Why is BTC in the toilet right now?

[foggyb]

the price of btc has very little to do with how much it cost to make them... its all about supply and demand.  its like gold and steal... doesn't cost more to mine gold, but gold is more valuable cuz there is less of it and lots of people want it....

You're just guessing now. Iron ore sells for around 113$ US per tonne, and 1/3 of that ore is converted to steel. The cost of mining gold is around $300 per ounce, and on average maybe 3 tons of ore are required to get one ounce.

The mining costs for gold are obviously MUCH higher because you've got to move much much more ore to get any metal.

So I would also imagine that your speculation in the link between the cost of mining bitcoin versus their price, to be also a guess. IE wrong.

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[markm]

Just curious... stopped paying attention for a week, and now all of a sudden we're at 8 bucks.

The markets are down across the board. Most likely people are trying to get to less risky investments and don't see the difference between a bitcoin and a buck.

I just checked #bitcoin-market, and I still see a big difference between a bitcoin and a buck. About $6.50 difference in fact.
We should be celebrating still, as we not only are still in the act of breaking the dollar parity barrier but also various other currency's units parity barriers. Which national currencies are worth more than 1 bitcoin per 1 of their main unit currently?

I do agree though that trying to compare with and exchange with fiat is a horrible mess, we should continue equipping as many nations as possible with their own national blockchain-based currency even if there is little to no chance of their government actually thanking us for doing so. At least it will let the speculators speculate between umpteen "national currencies" without having to deal with the crap the fiat system seemingly makes anyone go through who they suspect might be trying to move out of fiat... (oh you are moving out? well don't forget we will be happy to charge that back at any moment for you, thereby screwing those who like you apparently are interested in a non fiat currency...)

-MarkM-

[elements]

Which national currencies are worth more than 1 bitcoin per 1 of their main unit currently?

None. As far as i konw the british pound sterling and the latvian lat has the most value/unit.
(Maybe there are more exotic ones though?)

All the major currencies are (still) far below parity:

USD below
EUR below
GBP below
JPN below

CHF below
AUD below
CAD below
NDZ below
HKD below

PLN below
CSK below
NOK below
SEK below
DEK below
ZAR below

RNB/CNY below

LVL (Latvian Lat) = 1,41 EUR (still below)


Well, does anyone know a currency which has a higher value/unit as LVL? (A little off topic but would be intersting)

[btcvc]

Just curious... stopped paying attention for a week, and now all of a sudden we're at 8 bucks.

The markets are down across the board. Most likely people are trying to get to less risky investments and don't see the difference between a bitcoin and a buck.

I just checked #bitcoin-market, and I still see a big difference between a bitcoin and a buck. About $6.50 difference in fact.
We should be celebrating still, as we not only are still in the act of breaking the dollar parity barrier but also various other currency's units parity barriers. Which national currencies are worth more than 1 bitcoin per 1 of their main unit currently?

I do agree though that trying to compare with and exchange with fiat is a horrible mess, we should continue equipping as many nations as possible with their own national blockchain-based currency even if there is little to no chance of their government actually thanking us for doing so. At least it will let the speculators speculate between umpteen "national currencies" without having to deal with the crap the fiat system seemingly makes anyone go through who they suspect might be trying to move out of fiat... (oh you are moving out? well don't forget we will be happy to charge that back at any moment for you, thereby screwing those who like you apparently are interested in a non fiat currency...)

-MarkM-

What I meant is that the same people who are investing money in stocks are investing in bitcoin, so a contraction in the stock market leads to a contraction in bitcoin. Up until this point bitcoin has been controlled by traders - hence the focus on API's and exchanges, etc. Bitcoin needs to be focused on a good and service based economy.

[elements]

Unfortuantely this will take much longer and is much more complicated than setting up a bunch of decent exchanges.


But, yeah it would be great if bitcoin survived until then.

[Otoh]

when BTC hit the main stream media, the silkroad news, a lot of newbs pilled in & prob a few very big players (VBPs) too I'm guessing - the sort who would pump & dump, try & manipulate the relatively small BTC exchanges by being able to move very large amounts in & out as they choose

when Mt.Gox had it's time out probelms this must have been very stessfull for any of the VBPs who would certainly hold super large positions there, I doubt that they would have been naive enough to also use the MBC wallet & we have yet to hear just how many BTC were stolen through there last week & are now being liquidated at any price (it's all profit anyway for them & these peeps will likely move to cash asap - it's not like they are going to have too much faith in BTC ongoing except as an easy pickings to plunder) & this lack of info leads to great downside uncertainty as others cash out more & more the longer this now inside info is held back

with the recent general economy financial market losses & uncertainty some of the VBPs may choose or need to liquidate something to cover losses elsewhere or to take up volatility oportunities now, what's first choice to liquidate but those pesky BTC holdings, especially if they've already done nicely driving them up & dumping them back down again?

