Bitcoin as an investment?

[jyl]

Reviving this year-old thread.

Anyone still interested in bitcoin? Why, why not?

[sc_rufctr]

It's dead and over... No one is talking about it. You'd have to have rocks in your head to invest now.

[nynor]

it isn't dead, IMO. the price has bumped up, again. trading volume has been trending upward, predictably, since april of 2014. bitcoin isn't going anywhere.

the price isn't high enough to cover the cost of electricity, so i am not currently mining. however, i will hold what i have.

with price fluctuations in the neighborhood of 5 to 10 percent every few days, there is some money to be made. volatility = money.

anyway, naysayers have been naysaying for months, years and bitcoin still marches on.

[jyl]

So if bitcoin are valuable simply because there is a limited supply of them, why don't we use buffalo head nickels as currency? Or Brittania Beanie Baby plushes?

[nynor]

that is not why bitcoin has value. i suggest some reading from a source that isn't anti bitcoin. i mean, what is the value of that piece of paper in your wallet that has one dollar printed on it? intrinsically, nearly nothing.

[pcardude]

I have like 23 bucks worth of bitcoins and it's pretty lame.

[jyl]

that is not why bitcoin has value. i suggest some reading from a source that isn't anti bitcoin. i mean, what is the value of that piece of paper in your wallet that has one dollar printed on it? intrinsically, nearly nothing.

Here is my view on why a real currency like the US dollar has some fundamental value and bitcoin does not.

Some of it is that there are many more or less concrete references for the value of a dollar. People earn dollars for working an hour, a day or a month; everyone is surrounded by objects priced in dollars; services and rents are at dollar rates. These real world prices are sticky - they don't change rapidly - so rapid swings in dollar value get damped out by the arbitrage created versus real world dollar prices. If you and I and the rest of PPOT are trading dollars back and forth, along with some other currency (because you need another currency or fungible good, to trade) and suddenly a bunch of Pelicans decide they don't want dollars and start dumping their dollars for 50% of the last traded price, then you and I will scoop up those cheap dollars and use them to buy a car or a house or an employee, the prices of which won't adjust that fast. So the views of a small number of traders won't move the dollar a really large amount.

Some of it is that there is a powerful global system dedicated to protecting the dollar and other currencies against moves that are deemed "too large" or "too fast". Suppose lots of really big traders get bearish on the dollar, and send it down a lot or really fast. If the move is considered dangerous, central banks around the world have many hundreds of millions of dollars ready to intervene in the market, to inflict instant losses on those traders. They can also increase or decrease short term interest rates on trillions of dollars of assets, denominated in the dollars as well as in whatever currency the dollar is moving against. And they can direct many hundreds of billions of dollars, actually maybe over a trillion, toward buying or selling bonds to influence long term interest rates. Since interest rates are the payment for owning a currency, those moves are powerful measures to influence the value of the dollar or another currency.

This doesn't mean the dollar has a perfectly stable value. Far from it. There is inflation, which in my lifetime has ranged from very low (today) to several percent (the 1970s) and the dollar/euro rate can move +/- 20% over a year. But these moves are not big enough to break the dollar economy or devastate those holding dollars.

Compare to bitcoin. There is no external real world reference for the value of a bitcoin. When bitcoin value falls -80% in dollar terms, you can't say great, I'm going to scoop up super cheap bitcoin and use it to buy that house that is priced in bitcoin, or hire that worker who is paid in bitcoin, because those prices are now a big bargain. And when bitcoin falls -80%, no one at any central bank gives a damn, or intervenes to support bitcoin. When criminals break into bitcoin "banks", or those banks embezzle the bitcoin stored therein, no government or law enforcement agency really cares too much. When someone figures out how to hack bitcoin's algorithm, no one is going to put the pieces back together. Hell, NSA probably has the ability to break bitcoin right now, if it were deemed a threat to the USA.

