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Bitcoin More Than Doubles 2015 Lows As Chinese Ignore Easing Capital Controls
Bitcoin is up 123% from its January lows and over 50% higher than its early-September (post-Bitcoin XT anxiety) lows when we first warned about the virtual currency's relationship with possible China outflows. Despite promises of easing capital controls (and the chaos in the Yuan market over the last few days), it appears the Chinese are not waiting for the other shoe to drop and as offshore Yuan tumbled, so Bitcoin surged above $340 this morning (rallying all the way back to unchanged YoY).
After sending Yuan soaring - on an apparent easing of capital controls - Bitcoin (and Yuan) are now ignoring official statements are back to rotating away from the Chinese currency. And as we recently concluded, the last week or two suggests, perhaps more importantly, that China easing (and outflows implict from further devaluation) now appears to go straight to Bitcoin.
As Overstock's Chairman noted previously: gold is great, but tough to transport; thus, forcing Chinese into Bitcoin as we previously explained:
As we concluded previously, while China is doing everything in its power to not give the impression that it is panicking, the truth is that it is one viral capital outflow report away from an outright scramble to enforce the most draconian capital controls in its history, which - as every Cypriot and Greek knows by now - is a self-defeating exercise and assures an ever accelerating decline in the currency, which authorities are trying to both keep stable while also devaluing at a pace of their choosing. Said pace never quite works out.
So what happens then: well, China's propensity for gold is well-known. We would not be surprised to see a surge of gold imports into China, only instead of going to the traditional Commodity Financing Deals we have written extensively about before, where gold is merely a commodity used to fund domestic carry trades, it ends up in domestic households.
However, while gold has historically been the best store of value in history and has outlasted every currency known to man, it is problematic when it comes to transferring funds in and out of a nation - it tends to show up quite distinctly on X-rays.
Which is why we would not be surprised to see another push higher in the value of bitcoin: it was earlier this summer when the digital currency, which can bypass capital controls and national borders with the click of a button, surged on Grexit concerns and fears a Drachma return would crush the savings of an entire nation. Since then, BTC has dropped (in no small part as a result of the previously documented "forking" with Bitcoin XT), however if a few hundred million Chinese decide that the time has come to use bitcoin as the capital controls bypassing currency of choice, and decide to invest even a tiny fraction of the $22 trillion in Chinese deposits in bitcoin (whose total market cap at last check was just over $3 billion), sit back and watch as we witness the second coming of the bitcoin bubble, one which could make the previous all time highs in the digital currency, seems like a low print.
Read more details on how to smuggle $10 million out of China (and why that is stopping) here...
* * *
As Bloomberg noted overnight,
China’s central bank is finalizing revisions to its foreign-exchange rules that would loosen some capital controls while preserving its ability to intervene in times of volatility
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It's not gold and you can't hold it but it's free from Central Bank manipulation, that gives it a plus in my book.
As governments move towards cashless societies, they will not allow for an escape exit. They will simply utilize BTC protocol, while crushing BTC the currency. They will simply make it illegal for banks to transfer funds to BTC exchanges. Perhaps even pulling a Hunt brothers, by only allowing banks to accept incoming transfers from the BTC exchanges.
....that's stupid. Oh yeah..
OMG IT'S FUFUUFUFUFUFF'N BITCOIN oNZH!! SATOSHI WE LOVES YOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
China now "mines" about 57% of new Bitcoin. While there are (apparently) no "Chinese whales" (owners of huge amounts of BTC), if rich Chinese start buying BTC en masse, then the price will probably go up, maybe up a lot.
In the meantime, anyone in the USA can use BTC to buy gold from providentmetals.com while waiting.
At some point teh people using Bitcoin to transfer money out of China and other countries are going to suffer an epiphany... "hey what are we transfering it back into? Fiat? Why?"
Derp derp, just like you do gold derpity derp
exactly, when the fiat faceplants people will panic trying to preserve their "wealth" (as in when people realize fiat has no value because it got corrupted and is created out of thin air and backed by nothing but threats, violence and fear)
at that point people will stop thinking about how much cash they get for bitcoin because there will be no point in using intermediaries "corrupt money, unwieldy physical objects, etc"
The price will only go up until they SELL their bitcoin.
only stupid people sell their bitcoins.
it has a finite supply of 21 million, most of which has already been calculated and distributed
I'm not suprised China is one of the highest miners of bitcoin. All that cheap labour and cheap steel for shovels = mining heaven.
