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These 441 (And Rising) Retailers Are Offering "Bitcoin Black Friday" Deals
If one of the initial fears surrounding Bitcoin, or rather digital currencies of which there suddenly appears to be a veritable tsunami now that anyone with an algorithm can become their own central bank (and all are exploding in value in what should make at least a few people nervous) is lack of adoption, that may be put to rest courtesy of a new initiative called "Bitcoin Black Friday" which, as TechCrunch reports, has been adopted by over 400 online retailers who starting on Friday will be offering special deals just for Bitcoin users.
Since this is Bitcoin's first unofficial Thanksgiving, having stormed on the public scene after exploding in price from under $100 to nearly trading on parity with an ounce of gold, many of the Bitcoin-only offers are gimmicky: "you can use bitcoins to buy a bacon-flavored lollipop or a ticket to space on Virgin Atlantic, for example. That's not really going to help you with your holiday shopping list, though. However, there are some decent choices on the site, too, but for obvious reasons, they tend to be a little more geeky in nature. Adafruit, for instance, is offering 10% off of everything in stock, including Raspberry Pi. Reddit is selling Reddit Gold. The Humble Bundle has deals up for grabs. There are also software, electronics, domain name and hosting deals, and so on."
A sampling of the deals from the site is shown below:
And while there are some good deals to be found...
Mobile gift card app Gyft is one of the better deals available, giving Bitcoin shoppers 4 percentage points back when you buy gift cards from its supported retailer partners, like Target, Gamestop, Gap, Zappos, Nike, Old Navy, and hundreds of others. If you were stocking up on gift cards anyway, that's worth taking advantage of. (For what it's worth, PayPal users will get 3% back, while credit card users get 2% back, the company says.)
... TechCrunch correctly observes that the catalog is no Amazon, for obvious reasons: "the deal quality on “Bitcoin Black Friday” is a good indicator of where Bitcoin is in terms of mainstream adoption. That is, not so much. There really aren't big-name retailers on board with the digital currency at this time... big-name tech companies like Google, Amazon and eBay aren't going to play along either, as they all have their own payment mechanisms to push (Google Wallet, PayPal and Amazon's one-click checkout experience, respectively)."
But the list of vendors is growing at a pace that only rivals the explosion in the price of Bitcoin itself:
The Bitcoin Black Friday movement is still growing, however. Earlier this week, it was touting that 250 retailers had signed up, and today there are nearly 200 more. Evan Greer of Fight the Future also tells us the site has seen over 30,000 unique visitors to date, almost half of which arrived yesterday. Meanwhile, over 4,000 people have signed up to get an email when the deals go live.
And even if the popularity of Bitcoin adoption also follows a parabolic curve, a bigger problem is accurately observed by TechCrunch. Consider that on one hand Internet activists Fight for the Future are trying to spread the word about the Bitcoin Black Friday efforts, somewhat radicalizing the event by pointing to Bitcoin's potential to be disruptive to the status quo. "Bitcoin is an amazing new technology, but because it challenges established industries, it will face serious political opposition–especially in the U.S. where those industries are strongest,” the message reads on the project's site. “Bitcoin will only be safe once millions of people rely on it every day.”
Yet on the other hand, it is the sheer surge in the USD-denominated value of Bitcoin itself that may be turning off many people due to the law of large numbers (Bitcoin can't do a reverse stock split), and instead potential entrants to the digital currency world are looking at far cheaper BTC competitors (and there are plenty), as an alternative:
Of course, Bitcoin won't reach those mainstream “millions” while speculators drive the price of the cryptocurrency to crazy new heights. That doesn't discount its long-term potential though as a money transfer platform, though. But as a payment mechanism for online shopping? While it's great that there are over 441 retailers on board with Bitcoin Black Friday, it would be better if there were more deals mainstream users would actually want to buy. Instead of say, Bitcoin t-shirts, stickers, glasses, mining equipment….and, oh yeah, more Bitcoin.
Then there is the flipside to the argument. If and when the inevitable correction comes, how many of those who decided to give bitcoin "a try" will end up losing substantial disposable income and be turned off by the whole concept of alternative currencies? Someone with a paranoid bent may see how such a scenario could be put to great use by those who can create fiat de novo and use it to bid up BTC to stratospheric levels only to force a crash subsequently.
