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Is This Why Bitcoin Is Surging?
Bitcoin, an online-only currency scarcely four years old, is breaking out to new highs this week and now sports a total value of $2.8 billion. Just a few months ago, it looked like this economic experiment as the world’s first decentralized technology-based form of money would crash and burn. Since then, ConvergEx's Nick Colas points out that the U.S. government has shut down a large drug website which accepted bitcoins and promised further scrutiny of its uses; and omputer science experts have warned that bitcoin is neither especially private – one of its notional values – or especially well constructed. The market doesn't seem to care, with incremental demand from U.S. citizens (through Second Market) and Chinese nationals leading the path higher. Could bitcoin still fail? Sure. But, as Colas notes, its success to date speaks to how much the world is changing... Technology – properly packaged – can engender enough trust to develop a new asset class.
Bitcoin will eventually have to develop a lot more infrastructure to be a useful global currency, to be sure. But there’s close to $3 billion of real money to help back that transition.
Via ConvergEx's Nick Colas,
Bitcoin - The Lazarus Currency
Every great religion, or company, or country, or rock band has a dramatic ‘Creation myth’ – the story of its birth. The Judeo-Christian tradition has the story of God creating the world in seven days. Google has the grad-student thesis story. American culture is still informed by the Revolutionary War. And where would the Rolling Stones be if Keith hadn’t chatted up Mick on the train, just because he holding some new R&B albums from the States?
Bitcoin, the online-only stateless currency, has its own creation myth and it is purpose-made to appeal to exactly the kind of people who would find value in it. The highlights are:
The original design for bitcoin comes from a 2008 paper published by a person named Satoshi Nakamoto. Who, by the by, doesn’t actually exist.
Bitcoin’s basic architecture is decentralized – no one is “In control.” People with fast computers and some coding skills compete to solve a puzzle created by the algorithm described in Satoshi’s paper. Simultaneously, they track all the transactions in the bitcoin universe – people and businesses exchanging value for goods and services. Every ten minutes, on average, some lucky coder – or group of coders – solves the puzzle, gets a few new bitcoins, and validates the transaction list. Then the whole thing resets and everyone gets to work on the next puzzle.
In principle, this process leaves everyone exchanging or “mining” (cracking the code gets you 25 bitcoins currently) anonymously in the system. Everything in bitcoin is identified with a nearly-impossible-to-crack coding of letters and numbers. No names, phone numbers, or addresses needed.
Now, who do you think would find this creation story appealing? A few candidates:
Tech savvy people, who by their nature and high-functioning professional skills tend to have a few shekels lying around? Yep – classic early adopters.
Then there might be independence-minded older white males in the U.S., ticked off by the Federal Reserve and government in general. Yes, they like the story as well.
And then there are the criminals – drug dealers and so forth – who might not know a creation myth from crystal meth, but appreciate the potential for secrecy.
Offshore millionaires from essentially anywhere in the world, looking for classic diversification and a liquid investment. All you need to access your bitcoins is that long alphanumeric key and a local bank account which links to a ‘Wallet’ – an online repository to hold the currency. Deposit money in China, write down the key, fly to Monaco and go into an Internet café. Easy-peasy.
The basic appeal of this “Genesis” creation story lit a fire under bitcoin, starting at the beginning of 2012 at around $5 and ending up in a spectacular bubble top at $240 in April 2013. The cause of that peak – overwhelming tulip-bulbish demand for bitcoin – was its undoing. Exchanges where people went to trade dollars or euros for bitcoin couldn’t keep up with the volume. Accounts froze or moved very slowly, and confidence in the currency dropped, along with the price. Just a few days after the $240 high, bitcoin was trading for less than $60.
Creation myths are great anchors for a belief system, but there have to be other parts to the narrative; bitcoin is safely into its own “Exodus” – the second book of the Old Testament. That fall from the highs was just the beginning of its problems.
The U.S. government made it clear that they expect all currencies and their users to adhere to anti-money-laundering laws, including know-your-customer statutes which eliminate the notional secrecy of bitcoin.
The Feds also went after the druggies, shutting down Silk Road – a widely known website for the purchase of illicit substances.
In an odd twist of fate, the U.S. government now owns about 174,000 bitcoins, with a current value of $42 million thanks to the Silk Road bust and other actions.