many of the newbs may be cooling to thier BTC holdings as they see all the recent news, reaslise it's damn hard for the average non geek atm to keep them securly, plus they're worth a lot less since that influx so any they held are well down

I was one of the SR news newbs though only started to buy this week, mostly orders being met today through britcoin.co.uk which has Internet banking transfers cleared in under 2 hrs & hopefully very soon I will be doing the same through Mt.Gox too (crosses many fingers with that) which accept the same fast UK transfers in but don't provide that service out - as I intend to hold the BTCs (away from all exchanges) that's no prob & I can always transfer them to sell at Britcoin if I wished to cash out in GBP fast

anyway just some look at what a new entry guy is doing here in BTC world atm, I would really like to build up a nice numeric stash of these virtual items & right now seems like a good time to be doing it, other than that I've been 100% in gold since March 2007 with silver too & other precious metal collectables from 2002 onwards - I hope that I can still spot a winner & a good vehicle to bet against the sure fire fiat fiascos out there

edited a couple/few times for typos - more clarity, nothing major...

[TiagoTiago]

Look at the bright side...maybe we won't need to shift the decimal place as soon as we thought.  And if it collapses, we can always burn our worthless bitcoin to heat our homes in the winter (oh wait, nm...I guess fiat currency does have some intrinsic value after all).

Just keep mining, you get heat and you get Bitcoins that will be worth thousands a piece in the future.

[kjj]

I just checked #bitcoin-market, and I still see a big difference between a bitcoin and a buck. About $6.50 difference in fact.
We should be celebrating still, as we not only are still in the act of breaking the dollar parity barrier but also various other currency's units parity barriers. Which national currencies are worth more than 1 bitcoin per 1 of their main unit currently?

Meh.  That is pretty much just a matter of convention and history.  The value of a unit of currency isn't a real thing on an objective scale, it is just a sort of meaningless number.  Since it doesn't mean anything, it could just as well have been any other number.  If everyone woke up tomorrow the dollar was worth 10 times as much, with all prices and records (including memories) adjusted appropriately, you'd never notice the difference.

In the same way, if the block generation reward was 500 BTC, coins would be worth 73 cents right now.  And we would never know the difference.

[Otoh]

I just checked #bitcoin-market, and I still see a big difference between a bitcoin and a buck. About $6.50 difference in fact.
We should be celebrating still, as we not only are still in the act of breaking the dollar parity barrier but also various other currency's units parity barriers. Which national currencies are worth more than 1 bitcoin per 1 of their main unit currently?

Meh.  That is pretty much just a matter of convention and history.  The value of a unit of currency isn't a real thing on an objective scale, it is just a sort of meaningless number.  Since it doesn't mean anything, it could just as well have been any other number.  If everyone woke up tomorrow the dollar was worth 10 times as much, with all prices and records (including memories) adjusted appropriately, you'd never notice the difference.

In the same way, if the block generation reward was 500 BTC, coins would be worth 73 cents right now.  And we would never know the difference.

Yep agreed, it means nothing but there is a psychological effect I'd imagine, just for interest the highest value currency units can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest-valued_currency_unit

the highest being the Kuwaiti dinar at $3.64 per unit, or if BTC is about $8.30 atm then they're worth 2.28 dinars each & if BTC were listed as a currency unit on that Wiki they would top the list

I find of interest the BTC price in $ gold grams which at $53.48 / gram gives a BTC value of 0.155 gold grams, it's bubble peak of $30 against roughly $50/gm for gold giving it's max so far at around 0.6 of a gold gram, if one day it gets parity against the steadily rising gold price per gram in dollars that will be a major milestone & very newsworthy

[nazgulnarsil]

holding out for gold OUNCE parity 

[Steve]

This talk of parity is silly.  It's meaningless.  We could all agree tomorrow to shift the decimal place 1 position and the price of bitcoin would be back below $1.  The kind of parity I'm interested in is when the value of all bitcoin in existence matches or exceeds the total value of some other currency in existence.  Bitcoin has a long way to go.

[markm]

Not a problem! The Republic of Bitcoin's First National Bank of Bitcoin can easily back each and every Bitcoin with up to four bitcoins plus interest of Bitcoin Treasury Notes, so Bitcoins are actually worth four bitcoins plus interest each provided the Bitcoin Citizenry is wise enough and far-sighted enough not to let the politicians talk them out of granting  said bank its charter! See the Republic of Bitcoin thread for details!

-MarkM-

[Otoh]

holding out for gold OUNCE parity  

that'd be nice, assuming gold keeps pwning the fiats as it's being doing

Re: The BTC community could just agree to shift the decimal point, not so, a bitcoin is a unit - there will be 21 million of them eventually less the many that become irretrievable due to lost private keys etc, they can be divided by the 8 decimal points but those are always going to be fractions of a BTC just as a unit of 10 or 100 BTC will be just that also, so it is not arbitrary & charting it's historical unit price against gold, dollars & other fiats is the true reflection of it's worth

[Otoh]

MtGox being useless

Your request (#XXXX) has been received, and will be reviewed by our support staff.