"They will simply utilize BTC protocol"
Oh please tell us exactly how they will "utilize BTC protocol". I mean, you sure sound like you know what you are talking about, and not at all like you are just talking out of your ass like a moron.
"They will simply make it illegal for banks to transfer funds to BTC exchanges"
That might happen, but it would be of little consequence, as you can just trade them directly, or via matching services like localbitcoins.
Tmosely the big Bitcoin guru now. On past form Tmosely could have stopped Sea Biscuit with a $1 bet,
@tmosely - School is open:
1. BTC protocol will be and is already being used within the financial industy and governments will utilize the technology to create their own e-currencies.
2. If there is no physical cash and the banks wont accomadate the transfer of funds - how does new money get into BTC? This is the nail in the BTC coffin. And if there is physical cash how many people with large sums of money will trust "matching services".
Sorry to pop your BTC cherry - but you have lost your mind if you believe BTC is anything but a temporarily government experiment!
BTC was not written by government, is not administered by government, and is not operated by government. That is why they fear it. You've lost your mind if you think government has anything to do with Bitcoin. Even if Satoshi was an NSA higher-up, most of it at this point he had nothing to do with, and barring incomprehensibly fast brute-force hashing ability the likes of which would make NSA look like script-kiddies by comparison, there is no way to stop it.
1) Who cares what the financial industry does with blockchain technology. Let them create their own currencies and then watch the free market pick winners and losers.
2) Do you have any idea what value is and how money represents that value? If so, you should re-read your point #2 and try not to look so retarded in your reply.
"1. BTC protocol will be and is already being used within the financial industy and governments will utilize the technology to create their own e-currencies."
i'm all in favor of governments trying to come up with "their own e-currencies", and letting the market decide which one they prefer to use. government theives won't be able to restrain themselves, however, to a 21 million limit in currency units like bitcoin has, which is why i wouldn't use theirs.
"2. If there is no physical cash and the banks wont accomadate the transfer of funds - how does new money get into BTC?"
this question reveals a flaw in your thinking - new money doesn't need to "get into" bitcoin, bitcoin is already money, or at the very least, currency. people can and do trade real wealth, goods and services, such as gold, landscaping services, a case of beer, whatever, for bitcoin. this is much better than buying bitcoin with paper $usd promisary notes, which will return to their intrinsic value, i.e., toilet paper.
Crypto exchanges have a limited useful life span anyway. Decentralized exchanges are coming online within 12 months. Already the official OTC market through brokers is in the neighborhood of 250,000 btc/mo.
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/new-data-from-otc-trading-desks-rev...
If the govts made it illegal for the banks to deal with exchanges, the price in dollars would shoot through the roof. Bids would have to go way up to compensate sellers of bitcoin for their trouble. It won't happen.
In a SHTF scenario it goes to 0 faster than physical central bank printed fiat currency.
How long does your SHTF scenario last? Is everywhere on Earth SHTFING all at once? After the SHTFING does everyone plan on playing dumb and eating squirrel meat forever? If you plan on dying in SHTF anyway don't buy gold, silver or Bitcoin....
Yes. While BTC, IMO, would be close to zero in a "grid down", the lights will likely stay on.
BTC going to $5000 each is more likely than a really bad SHTF.
But it is all probablitity, NO ONE knows what will happen.
If things get sooooo bad that Bitcoin is worthless (and we are not saying they won't) then it's pretty unlikely you're going to be in a bartering situation with gold, silver or anything else either.
Utter nonsense.
Gold and Silver do not rely on any infrastructure for their utility or any counter party for their value.
They just are what they are , a very durable, portable, very rare, universally recognizable and accepted store of value and therefor splendid medium of exchange.
Gold is too rare and therefor precious for day to day type transactions but an excellent store of large wealth. You can put $250,000 in a space the size of a soda can.
Silver has always been REAL and universal money throughout the last 2000 years. It was not until the industrial revolution got a good head of steam going ( forgive the pun) that it became obvious that it could not be produced in quantities sufficient to meet the demand for honest money let alone industrial production as well. That is exactly why the percentages of silver content in currency dropped until it was ultimately removed from the global money supply in the 20th century.