* * *
And in totally unrelated news, and showing that sometimes nothing beats having a physical currency in one's hand is the story of James Howells from Wales, who bought 7500 Bitcoins in 2009, forgot about them, threw away his hard disk and is now scrambling to retrieve because the value of his "digital wallet" has exploded to over $7 million! From BBC:
A Newport man has been searching a landfill site in south Wales hoping to find a computer hard drive he threw away which is now worth over £4m.
James Howells's hard drive contains 7,500 bitcoins - which is a virtual form of currency for use online. It had sat in a drawer for years and he had forgotten it contained the bitcoins, which he obtained in 2009 for almost nothing, when he threw it out.
But this week, a single bitcoin's value hit $1,000 (£613) for the first time. It means Mr Howells's collection is now worth $7.5m (£4.6m).
A few years ago Mr Howells, who works in IT, had dismantled his computer after spilling a drink on it. "I stored a couple of parts away like the hard drive, and the rest of the bits and pieces which were still working I sold for spares," he told BBC Radio Wales.
"I kept the hard drive in a drawer in my office for three years without a second thought - totally forgot about bitcoin all together. I had been distracted by family life and moving house.
"Fast forward to 2013 which is when I had a clearout of my old IT equipment - I hadn't used this drive for over three years, I believed I'd taken everything off it... so it got thrown in the bin."
Mr Howells later realised what was left on the hard drive.
He added: "I had been hearing a few stories of a chap from Norway who had bought a number of coins for a very low price and had sold them for a high price and that's when I got back into checking the price and seeing what I'd done.
"When I found out what the price was, the penny dropped and I realised the coins I have 'mined' were on the drive I had thrown away.
"There was not a lot I could do."
Good luck James.
The irony here is that while many owners of the barbarous relic, (which may not be rising parabolically in price right now, but at least feels quite firm to the touch) are known to have "unfortunate boating accidents", water has a less than desired effect on electronics. But that's ok: we are confident that any Bitcoin lost in the electronic ether can always be retrieved eventually: just call 1-800-NSA.
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we all know he still has them.... just throwing them off the trail
Beliefs about Bitcoin are very polarized here on ZH. Lets see some numbers by completing this SURVEY:
Vote UP arrow if you believe Bitcoin will increase considerably in value over the next year.
Vote DOWN arrow if you believe Bitcoin will decrease considerably in value over the next year.
I don't find them very polarized. Just right and wrong.
Main things I'll watch next year to see if Bitcoin remains on track for success:
It retains its position as the best performing asset for the 4th year in a row.
The percentage of merchants accepting Bitcoin as a payment method continues to increase at an increasing rate.
I belive it will considerably increase in value over the next year, and then considerably decrease to near $0 over another one. where's button for that?
Eye on ball. Get to info first. Joe public likes to vegetate. Don't be a vegetable and get out when the time is right.
you can't know when time is right, especially for something unanchored to anything, valued by wishful thinking. time was right when most were wrong.
'you can't know when time is right' - exactly so with all investments, including PM.
This time next year 1 btc = 1 USD. Or less.
When I telephoned my Dad I sad, 'Wait a few months and it will $1000 an ounce.' He died after about 3 months after that call. It is not belief that is important, we can all be hit by surprises no matter how wise we think we are. That is why we diversify. That is why when you hold both PM and crypto, then you understand the smug cries of 'Speculator!' are from the kind of people who stock up on 500kg rice, only to have no tinned protein.
Why does it matter if one bitcoin is beyond the reach of many? You can buy fractions of a bitcoin.
Unfortunately the divisibility of bitcoin is perhaps one of the most under-exposed aspects of it, right now the uninformed genuinely believe they have to be purchases in whole units.
Would be nice to just list them in Satoshis. 100,000 satoshis for $1! amazing deal!
A good wallet program that was lighter than the default one, but secure (no Java, Javascript, web wallet or other BS) and denominated in satoshis would be fantastic.
You can also buy feather coin for less than a dollar a coin. It increased by 10% in the last hour.