If bitcoin were a company, the class action lawyers would be circling, fighting for air with the bankruptcy experts. There is simply no way so much legal action, let alone several ongoing problems with security in the system, would have left Satoshi Nakamoto’s creation as anything but roadkill on the world’s economic superhighway.
But here’s the beauty part: bitcoin is making a new high this week, breaking through the spiky bubble levels of April in a pretty controlled and orderly manner. What gives? A few points:
The biggest bitcoin exchange is now in China, displacing Japanese, American and European sources of demand. That enterprise is called BTC China, and its CEO Bobby Lee hails from Yahoo! and Walmart China. Oh, and he graduated from Stanford with a degree in Computer Science. In short, an apparently pretty clever fellow.
Our sources in the bitcoin community also agree that Second Market, the New York based business best known for trading pre-IPO company stock, has become a major player in demand for bitcoin. Earlier this year they started the Bitcoin Investment Trust, an open ended product to buy and hold bitcoins. There’s no way to know how much Second Market has purchased on behalf of its clients, but it must be a popular offering – the banner ad on their site for the trust occupied the top third of their front page.
It’s not all been roses for bitcoin, even in this recent run-up. Back in September computer science researchers from UC – San Diego showed that it was actually fairly easy to track individual transactions in the bitcoin transaction ledger. Just this week, academics at Cornell proposed that bitcoin could eventually be coopted by a handful of “Miners” who could hijack the system.
So why is bitcoin seemingly minted on Teflon? Limited supply, for one reason. There will never be more than 21 million bitcoins, and there are only 12.0 million currently. In the 4-ish minutes it has taken you to read this far, the most new bitcoins that might have been issued is 25, or $6,250. In the same timeframe, the Federal Reserve has pushed another $7.8 million into the financial system with Quantitative Easing. And then there is the undeniable creation-story appeal – a technology based sort-of-secret store of value. If James Bond, Sergey Brin and Paul Volcker all got together and designed their ideal currency, it might look a lot like bitcoin.
At the same time, the story isn’t over yet. If the “Exodus” analogy is to fit at all, then bitcoin is still in the wilderness. It has clearly withstood many challenges, and there are probably more to come. The end of the journey actually has little to do with how much bitcoin is worth, but what it might be good for.
That’s the piece some investors – many made quite wealthy by the incredible increase in bitcoin’s value – are working on now. A few final thoughts here:
Bitcoin is a more efficient method of transferring money than the current global banking system. The transaction ledger is essentially kept for free by the mining community. Want to send $100 to someone in England and have them redeem British pounds? It will likely cost you $5 or more. A bitcoin transfer is essentially free.
Merchants can accept bitcoin payments without paying the typical credit card fees of 1-5%. That’s one reason for the growing acceptance of bitcoin in China – online merchants are starting to accept this online currency.
Bitcoin could become a country’s ‘Second currency’. One of the more interesting conversations with one of our industry sources is the thought that one or more sovereign nations would entertain making bitcoin a parallel currency to their existing monetary system. Keep in mind that our source owns a lot of bitcoin personally…. But it is an intriguing thought nonetheless.
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Golds value then is also 'faith' based? Money is money because it has monetary properties; divisible, portable, fungible, recognizable, limited supply, store of value - ZH'ers should be able to identify money by now, and understand why it has value. It has very little to do with 'faith' - the component you are talking about is 'store of value', which is dependent upon trust, the durability of the currency. For BTC, it has to prove iteself, gold has a 5,000 yrs history.
How much is an aircraft worth? Well, that depends on the characteristics of the aircraft and what its purpose is. If we wanted to buy a passenger aircraft we would ask for things like, passenger capacity, fuel efficiency, range, annual maintenance costs and so on. Once we have worked out all the characteristics of the aircraft, then we can start working out its value - it is precisely the same for money. Money's purpose is to facilitate trade and store value - therefore we look at its monetary properties to determine its value - its nothing to do with 'faith'.
based on faith? yeah. people seem to want it. cool fiat? i don't see it bein' forced on anyone.
Bitcoin is a great idea an I am glad it has gotten so much acceptance, but there is a better way to use all that mining power and benefit society as a whole. The Gridcoin project aims to pair cryptocoin mining with Boinc (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing).
What is Gridcoin?
