Bitcoin: The Quants Dream.

[Lolcust]

I believe I have pointed out a very important fact:

The anonymous nature of Bitcoin 

Can you hook me up with your dealer? Whatever you are smoking, it's totally awesome.

Best option would be a bot that manages the salesmen's accounts adjusting their prices and trading their coins in accordance with market behavior and "risk settings" the salesmen set when creating their accounts with bot service (so that bot can play "riskier" with the account holders that are willing to allow somebody's bot to carry out more risky, but potentially more lucrative, operations with their accounts)

I wonder how hard would such rent-a-bot service be to create.

What a novel idea! Surely nobody in history has ever been smart enough to think up such a scheme?

LOL. What a complete financial ignoramus you are.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management

By the way - it crashed (in 1998).

Given massive difference in complexities, function and markets involved, inadequate analogy is inadequate.

LOL, what a bad troll you are.

Incidentally, could someone remind me if trolling is against forum rules ? 

[general.crackdown]

Incidentally, could someone remind me if trolling is against forum rules ?  

I started the thread. You have already said goodbye to us all once and failed to clear off.

Please honour your word.

[Lolcust]

Incidentally, could someone remind me if trolling is against forum rules ?  

I started the thread. You have already said goodbye to us all once and failed to clear off.

Please honour your word.

I am afraid that the only authority the act of starting a thread gives you is authority to close it, so you have neither ability to set up rules of your own, nor the ability to demand another agent's departure.

Also, why do you refer to yourself in plural ? Do you believe yourself to be some kind of royalty ?

[piramida]

Single point of failure?  Sure.  It's MtGox.  By volume it's ten times larger than the next larger exchange.  Hack or close down MtGox and converting bitcoins to currencies becomes very difficult.  MtGox is in a position to be the market maker.  While it was dead in June some other exchanges closed down as there were no price signals available.

Sorry but if mtgox goes out the trading just moves to some other exchange, there's plenty. Of course, price will drop if there is a significant loss of trust, but if mtgox just says "we're closing, take your money" then there will be absolutely no problem - tradehill or something else would fill the void instantly. Converting bitcoin to currencies is trivial now without ever logging to mtgox.

[julz]

LOL, what a bad troll you are.

I think he/she is just unfamiliar with Bitcoin, and is guilty of transcribing arguments from other scenarios.

To bemoan the deflationary nature of Bitcoin due to 'killing investment' is an inappropriate piece of transcription.
A traditional argument against a deflationary currency is that investment will be hindered due to reluctance to spend money which will be worth more in future.

For the argument that investment may stall to make any sense, Bitcoin would have to be so widespread that most of an economy's capital was tied up in it so that little other investment capital was available. (or so insanely deflationary that no investment other than bitcoin was attractive)
If the majority of the capital is still in other currencies, then from an investment perspective Bitcoin can also be considered just another asset like gold or property.

In the case where bitcoin is the dominant currency; the extent to which bitcoin is deflating would indeed act to subtract from the rate of return on investments.
I submit that Bitcoin's deflation rate will rise if the economy is vibrant (requiring more bitcoin transactions) - thus putting the brakes on borrowing and investment, but the Bitcoin deflation rate will lower if the economy slows  - making investments more attractive.

This is of course an experiment that hasn't been run with a highly divisible currency with a fixed issuance rate - but it doesn't seem helpful to have someone simultaneously arguing bitcoin will be 'dead in 3 months' whilst criticizing it for some flaw that they perceive in an alternate universe where Bitcoin has taken over the world.

[Minsc]

Asset prices do drop in a deflationary economy. If you are attempting to challenge this assertion please explain.

It does not cost me '50 bucks' to transfer money across borders. It costs the current spread quoted in the FX markets which most traders would consider worth paying to avoid Bitcoins volatility.

Why are guys all so against people 'logging' your financial transactions. Some proof of payment tends to be quite useful in the real world. Its why we have invented things called receipts.

