Why Bitcoin will collapse in price.

[PenAndPaper]

U.S give most BTC to China and takes most real money of the Chinese people.  Give nothing for real money !!!
It is tactical general impoverishment of China.

http://fiatleak.com/

I bet that if bitcoins are nothing you must have a lot of them right?

[seriouscoin]

Another idiotic thread ....

If i could have 1 BTC for every thread like this when the price crashes, i would be banging Kimdarshian and driving a Maserati.

[Peter R]

Do you imagine "them" as this cohesive group of people plotting to make your life miserable?  The government (aka "they") are just a bunch of unique individuals trying to make a nice life for themselves and those close to them...Bitcoin forces governments to be accountable.  This is better for everyone.  

I think you are totally off base. Politicians care about power and maintaining their power. Control over money and inflation is one of politicians most powerful instruments to finance their operation. Is it bad for the economy? Yes.

Exactly!  "Politicians care about power and maintaining their power," in order to make a better life for themselves and those close to them.  We're saying the same thing, porc, you just need to think bigger: bitcoin is a disruptive technology that will eventually break certain social/political alliances.  

Bitcoin gives politicians the opportunity to "opt out" too.  If they see bitcoin as the inevitable winner, what are they going to do?  They are going to buy it privately while towing the party line that it should be regulated!  But since they have a vested interested in the success of bitcoin, all regulation will be watered down in a way that actually strengthens bitcoin.  When bitcoin is strong enough, they will jump ship and be welcomed with open-arms.  

[ilpirata79]

Another idiotic thread ....

If i could have 1 BTC for every thread like this when the price crashes, i would be banging Kimdarshian and driving a Maserati.

 

[porc]

Do you imagine "them" as this cohesive group of people plotting to make your life miserable?  The government (aka "they") are just a bunch of unique individuals trying to make a nice life for themselves and those close to them...Bitcoin forces governments to be accountable.  This is better for everyone.  

I think you are totally off base. Politicians care about power and maintaining their power. Control over money and inflation is one of politicians most powerful instruments to finance their operation. Is it bad for the economy? Yes.

Exactly! "Politicians care about power and maintaining their power," in order to make a better life for themselves and those close to them.  We're saying the same thing, porc, you just need to think bigger: bitcoin is a disruptive technology that will eventually break certain social/political alliances.  

Yes we are have the same premise, that politicians will act in order to increase their power which is their main motivation.

However, you believe that  politicians cant stop bitcoin and thus will embrace it. I believe that politicians can and will stop bitcoin in order to defend their money monopoly. I have already explained to you in detail, why the power over money is such an enormously powerful tool for politicians.

You have not explained to me 1) why bitcoin is more valuable to a politician than a money monopoly 2) If 1) is not the case why you think politicians cant or wont stop bitcoin in order to protect their money monopoly.

I never said bitcoin might not be useful for society. I am saying that the value judgement of the politicians is different than our value judgement.

[amencon]

Bitcoin is only a medium of exchange when merchants accept it and hold onto it. Right now merchants are dumping bitcoin for dollars, so its not being used as a medium of exchange. This btw. also throws the transaction cost benefit argument right out of the window (spread).

Now will merchants ever accept bitcoin and hold onto them?
No.

This is where you lost me.  The merchants don't have to hold onto the BTC for bitcoin to have been used as a medium of exchange.  The BTC purchaser exchanged their bitcoins for a product regardless of the actions of the merchant after the fact.

The idea is that at first most merchants immediately convert 100% to fiat currencies as hopefully more and more merchants adopt bitcoin (users of bitcoin driving the economy forward).  At some point enough players are accepting bitcoins for payment that some merchants can afford to keep some percentage of sales in BTC to then pay suppliers or for services necessary for their business (merchants driving the economy forward).  This then cycles and continues to grow the bitcoin economy in a positive re-inforcement loop that ideally ends with majority of participants only converting small percentages to fiat or none at all.  It all has to start where we are now though.