GridCoin is a new peer-to-peer internet based cryptocurrency that aims to provide real benefits to humanity by compensating the coin miners for participating in BOINC projects that may lead to advances in medicine, biology, mathematics, science, climatology, and astrophysics by concentrating a large percentage of the computational power towards BOINC research - instead of generating unecessary heat and wasted power for the proof of work algorithms required to keep the coin network running.
This is what we need today more then ever. Now miners are incentivized to run Boinc while they are mining the cryptocurrency. And if you run Boinc you get a coin subsidy on top of the coins that you receive from the mining alone. Imagine if we can harness even a fraction of the Bitcoin network we can really advance pretty much all branches of scientific knowledge.
http://www.gridcoin.us/
I have no idea what you are talking about and that is why I have not bought bitcoin yet. This is why I am a neanderthal.
That gridcoin.us looks like an interesting site though. I do not know enough about computers to properly comment however.
The idea is to get people to make some money by mining digital currency and donate a portion of their cpu resourcs to scientific research. It is a win win for everyone.
Bitcoin's mining proces is designed as it is because: It is hard to do yet easy to verify afterwards. If the above project fulfills these to criteria, kudos.
The Gridcoin uses the scrypt algorithm. So it is the same as Litecoin except there is more coins to be minted and the difficulty is set differently. But the main thing is that there is a huge incentive to run Boinc along with mining that way you get 6-150 coins per block rather then on the 5 you get mining without Boinc. the idia here is to get more resoruces on Boinc so that that we can make some scientific discoveries and make money at the same time.
scrypt is fail if you are looking for horsepower... limited by memory which is cost prohibited.
merged mining with bitcoin, like namecoin would be best for the scientific/medical community. Tack on to bitcoin, forget scrypt
Script algo is better because the mining is not concentrated into a few hands with ASIC. Anyhow it is too late to integrate Boinc into either Bitcoin or Litecoin because the Boinc info is now stored into the Gridcoin blockchain. Which makes Gridcoin a very unique coin. This is a very different animal then Bitcoin or Litecoin and it has a true value to society. Gridcoin will be much more beneficial both as crypto currency and scientific helper.
The distributed computational problem-solving aspect of bitcoin mining has predecessor in things like seti-at-home and fold-at-Home that seek to harness excess computational resources. It looks like Gridcoin's value proposition is to split a miner's computation in half -- one half to mining coins another half to other scientific calculations.
This is an example of the kinds of spin-off ideas that come from the open source bitcoin software.
This "too few hands" argument is really silly. What do you do when ASIC falls to the wayside because of a new technology? Fork BOINCoin to include ASICs now in your hashing power, just because?
Eh, it seems nobody understands the power law distribution around here. Also, the failure of Litecoin to scale will be a rather epic implosion. You're not seeing it now because it hasn't gotten any real participation in its fledgling network.
Its light-years behind Bitcoin, and yet it gets flogged so some people with old hardware feel useful.
SETI used to do the same thing by allowing people to donate their personal computer CPU time to decode radio signals from satelittes looking for signs of ET communications.
Yes Boinc has SETI@Home. In order for people to gonate computational power there needs to be some imediate reward otherwise people either loose interest or the daily chores of life just make them forget. So by providing a financial incentive people will be more willing to join in for the long term.
I would support this as a good competitor to LiteCoin - not Bitcoin.
In either case I hope people decide to join in because if even a fraction of the power that is on Litecoin gets on this coin we can see some real scientific discoveries being made and every single person can contribute to the effort.
If the real and important scientific discoveries of the last 50yrs were actually made available to the world, then I might get behind something like this. The truth is that the suppression of scientific knowledge has been even more forceful than the suppression of gold and silver - while I like the idea, I am fairly jaded with modern science - especially physics and genetics.
Yeh I know a lot of supression has happened. It is is really unfortunate, but maybe now we can make a difference. I think if this goes mainstream then it will be that much harder to supress. At least I hope. If you are intereted in Gridcoin please spread te word as much as you can.