Real World Scenario:

1) I buy a book of Amazon for 10 Bitcoins.
2) I send Amazon 10 Bitcoins.
3) Book never turns up.
4) I ask Amazon where my book is.
5) Amazon ask me to prove I paid for the book then they will send it.
6) I can't because transactions are anonymous.
7) Entire system fails as no legal recourse exists. Welcome to reality.
 
You can see here that the entire premise of Bitcoin being anonymous has just been totally destroyed in 7 points by someone without a Phd in Computer Science or even A-levels. It is open to systemic fraud and confidence will never materialise.

Its not surprising that the entire Bitcoin 'project' was thought up by a cryptographer in a lab somewhere.

 

You link to http://blockexplorer.com/

[johnj]

oh wow, i just read some of these posts

general.crackdown, you're kinda embarrassing yourself.

Here, https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page

If you have any questions let me know 

[not_mm]

- they are a way to instantly send money across the world with very low fees - Already exists without risk of Bitcoin exchange rate fluctuations.
- they are decentralized; no authority can freeze or seize your assets - Also applied to gold
- they are pseudo-anonymous; contrary to traditional financial systems - Also applies to credit cards [sic, I think general.crackdown meant preloaded debit cards]

Notice how you suggest 3 mutually exclusive solutions. For example: you cannot instantly (in minutes) send gold across the world to an anonymous peer, e-gold is dead, preloaded debit cards are freezable and not decentralized, etc.

Bitcoin satisfies all 3 at once, and conveniently. That's what makes it powerful & valuable. Think of it as digital gold.

[nrd525]

Dwolla is a possible major competitor.  Fast and very low fee ($0.25).  Based on US dollars so more stable.

[not_mm]

How can you say this? Dwolla doesn't compare at all to Bitcoin.

- Dwolla's fee is 100x higher than a typical Bitcoin fee of 0.0005 BTC
- Dwolla is only available to 4% of the world's population (US only), compared to Bitcoin available to 30% of the world population (2 billion people online)
- Dwolla accounts can be seized and frozen, Bitcoin is immune to this
- Dwolla can reverse transfers received by merchants (see TradeHill case), whereas a Bitcoin txfer confirmed by 6 blocks pretty much guarantees it is irreversible
- Dwolla users forfeit all anonymity by having to provide a proof of ID, at least Bitcoin make pseudo-anonymity possible

[asdf]

So far we have determined:

1) Bitcoins anonymous nature is useless as to contest payment evidence of transaction is required.
2) Bitcoin does not prevent monopoly by institutional investors.

1) True. Anonymity increases efficiency only if we assume that there are transactions that would not happen without it (which is the case). Being anonymous means you have to trust the vendor, since you can't prove what you are entitled to if they don't deliver. It's always a trade off.

2) True, but in proper context. Bitcoin supply will never be controlled by a central authority. I believe that this makes it more resistant to monopolization, whatever that might mean (maybe you need to clarify). It will have to be widespread for this to happen though.

All Bitcoin will lead to is a deflationary economy in which asset prices continuously drop killing investment.

That's asset prices in bitcoin
'killing investment'?   Is bitcoin to die in 3 months or are you predicting the complete replacement of all other currencies by bitcoin?

Are you really using the hypothetical situation of bitcoin being the only currency in order to argue against it?

Bitcoin will still be deflationary when other currencies exist.

I don't think you get the contradiction here. Bitcoin is inflationary when it's dying. It is deflationary when it's flourishing. So it needs to flourish to die?

This.

Because bitcoin has a practically fixed supply, prices can only drop if the economy is growing. so (price) deflation, by definition, implies a growing economy. If no one invests in the bitcoin economy, prices (in bitcoins) will go up. The only problems here are economic fallacies.

[bitcoinTrader]

Dwolla is a possible major competitor.  Fast and very low fee ($0.25).  Based on US dollars so more stable.

Lol..
Dwolla is US based and the World in not US
On the contrary, bitcoin is worldwide (an advantage)

[neptop]

1) No relationship to anything in the real world either physically or economically.
3) You can trade it over computers and never have to integrate into society or meet people.
4) Can be traded at super high frequency by computer programmes.