Just dumped litecoins I got on a whim 6 months ago back into bitcoin for a very handsome profit. Altcoins are a distraction.
Will their prices be marked down at the same rate that bitcoin is rising?
Yes. If merchants don't, their competition will.
NEVER. That mark-down would bankrupt every merchant in a day.
Bitcoin is great for the early adopters but not so good for people coming late to the party.
Where have I heard this scheme before?
PM sellers say exactly the same thing, don't be late for the silver/gold/platinum run.
If Bitcoin is in a bubble, Ben Bernanke made it.
"You didn't blow that"
~~Barry Obozo
"If you want to keep your Bitcoins, you can keep your Bitcoins."
Wouldn't be surprised if the usual suspects were playing games here. Ooh, look gold is spiking, I mean bitcoin, I mean gold, no, wait.....
Blam!
I like the CheapAir/BTC exchange idea. The price fluctuations of airfare and BTC make that pair a perfect match.
Bitcoins have the characteristics of 3 different asset classes; art, money, commodity. Now let me explain:
Art - The only thing that is really finite is art. Once the artist dies, that's it. Only 24 million bitcoins can ever come into existence once those 24 million are mined, there are no more. The number of bitcoins that come into existence is halved every four years.
Commodity - I buy a bitcoin and sell it for a profit (or a loss). It can be used to exchange for money (like any commodity)
Money - Now this is where it gets interesting. Let's say I buy a bitcoin and use that bitcoin to buy a widget. The person who accepted my bitcoin can now convert it to dollars OR say, hey that was easy, I like this I wonder what I can buy with it. That person buys a widget with bitcoin. Guess what happened? 2 degrees of separation between transactions and dollars. The more this happens the more it resembles money.
A lot of people hate on bitcoin because they think people are looking at it like gold. Most bitcoin holders aren't. Bitcoin is simply another way to diversify from central banks who will print your currency into a shit wipe. You don't have to put $1,000,000 in bitcoin, put a hundred in or a few hundred, try it out and see how easy it is to use.
Now the fact is your money really isn't safe in the bank. Ben is printing 1 Trillion a year and the dollar has lost 98% of its value in 100 years. People who had money in bank accounts in Cyprus learned that they didn't really have money in the bank - it was stolen. Pensions in Poland were confiscated. Any of this shit can blow up at any time. Buy a little bitcoin, hold your gold/silver and just see what happens.
What backs bitcoin? What makes it better than litecoin? The most powerful computer network by orders of magnitude, what comes with that is; i. security, ii. transaction time. The speed of the bitcoin network can only be measured in scientific notation at this point. It is that bad ass.
Smug gold stackers who cannot admit to themselves that PM is just as much speculation as anything else. There are no certainties, other than death.
Tell me people aren't talking about bitcoin like these newscasters were talking about the internet in 1994:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUs7iG1mNjI
I have bitcoin, I've transacted in bitcoin and I can tell you from my experience it is revolutionary. It's just very misunderstood.
I understand that too. When you use it a while you realize that bitcoin makes PayPal redundant. Use it for trading and you realize it makes all banking redundant. This month I offered to pay my landlady in bitcoins... I would work or do business with pure cryptos, prefering that payment over regular currency. I can stockpile cryptos, then take a 'holiday' to Switzerland for 6 months, cash out there and have virtually no taxes to pay, all perfectly legal.
FAIL. Commodities have ONE important quality: ability to be used, like food or tools.
Bitcoin has no use. Trade-value of a commodity is based ONLY on its ability to be used: how much, where & by who & some value is based on WHEN.
Bitcoin can't do that & never has.
I have to admit that over 400 vendors is a pretty impressive list, although I can honestly say I have never heard of roughly 400 of these vendors.
Bacon lollipops? Please, if this is a selling point of .......nevermind.
OT but much more important right now: What is the right temperature when Turkey is done?
That depends on whether it's served on China (or in Gre/ece/ase).
"What backs bitcoin?"
Good FUN?
What backs gold?
unablility to have FUN?
It is not fun having to sell it to pay the bills. Last month I've been having hard time getting to sleep, worrying about my ever diminishing silver supply. The last couple of days I turned 400 euro investment into crypto in 3200 euro assets and growing. Now I sleep properly again.
now you're a full-fledged hedge fund. worrying ever about wallet backups?
