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Meanwhile, In Bitcoin...
Just last week we noted that the cryptocurrency was quietly surging towards record highs once again as the debacle in Washington, China's comments on the USD, and Baidu's acceptance of Bitcoins all interplayed to disrupt what many called he end of Bitcoin following the shuttering of Silk Road. Just yesterday, Bitcoin rose to almost USD235, within touching distance of April's record high... but then this morning, it collapsed to under $175 (as its liquidity reflected NFLX not global FX). The last couple of hours have seen the price bounce back to $210, but if you like high-beta vol, then Bitcoin is the new TSLA...
The blip from Silk Road is almost invisible... as BTC rose to near record highs...
and then collapsed today...
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bitcoin is pretty badass
Indeed.
Also, LOL at calling that dip a collapse. Poor TD, didn't get in during the silk road blip..
The regular ZH readers know what time it is. Buy as much "stuff" as you can and hold it.
The strongest hands win.
If Mt. Gox only allows for $1000.00 redemption per day, how can big money get involved?
Gox is one of how many exchanges?
I think they presently control 25% of the market and I do not know what the other exchanges allow for, in terms of redemptions.
"I think they presently control 25% of the market and I do not know what the other exchanges allow for, in terms of redemptions"
You really think that your money is coming back?
Not sure what you mean - please explain.
LOL!
Your cash = gone
it will happen easily. Not under your control & not even in your legal jurisdiction.
Fool.
Ah more fear mongering from the uninformed. It's getting easier all the time to convert Bitcoin to Dollars. I haven't looked into other cities, but here in Houston, there is a local exchange where you can sell your Bitcoin to a real live person for cash. I've done it many times. Not sure why people still seem to think that Bitcoin is a scam - fear of the unknown I guess.
Easier, yes. I can ACH to and from coinbase in seconds. But also increasingly foolish.
OP lied when he called it high beta. It does not correlate highly to the stock market.
BitCoin and dollars are equally worthless, zero intrinsic value. (OK dollars have TP, but they are just as dirty before you wipe)
Neither of them are investments. If you need currency function then by all means use them for the intended purpose, but don't expect not to get fleeced if you sit on them.
Austrian Economics 101: Nothing has intrinsic value.
There are OTC exchangers in every town.
localbitcoins.com
Intrinsic value do not exist (as you point out)
What people refer is "direct use value" and it is not intrinsic.
Marginal direct use value is decreasing as quantity increase.
Intrinsic value do not exist (as you point out)
What people refer is "direct use value" and it is not intrinsic.
Marginal direct use value is decreasing as quantity increase.
Ah, more shitcoinz pumping from the ignorant.
Any exchange can be compromised any time. You send money for BTC. You get nothing.
Done.
This one in this thread is in CHINA. Good luck
"Legal jurisdiction" LOL.
What jurisdiction was Corzine in? JPM, GS, etc?
I for one buy Bitcoin with the idea that it will be converted back to USD.
The one in China does more trading than Mt. Gox. It's called BTC China http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/10/23/bitcoins-biggest-exchange-is-now-in-china-as-the-price-tops-200btc/
They run a decent exchange there. I've used it a few times.
They (like most others) could do with a proper API and socket support, but I guess that sort of thing is hard for them still.
why put big money into it? Maybe just a few grand if you can spare it?
I was talking to a buddy a while back. It was just after the April bubble. I told him to check it out. He said to me: "No way too volatile!"
...he trades spot FX with all its leverage.
I shit you not..
I don't get the "volatile" arguement.
BTC is in an unbroken uptrend. In each cycle both the high and the post crash low are higher than in the previous cycle. Who cares if it is volatile if the direction is steadily up?
FX is volatile, but the steady direction is down. Why hold that?
"FX is volatile, but the steady direction is down."
Pardon? Down, relative to what? If one currency in a given pair is down, the other is up, and vice versa.
Dumbest thing I've heard this week.
It's down relative to real value. The dollar has constantly lost value over the past 100 years, it's steady and constant.
FX pairs mean nothing, both sides of the pair go down year after year. The fact that one side of the pair goes "up" relative to the other FX is irrelevant.
why put big money into it?