All these things are true for all hard currencies. Well, for 1) I don't know think I know what you mean by that.

But 3) and 4) also happens to other currencies. See High Frequency Trading. Some governments think about stopping this, but they can't really do so. The only way to stop it would be some kind of fee (tax), which makes it impossible to do so. Well, Bitcoin has transaction fees. This probably makes it more resistant against something like these things. Just another nice benefit of Bitcoin.

[general.crackdown]

oh wow, i just read some of these posts

general.crackdown, you're kinda embarrassing yourself.

Here, https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page

If you have any questions let me know  

Disagree. I'm the only one not embarrassing himself.

All trading systems need to be backed up by recourse to law if an individual is wronged in a transaction. Its all very well the entire world being able to see your hash code address but you would have to identify yourself in order to take legal action. The only advantage in anonymous transactions is if your trying to do something illegal.

This 'currency' is a Quant dream. Do any of you know what a Quant is?

Just to inform you all Bitcoin isn't some sort of singularity in history. Hayek theorised about free market banking and currencies years ago and it never caught on - for the same reasons Bitcoin won't work.

A question I would like you all to consider is:

If having a limited amount of currency is so obviously advantageous why don't the Federal Reserve (or any other central bank) stop engaging in open market operations?

[wareen]

If having a limited amount of currency is so obviously advantageous why don't the Federal Reserve (or any other central bank) stop engaging in open market operations?

Maybe because that would not be advantageous to them?

[general.crackdown]

If having a limited amount of currency is so obviously advantageous why don't the Federal Reserve (or any other central bank) stop engaging in open market operations?

Maybe because that would not be advantageous to them?

When you say 'them' who exactly do you mean?

'Them' is quite ranging.

[general.crackdown]

1) No relationship to anything in the real world either physically or economically.
3) You can trade it over computers and never have to integrate into society or meet people.
4) Can be traded at super high frequency by computer programmes.

All these things are true for all hard currencies. Well, for 1) I don't know think I know what you mean by that.

But 3) and 4) also happens to other currencies. See High Frequency Trading. Some governments think about stopping this, but they can't really do so. The only way to stop it would be some kind of fee (tax), which makes it impossible to do so. Well, Bitcoin has transaction fees. This probably makes it more resistant against something like these things. Just another nice benefit of Bitcoin.

Yes I know some points are similar to conventional currencies. You need to fulfil them all to make a quant geek currency such as Bitcoin.

[johnj]

If having a limited amount of currency is so obviously advantageous why don't the Federal Reserve (or any other central bank) stop engaging in open market operations?

You're either a dummy or a troll.  I'm going with the latter. For a 'new poster' you're certainly passionate and (somewhat) informed about Bitcoin. So we already know you came here to argue.  But this is an old discussion.

If it's indeed the former, I'm afraid I can't help you.

Good luck!

[memvola]

If having a limited amount of currency is so obviously advantageous why don't the Federal Reserve (or any other central bank) stop engaging in open market operations?

Maybe because that would not be advantageous to them?

When you say 'them' who exactly do you mean?

'Them' is quite ranging.

Haha, trying to corner people?

In the scope of this discussion, it's not necessary to prove that Federal Reserve is malevolent (some people might think that, but it's not a requisite for the argument against Bitcoin's doom in 3 months). On the other hand, your question assumes the contrary. So you have to prove that it's benevolent for your question to make sense.

So why are people buying gold, if having a limit isn't advantageous? Maybe FR notes and Bitcoins serve different purposes.

[Salavator]

On the buying from amazon:
Surly amazon would just have a public address which they declare is theirs. Then when you pay by bitcoins on amazon, after generating a new sending address, you tell amazon from what address you will be sending them payment, they associate that address with your account and send you an email as following:
Dear Customer,
This email confirms that payment will be send from: (sending address) to (amazons receiving address)
product:
date:
order number:
Amazon.

You send them the payment, the transaction can publicly be seen on http://blockexplorer.com and there we go, combined with the email there is proof and you are still anonymous because that sending address would only be used for amazon orders.