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Bitcoin Bonanza
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Five years ago it was worth $0. Then, a month and a half ago it went to $150 a piece. On Monday it shot to over $600. On Tuesday, the value rose to over $900, meaning a 6, 445%-increase in value since the start of the year. It plummeted to $531 at midday today and then recovered reaching $793 while being traded on the Asian markets. Bitcoin: it’s the bonanza of the century.
Volatility and hikes are based on nothing except speculation and the desire to make a mint, thinking that you can predict what the markets are going to do. But, will that Bitcoin volatility lead to a bubble? Or is it bringing in a new era of a new type of currency that people are willing to use and that merchants are now being forced to accept? It might never become a legitimate currency in the future, but that’s hardly important when you can make a profit from it. Of course central banks are at risk from the use of virtual currencies as it would mean that they would have little control over what we spend and how transactions are carried out. Is Bitcoin the death of our central banks?
Some might say that Bitcoin is associated with crime and is an easy way for illicit transactions to take place. Tell me one currency in the world that isn’t laundered these days? Tell me one place in the world where there is a currency that is clean? Pure snow-white virgin money doesn’t and never has existed. Just because it’s associated with crime doesn’t mean it’s not good for the rest of the world. All of the currencies of the world are associated with crime somehow. Perhaps after all the fall of the Dollar, the death of the greenback will not be because the Chinese have taken the world over and imposed the Renminbi as the reserve currency on the world. Perhaps it will be the Bitcoin that takes over the world economically today.
- When Bitcoin started out in 2009 after being founded by Satoshi Nakamoto (or under his real name of Gavin Andresen) one Bitcoin was worth $0.30.
- It rose to $32, but then fell to $2. There are some 12 million Bitcoins in circulation today and the number of Bitcoins issued every four years is reduced by 50% (and will be until that number reaches a circulation level of 21 million Bitcoins).
- The currency is already accepted on some of the world’s most highly-ranked internet sites today:
- WordPress.com ranked 22 in the world, offering custom-designed software and templates. They have accepted Bitcoins since November 2012.
- The Pirate Bay, ranked 108 in the world which started accepting Bitcoins in April 2013 for their music and move-software directory.
- Reddit, which ranks 117 in the world and accepted Bitcoins for the first time in February 2013 for the social and entertainment network site.
There are plenty more and they will be increasing in the future, simply because it’s the people that have decided that they are willing and ready to use Bitcoins as a means of exchange. Have the people started the demise of the Dollar and all other currencies? Are we living a moment in history that we shall look back upon in years to come as we wave goodbye to the hegemonic control of the politically-aided and biased reserve currency that is the greenback and that all other currencies are vying to overtake? Will they all lose out, because we have decided for it to happen? That will certainly wipe the smile off the faces of some at the top of the hill.
Gaining legitimacy is essential for the Bitcoin to be a valued and a valuable means of exchange. The difference between Bitcoin and any other currency that is controlled by a government is that Bitcoins have become accepted because the market has decided that they are. People want them and merchants accept them. It is not a political currency but quasi-commodity money. The number of transactions has suddenly increased since the start of November and it has now reached dizzy heights around the world. Even governments are starting to recognize the existence and the validity of Bitcoins today. Germany in August 2013 decided to recognize the virtual money as a real currency, legally and fiscally approving it is valid.
When Andresen spoke of begging Julian Assange not to use Bitcoin back in 2010 as a means of getting around the normal method of financial transactions and thus finding a route to funding WikiLeaks, he said ‘it will destroy us’ adding that they were too small a company to be able to deal with it. Although, with hindsight the ‘you-will-destroy-us’- statement probably had little to do with the nascent company not being able to cope with the financial trading of the currency that had been invented, but the fact that Bitcoin would have been closed down and nipped in the bud before it had got off to a start. Now we can see why Bitcoin wanted to steer away from that can of worms. It had greater things in its sights than WikiLeaks.
It’s a rare thing to have the opportunity today to choose which currency we want to use. Maybe this time the choice will be the right one. Maybe the central banks, the ones that have done the damage in the past and are continuing to do so today will have their power taken away from them.
Climbing the greasy pole that politics has become is nothing to do with who you are and what you say. It has everything to do with where you come from and what you have in the bank account to back you up.
Originally posted: Bitcoin Bonanza
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Thanks - it warrants a look into...
Second correction now over. Safe to buy again. While spreading out across the world the recoveries after corrections are faster.
Long live the revolution.
1st correction encompasses what you call 2 of 'em. The 2nd correction will be the drop to $200. Not safe to buy. The 3rd correction will take it down to 50 or lower.