Not to say that things will actually evolve like that, nobody knows how far this new economy will grow.  However I think it's a bit myopic to completely rule out fiat convert merchant adoption today as any sort of potential progress and conclude it's game over.  This is the first part of the process, we'll know if it works or not with time.

[porc]

Bitcoin is only a medium of exchange when merchants accept it and hold onto it. Right now merchants are dumping bitcoin for dollars, so its not being used as a medium of exchange. This btw. also throws the transaction cost benefit argument right out of the window (spread).

Now will merchants ever accept bitcoin and hold onto them?
No.

1) This is where you lost me.  The merchants don't have to hold onto the BTC for bitcoin to have been used as a medium of exchange.  The BTC purchaser exchanged their bitcoins for a product regardless of the actions of the merchant after the fact.

2) The idea is that at first most merchants immediately convert 100% to fiat currencies as hopefully more and more merchants adopt bitcoin (users of bitcoin driving the economy forward).  At some point enough players are accepting bitcoins for payment that some merchants can afford to keep some percentage of sales in BTC to then pay suppliers or for services necessary for their business (merchants driving the economy forward).  This then cycles and continues to grow the bitcoin economy in a positive re-inforcement loop that ideally ends with majority of participants only converting small percentages to fiat or none at all.  It all has to start where we are now though.

Not to say that things will actually evolve like that, nobody knows how far this new economy will grow.  However I think it's a bit myopic to completely rule out fiat convert merchant adoption today as any sort of potential progress and conclude it's game over.  This is the first part of the process, we'll know if it works or not with time.

1) If you sold your bitcoin for dollars and used dollars to buy from the merchant would you qualify bitcoin as a media of exchange? Of course not. Now if the merchant does it for you because he does not want your bitcoins but dollars its the same scenario.

The merchant accepts bitcoin not because he wants bitcoin (again he dumps for dollars) but because he knows that bitcoiners are wealthy customers that would like to transact in bitcoin and that there is little competition for these customers at the moment.

The dumping of bitcoins by the merchant creates transaction costs (spread) that makes transacting in bitcoins expense.

2) No its not a gradual thing. You either hold onto bitcoin or you dont. Again the merchant can profit by having wealthy customers with no competition. He has not endorsed the use of bitcoin as currency unless he holds onto it.

There is a huge psychological hurdle to accept bitcoin, because bitcoin itself is not valuable. I explain this in more detail in this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=364207.0.

[amencon]

What paper work are you talking about?
As of now, you just have to declare your capital gains at the end of the fiscal year; that at least in Italy.

I don't see why things should be made more complicated in the future only for bitcoins.

Regarding the banning of bitcoin tout court by a single country (already been discussed as just pointed out), I think that that would be a big mistake for the country that is making such a decision, because its businesses would be damaged internationally with respect to other businesses that can accept bitcoins.

Best regards,
ilpirata79

For merchants its complicated as they have to track the prices of bitcoin for each bitcoin they hold and sell. Why would a merchant want this? Again you keep assuming bitcoin will be adopted despite it being more complicated than government currency.

Why isnt gold used as money? Why is everybody using government money. Think about it. You are in love with bitcoin.

If this was the main stumbling block to failure for bitcoin I'm fairly certain someone would write some software for businesses that track your wallets and customer's BTC purchases to calculate this for you and then pre-fill whatever form you need at the end of whatever period this needs to be paid (yearly I'm assuming).

Remember one of the things that makes bitcoin such a leap forward is that it is programmable money.  As long as there is sufficient incentive these light technological hurdles will be coded for in due time.

Nobody will ever pay their taxes because there is too much paperwork... oh wait actually I do it all by myself with no training thanks to turbo tax every year.

I'm sorry but I think you'll have to hang your hat on something else other than paperwork as far as Bitcoin's doom.

[amencon]

Bitcoin is only a medium of exchange when merchants accept it and hold onto it. Right now merchants are dumping bitcoin for dollars, so its not being used as a medium of exchange. This btw. also throws the transaction cost benefit argument right out of the window (spread).

Now will merchants ever accept bitcoin and hold onto them?
No.