All wealth is derived from energy, derived in turn from the valued activity of something else usually human or animal labour. Then all wealth is made abstract by distance from the original source. In the case of bitcoin the derivation is closer to the source of labour (a computer) but that's about the only difference. However it is a crucial difference; without the added abstraction layers of traditional "money" (meaning printers, bankers, changers, markets, etc) bitcoin is more purely "value" and less liable to manipulations. The only problem I have with it is the labour; the computer is not doing any work of actual value to society that I can tell. If the labour were solving some problem in medicine or physics (like Folding@Home) then I could see the tie in. Otherwise I don't see how these things move humans forward except as a way around the traditional (and currently untrusted) owners of paper currency.
"The only problem I have with it is the labour; the computer is not doing any work of actual value to society that I can tell"
Agreed.
But the fed "depositing" digits into bankster accounts at the discount window (or even using Ben's printing press) isn't doing much in the way of actual labor either.
I think your problem is that you are viewing the labor the computers do in Bitcoin way too narrow, as in you're focused only on mining. However if you look at it from further away, the labor these computers do serves as something completely different: keeping a decentralized network of peers securely, and without the need for trust, agreeing on a ledger that keeps track of a limited digital asset and who owns fractions of it, and that certainly has a lot of value in today's world because of what it allows users to do.
I mean you could say the same thing about any computer doing anything else, because if you get to the very core components of a computer, all any computer ever does is math, nothing else. But this math, which by itself could be pointless, allows you to connect to other computers, allows you to write a word document, allows you to send an email, draw a picture, edit a movie, and what ever else one can imagine and all these functions certainly have value.
It's the whole that provides the value not a specific moving part.
Thank you for responding.
My definition of value is operational, not notional. It is about atoms, not bits. But as you say that is just one way to look at it. In a purely abstract sense all "money" is increasingly less about atoms (the set of all things) and more about trust (one member of the set of notions). I include services with the set of "things" because services are human labour and humans are atoms. We use notional money "tokens" mostly to get around the sticky issue of barter for atoms -- that is what atoms can you give me organized as stuff I recognize and need for my atoms organized as "eggs" -- and when coins were made of gold even the notional token had agreed intrinsic value.
If money going forward is going to be an agent of trust between agents exchanging atoms and services and nothing more, then so be it. Brave new world, all that. But if we ever do get back to an economy based on the exchange of atoms shaped as various things having intrinsic value that everyone understands and someone somewhere is willing to trade for at a premium then the token of exchange needs to be either air-tight trustable, or else built of atoms of intrinsic worth.
And not to put too fine a point on it, computer systems and networks cannot be trusted because the atoms of which they are constructed (metal and plastic atoms, plus code which is a service of someone else's labour and expertise to write it) contribute exactly zero to the value of their electronic and magnetic contents -- being bitcoins or anything else -- and the contents can be lost forever instantly if the processing power and logical associations computers and networks and code embody evaporate in a singular technological catastrophe. Which by the way can be imagined very easily and once started would be virtually impossible to reverse.
I wasn't speaking about your definition of value. Value is subjective, your individual definition does not matter, what matters is that the labor the computers do some people value and therefor objectively it has value.
i fucking say it again and again,if those wall street bastards afe involved in bitcoins, then its a bubble.... and they will crash it...fuck wallstreet
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/10/btc-china/
A single bitcoin is now worth $200, thanks to a little-known exchange in China that is suddenly pushing the digital currency to new heights.
The exchange, called BTC China, has been growing rapidly for the past few months as demand for bitcoins has surged. Today, BTC China accounts for just under 33 percent of trades. That’s ahead of long-time bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox (23 percent) and another rival, the Slovenia-based BitStamp (25 percent). Mt. Gox has long been the most popular exchange — and the most well known — but it has now fallen behind not one but two rivals.
BTC China seems to be riding a speculative mini-bubble that has boosted bitcoins’ value by more than a third since the federal government shut down the Silk Road online drug market, which accepted payments in bitcoin, about three weeks ago. On Tuesday, bitcoins crested over $200 for the first time since their wild runup last spring. That’s about ¥1,220.
“There’s been huge pickup in trading of bitcoins this year,” says Bobby Lee, the CEO of BTC China. At one point, during the currency’s last price surge last April, bitcoins were trading at the equivalent of $308 on his exchange, Lee says. That’s about $50 above their peaks at other exchanges.
...
It seems only logical that China would get behind bitcoin since it is a way to eat away at dollar dominance in the international internet trade market and also provide a way around capital controls and NSA monitoring of SWIFT network money transactions in the international realm.