Since you know how to predict the future you are wasting your time writing comments here. Just start speculating/gambling. But first predict how long you will survive so you'll know how rapidly to "spend your profits". Oh, and look up the "gambler's ruin problem" on Wikipedia.
It's rarely a waste of time to share the future.
That's why I have AGQ calls for 2015 jan, soon to be for 2016 jan, SLV calls, gold bullion, silver bullion, soon to be HVU (tsx) shares.
It's not gambling when you can use math to find the patterns.
The gold chart pattern requires the 10 year chart to be log-scaled on the TIME scale to see the repeating cycle line up, then just apply the rate of change, get the meta-date with the price & use exponent rescaling to remove the log function on the relative date.
With bitcoin it's absolute nonsense: any such giant peak will retain an average definite integral above & below the average function and ka-bam - bitcoin will slam down to 50 as a result.
The 3rd correction will take it down to 50 or lower.
Don't be a putz.
being a putz is calling for bitcoin to retain USD pricing above 50. Being honest is calling it at 50.
I think you meant to say BTC will outprice gold (in dollar terms) in Q1 of 2014.
pffft. Quite the dreamer, you are.
Q1 2014 will likely see gold rise $200/ounce/month and btc drop $400/month with a volatility band of +/- |log(x)| = 0.3521 or basically +125% to -55% which is absolutely horrible for anyone to put real tangible goods or work-hours on the line for.
It's safer playing frogger IN PERSON on the freeway. Nutso.
I watch the Bitcoin Group on youtube. There is an analyst there named Andreas Antonopoulus who is even more bullish than you. He expects bitcoin to hit 10k next year and 100's of thousands in three years (or go to zero). Possible? Likely?
While this is the ebullient stage of bitgazing, at a certain point the Bitcoin will start to gain critical mass. At that stage things could quickly turn to outright panic as Bitcoin turns into a massive fiat black hole. I would like to think that perhaps our "leaders" have thought of this possibility but I very much doubt it as they are really followers (of the worst type) that simply play along with whatever situation they find themselves in that particular day.
When I buy a bitcoin, where does the money go?....
From your pocket into the sellers account. I prefer to use localbitcoins.
Then instead of a fiat dollar the value of those dollars are transferred to your bitcoin account or wallet in the form of bitcoins or portions thereof.
You can then put the bitcoins onto several flash memory sticks. Or, the best thing as long as you are not prone to amnesia is to create a key with a long passphrase. That way you can keep your bitcoins in your head and not worry about them being stolen from the internet or any hardware device. Although if you talk in your sleep and have a wife like mine you may still have a problem.
Into your wallet.dat file which is a ledger recording your share of the total Bitcoin network.
haha, I see what you did there.
So what's a bitcoin really worth? I think this is nothing more than a ponzi scheme. How can a currency be worth five bucks one day and then nine hundred, five hundred, and maybe two bucks someday? Somebody's going to be left holding the bag sooner or later as long as it's openly traded without a stable value.
If the bitcoin were backed by something such as gold, it might be different.
Here's a clue as to what sets its price. Supply and Demand. If you do further research you will find to your astonishment that supply and demand is the ONLY THING that can ever determine the price of anything-from a Picasso painting to a gallon of milk. You will discover that even in police states like North Korea and Venezuela supply and demand set the price. It is the most fundamental law in economics and attempts to violate it by money creating cartels like the FED always fail. Even curreny requires competition-its as fundamental as the law of natural selection. A monopoly currency is fundamentally flawed.
What determines the price of gold? Supply and demand. How much energy is required to extract and purify a gram of gold, for example. Ultimately and on a deeper level the laws of thermodynamics namely that reducing entropy (disorder) requires work and thus energy set the price of everything. This is what truly sets the price of everything including life. There's no free lunch and no pertetual motion machine.
And no, if bitcoin were "backed by gold" it wouldn't be improved a bit (no pun). Its backed by the energy required to compute a hash that becomes increasingly more difficult as the supply of miners doing the computation and bitcoins increases, ultimately being limiting to a finite number (21 million coins). (Remind you a bit of gold mining?) A limit set by the limits of a finite earth and a finite economy. Just the opposite of QE (money counterfeiting). So, of course, when its priced in a fiat currency being expanded in supply everyday it goes up in "price". As Homer Simpson might opine, "duh"!
1999 called and wants gold back at $300/oz. What's gold really worth?