Bitcoins greatest shortcoming may be simply its dependence on infrastructure for it to be utilized.
Just MHO
No gold and silver are not "universally recognized". Nobody under the age of 50 something can remember silver being used as money and your average gen-Y won't give two shits about the difference between a clad dime and a 90% one. And what makes anyone think that the same sheeple who ignored gold & silver for the past 50 years are going to start loving it once chaos starts breaking out all around them? If you want to get any fair value for your gold & silver, you're going to have to wait for those people to die off first (not trade with them).
To teh dumbass junking teh we: We own gold & silver but we have no illusions about trading with teh sheeple as all hell breaks loose. There's no mythical "krusty McFarmer willing to trade muh silver dimes for eggs" in muh neighbourhood, doubt there's one in yours either.
i would venture to guess that the reason the sheeple have ignored gold and silver is becuase of government propoganda and media manipulation, and, more importantly, they haven't lived through a currency crisis.
once inflation starts running really rampant, people will understand the value of keeping their wealth in gold and silver.
it's a lesson that people in india, vietnam, china, russia, know all too well, and the average american is about to get a PHD from that school of hard knocks.
gold and silver are commodities which faceplant along with economy
(as it happened during all previous depressions)
If you have a collapse of the infrastructure to the point bitcoin / the internet no longer functions for an extended time, that means you are down to bullets and food. You won't have vehicles, cities will be death zones, and so on. Zombie movies are analogues for society collapse and starvation. Silver, gold, and jewels won't matter either in that scenario. You only need those when you have a need to trade across time, meaning a functioning society with a need for trade and specialization.
you do realize you can actually make the calculations necessary for bitcoin transactions on paper, its all just math ...
gold is neither rare, nor finite
there are millions of tons of gold available in asteroid belt alone
hell all it takes is one good asteroid to hit earth and watch gold become common rock.
not to mention you can actually create gold - granted currently not economically viable because value of energy needed far exceeds the value of created gold.
but that can change very quickly - the moment cheap/free energy source is invented and created.
You're over-stating your case coinhead. That's sheer nonsense. IF the internet were to actually die, as in all records erased, start from zero... then yes absolutely you would be able to use gold and silver as money. Maybe not right away, because in such a SHTF situation, food, water, warmth, and security matter more, but in a 6-months and beyond, absolutely you could use PMs as money.
in a post apocalyptic scenario, gold will get you killed first time you try to trade it for food
no society, no morals
killers would get all the "gold" as has been proven throughout the history
I love the SHTF scenarios.
The only SHFT scenario where bitcoin is not redeemable within a few weeks, will result everyone's death. So gold doesn't matter then.
I am fine with prepping for whatever SHTF scenario you can envision. But if you gave it any thought whatsoever, its not likely the entire world would be shut down all at once.
And if the entire world is not shut down, then the rest of the world will turn the lights back on.
They think they will still be able to post here barking about thier precious while the grid, Bitcoin and everything else is gone
some people expect a post-apocalyptic stone age world
thats just not happening. if people survive, there will be people like me, with enough knowledge to quickly rebuild society back to current level (quickly as in few generations instead of millennia)
much more likely scenario is a dystopian world
with current technological level not only intact but much more advanced, psychopaths in power love all the new tools of control technology allows them to use to directly and indirectly enslave general population.
Whelp, guess I better be diversified when that next SHTF scenario rolls around. Lord knows I'm doing fuck-all with all this shiny metal in the meantime. Hurry up!!
It's not just the Chinese driving Bitcoin up. The Winkelvii's exchange has made Bitcoin somewhat more respectable in the US:
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/02/winklevoss-twins-bitcoin-exchange-gemini-...
John Quiggin, Australian economist/Professor and an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow at the University of Queensland, thinks that Gridcoin is much better than Bitcoin. Why? Because GRC is mined by performing BOINC scientific distributed computing tasks instead of Bitcoin's wastefull hashes!
https://twitter.com/JohnQuiggin/status/655179547378233344
Quiggin recently wrote an article in which he explained the problematic nature of the Bitcoin mining process: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-06/quiggin-bitcoins-are-a-waste-of-en...
The "work" is what makes it valuable.
John Quiggin is just another academic talking head spitting-up all over himself proclaiming nonsense commensurate with all the fancy "credentials".