More importantly BTC China's CEO Bobby Lee brother also happens to be the founder of litecoin. Also Baidu in China which is one of the biggest web services companies is accepting bitcoin now along with Chinese merchants like Alibaba.
The other plus or minus depending how you view it to trade on BTC China you need to establish a Chinese banking account so you can bypass US regulatory agencies at the moment on their exchanges... The smart ones reading this can think of the possibilities concerning things like capital controls.
The reason why MtGox got smashed, and is basically toast is because of all the bullshit that is now required due to US Govt interference.
China is advising its citzens to get gold, get silver - so a far more tolerant approach to BTC in China follows with their public policy actions.
Also in case anyone has forgotten concerning the Chinese and virtual currencies. They've already been there done that and got the tee-shirt already in the past with something called Q-coin. Bitcoin is not new or foreign to many Chinese. From 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/technology/internet/01yuan.html?_r=0
SHANGHAI — The buying and selling of the make-believe currencies used in online gaming has become so widespread that Chinese authorities fear it will affect the real economy.
To quell that threat, those authorities said on Tuesday that they had issued new regulations aimed at restricting the trade and use of virtual money.
China is one of the world’s biggest markets for huge so-called multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft, and tens of millions of young people are believed to be trading virtual goods and credits for real goods and cash.
The coin of fantasy realms have already moved markets here. So-called QQ coins — a form of currency produced by the Chinese Internet giant Tencent — have sometimes risen sharply in value against China’s official currency, the renminbi, alarming officials at the nation’s Central Bank.
Some people have even traded virtual currencies in China, and exchanged them for clothes, cosmetics and other goods.
Last year, nearly $2 billion in virtual currency was traded in China, according to the China Internet Network Information Center. Some experts say they believe there is a much larger underground economy in the virtual world.
Most of China’s big Internet companies — like Sohu.com, Netease and Tencent — have some gaming component and virtual currencies have grown up alongside many of them.
...
Central bank, so called 'official', credit is also make believe, so there's no reason to be surprised that 'virtual money' can indeed trade 'money good', official currency does.
That doesn't mean 'virtual money' isn't a Ponzi scheme too. Bernie Madoff's credit was money good for many years.
Except bitcoin doesn't require constantly new people buying it to survive. Its value will change with demand, just like everything, but a ponzi scheme requires constant growth, or new membership, to pay the old members. This is simply not the case with bitcoin. I'm not saying its price may never be ZERO, if there were no demand for it, this would certainly be the case. But to call it a ponzi scheme is like saying cars are a ponzi scheme, or toys, or rocks, or gold, or anything that can be bought and sold. Please note, speculative bubbles can appear in any of those things I just listed, as well as asset inflation through credit distortion, but a ponzi that does not make.
Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme because new workers are constantly required to pay for the old workers getting more than what they put in. No new workers (assuming no debt used to pay for benefits) then no ponzi SS payments = Ponzi collapse.
BTC is still young, give it some time to shake out the weak hands and expand its ownership base and I think the price will become somewhat stable... probably after several more parabolic blow-offs.
The best thing I've learned is that Federal Reserve Notes are just another comodity to be bought and sold and traded just like everything else, and demand matters.
If FRN's were in higher demand someone might give me 3 apples for one in a heartbeat. Now they say...."well, FRN's are still acceptable (for now), but I'm only willing to give you 2 apples for one."
And Bitcoins and Gold are no different. The question with the dollar's demand becomes: how far can Benjanet stretch the elastic?
I've said it before, it's probably a good speculative play cause people get things wrong. To really survive the endless possibilities of virtual currencies it would have to become the world's mandated global currency, a la cashless society. Track and tax.
Otherwise the next virtual currency with a catchier name catches fire and BTC drops like a boulder.
BTC ATMs palm scan, photo ID elsewhere by law - just more checks on inherint and built-in ways of ascertaining ID for the cashless society.
Once it's mandated it's less tinker proof than it is now.
Raxcards dont even require your name - pull BTC out of an ATM in local currency anywhere in the world (runs through VISA).
Palm print first.
Operates on a 4 digit PIN, on any ATM that accepts Visa - no palm prints just yet.
It's a cook book, it's a cook book!
TO SERVE MAN
Bitcoins are becoming the currency of choice for the underground economy as gov clamps down on banks and privacy. It seems like the market has spoken. I don't own any, but wish I did.