I like to box. How I like to box.
So every day I box a Gox.
In yellow socks I box my Gox.
I box in yellow Gox box socks.
you know I was not expecting that reply.
You've no idea how many times I've had to read that book
That big money stays out can be only good for Bitcoin. If big money wasn't involved in gold....
1.) You can do more if you are "registered" or whatever, but still ~$10k I think. But again, that's just redemption, not a limit on trading. Yet, I'd say no real "big" money is trading - that money would be better spent on mining and selling via cash until when/if BTC fails.
2.) Cash (somehow, I'm sure)
The largest single BTC wallet holds 111,111 BTC, more than 20 million USD at current market. It hasn't been touched in years.
The moment it's touched watch the price plummet.
Do you think, if 18 billions of $ (cash) were touched and exchanged in a single day on the forex for a single commodity, the exchange rate of the USD would change?
111.000 btc will never be exchanged in USD (ass wipe paper), they will be paid to buy something like an island (in a couple of years).
Buying, not selling. BTC is easy to move.
MtGox is history. Their banking relationship failed, so you can no longer get USD out in any reasonable timeframe.
Check out campbx, you can get KYC verified for high limits.
Or you can buy large qty of gold with bitcoin, via Agora Commodities or Amagi Metals.
sucker. You think bitcoin is a good value at more than two DOLLARS per.
Everybody who wants to better-understand Bitcoin should read these two articles and watch this video. If you do these three things, I promise you will "get it" and see why it's a fantastic investment:
http://evoorhees.blogspot.com/2012/04/bitcoin-libertarian-introduction.html
http://konradsgraf.squarespace.com/storage/On%20the%20Origins%20of%20Bit...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx9zgZCMqXE
Any genuine questions or concerns about Bitcoin, I'll be happy to answer them for people.
So says the gold and silver basher. It's guys like you I would love to punch in the face for being such a complete fucking hypocrite.
I am liking this action in the intraday chart. Bull market raid was repulsed quite well. I have been seeing this most recent advance past $150 as leg one of three, with a spike following the third up leg. Been looking for a 2 day correction since about 180, but this will due nicely. I expect tomorrow to be a modestly down day as well, then the start of leg two up to about $300 or so. After that run a 2-3 day pause, and the final leg toping out at $425 with a spike to $600 which then collapses. This would be a scale invariant rendition of what happend in April.
Full dislosure: I have a position in BTC.
My guess is that BTC will run (eventually) and surpass gold on a per unit basis, possibly well, well beyond gold.
This month has been an almost complete halving of the price of gold in BTC.
http://blog.quantsig.net/2013/10/24/goldbtc/
I've been pondering this. Unlike gold and precious metals, bitcoins are based on an encryption algorithm that can be duplicated. You can't duplicate gold unless you have lots of pressure and nuclear fusion. So, here's the question; what's to stop a millionaire from hiring a couple of programmers, modify the algo, and launch a competitor crypto-coin with more exchanges... call it bettercoin?
What's to stop bitcoin2, bettercoin2, bitcoin3, bettercoin3, evenbettercoin1... from being launched and diluting the market? Then, someone with deep pockets can buy up and crash bitcoin to make those exchanges seem untrustworthy to convince people to move to a different crypto-coin that is maybe, say, less volatile, has more exchanges, and is more market stable (and also probably owned by the TPTB)? I'm sure there are other scenarios.
My point here is that each crypto-coin may be secure in and of itself, but it's still a "trust" based system.
Same reason competition to Groupon hasn't work. Its established/credibility and has already been tried with lite coin. Whats to stop a central bank from debasing my currency 85 billion a month?
Other "cryptocurrencies" do not have the advantage of being backed by the full faith and credit of the Federal Reserve like BitCoin does.
Bravo! It's called barrier to entry. Bitcoin like Google is just a fucking algorythym.
"So, here's the question; what's to stop a millionaire from hiring a couple of programmers, modify the algo, and launch a competitor crypto-coin with more exchanges... call it bettercoin?"