1) This is where you lost me.  The merchants don't have to hold onto the BTC for bitcoin to have been used as a medium of exchange.  The BTC purchaser exchanged their bitcoins for a product regardless of the actions of the merchant after the fact.

2) The idea is that at first most merchants immediately convert 100% to fiat currencies as hopefully more and more merchants adopt bitcoin (users of bitcoin driving the economy forward).  At some point enough players are accepting bitcoins for payment that some merchants can afford to keep some percentage of sales in BTC to then pay suppliers or for services necessary for their business (merchants driving the economy forward).  This then cycles and continues to grow the bitcoin economy in a positive re-inforcement loop that ideally ends with majority of participants only converting small percentages to fiat or none at all.  It all has to start where we are now though.

Not to say that things will actually evolve like that, nobody knows how far this new economy will grow.  However I think it's a bit myopic to completely rule out fiat convert merchant adoption today as any sort of potential progress and conclude it's game over.  This is the first part of the process, we'll know if it works or not with time.

1) If you sold your bitcoin for dollars and used dollars to buy from the merchant would you qualify bitcoin as a media of exchange? Of course not. Now if the merchant does it for you because he does not want your bitcoins but dollars its the same scenario.

The merchant accepts bitcoin not because he wants bitcoin (again he dumps for dollars) but because he knows that bitcoiners are wealthy customers that would like to transact in bitcoin and that there is little competition for these customers at the moment.

The dumping of bitcoins by the merchant creates transaction costs (spread) that makes transacting in bitcoins expense.

Except that it's NOT the same scenario.  In one scenario there is a merchant that a bitcoin holder can buy from using bitcoins (thereby increasing the perceived value of holding bitcoins), in the other there isn't.  More merchants accepting bitcoin should attract more bitcoin users, thus likely convincing more merchants to accept bitcoins thus potentially leading to the positive reinforcement cycle I've laid out in my last comment.

On top of that coinbase converts first million in sales for free so no "spread".  From what I've seen even the other services that charge do it for fees lower than CC processors anyway.

2) No its not a gradual thing. You either hold onto bitcoin or you dont. Again the merchant can profit by having wealthy customers with no competition. He has not endorsed the use of bitcoin as currency unless he holds onto it.

There is a huge psychological hurdle to accept bitcoin, because bitcoin itself is not valuable. I explain this in more detail in this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=364207.0.

Of course it's a gradual thing.  It's taken years to go from 0 merchant adoption to where we are now.  Are you telling me that assuming continued growth and popularity of bitcoin people won't continue to feel more and more comfortable holding on to it?  It's what has been happening so far.  Some merchants didn't accept or hold bitcoins that do now, it's only a question of whether this trend continues or not.

Also the decision to convert sales to fiat or not is not a binary one.  You can set a sliding scale of whatever percentage you want converted for each transaction.

[porc]

What paper work are you talking about?
As of now, you just have to declare your capital gains at the end of the fiscal year; that at least in Italy.

I don't see why things should be made more complicated in the future only for bitcoins.

Regarding the banning of bitcoin tout court by a single country (already been discussed as just pointed out), I think that that would be a big mistake for the country that is making such a decision, because its businesses would be damaged internationally with respect to other businesses that can accept bitcoins.

Best regards,
ilpirata79

For merchants its complicated as they have to track the prices of bitcoin for each bitcoin they hold and sell. Why would a merchant want this? Again you keep assuming bitcoin will be adopted despite it being more complicated than government currency.

Why isnt gold used as money? Why is everybody using government money. Think about it. You are in love with bitcoin.

If this was the main stumbling block to failure for bitcoin I'm fairly certain someone would write some software for businesses that track your wallets and customer's BTC purchases to calculate this for you and then pre-fill whatever form you need at the end of whatever period this needs to be paid (yearly I'm assuming).

Remember one of the things that makes bitcoin such a leap forward is that it is programmable money.  As long as there is sufficient incentive these light technological hurdles will be coded for in due time.

Nobody will ever pay their taxes because there is too much paperwork... oh wait actually I do it all by myself with no training thanks to turbo tax every year.