There is the online route using Exchanges or Coinbase (if you are in the USA) or as simple as meeting somebody online or at a coffee shop: https://localbitcoins.com/
A "currency" with a highly fluctuating value is ... ?
A young, market driven device without a .Gov to set a price or peg, building faith in potential owners over time as people work to discover its true price through trading... It will settle down in the future.
I predict it will settle "UP" in the future ;)
...going through market discovery.
-Unlike virtually ANY other currency, investment, commodity, or exchange out there.
God created the world in 6 days, not 7.
Re: God created the world in 6 days, not 7.
Dude, the lazy bastard took a day off because the goddamn Diety Union (local 1) are just out to screw management.
And, look at the job the union bastasd did too. He calls this mess quality work? Christ, talk about coodled union workers...
Just a note from the front lines. I have, off and on, held some bitcoins. For use inside the deep web. Just had a few lying around with no plan to spend them, in the last few weeks their values has jumped big time. I feel it is time to cash them in. I am a bird in the hand man. If someone wants to double my money, I'll take it. I am not a long term holder of bitcoin. I did find it funny a few months back when the US Government moved to kill bitcoin. You know why? Must not have anything to threaten King Dollar's monopoly. But it failed, China has begun accepting bitcoin on their web. And 1 1/2 billion people CAN make a difference. Once again, China has told America to go fuck itself. If I profit short term, well, hell, I'll take it.
Anyone read that Home Land Security is advertizing for troops. Yes, google it, they are seeking high security clearance people to staff a new army. For some strange reason, they are being stationed in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Crazy! That's where I live. This is not a fake story, the Home Land Security is seeking new people for postions in this new organization. It can be confirmed in the public record. I only ask WTF is going on????
Re: they are being stationed in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
It's the water, man. Global warming, cheese, RomneyCare, shape shifting lizard people running the IMF, and water.
Put it all together and I think anybody with half a brain can figure it out!
I'll look into your homeland security warning (it was a warning right?) but today I found out that Wisconsin and Minnesota have overall tax climates in the bottom ten of states (43rd and 45th respectively).
I'm looking to incorporate a business in Delaware. Unfrotunately I'm in the Em Dee (41st best!) and the only reason we have an economy is due to federal workers and welfare recipients collecting checks.
"they are being stationed in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Crazy! That's where I live."
It's all about you Jack!
I wonder how Bitcoiners on San Juan Island are spending their bitcoins tonight...or in the near future.
From: http://www.islandssounder.com/news/230684391.html
Flip a coin..
Hypothetical situation...
BTC goes mainstream. Each coin is worth milllions and the world/internet economy obviously becomes a sort of too big to fail entity reliant on BTC. Then one day, the code is cracked by a super duper super computer, rendering the blockchain compromised. The panic would be such the economy would collapse.
Re: The panic would be such the economy would collapse.
I'm thinkin Bruce Willis in this one. Bruce saves humanity at the last minute by bustin' some geeky guy (Snowdon?) into the evil mastermind's underground bunker guarded by bi-sexual North Korean supermodel Ninja.
http://www.listentobitcoin.com/
It's another Ponzi scheme. No one said Ponzi schemes can't surge.
"If" Bitcoin were the real deal (a stateless, distributed, divisible, recognizable, fungible, scarce digital currency) and not a Ponzi, what would need to be different about it?
Folks LOVE to toss around "Ponzi" these days, but clearly do not understand the definition, much less why it can't possibly apply to Bitcoin.
Can Bitcoin go to zero? Yes. It's currency.
Ponzi? No.
Bitcoin, blah, blah, blah ... the globailst's wet dream, a 100% electronic global currency.
No thanks.
You mean, electronic like those Dollars, Euros, Yen and such that are stored on magnetic platters inside mechanical devices inside SANs linked via fibre optic cables and microwave links all across the world, connected to a grid transporting electricity to the massive data centres hosting all the banks information?
