cost a few cents.

[monkeybars]

There are 7B people (1-5 transactions/day buying cigarettes, dinner .. ) ... 1 transaction is about 0.5 kB ...
= looks like when bitcoin will worth $200k/BTC then we will need 20 TB/day

I'm quite certain a distributed blockchain network protocol will be built on top of Bitcoin some time in the next two years. Then no one will need to download the whole thing; they'll just share the parts of the blockchain that are needed a la Bittorrent.

[foggyb]

The current block chain is about 12.5GB and it zips down to 8.74GB (a 30% savings).

There are 7B people (1-5 transactions/day buying cigarettes, dinner .. ) ... 1 transaction is about 0.5 kB ...
= looks like when bitcoin will worth $200k/BTC then we will need 20 TB/day

Toddlers buy cigarettes with their dinner. 

'We' will not all have the blockchain stored locally.

20TB hard drives will cost $199 in 5 years.

There is no reason we can't have secondary systems on top of bitcoin, kind of like credit cards. Doing away with 99% of those 7B transaction. It doesn't make any sense to buy cigarettes with bitcoins when we could have a bitcoin credit system process small transactions with little to no risk and much faster throughput.

[westkybitcoins]

<snipped>

[xavier]

For good or for worse we are all invested in bitcoin.

Because we have taken the time to understand it, follow the news about it, post on these forums about it, be involved with it and for many people actually buy the coins.

Obviously nobody knows the future of bitcoin. The VC's say it's 80% likely to fail, I have no idea how they come up with 80% but I'll take their word for it mostly  - because probably they (with their large resources of time, money and research) know a lot more than me about it.

However for good or for worse there's no way I am going to sell my coins unless something cataclysmicly bad happens to bitcoin. At which point, it would probably be a terrible time to sell because nobody would be buying.

So I guess you could say that - for good or for bad - I'm in it for the long haul, and probably speaking for many others here too.

My 2¢!

(sorry this post is probably not good for the price)