Bitcoin Reality Check - so many issues
Anonymity -once the goverment and the banks get involved, that will go out the window. Also, retailers and the general public have never had an issue with complete anonymity. In fact, people like to know who they are dealing with on both sides. Also, the only people excited about total anonymity are those involved in illicit activities and those not wanting to pay taxes. Integration into the mainstream banking system will quickly end that.
Security - COST MONEY- once your bitcoins are stolen and separated from their private keys, they are history. The 144,000 Silk Road bitcoins in possesion by the FBI are without private keys and are toast. If Coinbase cold storage got hit along with the private keys, all of that BTC would be history. How would Coinbase compensate you for your losses? There is no FDIC insurance to replace the Bitcoin loss. It's happened before.
Buying Bitcoin - lots of hoops to jump through if you aren't a miner.
Scarcity??? -21 million x a power of 8 per Bitcoin ( each Bitcoin x 8 = 100,000000) x 21m Bitcoins ...................................TRILLIONS
Transaction Time - Visa and Master Card can do transactions at 70-1 over Bitcoin. Bitcoinn needs 3-6 authorizations before it can be used. This slows down the processing time. This has to be dealt with before retailers will embrace. This is something Dark Wallet is endeavoring to resolve. Again, more layers and complexity
Hackers - LOVE BITCOIN and the complexity of whole Buyer Beware Bitcoin environment. Lot's of wallets to pick and choking websites (MT Gox) to hack.
Cheap way to play Bitcoin - buy Litecoin.
Waiting in the wings - Litecoin, Anoncoin, Devcoin, Peercoin, Novacoin, Terracoin, Worldcoin, Lxcoin, Iocoin, Feathercoin, Frecoin.......GaZillions
GOLD and SILVER - maybe owning some PHYSICAL gold and silver might not be a bad idea. Gold and Silver backing might be the thing Fiat and crypto currencies will need to give them trust and legitimacy.
It's clear by your post that math/decimals are not your thing.
If I offer you 1 dollar or 10 dimes which one would you choose?
If I offer you 1 Bitcoin or 10 one tenths (.10) of a bitcoin which would you choose?
Dividing a dollar into smaller parts does not make it (or the the other dollar holders dollars)less valuable.
Dividing a Bitcoin into smaller parts does not make it (or the other Bitcoins holders Bitcoins) less valuable
fork
Bitcoin Reality Check - so many issues
Anonymity -once the goverment and the banks get involved, that will go out the window. Also, retailers and the general public have never had an issue with complete anonymity. In fact, people like to know who they are dealing with on both sides. Also, the only people excited about total anonymity are those involved in illicit activities and those not wanting to pay taxes. Integration into the mainstream banking system will quickly end that.
Security - COST MONEY- once your bitcoins are stolen and separated from their private keys, they are history. The 144,000 Silk Road bitcoins in possesion by the FBI are without private keys and are toast. If Coinbase cold storage got hit along with the private keys, all of that BTC would be history. How would Coinbase compensate you for your losses? There is no FDIC insurance to replace the Bitcoin loss. It's happened before.
Buying Bitcoin - lots of hoops to jump through if you aren't a miner.
Scarcity??? -21 million x a power of 8 per Bitcoin ( each Bitcoin x 8 = 100,000000) x 21m Bitcoins ...................................TRILLIONS
Transaction Time - Visa and Master Card can do transactions at 70-1 over Bitcoin. Bitcoinn needs 3-6 authorizations before it can be used. This slows down the processing time. This has to be dealt with before retailers will embrace. This is something Dark Wallet is endeavoring to resolve. Again, more layers and complexity
Hackers - LOVE BITCOIN and the complexity of whole Buyer Beware Bitcoin environment. Lot's of wallets to pick and choking websites (MT Gox) to hack.
Cheap way to play Bitcoin - buy Litecoin.
Waiting in the wings - Litecoin, Anoncoin, Devcoin, Peercoin, Novacoin, Terracoin, Worldcoin, Lxcoin, Iocoin, Feathercoin, Frecoin.......GaZillions
GOLD and SILVER - maybe owning some PHYSICAL gold and silver might not be a bad idea. Gold and Silver backing might be the thing Fiat and crypto currencies will need to give them trust and legitimacy.
Hellomoto wrote, "There is no FDIC insurance to replace the Bitcoin loss.",and, "GOLD and SILVER - maybe owning some PHYSICAL gold and silver might not be a bad idea."
How is that $28 Billion in the FDIC Insurance Fund going to cover the $1.4 Trillion in Deposits during the next Fianancial Collapse?
On Gold and Silver??? There IS NO MAYBE ABOUT IT. Owning a substantial amount of PHYSICAL Gold and Silver is a GOOD IDEA at all times. Some portfolios need at least a 10% exposure in these uncertain times.