Here's what $USD1,000,000 looks like to a computer:
0b11110100001001000000
Bitcoin makes just as much sense as the tally stick system did in England right up until 1826. As a matter of fact that system was what help build the British Empire.
http://unusualhistoricals.blogspot.com/2010/10/money-matter-tally-stick-...
http://www.xat.org/xat/moneyhistory.html
all i do is continue accumulating $2 rolls of Nickels for $2
figure it can't be a loser and have some doubts about a 2014 issue ... if not it'll be 2015
Maybe the constant flow of Bitcoin hucksterism and pro-Bitcoin propaganda is working to obscure the fact that people are fleeing from one unaccountable fiat currency into another.
Bitcoin is 100% accountable. That's one of its main points. No Bitcoin user trusts any other Bitcoin user for reasons that should be obvious to you. (tungsten anybody?)
I WANT people to hate on Bitcoin. I've noticed that the more hatred and vitriol thrown at Bitcoin, the more the price goes up. I'll dump a few more bitcoins when 1 bitcoin nets two oz. of Au.
Please, please, please keep hating on Bitcoin. You're securing my future. Thanks.
If you want higher Bitcoin , you need to get Xenofrog to comment total reverse indicator fucktard
use your bit coins to buy gold and silver while you can
jb
Having heard all of the pro arguments, I have no idea why Bitcoin is even entertained as a value proposition.
I even get why it is superior to a nation states fiat currency. But still . . . Buy gold and silver physical for the same benefits.
If it need it I expect I will be able to trade my phys for Bitcoin. Is the converse true?
And besides, my spider sense says, or rather screams, "scam."
Bitcoin is more portable, divisible, and recognizable than PMs. "If" Bitcoin were the real deal, wouldn't it be pretty cool?
http://www.amagimetals.com/ in Denver accepts Bitcoin for PM purchases. There are others.
PM's are utterly manipulated - there is no fundamental reason why gold isnt $2500+, and silver $50+ .. so for those tired of waiting for a total short squeeze to crush the manipulation, BTC is responding very well and in real time.
I used to have about 70% silver, 25% gold and 5% BTC - now I'm around 50% BTC - thats purely based on the run up in price of BTC.
PMs have limited upside. BTC has appreciated 100x so far, and it's got another 100x to go. Don't even need a fiat collapse to make it happen.
"Just a few months ago, it looked like this economic experiment as the world’s first decentralized technology-based form of money would crash and burn."
No.
It.
Didn't.
At least, not to anyone with any real understanding of it, or anyone with any capability of being objective.
"Anyone with any capability of being objective."
Now there's a scarce resource.
Ya - anyone who has a brain could see that the movements are actually extremely predictable. Its like a successful new tech stock - its going to have fast run ups, followed by pulls backs, then consolidation.
What amazes me about BTC is the run up slope, the short time frame of pull backs and consolidation. The fact that these time frames are so short tells me that there is onging and steady demand.
there's an ask wall at 280 USD (bitstamp) and at 1900 CNY (=312 USD per FX). if those are breached, there's basically no upside resistance.
Correct, and the ask curve seems to be flattening out to 300 on Bitstamp. We're going to see an epic rally, and all of these sticks-in-the-mud with their crappy yields on STAWKS and BONDS are bickering about you "can't hold it in your hand" idiocy.
Fine, more for me. I don't mind being up another few thousand percent.
What did you make on those stocks? What? Under 10%? Hahahahaha. For fucks sake.
Epic. $300 and climbing in China, let's see if the laggards in the west play catchup..
http://i.imgur.com/2XNH0N9.png?1
Update: Yes, coins have been sold for $302 on Mt.Gox
I don't know where people have been but the US Government doesn't run things around here. The US has become a Corporate fascist state and BitCoin just happens to be of Corporate interests. So there you have it.
BTFBD: Buy The Fucking BitCoin Dip
I love these bitcoin for fucking idiots articles.
Not so keen on the "I wouldn't touch it with a barge-pole, what, you think electrons are better than gold" shit that always follows one though. Getting boring.
I guess those are the people like lemonobrien (first comment) who haven't got any.
Cheers!
Fred
The BTC vs. PM arguments are moronic. What's the obvious answer for someone asking if they should put all of their money into one stock or the other? Diversify! Sure BTC is a risk, but so is EVERY other option. At some point, people will stop telling those who have taken multiples of what they put into BTC, out of BTC that they are idiots. The point is diversification is the name of the game. Every option for wealth allocation/investment has it's own benefits and risks, and should be considered accordingly. The smarter people are quicker to realize this.
You nailed it.