Encrypted and zipped with encryption, copied to multiple diverse areas. No problems there. I worry more about tripping up and banging my head.
Make a paper wallet and store in a safe. Very easy.
People don't realize yet that you can actually hold bitcoin.
sure, paint the wallet on the cake so you can even EAT IT. unlike gold bars and credit cards :D
now, that's where i get all luddite about it. i lose about half the posts i make here on zh before they get posted .... and i'm gonna put money in this machine? hah! thats why my btc's is numismatic! purchased at 12$ and selling right now for about 2500$ and counting bitchez ....
( it'll be worth as much as my puny lil' stash of 4 1/4 oz liberties , 4 silver keisers and 60 monarch bars- before i had to sell 'em for rent this summer, no boating accident here- by february)
$2500? Where do you get that from? 1:13AM Fri Nov 29 Mt. Gox @ $1180
casascus circa 2011 seiries 2 only 1000 of them minted.
I can hold pocket lint too but that doesn't make it special, nor me rich.
Why don't you ask your wife/girlfriend by holding a gold bracelet in one hand and a bitcoin stock certificate in the other
she preffers MasterCard
An economy based on the perceptions of women:
"And yet the motives of women are so inscrutable. You remember the woman at Margate whom I suspected for the same reason. No powder on her nose — that proved to be the correct solution. How can you build on such a quicksand? Their most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin or a curling tongs."
I think this comment just shows us the level of intelligence of your girlfriend. My girlfriend would take the BTC without a second's thought.
Wifey is quite stocked up in BTC. I offered to rotate a portion into PMs for her (like I am planning for myself) but she. is. not. interested.
I get it. Now she thinks all your assets are in BTC so when she divorces you a year from now, half of nothing is nothing & you're off the hook.
GENIUS.
i'd prefer gold myself. call me old-fashioned.
Then your girlfriend is very dumb. Gold is real money now & forever. BTC is a ponzi-trade for dollars now and is worth nothing a year from now.
Pussy and Yachts back gold, everyone knows that, its economics 101.
The same thing that backs gold. BTC is backed by a unique pattern of numbers and letters as defined by natural law, math. Gold is backed by a unique pattern of neutrons, electons and protons as defined by natural law, chemistry. Both are backed by natural law which is beyond the manipulation of any human or group of humans. However, unlike phsyical gold, a BTC key can exist in physical form and/or digital form in redundant copies concurrenty. For exmample, a single unique BTC key can be stored on a USB drive, PC hard drive, in the cloud and on a piece of paper in a safe, all at the same time. Gold, however, is tied to it's physical matter and therefore is limited to only existing as matter in the material world. This makes gold inferior to BTC as sound money.
Gold is backed by ATOMIC MASS, and chemical properties - bitcoin has NONE of these.
You brainwashed idiot.
I can use those atoms DIRECTLY such as for my teeth. That's my PRIMARY value / use for gold. Bitcoin can't do anything like that.
Drive storage is garbage: they all can be destroyed from age, heat, electrical storms, fire, etc. Gold survives ALL Of that.
BTC is unsound non-money and inferior to gold in EVERY way. The more copies the WORSE it is. The faster you can move it the WORSE it is. Gold's inability to move like bitcoin is the sole SECURITY for it. Bitcoin has NO security because it has none of these properties. They can be destroyed in a nanosecond - never gold - and computer / phone snooping can lose you the entire lot INSTANTLY, never for gold.
Gold is the most sound & powerful money ever to exist.
Bitcoin is less valuable than POCKET LINT or a cigarette butt.
*passes a MeelionDollerBogus a tissue*
You should really do one of those Hitler youtube sketches on this subject.
Silly fool. Next gold i'm getting is in my teeth. Because it's useful.
I still don't get it. Is the $100 Target gift card now only 1/12 of a BTC when that same gift card cost 1/3 of a BTC recently? Really? Is whoever the supplier of these cards is to Target, willing to shell out 400% higher values in Target gift cards? Is Target on the receiving end of the inflated BTCs and forced to accept less BTC value for the same Dollar amount as the gift card? It's a small market, so Target et al. may just entertain this as a marketing gig.