I know, bitcoin fans say the supply of bitcoin is limited while the Fed prints unlimited quantity of dollars. But that isn't remotely true. The Fed injects a lot of dollars into the economy, but it isn't actually a lot at all relative to the total amount of dollars that exist - so, in percentage terms, it is tiny - and the Fed pays a lot of attention to money supply and money velocity, and to keeping those in check.

That's why I compared bitcoin to beanie babies. They are equally unsuitable as a currency. At least if you have access to the dollar or euro or yuan or yen or other credible currencies. If you are limited to argentinian pesos or Russian rubles or similar basket case currencies, it might be a closer race.

[nynor]

what you fail to understand is that with any currency, including bitcoin and the dollar, the value is what people have agreed it is worth. again, the US dollar, the one in your pocket, has zero value.

i understand what you are saying and you are making some fundamental errors with your understanding of currency. if the US dollar were to lose usefulness, such as it not being used as the currency of choice for purchasing and trading oil, there would be hell to pay. there WILL be hell to pay.

hacking the algorithm.... you clearly don't understand how it works. the algorithm is out there. you don't even have to hack it. it is applying the algorithm to the blockchain. in order to hack the blockchain, you'd have to hack it twice in ten minutes. possibly three times. there isn't enough computing power on the planet to do that and if there was, there isn't enough electrical supply to feed that computing power.

[jyl]

what you fail to understand is that with any currency, including bitcoin and the dollar, the value is what people have agreed it is worth. again, the US dollar, the one in your pocket, has zero value.



i understand what you are saying and you are making some fundamental errors with your understanding of currency. if the US dollar were to lose usefulness, such as it not being used as the currency of choice for purchasing and trading oil, there would be hell to pay. there WILL be hell to pay.



hacking the algorithm.... you clearly don't understand how it works. the algorithm is out there. you don't even have to hack it. it is applying the algorithm to the blockchain. in order to hack the blockchain, you'd have to hack it twice in ten minutes. possibly three times. there isn't enough computing power on the planet to do that and if there was, there isn't enough electrical supply to feed that computing power.

Do you think the USD will soon "lose usefulness"? Like that it well cease to be the currency used in the largest economy (on some measures tied with China), in the world and in most of the trade with that country and in trading oil and most commodities?

Okay, suppose you think the USD will no longer be used to trade oil. Well, would you say the Chinese yuan has "lost usefulness"? No oil is traded in RMB, the yuan is hardly used outside of China.

Maybe you think the USD will somehow be used less for other trade? Well, look at the British pound?. That's a fairly small country, after all. If the USD was only used in California, it would still be more used than the GBP. Yet when is the last time you saw the GBP fall 80% in a year, or swing 10% every week?

If you are worried about losing usefulness, bitcoin should be poison to you. It is used for virtually nothing, compared to what actual currencies are used for.

There are many rreasons but one is that it is practically non-existent in terms of how much there is. There iscabout $3.5BN of bitcoin out there. That is nothing - it is such a trivial amount, by the standards of anything that wants to be called a currency. If anyone slightly big wanted to, bitcoin could be manipulated so easily. It trades about $2MM a day. How would you like to run your business on bitcoin, contract for X bitcoin tomorrow, then someone pushes a hundred thousand dollars of trades, jerks bitcoin around by 20%, and wipes out your profit.

Also, I see bitcoin miners have daily revenue about $1MM and total bitcoin capitalization is $3.5BN. So the supply of bitcoin supply is inflating 10% per year. I gather it is designed to continue to grow at a slowly declining rate for some decades more. That isn't enough growth to make bitcoin big enough to be a real currency.

[Brando]

I have a couple of spare servers that we could provision for BTC mining ().

If a few of you leave your PCs on and idle, we could start up a "worker pool" and split the "profits" amongst our secure wallets.

I just gotta get these servers up. I'm sure I can pull power from my garage or maybe a spare office at work...