I'm sorry but I think you'll have to hang your hat on something else other than paperwork as far as Bitcoin's doom.

If the transaction costs are not cheaper than digital gold we have no reason to accept bitcoin. Again capital gains paperwork is soft force to make bitcoin uncompetitive vs the dollar. If that does not work because economy of scale has reduced the cost of transacting in bitcoin government will find other methods. You are confusing my argument (government wants to protect its money monopoly) with one example of how it does that (taxing the medium of exchange).

Bitcoin already has problems with acceptance and transaction costs are the only plus factor. I explain it in more detail in this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=364207.0

[amencon]

What paper work are you talking about?
As of now, you just have to declare your capital gains at the end of the fiscal year; that at least in Italy.

I don't see why things should be made more complicated in the future only for bitcoins.

Regarding the banning of bitcoin tout court by a single country (already been discussed as just pointed out), I think that that would be a big mistake for the country that is making such a decision, because its businesses would be damaged internationally with respect to other businesses that can accept bitcoins.

Best regards,
ilpirata79

For merchants its complicated as they have to track the prices of bitcoin for each bitcoin they hold and sell. Why would a merchant want this? Again you keep assuming bitcoin will be adopted despite it being more complicated than government currency.

Why isnt gold used as money? Why is everybody using government money. Think about it. You are in love with bitcoin.

If this was the main stumbling block to failure for bitcoin I'm fairly certain someone would write some software for businesses that track your wallets and customer's BTC purchases to calculate this for you and then pre-fill whatever form you need at the end of whatever period this needs to be paid (yearly I'm assuming).

Remember one of the things that makes bitcoin such a leap forward is that it is programmable money.  As long as there is sufficient incentive these light technological hurdles will be coded for in due time.

Nobody will ever pay their taxes because there is too much paperwork... oh wait actually I do it all by myself with no training thanks to turbo tax every year.

I'm sorry but I think you'll have to hang your hat on something else other than paperwork as far as Bitcoin's doom.

If the transaction costs are not cheaper than digital gold we have no reason to accept bitcoin. Again capital gains paperwork is soft force to make bitcoin uncompetitive vs the dollar. If that does not work because economy of scale has reduced the cost of transacting in bitcoin government will find other methods. You are confusing my argument (government wants to protect its money monopoly) with one example of how it does that (taxing the medium of exchange).

Bitcoin already has problems with acceptance and transaction costs are the only plus factor. I explain it in more detail in this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=364207.0

Sorry I'm not familiar with "digital gold" so I have no frame of reference for your comment.  Have a link?

As I said the paperwork side can be automated away (or already is) and so will be a negligible cost and the exchange fees are either competitively low or free.

I don't see "taxing the medium of exchange" as a viable threat to bitcoin at this time, though I'd be willing to entertain some figures that demonstrate it is if you have some.

[diedicar]

dear porc,

as gold is bitcoins are a store of value before beeing an everyday currency. Why? because people like to be safe: if you are very rich you do not trust in banks or goverments, you hoard gold aside of other assets but you have to build a caveau if you want to keep gold safe and someone can still steal it. instead you can hide several copies of your btc wallet everywhere. That's why cryptocurrency is the MOST safe value store ever. Probably btc will never be everiday's money just because it's a too good value store, that does not mean it will not grow exponentially in price.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law

[porc]

Bitcoin is only a medium of exchange when merchants accept it and hold onto it. Right now merchants are dumping bitcoin for dollars, so its not being used as a medium of exchange. This btw. also throws the transaction cost benefit argument right out of the window (spread).

Now will merchants ever accept bitcoin and hold onto them?
No.

1) This is where you lost me.  The merchants don't have to hold onto the BTC for bitcoin to have been used as a medium of exchange.  The BTC purchaser exchanged their bitcoins for a product regardless of the actions of the merchant after the fact.

