Realism

[neptop]

If you think Bitcoins goes down/crashes completely ask yourself two questions:

Would (a big number) people suddenly give away Bitcoins for free?

Would people at some point pay to get rid of Bitcoins?


If the answer is no then Bitcoins will never ever be worthless.

[ArsenShnurkov]

Of course it will not be one-day event. Course will fall for months... Ups! it does this now!

[Raize]

A possible counter argument would be that the exchanges can't make enough money at this rate so they will shut down.

Of course, that's assuming that the exchanges themselves aren't selling. I think they are. And I think they are today, too. Specifically, I think the largest account holder on MtGox is selling today.

[neptop]

Of course it will not be one-day event. Course will fall for months... Ups! it does this now!

Erm, did you read what I wrote?

A possible counter argument would be that the exchanges can't make enough money at this rate so they will shut down.

You don't actually need exchanges. Of course they are good and important, but there are other ways to sell and so Bitcoins are not without value.

Value is NOT based on what someone will sell an item for, it is based on what someone will pay for it....
i.e. I can go out and fetch up some of my dogs crap and demand 1,000,000 BTC for it, but since there would be no buyers it still has 0 value (P.S. if someone does want to pay that much for my dogs crap just call me, free delivery on that lol)

Damn, my post was very short and simple. Still you weren't able to read it.
I never claimed it would be different.

The essential question is whether a point where there is no one willing to buy (and of course someone needs to sell it) Bitcoins.

[neptop]

Well, it's basically the same.

And now some speculation:
I think what's happening right now (and happened over the last year) will make Bitcoin more stable and therefor usable as currency. I am not sure what it means for its distribution. On one hand a low price and many Bitcoins in the markets (exchanges) can be good for newcomers, but it also allows people to horde them.

Well, will see whether I am right or wrong with this.

[Sekioh]

I think having no exchanges would actually be the BEST for bitcoin, having exchanges lets people tie the fiat money to Bitcoins, instead of locking value in at what services or goods can be offered for raw PEER TO PEER exchanges of hand.

[neptop]

I strongly disagree. They are defiantly important for now.

What if someone wants to build up a serious business with Bitcoin? He needs to live, eat drink, get the resources for whatever he does, wants to go on vacation some time, ...

So if there were no exchanges all of this needs to be available in form of other Bitcoin accepting business right now, which is highly unrealistic. It's not like the whole world would suddenly start accepting Bitcoins. You need and exchange to simply cash in or out. Consumers also need this.

[Cluster2k]

If you think Bitcoins goes down/crashes completely ask yourself two questions:

Would people at some point pay to get rid of Bitcoins?

That's a silly question.  Who do I pay to uninstall a program on my PC, or to delete a file?

If the answer is no then Bitcoins will never ever be worthless.

Bitcoins have never been worthless.  But you've got to ask yourself the question are they worthwhile after a massive speculative blowoff and a continuous downward trend towards something close to zero.

[molecular]

The real fear right now isn't even the cost of the bitcoin, it's how much the miners will tolerate, as the value drops they will become unprofitable and will either swap to alternate chains or just drop out completely.  The hash rate is already dropping below the difficulty threshold and before too much longer you could see 12+ minute blocks or more, if that happens it will keep miners out for some time as the gap between difficulty changes will become very long and mining won't be realistic (i.e. namecoin).

If this happens, we could change the difficulty adjustment algorithm à la SolidCoin. Then, at least, SolidCoin was good for something

I know it would require >50% of miners to use a new client with the rules changed, and I also know this will reduce trust into bitcoin ("Bitcoin Developer oligarchy changed Rules of Game"), but it could certainly be done. It would be better than waiting 'til Christmas for the next retarget, and then some more.

I doubt it'll happen, though.

[molecular]

If you think Bitcoins goes down/crashes completely ask yourself two questions:

Would people at some point pay to get rid of Bitcoins?

That's a silly question.  Who do I pay to uninstall a program on my PC, or to delete a file?

If the answer is no then Bitcoins will never ever be worthless.

Bitcoins have never been worthless.  But you've got to ask yourself the question are they worthwhile after a massive speculative blowoff and a continuous downward trend towards something close to zero.

+1. At close to zero I would definitely buy them all up for nostalgic reasons. I'm surely not alone. We might theoretically be trading in subcent ranges again (I highly doubt it), but even then, there will still be some demand.

[neptop]

I would do the same.

@viperjbm: I just understood what you referred to in your first reply. I just think that there is some kind of psychological barrier that would make people buy at least small amounts of Bitcoins, so that you would need a lot of suppliers to still have the price to not rise. However I don't know what will actually happen. That's why I formulated it in the form of questions.

[dserrano5]

I would prefer a subtle change, for example 2016 blocks with a maximum of 3 weeks.