There isn't! People already have. It's open-source and as such it can be freely modified. There are competing crypto-currencies.
The worst-case scenario you lay out is COMPLETELY non-sensical. Besides, you completely ignore the fact that competition is good for the market overall.
Technically you wouldn't even have to hire a programmer. The code is open source, just download it and set up your own virtual currency if you want (and indeed, many people have: Litecoin, ppCoin, etc.)
The issue is always this: why would I want to own your virtual currency over Bitcoins, when Bitcoins already has an established network of users and your new currency brings nothing new to the table?
My hypothetical bettercoin brings more exchanges in more countries and has more liquidity. Would that make your switch to the bettercoin? If not, what would make you switch to bettercoin? And if you come up with something, whose to say it won't happen? if it does happen, what would happen to the price of bitcoins?
I think currency competition is a great thing for anyone (that's the inherent problem with FRNs, no? No legal competition). The worst case for bitcoin is governments outlaw its use. Not sure how they'd do that, besides shutting off the internet.
government agents and banks can easiy maniulate bitcoin as well. Just like any currency, trust is the issue.
Oh no, you just let me know what they will do. Like illegal drugs, they'll force it underground and make it a "war", and they'll never win. But now they'll have a "war on crypto-currencies" that lasts forever, allowing them to print more orders of magnitude of much needed $ for themselves to fund the "war", and the hip people will still buy things with bitcoins while being thrilled at their little secret.
Slowly over many years of the "war on illegal crypto-currencies" not working (like all "wars on ..."), fines and criminal charges will be lowered, people will vote for representatives that want to make bitcoins legal, game goes on. and on, and on.
Nope, not buying any bitcoins.
WHen SHA256 is finally cracked I will switch to the new BTC client which will use SHA512 or SHA 1026 etc.....
actually, people have no idea how that change is easy. The concept of "address" isn't even defined in the core of the system. Each transaction includes its own decoding protocol. Satoshi knew what he was doing.
Maybe your hypothetical BetterCoin uses better encryption, or maybe it confirms faster. Then I might switch. And hey, maybe Bitcoin's value will be decreased by BetterCoin's popularity. To that, I say "Good!"
Competition is vital in any area, money included. If you can make a better virtual currency, I say go for it!
Do your new currency cost anyone 5 millions $ to undo a transaction after ten minutes and add another 5 millions after every ten minutes?
This is what you must deploy to forge a transaction in bitcoin.
In LItecoin? A lot less, probably 100.000 is enough.
The other coins? it is just easy.
A 1 billion transaction would become uneconomical to reverse after 1 day.
Here's today's list of your "bettercoin"s: http://www.coinchoose.com
If you notice, almost none of them are worth two bits (and I'll lower that threshold to being a U.S. zinc quarter, not even the two eighth's of an ounce of silver that two bits really refers to).
The reason they have no value is because they lack what bitcoin has -- a true decentralized digital currency with sufficient protection against a 51% attack. Bitcoin is a proof-of-work based crypto currency. That means that the authority for what goes into the ledger is based on consensus by those doing the work. The vulnerability with that is if a single party or cartel gains sufficient hashing capacity such that they control 51% of the total mining capacity, they can either censor what goes in the blocks (by rejecting certain transactions or certain blocks from other miners) or they can mine silently with the intention to then try to cheat by double spending their own transactions.
But this isn't happening because the barrier to doing such an attack is much more than $10+ million worth of hardware, and that hardware isn't even readily available --so it could cost $50 million maybe to pull off by the time ASIC manufacturers have sufficient supply.
Now these "bettercoin" alt coins aren't even at a tiny fraction of the same level of protection from a 51% attack. Litecoin is the closest, though there is the belief by some that even their current level isn't sufficient protection.
The alternative is proof-of-stake, however that's controllable by a cartel as well and thus is more vulnerable but in a different way.
What you are left with is one coin that has sufficient protection, and all the others being longshot risky plays (if Bitcoin itself isn't risky enough for you).
"What you are left with is one coin that has sufficient protection", and, as others pointed out, it has a descent barrier to entry.