2) The idea is that at first most merchants immediately convert 100% to fiat currencies as hopefully more and more merchants adopt bitcoin (users of bitcoin driving the economy forward).  At some point enough players are accepting bitcoins for payment that some merchants can afford to keep some percentage of sales in BTC to then pay suppliers or for services necessary for their business (merchants driving the economy forward).  This then cycles and continues to grow the bitcoin economy in a positive re-inforcement loop that ideally ends with majority of participants only converting small percentages to fiat or none at all.  It all has to start where we are now though.

Not to say that things will actually evolve like that, nobody knows how far this new economy will grow.  However I think it's a bit myopic to completely rule out fiat convert merchant adoption today as any sort of potential progress and conclude it's game over.  This is the first part of the process, we'll know if it works or not with time.

1) If you sold your bitcoin for dollars and used dollars to buy from the merchant would you qualify bitcoin as a media of exchange? Of course not. Now if the merchant does it for you because he does not want your bitcoins but dollars its the same scenario.

The merchant accepts bitcoin not because he wants bitcoin (again he dumps for dollars) but because he knows that bitcoiners are wealthy customers that would like to transact in bitcoin and that there is little competition for these customers at the moment.

The dumping of bitcoins by the merchant creates transaction costs (spread) that makes transacting in bitcoins expense.

A) Except that it's NOT the same scenario.  In one scenario there is a merchant that a bitcoin holder can buy from using bitcoins (thereby increasing the perceived value of holding bitcoins), in the other there isn't.  More merchants accepting bitcoin should attract more bitcoin users, thus likely convincing more merchants to accept bitcoins thus potentially leading to the positive reinforcement cycle I've laid out in my last comment.

On top of that coinbase converts first million in sales for free so no "spread".  From what I've seen even the other services that charge do it for fees lower than CC processors anyway.

2) No its not a gradual thing. You either hold onto bitcoin or you dont. Again the merchant can profit by having wealthy customers with no competition. He has not endorsed the use of bitcoin as currency unless he holds onto it.

There is a huge psychological hurdle to accept bitcoin, because bitcoin itself is not valuable. I explain this in more detail in this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=364207.0.

B) Of course it's a gradual thing.  It's taken years to go from 0 merchant adoption to where we are now.  Are you telling me that assuming continued growth and popularity of bitcoin people won't continue to feel more and more comfortable holding on to it?  It's what has been happening so far.  Some merchants didn't accept or hold bitcoins that do now, it's only a question of whether this trend continues or not.

Also the decision to convert sales to fiat or not is not a binary one.  You can set a sliding scale of whatever percentage you want converted for each transaction.

A) No. Accepting bitcoin for payment means holding onto them. The merchant has already calculated the average spread costs and priced these costs in his products.  If you buy with bitcoin and calculate all the costs (spread buying spread selling for dollars) you will not be competitive and thus bitcoin cant become a medium of exchange as its only benefit are its transaction cost. Thus merchants dumping means the rejection of bitcoin.

B) Its not a gradual thing. You either decide to convert X amounts of dollars into bitcoin or you dont. You either hold dollar or bitcoin.

[diedicar]

"After people realize that merchants are not adopting bitcoin and that it is not used as a medium of exchange, it will collapse in price. Will anybody store significant wealth in Bitcoin after this spectacular collapse? Not likely."

that's a completely wrong assumption. Bitcoins will be used as a medium of exchange like diamonds, but they will be converted in faster currencies, fiat or not, for everyday shopping. Bitcoins will be hoarded because they are SAFER, that's a strong point, than all other options and portable. It' does not matter that they are useless in terms of consumption (like jewelery).

[amencon]

Bitcoin is only a medium of exchange when merchants accept it and hold onto it. Right now merchants are dumping bitcoin for dollars, so its not being used as a medium of exchange. This btw. also throws the transaction cost benefit argument right out of the window (spread).

Now will merchants ever accept bitcoin and hold onto them?
No.

1) This is where you lost me.  The merchants don't have to hold onto the BTC for bitcoin to have been used as a medium of exchange.  The BTC purchaser exchanged their bitcoins for a product regardless of the actions of the merchant after the fact.