BTC, BTChez
It's "make work" not work.
scamcoin is a scam.
uhm i thought grc mining was not directly used to help with boinc computing
afaik it is more like a check/reward/incentive to see if a person runs boinc client
why use a pointless alt when you can use bitcoin for the same purpose with the power and security of its blockchain
Shouldn't Gold and Silver being going up as well. But amazingly they go down while BitCoin goes up. I have to believe Bitcoin is the enemy now.
don't be fawking stupid... anyone who reads this blog (or other "conspiracy" sites) should know that the gold/silver markets are rigged. Their charts would look like what BTC has been doing if they were not.
Why do you care about these nutters? They are on a trader site and NEVER TRADE... Just fucking doomers. Even if they thought BTC is like NFLX they should still see how to make money on the swings by trading it
The irony is that if their SHTF happens and they really have to trade their precious for a box of eggs... They won't! They'll starve and die with it in their dead cold hands!! Never sell, at any price!!
Gold shows up on Xrays.
So do belt buckles.
Cuff links.
Coat hangers.
etc
etc
etc
While they show up, they don't scream "Hey! Look at me! I am Gold!!!".
Gold is by far the more accepted currency, CERTAINLY in India and China, the middle East, etc, etc, etc.
So why are Bitcoins moves in response to currency destabilizers not merely a shadow of its longer established and more durable competitor (complement)?
That is a very good question, that, in my opinion, is the strongest yet indicator of widespread, intentional, and coordinated Gold price supression.
When one of fiat-currency's alternatives doesn't zig or zag with the rest of the alternatives, but acts totally differently, something is wrong.
It's because you are clueless on technicals and somehow see the gold market functions the same as BTC's market.. There is no paper market for BTC!! No dilution!! Laugh at its digital nature, but the world has been running on these same digits for decades so I guess everything is bunk. Sell your gold for bullets and torches now if you are waiting for the world to go dark
Thumb drives show up on xrays...
...and are blanked by them...
Sell your...
oh...I guess it would at that point be a bit of plastic with some non-functional gallium arsenide chips.
I've got boxes full. Because unlike you. I actually understand the technology, cryptology and all.
Put that in your RSA cypher and encrypt it.
How's your blockchain doing?
How'll it be after a few TRILLION more transactions?
Buy litecoin instead. They haven't fixed bitcoins dust attack problem yet.
its way, way overpriced especially when compared to better alts that actually bring technological innovations and improvements (litecoin has zero innovation)
if you want to gamble on skyhigh profits, grab some way undervalued alts such as viacoin :D (100k vs 150m market cap)
This isn't just Chinese easing, there's a ponzi scheme called MMM that's driving a lot of the current bitcoin purchases as well.
Hmm, seek.
I googled MMM and Bitcoin, and got a reddit link, about the Philippines and youtube. Looks like a big ponzi.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3r2hvd/for_those_of_you_who_do...
Thanks for the heads-up!
Bitcoin IS a ponzi scheme.
Your head is a pretzel scheme.
Anopheles please do reaserch before comenting against bitcoin.You are member for 21 week on zero hedge shame of you
It IS a ponzi scheme. That market cap exists on paper only and will evaporate instanty if a large proportion of holders want to exchange their bitcoin for "hard" currency or even goods. The venders of goods have to pay their suppliers, and in the majority of cases, will need to cash their bitcoin.
The ONLY way to get cash OUT of bitcoin is if someone else puts cash INTO bitcoin. There are NO RESERVES.
You are the one who doesn't RESEARCH and simply parrot your BELIEFS. Hint, beliefs are NOT facts or reality.
Congrats. You've just described commodities markets and ETFs.
that's a really dumb thing to say, even for you, anopheles:
"The ONLY way to get cash OUT of bitcoin is if someone else puts cash INTO bitcoin. There are NO RESERVES. "
the only way to get money out of gold, or a loaf of bread, is if someone else puts money into buying it. so, by your definition, a loaf of bread is a ponzi scheme.
you should look up and understand the definition of ponzi scheme, before trying to use it. according to wikipedia:
"A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation where the operator, an individual or organization, pays returns to its investors from new capital paid to the operators by new investors, rather than from profit earned by the operator."
note that bitcoin has *no operator*, and does not claim to have any profits, it is just a protocol.
Here's some food for thought.