However there is nothing wrong with Bitcoin. It is best to be DIVERSIFIED in your core investments. Owning US Dollars is not necessarily a bad idea...yet.
"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." That is a valid cliche.
But Bitcoin is a good endeavor. The rest are too late to the game unless they have something better to offer. Then Bitcoin will have some competition. That is good to have competition in the Marketplace as it keeps prices affordable.
Competing Currencies is an optimal outcome for Liberty and choice.
No problem for the FED to pull new USD out of its ass to cover FDIC.
But the 10's of 1,000's of BTC folk that lost their life savings have all gotten back a BIG ZERO
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83794.0
list of BTC heists to date, ... but there are more this list only looks > 500 BTC's...
***
History repeats the bank fails you get your money back, the weakest link in BTC fails and your fucked with NO fucking recourse.
Keep talking BTC .... Your arguments are getting weaker by the day.
> So what's a bitcoin really worth?
Right now, about $600. Tomorrow, maybe $300. The day after that, maybe $1000. Bitcoin wasn't designed to be a stock or a store of value. It was designed to be a money transmittal network, which it does better than anything else out there.
If moving $200k in bitcoins from one side of the world to the other is the goal, it makes no difference if they're worth $100 or $1000. If holding a predictable asset is the goal, Bitcoin isn't for you, even with the huge potential upside.
bit coin is worth nothing and you guys know it if you are honest with yourselves. but - it's a great opp. to benefit from a ponzi.
come on - 'this is a chain letter. i made xxx from the chain letters. don't break the chain, or you will suffer from ...' 'please put one dollar in an envelope and mail it to at least xxx of your friends. tell them to do the same'......
The USD is worth nothing too if you are honest with yourself. Our currencies are only as good as the faith people place in them. BTC is backed also by the same faith.
Time will only tell if BTC will incur a large enough following for the faith to 'naturally' spread from that point forward.
Speaking of faith, I'm diversified in the following beliefs:
Currencies have zero value as well. Backed by nothing/nada! Its only by the faith of its users that it holds any value at all.
saedeng,
i hope you see this. i would love anything other than the u.s. dollar backed by 'fiat' and i'm an american citizen. but the dollar is backed by something, and that is the fact that the us government can raise funds to pay back what they borrowed. the problem with the current implementation of the dollar is that, they no longer implicitly back it with gold, or some other asset, so as a debtor, one's claims are on what the government can raise as assets. in the worst case scenario, the us gov could for example sell alaska back to russia. (read up on that, russia sold alaska to do what (you stupid fck)? raise money). anyway, i hope things go well for you in PRC and you don't own too many $$'s. because we will probably end up having to give you alaska or hawaii first. and then the grand canyon.
so think about this. the guy behind the bitcoins. he's going to give me what???
Regardless of price, the more BTC you own the more nationalist currency you can funnel at that particular point in time. That fact alone makes BTC extremely valuable and is why I will not sell my BTC at any price. Bitcoin is a protocol, a currency and a type of crypto-wealth tunnel.
Won't help much when networks are cut. They have been in several crisis areas if not by war then by hurricanes or earth quakes & that alone is a dire reason to not use BTC for escaping money. The money can't escape too early or too late - it has to go WITH the person needing to spend it.
How many people in the Phillipines bought their way into recovery using bitcoin? NONE.
Shitcoinz don't work when hurricanes knock out all cell towers, all ISP's & all electricity & this is when money is MOST BADLY needed, to repair or to escape.
What good is Digital Fiat Currency in a SHTF Scene. Do you think that the ATMs were working in the Phillipines after the Typhoon? That is a BULLSHIT ARGUMENT.
The Electricity went out on September 6, 2011, in San Diego. People were running out of Gas on the Freeways. The Gas Pumps were inoperable. It did not matter if you had $100,000 in the Bank. You were not able to get to it. You had what you had. Most stores closed down. Target and Home Depot remained Operational as they had operating Generators. All transactions were cash.
There were bidding wars for Generators at Home Depot. The Manager sold a $600 Retail Generator, the last one, for $1400 Fiat. I am sure that if you began bidding ounces of Gold you could have outbid anybody as Gold was at $1900 at the time.
But if your Fiat was in the Bank then you went without. Nobody was taking any promises to pay.
Target's shelves were completely emptied in hours as News Reports told us that it may be TWO DAYS before power was restored. All of that happened because of a simple Blackout. We had Power restored in Six Hours where I was at in Jamul. (The rich communities get their Power restored FIRST. That is just the way that it works.)