The largest holders of BTC have neither bought nor sold since Feb to April time frame this year. The table was posted here on ZH a few days back. It's a tightly locked supply and if PCLN with 98% institutional ownership can go into orbit, so can BTC. The key is that nobody is either selling or converting PCLN or BTC.
Both can go higher theoretically. Good luck playing.
"The largest holders of BTC have neither bought nor sold since Feb to April time frame this year"
Not true. I actually took the time to click on the first 50 addresses at www.bitcoinrichlist.com. Guess what I found?
#2 holder halved his position.
http://bitcoinrichlist.com/address/17UUsmejDsjJEtbRcotd289ADp7ZdanH5k?ch...
#5 holder completely sold out.
http://bitcoinrichlist.com/address/13DRu4fXZ7gr8pykRVKwwStPUnUvfhMXJS?ch...
#9 holder completely sold out
http://bitcoinrichlist.com/address/1FGAftzSTztFSB8LMwsrdCKTyqGY6zr3sU?ch...
I could post others but I'll afford you the opportunity to do your own due diligence.
This is obviously where a lot of the volatility has come from but guess what? We're still at near record highs which means there are people ready to buy those bitcoins.
Two weeks ago coinbase literally ran out of bitcoin (and they are one of the biggest places in which to buy bitcoin) The appetite IS there, people are WAITING for them to sell. The adoption rate for merchants accepting bitcoin is literally through the roof, more so than the actual price of bitcoin. But again you have to do your due diligence and actually research the developments.
Ok, thanks for doing the DD.
That university which started accepting BTC as payment for example. Are they exchanging the cost of tuition from Dollars to BTC on a daily basis? What if I had the fortune of owning enough BTC TODAY to pay for the tuition of all my four kids. Do you think that they would go for it? I might not have enough tomorrow or I may even have to pay less.
It seems insane.
The cryptocoin deflation is insane, that is why you should invest in feathercoin today.
"That university which started accepting BTC as payment for example. Are they exchanging the cost of tuition from Dollars to BTC on a daily basis?"
I don't know what they are doing with their bitcoin nor do I care. I can tell you the EURO hasn't treated Greece well which is where that University is located.
The cool thing is that you can convert them into your local currency if you can't handle the volatility, or you can hold them, or you can accept them and use them elsewhere as the adoption grows. Bitcoin is incredibly versatile which is what is nice about it. It's also global, I can have bitcoin that I bought in America for example, take a trip to Germany and spend some of it in a town like this: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/video/2013/apr/26/bitcoin-currency....
It's easy to buy. And anyone in the world can buy it. Keep in mind - 7 billion people 21 million bitcoin. Everyone won't get a whole bitcoin.
They can immediantely transfer the Btc pmt to Euro or $ if they wish to. It is Point of Sale. POS. The risk is on the holder.
but where did that bitcoins go? maybe another of holders accounts, you can not know.
" The adoption rate for merchants"
sounds like GROUPON
didn't its founders sell their shares after IPOs fast?
"but where did that bitcoins go? maybe another of holders accounts, you can not know."
Two points here:
i. True. You truly do not know. Which is one of the benefits of bitcoin. Private control of your own money.
ii. You can draw calculated assumptions. If you juxtapose the times positions were either moved or sold and they coincide with times when bitcoin went from 900 to 400 in one night, it would be safe to assume that's probably what caused it.
As soon as BTC is put on an interbank F/X platform (EBS) and can be traded out at least 5 decimal places, I'll make it part of my F/X trading portfolio.
It's got way too much volatility right now. These $50-100 violent swings don't bode well for a good liquid exchange medium. There needs to be many more players and much more liquidity(price stability) first.
when they start trading USDBTC on margin, you'll get hell lot of stability :D
Guess what. Most electronic junk including probably James' computer get send to Africa for recycling. Africans are the new billionaires because their kids are digging up old hard drives from the land fills and 'mining' BTC. I know at least a dozen of my old PCs since the first days of PCs went to Africa. The biggest graveyard for old harddrives is Africa imo. Good for them!