Our help desk is experiencing unusually high traffic currently. We regret to inform you that you will experience some delays (currently 48-72 hrs) in us getting back to you.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and are working on all fronts to improve our response times.

To review the status of the request and add additional comments, follow the link below:
http://support.mtgox.com/tickets/XXXX


XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX, Aug-09 00:21 (JST):
hi

I sent GBP XXXX credit to your UK bank account from mine, requested
yesterday, it should not have taken more than 2 hrs, please let me know if
you have received it as yet, btw Britcoin.com can do this in under 2 hrs &
they're a tiny exchange in comparison

many thanks

ID: XXXXXXXXXXX

[Otoh]

OK still haven't had a response from MtGox but they have auto-advised that the funds have just now been credited & exchanged from GBP in to $ at an excellent exchange rate $1.63675 which is better than XE.com are showing $1.620 & better still than XE-Trade's transfer rate, so good that's good even if they did take a couple of days - I'll edit to say why this was when they let me know...

[lathomas64]

its just a bubble popping, we'll all be allright

[bitcoinminer]

MtGox being useless

Your request (#XXXX) has been received, and will be reviewed by our support staff.

Our help desk is experiencing unusually high traffic currently. We regret to inform you that you will experience some delays (currently 48-72 hrs) in us getting back to you.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and are working on all fronts to improve our response times.

To review the status of the request and add additional comments, follow the link below:
http://support.mtgox.com/tickets/XXXX


XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX, Aug-09 00:21 (JST):
hi

I sent GBP XXXX credit to your UK bank account from mine, requested
yesterday, it should not have taken more than 2 hrs, please let me know if
you have received it as yet, btw Britcoin.com can do this in under 2 hrs &
they're a tiny exchange in comparison

many thanks

ID: XXXXXXXXXXX

I think the issue is you wiring bank funds to Mt. Gox, which is historically useless.  I was almost hoping the next post would be that you lost your money, so it would be one more reason to steer people away from them.

[PGPpfKkx]

- US announcing law against virtual currencies including bitcoin (from 27th of September, if i recall correctly)

why the fuck would u write something so ridiculous only 2 possibilities:
1) you are retarded and believe naked sex news or something like that
2) you have something to gain

[elements]

- US announcing law against virtual currencies including bitcoin (from 27th of September, if i recall correctly)

why the fuck would u write something so ridiculous only 2 possibilities:
1) you are retarded and believe naked sex news or something like that
2) you have something to gain

http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/8412471372/fincen-prepaid-access-final-rule

...and I'd appreciate it if your posts became more content less insult

[Otoh]

MtGox being useless

Your request (#XXXX) has been received, and will be reviewed by our support staff.

Our help desk is experiencing unusually high traffic currently. We regret to inform you that you will experience some delays (currently 48-72 hrs) in us getting back to you.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and are working on all fronts to improve our response times.

To review the status of the request and add additional comments, follow the link below:
http://support.mtgox.com/tickets/XXXX


XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX, Aug-09 00:21 (JST):
hi

I sent GBP XXXX credit to your UK bank account from mine, requested
yesterday, it should not have taken more than 2 hrs, please let me know if
you have received it as yet, btw Britcoin.com can do this in under 2 hrs &
they're a tiny exchange in comparison

many thanks

ID: XXXXXXXXXXX

I think the issue is you wiring bank funds to Mt. Gox, which is historically useless.  I was almost hoping the next post would be that you lost your money, so it would be one more reason to steer people away from them.

Well thanks BCM for your almost kind wishes, it wasn't exactly a bank wire but an free Internet banking transfer within the UK - these normally are great & take under 2 hours to show (ie at Britcoin.co.uk), MtGox couldn't locate my funds for over 2 days even having the date sent, amount, my full name, my MtGox ref number on it, they just faffed around while their offer of reduced fees lapsed & the BTC price rose, how hard is it to do a simple search - unbelievable! Anyway eventually the funds were credited at a good exchange rate & after more prodding they replied:

As for the reason why it took two days, it was because we had to process this manually for the time being according to the Barclay's system. However, we are making every effort to get the funds deposited faster into the Mt.Gox accounts.

We also have plans on making the UK withdrawals possible to facilitate our UK customers and will let our users know once it becomes available. Thank you for your patience and continued support.

Today they sent me a code for a free MtGox Yubi key which I've now ordered, it can only be used with their service just as the regular Yubikey can not be used there, but still useful & a nice gesture, plus what with their rescue of the Polish exchange & clients they do seem to be improving generally so lets give them a chance