I'm not buying it though. There's definitely something fishy with bitcoin. Money can be thrown around to make a more recognized crypto-currency, with more protection, more exchanges, and bitcoin could go down in history as the "first good attempt".
An integral part of the trust-model in cryptocurrency is the fact that it's open-source.
That makes your idea of some competitor coming out of stealth-mode with instantaneous credability and crashing the bitcoin market a little hard to retionalize.
If a viable competing currecy were to overtake bitcoin it would have to have an open-model and gain traction legitimitely. In that case, there would necessarily be exchange between the currencies. So what, if bitcoin turns out to be the "first good attempt"? Yeah there might be some dumb money riding it all the way to the bottom but it sure as hell wouldnt be ovenight hyperinflation with no path to the exit, al la fiat.
Doesn't have to be stealth mode, the algorithm will be open-source as well. But, it'll be brought to you by the central banks. They could work with governments to grant funds to universities (print print print) to buy hardware and start setting up the currency creation. In the meantime, the "powers" can be working with large supermarket stores, big box stores, Amazon, facebook, google, ebay, paypal... to accept the currency (since they own them anyway). When everything is ready, turn it on and offer discounts for use. And guess what, they'll back it by the full faith and credit of the governments/central banks.
I think they'll just, for many many years, start to brainwash people that crypto-currencies are evil, people that use them are up to no good. They'll have a nice money printing, privacy invading, war on illegal currencies.
That doesn't make any sense at all! If it were really a "cryptocurrency" that requires computational effort to produce "coinage", the government wouldn't have the ability to manipulate it at will. In that case, backing it by the "full faith and credit" means nothing. Furthermore, that statement implies a debt-based system, which is completely contradictory. If that were the case, why would they have all this "hardware" churning? They'd just magically "appear" the coins.
It sounds like you don't really understand how cryptocurrencies work. They are much more like a finite commodity than a debt-based fiat currency.
>> I think they'll just, for many many years, start to brainwash people that crypto-currencies are evil, people that use them are up to no good. They'll have a nice money printing, privacy invading, war on illegal currencies.
when hyperinflation begins even the fbi cafeteria will be accepting bitcoin. read up on hyperinflations and how people use "illegal" means to survive.
if you sell/buy usd in buenos aires TODAY you can get 8 years in jail. but nobody respects that, because the cops know they too need to get rid of their pesos.
Bitcoin has been around since 2009. The competition just missed the train, it's too late now. The computing power of the Bitcoin-network is by order of magnitudes more powerful than that of all the competition combined.
There are hundreds of alternative cryptocurrencies, and all of them put together have a market cap less that 1% that of bitcoin. Any innovation in the area of cryptocurrency which is powerful enough to replace bitcoin per se will have to be built on top of the bitcoin protocol in order to gain traction. And that will only increase the value of the underlying bitcoin.
99.44% of the bitcoin skeptics are simply ignorant. The rest are evil.
litecoin
SS,
Thanks for posting the links. I'm very much in favor of letting markets choose what money is used, and I can see some value in holding Bitcoin. I'm in the process of reading the first article now, but already I've found something I'm skeptical about. Maybe you can help me understand better.
From the article:
There will never be more than 21 million in existence, and they are released over time at a declining rate (at the time of writing, about 8.5 million Bitcoins exist).
Now, it's easy to say that only "X" amount will ever exist, but who makes that determination? Also, who determines what rate they are released at? For example, we've been told in the past that the US Government would only issue it's currency based on a 1:1 ratio of the gold bullion held by the Treasury. We can see how, over time, those sorts of promises start to go by the wayside. The US is not alone, though. All governing bodies at some point issue more promises than can be fulfilled. The point is, what makes the Bitcoin system different in those regards?
It's called math. I know, not exactly one of those things you understand.
I forgot how many, but each coin can be divided into millions of others. Though, you still have to run the alorithm to create a new coin from a "first wave" coin. Someone correct me if I'm wrong here.
As the other reply states, it is math. However, I'll explain it without being a douchebag.