2) The idea is that at first most merchants immediately convert 100% to fiat currencies as hopefully more and more merchants adopt bitcoin (users of bitcoin driving the economy forward).  At some point enough players are accepting bitcoins for payment that some merchants can afford to keep some percentage of sales in BTC to then pay suppliers or for services necessary for their business (merchants driving the economy forward).  This then cycles and continues to grow the bitcoin economy in a positive re-inforcement loop that ideally ends with majority of participants only converting small percentages to fiat or none at all.  It all has to start where we are now though.

Not to say that things will actually evolve like that, nobody knows how far this new economy will grow.  However I think it's a bit myopic to completely rule out fiat convert merchant adoption today as any sort of potential progress and conclude it's game over.  This is the first part of the process, we'll know if it works or not with time.

1) If you sold your bitcoin for dollars and used dollars to buy from the merchant would you qualify bitcoin as a media of exchange? Of course not. Now if the merchant does it for you because he does not want your bitcoins but dollars its the same scenario.

The merchant accepts bitcoin not because he wants bitcoin (again he dumps for dollars) but because he knows that bitcoiners are wealthy customers that would like to transact in bitcoin and that there is little competition for these customers at the moment.

The dumping of bitcoins by the merchant creates transaction costs (spread) that makes transacting in bitcoins expense.

A) Except that it's NOT the same scenario.  In one scenario there is a merchant that a bitcoin holder can buy from using bitcoins (thereby increasing the perceived value of holding bitcoins), in the other there isn't.  More merchants accepting bitcoin should attract more bitcoin users, thus likely convincing more merchants to accept bitcoins thus potentially leading to the positive reinforcement cycle I've laid out in my last comment.

On top of that coinbase converts first million in sales for free so no "spread".  From what I've seen even the other services that charge do it for fees lower than CC processors anyway.

2) No its not a gradual thing. You either hold onto bitcoin or you dont. Again the merchant can profit by having wealthy customers with no competition. He has not endorsed the use of bitcoin as currency unless he holds onto it.

There is a huge psychological hurdle to accept bitcoin, because bitcoin itself is not valuable. I explain this in more detail in this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=364207.0.

B) Of course it's a gradual thing.  It's taken years to go from 0 merchant adoption to where we are now.  Are you telling me that assuming continued growth and popularity of bitcoin people won't continue to feel more and more comfortable holding on to it?  It's what has been happening so far.  Some merchants didn't accept or hold bitcoins that do now, it's only a question of whether this trend continues or not.

Also the decision to convert sales to fiat or not is not a binary one.  You can set a sliding scale of whatever percentage you want converted for each transaction.

A) No. Accepting bitcoin for payment means holding onto them. The merchant has already calculated the average spread costs and priced these costs in his products.  If you buy with bitcoin and calculate all the costs (spread buying spread selling for dollars) you will not be competitive and thus bitcoin cant become a medium of exchange as its only benefit are its transaction cost. Thus merchants dumping means the rejection of bitcoin.

B) Its not a gradual thing. You either decide to convert X amounts of dollars into bitcoin or you dont. You either hold dollar or bitcoin.

A) Again, what spread costs are you talking about?

B) Adoption (the decision to hold bitcoins) on a large scale is a gradual process, it started at 0 and has grown over the years, this is in fact a perfect example of something happening gradually.  As confidence increases some might even increase their stake of sales held in bitcoin gradually over time.  Not even sure why how gradual it is for a singular participant to choose to hold bitcoin or not would be in contention.

[porc]

dear porc,

as gold is bitcoins are a store of value before beeing an everyday currency. Why? because people like to be safe: if you are very rich you do not trust in banks or goverments, you hoard gold aside of other assets but you have to build a caveau if you want to keep gold safe and someone can still steal it. instead you can hide several copies of your btc wallet everywhere. That's why cryptocurrency is the MOST safe value store ever. Probably btc will never be everiday's money just because it's a too good value store, that does not mean it will not grow exponentially in price.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law

Yes. But I dont think it is a good store of value versus gold.