Good luck trying to guess my 20+ character passworld.
First think I do when I download a new wallet, and I have about 5 of them, is to encrypt them, then backup the encrypted wallet file. Then I zip the encrypted file in an ecrypted zip with another password 20+ characters in length. The encryption schemes are different, as are the passwords. By the time NSA is done decrypting my key I will ahve empied the account anyway and there will be nothing but nanocoins left in the account.
LOL! To be worthy it must be at least 20 WORDS with odd symbols. 20 characters is EASILY hackable on a government super computer. My passwords do not go lower than EIGHTY CHARACTERS.
that must be a lot of heat from these PCs. no wonder Africa is so hot climate.
Nobody is getting rich with old hardware, unless the hard drive has an unencrypted wallet.dat sitting on it.
Even for Scrypt mining, you need a decent, fairly modern AMD GPU.
They need to set BTC up like xau contracts. 100/10/1 toz. Price it out 3 decimal points at least, and allow the standard 50:1 or lower f/x leverage rates. A 100toz gold contract moves $1 with each cent in price, a 10toz contact = 10 cents, 1toz=1cent ect...
Someting along those lines. Leverage not margin. No margin calls you just stop out of your position.
BTC contracts are not BTCs themselves
it will have no significant impact on BTC volatility, liquidity etc, it's just another instrument
Yes they would be actual BTC contracts and it would affect liquidity. The exchange would have to guarantee(bid/ask prices) access and liquidity to the pool of bitcoins/blockchain ect...Just like any other tradeable currency.
Yen: I knew you would come along and fuck some sense into this!
Cheers
Cheers Angus.
Mt.Gox currently offers 8 decimal places of precision. How does your plan differ from the current order book, viewable at http://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/mtgox/btcusd?
So what you are saying is, gold manipulation and the lack of gold at the comex is a good thing?
100 paper ounces per 1 real ounce of gold actually helps gold, since it suppresses volitility?
But but but I thought they were evil manipulators, but they prevent wild swings?
I'm using gold as a template for contract size and structure since the prices are comparable. Don't put words in my mouth. You know just as well as I do that BTC wouldn't experience these 200 dollar price gyrations every other day if the market had more liquidity.
Excellent point. I had forgot about that.
I know very well it would be 800 a day in that case.
I thought I did the same thing as the guy at the dump but when I found an old wallet backup everything was there. Wasn't so bad a couple years ago.
If you think you can trade an item worth $1000 for a Bitcoin you think will be worth $2000 in short order, just about everyone will try to trade items for them.
It is the chase to find a greater fool. The chase for wealth without work.
It has happened many times in history and it will continue to happen. The items may be different but the scheme is always the same. People traded their homes for tulip bulbs. If a Bitcoin goes to $100k people will trade their house for a Bitcoin in the hopes that same Bitcoin can buy a home twice the size a year later.
I've never seen more scams in my life. It seems you can't be in business unless you are running a scam.
"It is the chase to find a greater fool. The chase for wealth without work."
Mine a block of 50 bitcoins by hand. Let me know how that works out for you.
"People traded their homes for tulip bulbs."
I love it when people bring this up... bitcoin = tulip bulbs. You can grow unlimited amounts of tulips (and by extenion their bulbs), kind of like dollars. There are only 24 million bitcoins that can ever come into existence. Why does the artwork of Picasso fetch such high prices? Picasso is dead and he's not making more art. Once the 24 million bitcoins have been mined that's it.
"I've never seen more scams in my life. It seems you can't be in business unless you are running a scam."
The onus is on you to make a case on why it is a scam. Otherwise you're making ad hominem attacks against an asset it appears you don't understand.
Why does the artwork of Uncle Fred not fetch such high prices? He is (also) dead and he's not making more art.
Something about value ...
I'm not going to tell you the answer to this. I want you to find it out for yourself.
How many calculations are done on the bitcoin network per second? Because THAT is where the value is. That number represents (like I've said in my above comments) i. security; ii. transaction speed.
from 1 to a quadrillion quadrillion the value is zero. What is produced has no value as a usable output product. Once you consume that electricity & time you have destroyed value because nothing was produced with it and no one else can use the same power or time later. You stored nothing, you wasted it.