The whole system is based on fundamental mathematical alogrithms. That basically mean that these rules are "baked into the cake". How can you be so sure, you ask? Well, the protocol that runs the whole thing is open-source. So anyone can read and verify the mechanizaitons of the entire system.
Also, by "baked into the cake", I mean that those "rules" aren't technically "rules". They are fundamental charactaristics of the design of the system. To change those things would require the creation of a new currency based on different math and different initial conditions.
The answer is that Bitcoin is not a program; it's a protocol agreed upon 100% by all actors using Bitcoin.
The protocol says that anyone who does work for the system and validates a block of transactions gets a reward, with the reward given being based on how many blocks have already been found. This reward decreases as time goes on.
You could easily modify the bitcoin program to say "I found a block, I award myself a bazillion bitcoins!" but your transaction would be invalid because every other computer using bitcoin knows you didn't play by the rules of the protocol and they would refuse to honor it.
".. Now, it's easy to say that only "X" amount will ever exist, but who makes that determination? Also, who determines what rate they are released at? .."
The speed rate of the new bitcoins' creation depends on the miners. If everyone dropped the currency tomorrow and lose interest forever in it, then miners would stop mining, so bitcoin creation would stop. (And it would never reach the 21.000.000.)
Bitcoin creation is the earning for doing the hard work of keeping the ledger building up.
However, Bitcoin-mining became an arms race. You need so heavy hardware to be able to make profits on mining that it's unbeliavable. BTC needs its "silver", Litecoin may be a possible currency for that. Bitcoin may become too expensive.
The reason Tyler(s) are fascinated with Bitcoin's market action is because its an actual free market.
There's no POMO, so the price can actually decline when it should. I can imagine the frustration as people look at the Dow and S&P 500, and wonder why it never really seems to have a true correction.
Wait, wait, wait... you mean there's money that increases in purchasing power?
Seriously though, diversification away from fiat is key. Bitcoins + precious metals should be part of all investment portfolios.
I looked and saw that was going up like 20% in a few days. I was partying like it was 1999.
Ahh! I see what you did there...
Might as well diversify the portfolio even further and BTFD. Why the hell not? The Bernank keeps giving us free money.
It it helps knock over the system..I am all for Bitcoin.
If the sytem crashes or goes down how does Bitcoin even work? How are transactions done without computers?
BTW, I am for any and all kinds of competing currencies that undermine the FEDs monopoly of counterfeiting.
Think about what you said. Where are most dollars stored? 10010100100101. Computers/Internet go down you're not getting your dollars either
Whats makes you think I have dollars stored at a bank?
Some of you guys are don't pay much attention to things do you?
If you're hiding gold and years of canned Ham and soybean meal in your re-purposed nuclear survival bunker than good on you.
*cough* aquaponics *cough*
A very obvious and good point. As far as I can tell the only way to kill btc via tptb is to defeat strong encryption and screw up the blockchain. I am betting that as the dollar approaches zero value the btc value increases exponentially. I would store money as gold, silver (physical only) and btc, one third of each.
Defeating strong encryption is like defeating math. Not impossible, but less likely than a mega asteroid hitting the earth this year.
untrue for me.
My dollars are paper first, paper most of all, and my total savings is much more in gold & silver than in dollars anyhow.
I do not live off trust in electrons. if you do that's not my problem.
"The system" cannot "crash". It is a decentralized, peer-to-peer, global computer network. If one part of the world loses electricity, it's not a big deal. Bitcoin continues. You just find a computer with Internet access and you can spend your BTC. That means you can travel anywhere in the world and still have your savings intact.
You can't do that with gold. Governments can confiscate your gold at borders.
Bottom line; You still need a computer on the internet and power grid ( and so does the selling party). Again, wake me when I can fill my tractors with diesel using "bits".
What gold? What silver? They also "confiscate" cocaine at borders, yet hundreds of tons somehow still make it into the U.S. Please, such "Rules" are for suckers and debt-slaves. hell, I exchange beer for all kinds of stuff on a pretty regular basis, tax free too.
This guy is so full of shit it's coming out his ears.
You don't need a computer and grid power in any place at all times, you just can go with your brain wallet to a place where access to the Bitcoin network is available.