I have explained this in the second paragraph under heading 2):

Also Bitcoin is a technology, that can be outcompeted by other altcoins. Your wallet can be hacked. The average citizen cant judge if the code can or can not be hacked and thus more bitcoins created. If you want to store wealth over a long period of time investing in a technology is not the best and easiest option. Also Bitcoin is not useful or wanted. If you ask a Bitcoiner what can I do with it they will say: dump it on the next guy it will go up in price! Gold and Silver where always wanted (jewlery and nowadays industry) and thats why they became MONEY in the first place! They have unique properties and everybody love to hold them in their hand. This will always be the case ensuring significant value and acceptance. Nothing like this can be said for bitcoins. Thus I dont believe bitcoin will function as a store of value in any significant way.

Now let me explain this paragraph in more detail (a lot of people seem to have missed it).

Definition store of value: To act as a store of value, these forms must be able to be saved and retrieved at a later time, and be predictably useful when retrieved. WIKI

Now lets look at useful: 1 Bitcoin of course is not useful in and of itself. So already we have a problem. However lets broaden the term to mean that bitcoin is useful when  others accept it for payment of goods and services or if I can convert it to currency (dollar) which is accepted for these goods and services.

Now you already said that bitcoin wont be a media of exchange (which I believe is correct as government will prohibit it). This leaves us with bitcoins only use: its ability to be traded into currency. So all you have left basically is an artificial agreement to use it as a store of value and accept its worth. Its totally artificial and thus NOT predictable nor suitable. People could decide not to accept nothing (bitcoin) for something. People could decide to use a different cryptocurrency. Many people might lose trust in the code or not even begin to trust it.

Gold is fits the definition perfectly. Its reliable usefulness is that its pretty and not everybody can have this form of pretty (rare). This value judgement by society has been established since the dawn of man and cant be replaced. So its much more suitable than bitcoin for storing value over lets say a 15 year period.

[flynn]

Funniest thread ever IMO

[deed02392]

There's a US couple who are currently LIVING off BTC, i.e. paying bills, rent, buying food etc. with only BTC.

If I were a coffee beans producer and lived like this couple in that all my necessities could be bought with Bitcoin, I might reasonably think to sell my beans to coffee shops for Bitcoins. If the coffee shop then sells the coffee for Bitcoins, there is an end-to-end transfer of only Bitcoins - no capital gains tax needs to be calculated or paid because there is no increase in capital from currency exchange.

This is the future us early adopters are expecting. The market is young now because it's not widely accepted, but we feel that it can and will be.

[diedicar]

yes btc could be replaced by other peer to peer crypto currencies, but the whole capitlization of cryptos is going to explode. And btc will be the leader in the first place. The value of gold itself relies on some kind of inertia.

no btc cannot be hacked if you buy a new pc and you open your principal wallet just in case of big transactions. An uber safe protocol is definitely cheaper and safer than building a caveau.

No, there is no strict need of jewelery in gold. You can wear false gold without anyone noticing, you can alsa wear wonderful copper jewels, but gold is rare. Prices of gold have big swings, but grow on the long term, in no way at this point the value of btc will go to zero, to much difficult to destroy the whole organism. So, because btc are rare, hoarding will restart in cycles in the very same way it did from 2009. No need of btc as an everyday currency for this behaviour.

[porc]

yes btc could be replaced by other peer to peer crypto currencies, but the whole capitlization of cryptos is going to explode. And btc will be the leader in the first place. The value of gold itself relies on some kind of inertia.

no btc cannot be hacked if you buy a new pc and you open your principal wallet just in case of big transactions. An uber safe protocol is definitely cheaper and safer than building a caveau.

No, there is no strict need of jewelery in gold. You can wear false gold without anyone noticing, you can alsa wear wonderful copper jewels, but gold is rare. Prices of gold have big swings, but grow on the long term, in no way at this point the value of btc will go to zero, to much difficult to destroy the whole organism. So, because btc are rare, hoarding will restart in cycles in the very same way it did from 2009. No need of btc as an everyday currency for this behaviour.

You have not addressed my point. What can I do with my Bitcoin once you have transferred them to me?