If you belive that Bitcoin is over and done with...

[nighteyes]

in which case yes they are doomed.

Doomed from what? Being a scammer jammer community?...I think clearly bitcoin could easily make a comeback in a broader sense if it adheres to solid economics.

Will it be doomed from taking over the US dollar? Hopefully.....with the right expectations it could produce. No more pie in the sky, but actual value and people I think will respond....is it going to be hard? Well its going to be harder than sitting on azz and expecting to be rich. The majority of bitcoins is going to have spend on investment and there is going to have to be accountibility.

[memvola]

We're still printing them at a quarter million bitcoins a month,  even if they are worth .00001 cent each. 

If someone can logically answer why there is no mechanism to slow down the rate of printing then I want to hear it.

The one and only reason Bitcoin has real followers it that the money supply cannot be tempered with. It's also the only advantage it has to centralized fiat.

Furthermore, the fact that this is infinitely more important than how inflation occurs is its only defense against copies (with different inflation curves) randomly inflating the space.

[kgo]

If someone can logically answer why there is no mechanism to slow down the rate of printing then I want to hear it.

Because Satoshi Nakamoto didn't add that feature and changing the rules of the entire system that existed since the beginning will upset many people who don't want the rules changed.

then you just pointed out the biggest flaw in the bitcoin algorithm.

Even the US constitution has a mechanism to add or remove items from it..   IE: change the rules.

It's reaching the point where a few of the mining pools might make the decision for us if this continues....

They would rather get 2 BTC per block at 50 dollars... rather than 50 BTC at 2 BTC. Because the amount they have sitting on their machines now would increase as well.    Trust me I did the math.

If they reduced the payout to 2 BTC and the price did jump up... it would increase the amount of dollar per BTC for the 100,000 of them they have on their machine...  

It is possible to change the rules.  There have been discussions on how to transition to a new hashing algorithm if SHA256 gets busted.  It can be done.  But just like the Constitution, the change will only stick if an overwhelming majority of users use the modified client, essentially voting for the new change.  Just like the Constitution, the changes can't be forced upon people by a small cabal.

(Un)Fortunately, I think a majority of users would switch to a new client if we found cryptographic insecurities, but not for changes to the established monetary policy.

[ercolinux]

As I've already said elsewhere BTC are dropping in short term view because there are people who need to sell (miners who needs to pay energy bills) but pratically noone who needs to buy (the BTC market is really poor at the moment). Big offer and little request make price very low on every market.
Aside that point price is dropping on short period (4 months or less) but 6 month and 1 year performances are still good (and I'm one that enter at 14-16$  so big loses 'till now). Overall I'm quite confident that prices will mantain low for at least a couple of months (maybe even lower than today), but then will begin to rise again.

[defxor]

Because it's irrelevant?

No man... it's not irrelevant...  it's the basis of the entire experiment.    If it falls to pennies or lower... it's game over for all of us...

I think you've misunderstood Bitcoin. Completely.

This price of BTC is irrelevant to its function as a currency. If you believe it to have been an investment, that's your gamble.

[TheDjinni]

Because it's irrelevant?

No man... it's not irrelevant...  it's the basis of the entire experiment.    If it falls to pennies or lower... it's game over for all of us...

I think you've misunderstood Bitcoin. Completely.

This price of BTC is irrelevant to its function as a currency. If you believe it to have been an investment, that's your gamble.

Spot on.  The role of a currency is to be both a long-term store of value, and a short term medium of exchange.  To be a store of value it needs to have stable prices, and to be a medium of exchange it needs to be easy to use and exchange.

If it's worth 0.01 US cent, it doesn't matter, as long as it retains that value over a long period of time and people use it in exchanges.