How about those Credit Card Readers? In a SHTF scene Gold and Silver might be a Good Resource in an area restricted from resources.
That is the reason for DIVERSIFICATION.
you just agreed with me & proved me right, following calling it a bullshit argument.
You OK?
What the hell situation do you THINK we need to prepare for? That's the one I'm preparing for.
I've got stored water, food, gold, silver, medicine, tools (some not even opened from packages), tobacco, whiskey, rum... etc. etc. My only purpose for fiat in the bank is for playing options & I will live fine if that goes to zero. My prepared outcome ASSUMES it will go to zero & it's a bonus if it doesn't and I actually get to spend it.
mattress. anybody that doesn't have some cash on hand (and little enough to be stolen from it) living in a disaster area is a jpm dream jerk.
That's actually a complete load of crap. The internet has proved itself to be remarkably resiliant in war-torn areas and countries that are supposed to have extreme censorship.
really, so how's that internet working out in Afghanistan?
Or how about in Syria?
Or how about in the Phillipines?
I think you need to switch your prescriptions.
The internet is resilient or the people are?
Sooo, uuum, how many BitCoins did you trade in for fiat?
Be honest ;-)
Being able to convert BTC to USD kind of ruins the whole point of an alternate currency to begin with...
No you are discounting the importance of liquidity.
Is it any different than being able to convert USD to EURO, or, EURO to YUAN, or Yen to Gold, or Pesos to Silver?
It is a competing currency that has two different primary attributes which make it attractive. Anonymity is one. The other is that it is not a Fiat Currency. It derives its value strictly by Supply and Demand.
Do not misunderstand. To be pro Gold does not mean that I must be anti Bitcoin. In fact I like the idea of Competing Currency. This is what Dr. Ron Paul had envisioned. Let the Markets, and NOT GOVERNMENTS, determine the true value of a Currency in a Free and Open Marketplace.
Only perhaps to ideological purists (who would need to make the initial exchange anyway). It actually makes BTC more valuable and for it to serve as currency means it needs to be able to be exchanged.
Actually it destroy's btc's value: this permits central bankers printing fiat to control the entire btc market. They need only buy & sell in any pattern desired to shove btc to a million dollars then a millionth of a dollar. In one second flat. They have that power because of exchanges.
They have the power to manipulate the price on exchanges if there are matching sellers (who are paid greater and greater amounts of fiat). Afterwards Central Banks will be owners of bitcoins which they then sell en masse to drive the price down. The previous bitcoin sellers would become buyers, scooping up cheap coins and making huge profits.
Most bitcoins are not available for sale on exchanges at any given time, just like gold. Just because gold might limit down for 2 weeks straight doesn't mean you can't hold on to it until the price comes back up.
this is where you need to answer the clue phone:
ring ring
it's for YOU.
The Fed can be it's own match: buy & sell to ANY bid/ask ratio desired.
You can't because you'd lose money. They can PRINT money.
Problem solved.
How do you think naked short-sellers without delivery for silver & gold COMEX works? Same deal.
Ann Barnhardt's "we are the gold" thing is spot on. The only real currency is a man's hard day of real work. Everything else is manipulation.
The USD is not a fungible proxy of a man's hard work, and neither is the BTC because it is exchangable for USD.
Just saying man. I honestly don't really give a fuck how any of this goes.
indeed. I've seen word of local usury-free currencies which are TIME-based.
That is to say each is a voucher for HOURS worked.
From that point one can freely establish if 1 hour of worker John Smith is worth 10 minutes of time from doctor Albert Smythe. Or whatever they agree upon for whatever reason.
Perhaps those who disagree don't like to work hard... ;)
Define "work" and I will give you all my Bitcoin and silver and nominate you for whatever Krugman's version of the Nobel was.
Joules of energy? Time? Skill? Efficiency? Perhaps a combination of them?
force x distance
You know, you never read the story of genies & making wishes & being VERY specific, right?
LOL
One such local work currency you describe is called Ithaca hours( Ithaca NY). I believe the value would be added for a doctor that agreed to accept them (as in 5 IC's for one hour work), but that Doctor would understand that accepting any amount would only add value to his communities wealth through value and velocity.
While I can certainly agree with her sentiment there's a major problem with that. The labour theory of value was a debate that raged back in the time of Adam Smith. The problem was relating a "hard day's work" between a doctor, a painter, a musician, a lawyer and a brick layer. These differences are still exploited (usually by Marxists) today but ultimately people had to come back to the idea that value (in objects as well as labour) is subjective.