Why does a rare collectible, like a work of art, have value? Even when you can print a cheap copy of a painting to hang on the wall (which is its only usefulness), the original consistently changes hands for large sums of money. 100% of its owners (a sole owner) cash out at once routinely.
Lordy this ignorance again. Bitcoin is as a simple matter of fact not a Ponzi scheme. To say that you either have no idea what a Ponzi scheme actually is, or you have no idea of what Bitcoin actually is.
Its not all China. Recently, the EU changed the policy of treating BTC like an "asset." No longer would you have to declare profits from a transaction using bitcoin as income.
For example, in the US if I bought bitcoins five years ago for $1 apiece. If I use those $340 bitcoins to buy a car then I am liable on the capital gain of $335 per bitcoin BEFORE I complete the transaction.
In Europe, it is treated like money. Sure the value will fluctuate, but the transaction is the transaction.
If that is the case, why would you not convert your fiat into a deflationary "money" now, before the the of fiat goes nuts?
Let me get this right. The CME glitch screws some folks, the ECB is caught red handed in crony insider trading, COMEX's ratios being 130+/1 for deliverable gold, US proxies shot down a Russian airlinerairliner, and China/Iran/Iraq are openly telling the US to shove it.
In the mean time gold makes steady gains only to be hammered by naked shorts , while bitcoin is giving people a golden opportunity for gains and actual progress toward a sound money system?
Get with the program people.
Bitcoin is simply a medium of transfer, not much different than any other fiat, except it's uncontrolled.
Here's what bitcoin has, and doesn't have to justify it's price
Theoritical market cap = $5 billion
Backing assets = zero
Backing income = zero
Future potential backing = zero
Total liquidity = near zero, whatever cash is in bank accounts of exchanges
The ONLY way people can "cash out", is if OTHER people (suckers), buy their bitcoin
Bitcoin is the currency that sustains the network that in the future may be the highway for trading of stock, bonds, derivatives and so on. In fact, in the most optimistic scenario, not necessarily the most probable, it may back all operations that are currently performed by Wall Street.
Let's these dinosaurs die... natural selection and all that
Yep. If people want to continue listening to LP's or CD's instead of digital downloads, use snail mail rather than email, or instead of bitcoin, use fiat and commodity currencies (gold, silver, USD) that are easy to debase, who cares?
The digital revolution will just pass them by (once again). At some point in the future, they'll 'get' it (after all, even my parents eventually figured out email, mp3's, and e-books) and they'll probably start looking to invest after BTC is valued at 20k USD or higher in a few years.
There are always people who are ready to bash new technologies that they don't understand - you can find plenty of well-reasoned articles explaining why the Internet was never going to amount to much, or why email doesn't make sense for most people, or that bitcoin isn't "backed" by anything, etc. The digital revolution doesn't care - it just keeps moving forward, virtualizing things (letters, songs, movies, calculators, cameras, money) to create new versions that have more capability than the analog things they replace.
There are several fiat currencies that are at risk of hyperinflation right now. It's probably only going to take one or two fairly small currency crises to drive BTC up by huge amounts, and that's just one likely set of circumstance which could drive up the price, literally at any time. Gettting a few major retailers on board, the WinkleETF opening, the further development of side-chains, the mining reward halving next year, lots of potential catalysts for more demand and more value for bitcoin.
*edit* Wow, just looked and BTC is around $360 per right now. Up 10% in about 24 hours.
*edit2* 5 mintes later... $370
Bitcoin will never be that. What you are talking about is a RESERVE CURRENCY. A reserve currency MUST BE BACKED and bitcoin has ZERO backing of ANY KIND.
It will forever remain a bit player for a few selected purposes.
no one can be this stupid, the things you keep going on about are so outrageously ignorant, makes me wonder if you are trolling on purpose.
"A reserve currency MUST BE BACKED": ok, i'll bite - $USD is the reserve currency right now, what is it backed by? you know that since 1971 the $USD is unbacked fiat, right?
The US dollar is backed by the USA. Which includes it's GDP.
Tell us genius, EXACTLY HOW is bitcoin backed?
You have such a limited mind. None are so blind as those who refuse to see.
Bitcoin isn't digital fiat (you can't print more) - it's a digital commodity, and commodities don't have to be "backed" by a centralized government.
Who "backs" gold? Gold is backed by its scarcity and the attractiveness of its properties as a currency (it's portable, it's easy to divide, it's a store of value, it's somewhat difficult to counterfeit, etc.).