Right now we have neither:

The money supply is inflating, last I checked, by around +37% a year (as of a few days ago; obviously that number will converge to zero as the months go by, but 37% inflation is still significant).  At the same time, Bitcoin is getting all kinds of positive and negative publicity, resulting in fluctuating demand.  Right now we're in a deflationary period as a result of all of the bad publicity.  This rapid inflationary pressures and fluctuating deflationary pressures means the currency can't hold a stable price.  Security issues are also at the forefront as no significant third-party solutions have come forth and I haven't seen much commitment from the developers.  In the future when inflation dies down and demand stops fluctuating so wildly, we'll see significant price stabilization.

As a medium of exchange, it's also weak: there's little to actually buy and the services available to facilitate those transactions are untrustworthy at best, outright frauds at worst.  Basically what we have is a bunch of lone techies writing code in their basement, not professional companies creating products; this does not mean we won't have reliable facilitators in the future, but the fact is we just don't have any now (in my opinion). 

Bitcoin isn't useful as a currency now.  The most investment and focus by third parties is in BTC mining and exchange right now, as is to be expected and as is necessary, as developed mining and exchange is absolutely necessary for the short, medium, and long term prospects.  When the economy has developed enough to allow convenient BTC purchases in supermarket stores I think Bitcoin will be just about 'ready' to move from a mining-based, long-term investment to an exchange-focused currency.

[MajorMiner]

Because it's irrelevant?

No man... it's not irrelevant...  it's the basis of the entire experiment.    If it falls to pennies or lower... it's game over for all of us...

I think you've misunderstood Bitcoin. Completely.

This price of BTC is irrelevant to its function as a currency. If you believe it to have been an investment, that's your gamble.

Freaking priceless and right on the money, errr Bitcoin 

[BkkCoins]

Because it's irrelevant?

No man... it's not irrelevant...  it's the basis of the entire experiment.    If it falls to pennies or lower... it's game over for all of us...

I think you've misunderstood Bitcoin. Completely.

This price of BTC is irrelevant to its function as a currency. If you believe it to have been an investment, that's your gamble.

+1
Let's get on with building a better currency and dump the "investors" who keep watching the daily price and imagining they'll soon be rich. Send them back to Wall St. What Bitcoin needs is price stability.

What we still need is easier ways to get in/out of Bitcoins worldwide. I'd like to be able to send BTC to someone in another country without them having to transact back into a (US?) Bank and withdraw thru their ATM. We need a worldwide network of walk-in exchanges much like you can walk in and convert US$/YEN/BAHT/...whatever just about anywhere you go. The biggest boost would be for agents like post offices to handle BTC like they do Western Union/Moneygram or similar transfers. Can you imagine worldwide instant money transfer without ripoff 5-10% fees?

[Jeremy West spendbitcoins.com]

Because it's irrelevant?

No man... it's not irrelevant...  it's the basis of the entire experiment.    If it falls to pennies or lower... it's game over for all of us...

I think you've misunderstood Bitcoin. Completely.

This price of BTC is irrelevant to its function as a currency. If you believe it to have been an investment, that's your gamble.

Freaking priceless and right on the money, errr Bitcoin 

+1

[David M]

This price of BTC is irrelevant to its function as a currency. If you believe it to have been an investment, that's your gamble.

As both a merchant and investor in the Bitcoin economy, the price DOES matter.

I am only exposing one of my 3 businesses to Bitcoin.

When the price was above $16 US, I offered 0.5 BTC per kg of my product (beef) (10% discount)
When the price was above $9 US, I offered 1 BTC per kg of my product

Today, I changed the price to 2 BTC per kg.
With a shit house derivatives market, I MUST keep changing my BTC price.  That pisses me off no end.

Personally, I think I BTC = 1KG of prime beef, but my bottom line will not take it.

The price discovery phase is still in motion and I expect something as radical and AWESOME as bitcoin will require at least another 6-9 months for the real trading to begin. 
Around about March 2012 which almost ties in nicely with the reward reduction to 25BTC.

[Jeremy West spendbitcoins.com]

This price of BTC is irrelevant to its function as a currency. If you believe it to have been an investment, that's your gamble.