Also the l33 n00b bitcoin miners have no optical VLSI systems dedicated, unlike Uncle Sam, which means you have less than 1% of all BTC now and they have the rest. You're screwed.
You've clearly NEVER grown tulips. They are in no way unlimited, nor is the ground they grow in, nor is the time it takes to grow them.
Even so they have higher value than bitcoin.
Onus, scam: every person who makes a "profit" on bitcoin causes a massive financial loss to another person. The INSTANT enough people figure out that they are the bag-holder BEFORE grabbing the bag then all others holding bitcoins go broke instantly. They all go to zero and stay at zero.
"It is the chase to find a greater fool. The chase for wealth without work."
If you think managing a GPU farm, troubleshooting electronics/software/network issues, maintaining cooling/electricity isn't work then you're the biggest fool.
Work also includes risk. Risk included the eventual sale of said GPU farm and learning how to do the same with FPGA equipment, then again with ASIC equipment. I've worked a lot, and risked a lot - and now I've earned my rewards. If people are willing to pay me $1,000 or more for a piece of my work, then so be it. No different if I had packed up a mule and a shovel and headed west during the 1840's.
I'll tell ya what isn't work:
1. Buy gold
2. Wait for world to go to shit
3. Profit
it isn't work if you don't produce a useful output like analysis of a business, problem, rendering graphics, designing genomes, buildings, etc.
The output is btc: btc has no intrinsic value or use & it's barely good for it's INTENDED use. You can shovel cow shit up and down a road for 8 hours a day 6 days a week but that's not work either. That's shoveling shit for nothing.
Same situation.
You've earned nothing & you can only get dollars out of your btc ponzi to get "value" and that means someone else LOST value. It's the definition of a ponzi that you can only get paid on the losses of others. Dollars don't have that quality. PRINTING Them faster than they can be earned gets money value for the printer by inflationary theft but as soon as that printing is LEVEL that problem is GONE. Bitcoin on the other hand CAN'T go level because it can ONLY function as a ponzi with fiat-gateways.
You produce nothing of value. I wouldn't give you one PENNY for a bitcoin for fear of overpaying.
@adr
"the chase for wealth without work"
If Yen Cross makes a correct fx trade he has done that by pushing buttons on a computer, nary a shovel is involved. If fonzanoone makes a great bond call his account is credited, with no pick-axe in sight.They both made 'money'.
I am trying to wrap my head around this crypto-currency thing but, what is the difference? I am ignorant, I just don't see the difference.
YC and fonz, no offence, just looking for answers, just using you as examples.
the difference is that high-value goods are purchased with everything that's not btc and when gateways are closed, or full of robbers, that turn btc into cash, you're out of luck. You also can't pay tax in btc and can't stay out of prison NOT paying tax - unless you use EBT.
And here it is, corporate support, and just in time for Christmas. That's all I need to confirm my long held suspicions that bitcoin is the NWO electronic currency we have so anxiously awaited.
And all they had to do to get you to buy into it is claim it is outside the system.
Well here's the news folks, bitcoin IS the NEW system. Meet the new boss,m same as the old boss. NO fucking thanks.....
Do they have Trader Joe's cards? I'm tired of eating at Target.
it has to crash as thre are only really 175,000 wallets with Bitcoins in them ,,
http://bitcoinrichlist.com/charts/bitcoin-distribution-by-address
And what airlines uses them I need a ticket to Pittsburgh for the Holidays.
No Pittsburgh is not a country.
Hope this chap finds his harddrive.
http://www.dailydot.com/news/james-howells-bitcoin-buried-landfill-millions-hard-drive/
If he doesn't, the remaining supply of bitcoin becomes even more scarce.
https://bitcoinpaperwallet.com/images/water-damage.jpg
I would suggest lamenating.
Lol
Same thing could happen to the GPS coordinates of my secret gold stash as well. 6th graders learn about backups these days, even in American schools.
idiot.
If you don't know where your gold is without a GPS & for that matter, you wrote it down, you're not a genuine stacker, you're a l33t n00b poseur.
Cool. I boycott bitcoin and black friday. I get 441 items of easy mockery!