Untrue.
Any time the network is split each subnetwork blocked from communication with other subnets will evolve their own contradictory bitcoin blockchains.
This will break the system completely if it's ever attempted to be re-united, which breaks the entire system on the spot as it becomes a regional currency.
Worst of all I need to be able to use money with NO Internet available. What happens if one day I want to get Internet started, first bill, first installation, first setup, I won't be able to pay in the new locale with bitcoin because that's the cart before the horse.
Governments & militaries can knock out networks & devices with bombs, EMP's, etc., and that's much more likely than a border search for my gold coins or silver. Much more likely.
I'm not in Cyprus. IF I was in Cyprus I'd much more agree that 99% of confiscations will take ALL cash, gold, silver, on a person. That story has been very fruitful for bitcoin transit. Not to hold it but even losing 25% in one day is better than losing 100% in one day.
HOWEVER there's no way to GET cash into bitcoin post-crisis, only those who were prepared in the first place stood a chance in Cyprus.
But at what cost? Any government trying to seperate the network without that the nerds are noticing it: impossible. There are many ways around it, I am sure that many miners are already using tunnels. The only way is to cut all cables, but who would do that? And can they really do that technically? Even a nuclear war would maintain some network connections, since the internet protocol is based on a military development (ARPANET).
The three hardware backbones of the internet: Undersea fiberoptic cables, Satelites, and Internet Exchanges.
If the IXPs get bombed, then the world would go "dark".
That should be motivating to get the internet decentralized, right? As of now, Tier 1 networks seem to be very centralized due to their current costs and size requirements.
Everytime you use a VISA/Mastercard, you use the internet.
Actually, you can print out wallets on paper and pay with those. They can't be verified without an Internet connection, but they work to transfer funds.
Network splits are entirely recoverable. One has already happened, and it wasn't catastrophic. The software is much more robust now.
Border searches are routine. EMPs are not.
To think clearly you must separate concerns. E.g. store of value concerns vs. medium of exchange concerns. The threat models for each concern are different.
Network splits will be UNRECOVERABLE. There will be YEARS of no connection between the subnets across oceans.
Printed wallets have no value: no person can be sure they are random bits or btc and will give nothing for them.
EMP's don't need to be routine: they will happen ONCE and that's that.
Border searches will full confiscation are NOT routine, just border searches WITHOUT full confiscation, globally. The wise will avoid the obvious police-state regimes to avoid higher odds of being nabbed. I will never cross the USA border.
To think clearly concerns must be combined at all time. To pretend only 1 at a time matters is to tell yourself a fairytale.
Hi SpykerSpeed,
Serious question after reading half of the first link's article. It seems other than global power failure, the only possible weakness is the password to your wallet. I'm not a tech person, so is it possible for the NSA etc to learn your password? Do you type the password for every transaction/see the password while you set up the wallet? If "backdoors" are set up in most computer software can they access your password?
Thanks
Marco?
The client software(wallet) allows you the option of password protecting your wallet. So if you wnt to, yes you can PW protect it and type it in every time. If you want to defeat keyloggers, use a virtual keyboard on a touch screen.
Use Trucrypt and create a hidden volume and there will be no evidence that you even have a wallet on your computer.
There are multiple vectors of attack to steal and identify, bitcoins. Read, read, then read some more.
Thanks Polo :-)
So the rub is, you need to be a tech person to Protect your Bitcoins.
But then again, you might need guns to protect your precious...
Everybody who wants to better-understand Bitcoin should read these two articles and watch this video. If you do these three things, I promise you will "get it" and see why it's a fantastic investment:
http://evoorhees.blogspot.com/2012/04/bitcoin-libertarian-introduction.html
http://konradsgraf.squarespace.com/storage/On%20the%20Origins%20of%20Bit...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx9zgZCMqXE
Any genuine questions or concerns about Bitcoin, I'll be happy to answer them for people.
Who is behind Bitcoin?
The person who created it? Nobody knows.
Bitcoin is a protocol, though, not a piece of software, so even if you don't trust the reference implementation (which is open source), there are others, or you could write your own.