Bitcoin is "backed" in exactly the same way. It's a digital commodity with mathematically verifiable scarcity. That scarcity plus the desirable currency qualities (portability, divisability, store-of-value, etc.) are what back both gold and bitcoin.
Are there some differences? Yes there are. Bitcoin is much more portable than gold, and much more difficult to counterfeit. There are no tungsten core bars of bitcoin that I'm aware of, nor is the price of bitcoin being artificially held down like gold and silver have been.
Store of value is the big area where bitcoin is lacking right now, but the market cap is still *tiny* even compared to very small fiat currencies. As the value of bitcoin continues to expand and it becomes more widely held, the bitcoin price will stabilize. The other problem bitcoin has right now is that it's complicated compared to other commodities and currencies. That's the norm for emerging technologies. Before the iPod, you have to deal with the Nomad, before the Kindle, you have to deal with the crappy Sony e-reader.
Early adopters of technology understand this - we've seen this show before and we understand that it takes a few years for the ecosystems to build up around new technologies and for some of the rough-edges to be smoothed away.
If you educate yourself a bit about what bitcoin actually is, I think you'll begin to understand that the "backing" for bitcoin is actually superior to every other store of value and currency on the planet including the USD. You realize that the dollar has lost 97% of its purchasing power over the last hundred years, right? And a not insignificant portion of that purchasing power loss has happened during the QE regime of the past few years.
Who wants to keep playing that losing game?
Bitcoin is a commodity? Whatever you say.
It's irrelevant that the dollar has lost 97% of it's purchasing power. Average wages have risen, so it's RELATIVE purchasing power hasn't changed much. It's a MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE, and not a commodity. Just like bitcoin is a medium of exchange.
Purchacing power during GE? It's INCREASED internationally, not decreased. The strong dollar has pushed down most commodities and it's soared compared to almost every other currency on earth.
Go ahead, convince (delude) yourself. The emperor actually has no clothes.
Yes, bitcoin is a commodity. It's scarce, it's fungible, and it's a store of value (though with exaggerated price swings due to its currently small market cap).
Wages have risen, but if you look at what's happened to wealth inequality during the same time period, you can't logically argue that it's been a wash. Newly minted money seems to somehow wind up in the bank accounts of financial services employees much more frequently than it does in the accounts of middle class workers.
And that's not a "bug" - it's a feature of debt based currency that bankers have the power to make more of - out of thin air - at any time.
If you want to keep playing with your debt masters' monopoloy money, that's fine. People have been doing that (and losing) for a very long time.
Thing is - there's now an alternative to that system which is superior in every way (unless you're a big fan of ever increasing centralized government control). It's up to you to decide to educate yourself about it or not.
Right now, it's clear that you don't understand much about what bitcoin really is, so it's hard to take your criticisms seriously. Learn more about some of the concepts, and I think you'll find your perception changing. Some of the biggest names in Bitcoin have said that they initially dismissed it as well - it takes some time to fully digest. But at a certain point, there's a moment where the logic of this just 'clicks' and from that point forward, people tend to think very differently about it.
Venture capitalists and financial services companies aren't speding lots of time and resources on bitcoin and blockchain right now because the emperor has no clothes. Banks realize that this is their equivalent of the recording industry's
"mp3" moment. They can learn how to surf the digital wave or they can get consumed by it.
It's actually the debt-based fiat currency system that's really looking more threadbare by the moment. How much debt are we sitting on? That used to worry me a lot, but I'm now confident that the Bitcoin ecosystem is going to be there like a just-in-time lifeboat to escape the Titanic financial disaster that currency devaluation and accelerating debt accumulation have locked us into.
If Bitcoin is a commodity, that means stocks (shares) are also commodities. They fit your definitions, and even have a lot more backing than Bitcoin.
You make a lot of assumptions about me. I know a tremendous amount about Bitcoin and competitors. And also have three decades of experience with emerging technologies, technology and economics.
My views are rational and detached. Fanboys or true believers of any particular technology, whose views are rigid, uncompromising and unwiling to be critical are always wrong in the long run.
Yes, stocks are also potential commodities (seashells, glass beads, lots of things can be and have been used as commodity/currencies).