[nynor]

Originally Posted by jyl

Do you think the USD will soon "lose usefulness"? Like that it well cease to be the currency used in the largest economy (on some measures tied with China), in the world and in most of the trade with that country and in trading oil and most commodities?

Okay, suppose you think the USD will no longer be used to trade oil. Well, would you say the Chinese yuan has "lost usefulness"? No oil is traded in RMB, the yuan is hardly used outside of China.

Maybe you think the USD will somehow be used less for other trade? Well, look at the British pound?. That's a fairly small country, after all. If the USD was only used in California, it would still be more used than the GBP. Yet when is the last time you saw the GBP fall 80% in a year, or swing 10% every week?

If you are worried about losing usefulness, bitcoin should be poison to you. It is used for virtually nothing, compared to what actual currencies are used for.

There are many rreasons but one is that it is practically non-existent in terms of how much there is. There iscabout $3.5BN of bitcoin out there. That is nothing - it is such a trivial amount, by the standards of anything that wants to be called a currency. If anyone slightly big wanted to, bitcoin could be manipulated so easily. It trades about $2MM a day. How would you like to run your business on bitcoin, contract for X bitcoin tomorrow, then someone pushes a hundred thousand dollars of trades, jerks bitcoin around by 20%, and wipes out your profit.

Also, I see bitcoin miners have daily revenue about $1MM and total bitcoin capitalization is $3.5BN. So the supply of bitcoin supply is inflating 10% per year. I gather it is designed to continue to grow at a slowly declining rate for some decades more. That isn't enough growth to make bitcoin big enough to be a real currency.

nope, i don't think that the USD will lose usefulness soon. that is a nice strawman, though.

i hear what you are saying. however, you clearly do not understand currency. nor do you understand bitcoin. keep in mind that bitcoin has been aroun for a bout six years and has only been mainstream for about two years. a little history of the US dollar in it's infancy might be helpful to you. also, a little reading and understanding of the usefulness of bitcoin might be helpful to you.

i refuse to argue further with you, as you are clearly hostile to bitcoin and it colors your thinking. also, you do not understand the basics of how it works. get back to me when you have a better understanding of the subject. i do not feel like writing 20 pages to help you and there are much better sources of the information than myself.

i'd be willing to bet that bitcoin will be here five years from now.

[Hawkeye's-911T]

i'd be willing to bet that bitcoin will be here five years from now.

I think for now we can all agree, it seems to be flying under the radar.

Cheers
JB

[jyl]

I'm sure bitcoin will be around for years. And will even be used by a relatively small number of people who have unusual needs or interests. I just don't think it will be a practical substitute for an actual currency.

[Brando]

As of right now.
BTC:USD


Plus I did a little reading this morning.

Yesterday's WSJ: pic

Today's news: Canadian Exchange QuadrigaCX to Become World’s First Publicly Traded Bitcoin Exchange

[pcardude]

If you want to buy an unregistered pistol. Bitcoin is the way to go.

there is a market for stuff like that.

[jyl]

Isn't a roll of grubby $20s better? Bitcoin is a digital transaction, those aren't as anonymous as we think.

[Brando]

As of today, 1 BTC = 294.37 USD.

I'm looking at taking some spare cash and grabbing an used S3 Antminer or two, maybe joining Antpool. They seem to be better than some others like BTCGuild. I can run them in my garage where I get "free" power.

[JJ 911SC]

Way back at post #4

Originally Posted by masraum

And that's why it fell from over $1200 to around $600, because China said, no Bitcoin.

[Dantilla]

Originally Posted by nynor

keep in mind that bitcoin has been aroun for a bout six years and has only been mainstream for about two years.

Depends on your definition of "mainstream".

According to my definition, it is no where near mainstream.

[drcoastline]

Thought I would revive this thread. anyone in Bitcoin since the last post in 2015? How about any of the other crypto currencies?

Bitcoin is Currently at $5,169.00

Tom 74 911 did you keep bitcoin?