Yeah, I'm sure the CIA, NSA, FBI, Mossad have got no clue at all about this.
I'm sure they know all about Bitcoin. Heck, maybe they wrote the thing (though I would find such a claim dubious). So what?
Bitcoin is at its heart just a public ledger of accounts.
But they missed the train completely, otherwise they would have killed it with a small supercomputer in the beginning.
"Two guys in a garage". So to speak.
Certainly not any banking (currency creation) cartel, that hates it and is thinking of the "If you can't beat them...", to eventually come out with their own version, that uses biometric RFID implants the size of a grain of rice.
They're playing for time, and will succeed because most people are sheeple. Another reason is that the Normalcy Bias of serfs is so strong, that only few of them are Early Adopters (a marketing term), and only few of them embrace "the inevitable" as their own. Just reading the blogs on ZH confirms these dynamics.
when I move to another country and a part OF that country in a forest or outback or other rural area with NO computers, no phone lines, no electric grid and I want to pay for supplies to further develop the homestead for offgrid living, how do I do that with bitcoin?
When the power grids go down in a medium-sized city (I'll never be in a huge megacity) and I need transport out of town, need to pay for gas or buy a car on the cheap, no power is running, how do I escape the medium-sized city using bitcoin to pay for last-minute goods?
EVery friend of yours will have a paper copy of your wallet, or a digital copy of the file. All you need to to is phone them up, give them a password and have them move the funds for you. This is what we will see Ross Ulbright do, unless he decides its better to use those BTC as bargaining chips.
Or use that same phone to send the BTC yourself. Most modern phones can also be a hardware wallet.
There's a couple travelling around the country/world right now using only BTC. Google something like "couple travel bitcoin".
They buy gasoline, groceries, etc.
"You can lead a sheep out of the barn but you can't make it think for itself"
NO PHONE. What part of NO GRID are you not understanding?
In a free market (like bitcoin) you get a crash but quick recovery. In a centrally planned clusterfuck you get decades of misery.
It's the single-day drops of 25% that people will remember. Gold has the excuse that it has a futures market AND supply / strike issues. Bitcon HAS NO SUCH EXCUSE yet is more volatile.
The 10,000% increase in 2 years kinda overshadows the 25% drops. At least for me. Sucks though that last night i could buy 10 oz of silver per bitcoin and now it only worth 9 oz of silver.
The upside is that this time next year you can buy 50 oz.
no, it doesn't - it looks no better to me than YHOO or NFLX or TSLA in that regard and I'm not jumping all over those either, much less AMZN.
Unicorns and rainbows for everyone! Anything can be created on a harddrive, and probably will. Wake me when I can buy more than a hundred gallons of diesel for my tractor with these "bits". So far, none of my suppliers have agreed...
< meh >
You actually can! There are services that provide debit cards that automatically convert your Bitcoin savings into dollars at the point-of-sale.
You wake me up when I can buy more than 1 gallon of regular unleaded gasoline for my car with a gold coin. Nobody accepts gold these days.
Please, I have never had a problem exchanging PMs for the "fiat du jour". BTW- I can turn physical gold into paper gold very easily too, and have no problem sending that across boaders.
"Nobody accepts gold these days." - FAIL, I have paid several people in PMs for certain services (tax free too).
Exchanging BTC for fiat is actually pretty easy these days. Some sites will exchange BTC for gift cards, some will do the conversion on the back end and have the item shipped to you, and of course you could always just sell your BTC on an exchange.
"Exchanging BTC for fiat is actually pretty easy these days." - Bullshit. I actually looked into selling some of our distilled spirits on an exchange.
Ah, as a seller? Try BitPay. You insert their gadget into your website and your customers can pay in BTC at checkout, but BitPay does the conversion to USD on their side and dumps the result into your account.
You never actually have to handle BTC yourself. Pretty slick, actually.
This is actually usefull information, now how do I turn those bits back into physical cash again? Believe it or not, I see there being a shortage of physical fiat in the future.
easiest is to get an account at coinbase.com which transfers BTC deposits to your bank via ACH. this can be automatic, or manual.