But not all commodities were created equal. Bitcoin (the commodity) is nearly impossible to counterfeit or debase, each one is instantly and effortlessly divisible to the eighth decimal place, it's easy to secure, easy to hide, difficult to trace, cheap to trade (you can trade a hundred thousand "shares" of bitcoin for pennies - much better deal than Scottrade, right?), so really the only advantage that using a company stock as a commodity would have is potentially greater market cap / stability (depending on the stock), but that's a situation that should reverse itself in time as the breadth and depth of the BTC market continues to grow. BTC with a 1 trillion USD valuation is going to look a lot different than with the 4 billion or 5 billion cap it has recently had.
I'm not assuming anything about you - I'm reading what you're writing, and that tells me very clearly that you don't understand bitcoin. Your own comments ("It's a ponzi scheme") make that abundantly clear. If we were having a conversation about the 'nonce' and the pro's and con's of how mining difficulty is adjusted, or discussing whether or not BIP 100 or BIP 101 is the less risky solution to the blocksize problem that's ahead, then I'd presume you do actually know something about the subject.
But calling it a ponzi or asking what it's "backed" by, tells me that you don't understand the concept, just as clearly as I'd realize that you probably don't understand human reproduction if you started making comments about how babies are really delivered to the hospital by storks.
When you say things that aren't true and are easily checked, what are other people supposed to think? Some people have real worries about the future of bitcoin (I do too), but you're making statements about bitcoin that anyone who has spent at least an hour researching it would easily understand are silly.
Tell us. Can bitcoin complete transactions in a couple ms ? Because that's how fast stock exchanges are.
Can EVERY transaction be audited back to KNOWN people and locations? THAT'S what's required for all stock transactions.
Wow, the bankers and traders would love you. Yup, move all stock and financial transactions to a completely anonymous, and untraceable system. Stock fraud would be the norm. And you think things are manipulated NOW ? You ain't seen nothing.
That's quite a utopia you want.
Yes and yes. Read up on sidechains and the lightning network. Just because bitcoin *can* be used (mostly) anonymously, that doesn't mean that it has to be in all circumstances. To conduct transactions in regulated markets, exchanges will simply need to verify the identity of people creating accounts - that's how US based bitcoin exchanges already work today.
Of course, that doesn't mean that I can't have another bitcoin wallet, not created on a US exchange, that I use to conduct other business where I might not necessarily want my identity to be an easily discovered part of the transaction. Bitcoin isn't an all or nothing proposition when it comes to hiding your identity - sort of like USD when deciding to pay in cash vs. with a debit card, for example.
I think reading through this will help you.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Myths
Bitcoin is still a very new protocol, still being worked out and modified to meet real-world needs, so there are some very real issues and risks in the future for Bitcoin, but the ones you're trying to bring up just show me that you don't actually understand the concept very well yet.
Which is fine - it takes some effort to understand, even if you're a techie. But the potential of bitcoin and the very low valuation now compared to where it *could* be, even in just 2-3 years, means it's something that I hope people will take the time to try to learn more about, rather than just dismissing it because they don't really understand it (or how fiat money works) very well.
Check your facts. When you buy a US stock, the transaction is settled in about 3 business days (T+3). Even then you probably don't have custody of the actual paper stock certificate. In Bitcoin you can have a pretty secure settlement in about an hour and no third party custodian and risk associated with such. That's a complete transaction.
If you trade anything on an electronic exchange/brokerage - sure they can execute your trade in milliseconds or even nanoseconds - bitcoin included. No difference there.
> Backing assets = zero
The existence of the internet is Bitcoin's backing asset. The internet is the widest ranging engineering project in human history.
It's still an ongoing experiment - Bitcoin and the internet. But if one thinks that Bitcoin has no value, then one thinks that the internet has no alue.
Hahahahahahahahaha
Tell us, how is "the Internet" going to give you cash for your bitcoins.
The internet "gives" me Au and Ag for my btc. Much better than fiat.
bitcoin is the internet of financial world
Bitcoin is the Enron of the Internet financial world.
All of the anti-Bitcoin posts on ZH can only lead me to conclude that Paul Krugman has multiple accounts on this site.
In my opinion Crude Oil WTI currently shows no clear trend, which allows for intra-day trading on the smaller interval charts.
$43.30 - $49.80 are the trendless zones.
http://tripstrading.com/2015/11/02/oil-daily-neutral-area-between-43-30-...