As both a merchant and investor in the Bitcoin economy, the price DOES matter.

I am only exposing one of my 3 businesses to Bitcoin.

When the price was above $16 US, I offered 0.5 BTC per kg of my product (beef) (10% discount)
When the price was above $9 US, I offered 1 BTC per kg of my product

Today, I changed the price to 2 BTC per kg.
With a shit house derivatives market, I MUST keep changing my BTC price.  That pisses me off no end.

Personally, I think I BTC = 1KG of prime beef, but my bottom line will not take it.

The price discovery phase is still in motion and I expect something as radical and AWESOME as bitcoin will require at least another 6-9 months for the real trading to begin. 
Around about March 2012 which almost ties in nicely with the reward reduction to 25BTC.

This doesn't say price itself matters, just that price stability matters.

[terryfkwit]

I laugh my socks of at all the would be central bankers here, a whole squad of timmy's and benny's in waiting.
Early day adoption of Bitcoin has proved to be painfully volatile and may be for some time yet. This is a child concept struggling to learn to breath in and out regularly. Miners will stop mining people stop buying and these swings will recur to a large degree in the growth of this child concept of bitcoin. Is bitcoin going to die... NO ..but yes it may grow much slower than many imagine...

The only day i will walk away is when you start central planning..

AMEN

[David M]

This doesn't say price itself matters, just that price stability matters.

Sometime the subtleties of the English language mean jack shit in the "real" world.

Point taken though.

[Pieter Wuille]

We're still printing them at a quarter million bitcoins a month,  even if they are worth .00001 cent each.  

If someone can logically answer why there is no mechanism to slow down the rate of printing then I want to hear it.

If you know of such a mechanism, which

• can be enforced easily by each node (bitcoin's security system)
• does not depend on a centralized data source (exchange rate eg.)
• is not easily influenced by people who want to take advantage of it (eg. rate/size of transactions in the block chain)

then I want to hear it.

[WilliamJohnson]

If you belive that Bitcoin is over and done with [...] send your Bitcoin to me 1APr8KyR379soKSCAciZJV2TKUnxnpxmPA .

Done.
You should have received a whopping 0.95 BTC. (It was all I had )

[Jeremy West spendbitcoins.com]

If you belive that Bitcoin is over and done with [...] send your Bitcoin to me 1APr8KyR379soKSCAciZJV2TKUnxnpxmPA .

Done.
You should have received a whopping 0.95 BTC. (It was all I had )

Wow. Now I want to start a thread like this. http://payb.tc/jeremy

[RJau]

hope not, I've got .80 Btc stored there

[Jeremy West spendbitcoins.com]

This doesn't say price itself matters, just that price stability matters.

Sometime the subtleties of the English language mean jack shit in the "real" world.

Point taken though.

This subtlety matters though. Some people claim bitcoin is doomed if the exchange rate drops any more. In reality, though, all that matters is that the price stabilises somewhere. Whether that's at 0.01 USD or $1000 USD makes little difference.

[defxor]

This subtlety matters though. Some people claim bitcoin is doomed if the exchange rate drops any more. In reality, though, all that matters is that the price stabilises somewhere. Whether that's at 0.01 USD or $1000 USD makes little difference.

Some people, who are used to dealing in multiple currencies, don't even think that matters. While $/€ might not move more than 20% over a few months, you still have to hedge for currency volatility just as with Bitcoin.

[BkkCoins]

This subtlety matters though. Some people claim bitcoin is doomed if the exchange rate drops any more. In reality, though, all that matters is that the price stabilises somewhere. Whether that's at 0.01 USD or $1000 USD makes little difference.

Some people, who are used to dealing in multiple currencies, don't even think that matters. While $/€ might not move more than 20% over a few months, you still have to hedge for currency volatility just as with Bitcoin.

But how do you hedge for Bitcoin volatility. There isn't any functional options or futures markets yet. I know there's talk about it but when I went looking they weren't functional. You would need something that can offset Bitcoin price changes.