You could always order phyzz online and then lose it in a freak boating accident.
ONLY down 25% in one day, epic win!
oh wait...
paying an extra 35% (the inverse ratio) for gasoline in ONE DAY purely because the "currency" of choice is Epic Fail is... like being hit with a Failtonium warhead.
You, and only you, at the gas pump get to pay an extra 35% no one else has to pay.
You can only suffer from even greater Fail by not realizing your already epic Fail.
Even with the drop i'm still paying less for gas, paid with bitcoin, then i did 2 days ago.
and in a week you'll be paying double.
Maybe your supplier doesn't accept bitcoin yet. Thats ok, he's behind the curve. Need an island, Mercedes or airplane? Checkout bitpremier.com
Does "bitpremier.com" have any engineers drilling wells or refining crude? Yeah, my suppliers Exxon and BP are "behind the curve".
Morons.
At one point everyone thought the Internet was a fad and novelty. Cook dinner while your 1 image of porn was downloading on your hard drive and save it to your floppy disk. Bitcoin is the same shit and Yea, they are behind the curve. Can't stop the engine of innovation
None of what you mention has change how current trade accounts are settled, nor how oil is discovered, mined, or delivered.
At the end of the day, countries want to exchange and settle accounts with real, hard, assets. It has been this way for thousands of years.
Yep, kno what u mean. I settle my tade accounts with check or cc. They always bitch about the terminal fees on the cc. And checks take so long to mail etc.
When vendors wake up to the fast money no terminal fees. Competitve advantages the BTC has over all other bank assisted payment sysrems, BTC will be the preferred payment system. Give it 5 years. Except in five years BTC will be trading above your paygrade.
Bitch.
As a provider of food, I am not too worried. Troll harder.
Thank you for providing the food.
Until 1971.
.
And 50 years ago people thought 50 years later we'd all have rocket-packs and flying cars.
Hm.
Tell people about the internet 50 years ago and they put you in a mental institution, since they would not be able to wrap their head around the concept, just like you can't wrap your head around Bitcoin. Some people are stuck in their old ways and don't embrace change, hesitate and skeptic out until it goes main-stream then say "shoulda, coulda, woulda".
tell people 50 years ago about the framework that did exist in DARPA and they'd think you're a genius and try to make patents ahead of everyone else of what you're saying.
Plenty of petroleum engineers will happily work for bitcoin. You just don't have enough coin to pay for them.
When I can drop a BitCoin on my foot and make it hurt my toe, then it will be the day to trade in my stack of PHYZZ! Until then, BitCoin is something that can disappear just as fast as every other item of electronic wealth.
Not really. There are tens of thousands of copies of the blockchain stored on hard drives all over the world. Bitcoin is redundant, resilient, and impervious to government meddling. Your gold, being physical, is easily confiscated.
"Your gold, being physical, is easily confiscated." - LMFAO!! How's that working out for India right now? What PMs? "Laws" that cannot be enforced are not laws at all.
Regardless of how easily gold can be confiscated (or not, as the case may be), it's still true that gold can be more easily confiscated than bitcoins. With BTC, I can walk across any border in the world with essentially the key to my bank account residing only in my head.
With physical metals, we have "boating accidents", but with bitcoin, we have "Password? Password to what? What's a 'bitcoin'?".
You will always be one power/internet failure away from being unable to enter that password too, but keep on shilling, I have better things to do.
That's (mostly) true. I wouldn't say that BTC is always better than gold. They both have their distinct advantages.
In a Mad Max scenario where electricity is a story told to children and bands of cannibals roam the streets looking for someone tasty, gold definitely has the upper hand.
I disagree, in that scenario. lead and brass will be much more fungible.
Haha, I almost said that myself. Great minds and all . . .
Confiscation does not require useful ownership by a theft.
It requires only that you LOSE what you had.
One good solar flare, EMP, etc., will knock out ALL your bitcoins & will do so for almost everyone all at once.
Not so for gold.
EMP too.
So long as one copy of the blockchain exists on one computer, Bitcoin can be restored to 100%. Is a solar flare really going to cook every single computer on earth?