I'm interested to see it pass $32, which should have symbolic significance if nothing else (the peak happened at $31.91 and crashed to $10 days later).
"If Bitcoin becomes the new global monetary system, one bitcoin purchased today (for 90 cents, last time I checked) will make you a very wealthy individual. You are essentially buying Manhattan for a quarter. There are only 21 million bitcoins (including those not yet minted). (In my design, this was a far more elegant 2^64, with quantities in exponential notation. Just sayin'.) Mapped to $100 trillion of global money, to pull a random number out of the air, you become a millionaire. Wow!"
My guess is that it's more likely to be another cryptocurrency that becomes the standard. Once the right people figure out how to be the main beneficiaries. Also, I'm not sure that a depreciating currency is good for society as a whole, since it encourages hoarding, rather than investment.
FWIW bitcoin is still inflationary (in terms of money supply increase)-- and quite a lot more than traditional currency; although the rate of increase halved at the start of the year.
I believe this question is hotly debated among economists. I think deflation is probably fine: In the end, money isn't any good if you don't spend it, so hoarding has a natural limit.
>>In the end, money isn't any good if you don't spend it
The money that you hoard, invest and which grows itself is the best kind of investment.
I know of a few people who saved through their life to buy real estate and rent it out. The next generations have practically slept through their lives without ever working and yet continued to live like millionaires.
* CBs are monetizing enormously; and if they stop the stock market crashes; they are also promising inflation;
* the Libor conspiracy might bring down one TBTF in London
* Bankia and Santander are under stress and might fail
* There's a full-blown currency war going on with competitive devaluations
* People are placing billions of dollars betting that the Japanese bonds & yen will collapse
* there are reasons Germany is repatriating their gold
I could go on, but bitcoin is oblivious to all that; in some ways it is less risky than the int'l banking system.
Finally, just as an example, the Fed is printing $800,000 new usds per each new bitcoin created. I'm not saying that bitcoin is going to be that valuable, of course, but if you look at the numbers involved you might as well consider putting some savings completely out of an interconnected banking system that is the contrary of the internet: it needs all nodes to be up and running to survive.
2. Wait till Bitcoins are in demand, continue till demand reaches epic levels. Since supply is short, more people are read to pay big dollars to buy same number of bit coins. Continuing this cycle.
3. You own Manhattan.
But the article says some between 2 and 3 say ....
2a. Drug dealers, mafia, war lords, terrorists and such a likes will flock this market.
2b. Since its decentralized they will reap the benefits of anonymity.
2c. Government gets pissed due to the fact anonymity gives the criminals all the immunity they need. There fore they can't be sanctioned/tracked etc.
2d. Government moves to shut down all Bitcoin exchanges.
We never go to 3. And therefore we never get to own Manhattan.
I think the present time is completely different from the 2011 bubble. The range of services offered have grown dramatically and the Bitcoin protocol has shown it's resilience.
The first ASICs started shipping recently. This made bitcoins harder to mine (for anyone who doesn't have those ASICs, which is most people). This also demonstrated that bitcoins are here to stay, since people have made large investments in hardware that basically doesn't do anything but mine bitcoins. So the perceived future value has skyrocketed.
Some people believe in the success of gold. They invested heavily in the future of gold. This proves gold is going to be a success.
Some people believe in the success of US dollars. They invested heavily in the future of US dollars. This proves US dollars are going to be valuable.
Edit: ok so to be clear, it's not just wishful thinking at work, but the fact that people are working toward making bitcoins successful and stable that makes them successful and stable.
The difference is that with gold, there's an actual intrinsic demand backing it. There's a cultural demand (indian weddings) but also a real industrial use for gold. There is zero use for bitcoin outside of the financial context.
The US Dollar is backed by the united states government and economy, and enough people have faith in both to confer present value and future value.
There was a massive effort to introduce a new currency backed by physical silver (by the Hunt brothers), which never gained much traction despite the cash thrown at it.
Right now the people investing in bitcoins are speculating that they will stay. For them to stay, there needs to be confidence that it will retain some sort of value, and the early people are at best described as speculators (no one is betting the farm on BTC).
> Some people believe in the success of US dollars. They invested heavily in the future of US dollars. This proves US dollars are going to be valuable.
You realize that you're sorta making his point? US Dollars are not going to be successful because some people have "invested heavily in the future of dollars." But that's the reasoning given 2 posts up that was poked-fun at in your parent.
Perhaps "yes", perhaps "no". I'm guessing (and I can only guess, like everyone else) that more people are convinced of the benefits of bitcoin than at the point of the previous bubble, so it probably wouldn't crash AS MUCH as before.
I think it's more likely though, even if it does end up being a bubble, that it'll shoot higher first before crashing this time around.
I've been considering this over the past few days, I have a vested interest (early adopter) and I don't think the current performance is a bubble. It took some months for online properties to build the code needed to facilitate bitcoin, since they are now coming to fruit the growth pattern is organic. Bitcoin started with a tech savvy crowd, and as we know, the ones who can understand a system early are the first to benefit from it. I found the comparison of Bitcoin to a Tech startup to be particularly interesting, in the article it is estimated that Bitcoin is understated by two orders of magnitude.
http://vincesamios.com/bitcoins/bitcoins-are-a-tech-stock
There is much, much, more merchant acceptance, transaction volume, etc. for Bitcoin compared to the last time there was a big rise; not to mention production is only half of what it was before; ASICs are here/on the horizon, YC has funded a bitcoin startup, it's mentioned basically daily in the blogs of major publications, etc.
Clearly a lot of speculation going on here; but I very strongly doubt we will see a crash anything like we saw last time (how many people were preaching that the end of bitcoin had come?); though a significant correction when people start taking their profit seems almost inevitable.
Anecdotally, a number of people I have been telling to buy bitcoins for years now are finally like, "well okay, I am just going to wait till it drops to $xx or so (where xx is ~40% less than whatever it is at the moment we have the conversation).
well yeah it makes sense, they already missed the train.
it's hard to predict when you're not in the known. will it keep rising? they don't know.
someone like you have a much better insight of the risk. its how the market works, except when its young, the amount of people in the known is low. Thus there is more potential gains
"I very strongly doubt we will see a crash anything like we saw last time"
This assumes that all crashes are built the same. In fact they are not. An an example, increased usage and profile also greatly increase the likelihood that governments come in and panic investors.
Another thing to worry about is something better coming along. As soon as it does, bitcoins will crash and never recover, since their only worth is they are better than anything else for making anonymous secure trades. If Ripple or soemthing else begins to take off, that may change.
So the 10 btc I bought a couple years ago for ~$2 are now "worth" $300 USD. Do I sell them now, or wait 20 years until they're worth more?
How do you know when to wait longer, and when to sell? Its not like a company where you can at least get some information on their past and future performance, whether they are growing or shrinking, etc.
According to the efficient market hypothesis (which you may or may not agree with) the only guide you have as to how much something is worth in the future is the current price, as well as "future information" which is not currently available (if it was already available somewhere, it would already be priced in.)
In other words, no one can answer that question for you :)
The volatility of BTC is useful in such situations. If you sold now, the price may rise to $40, then crash to $15, and then rise again to new heights. So if you do sell (and are keen to stay in the long-game), you have to be confident that you will be able to buy in again at below that price (NB transaction costs). If you achieve that (which is done most effectively by guessing when the peak of the bubble occurs) then you wouldn't lose out it the long term. Then you have to weigh up the risk vs reward..
I think most people think the only reason bitcoins are useful is that they're not controlled by a government. However, I've recently started using bitcoins for some tiny transactions and found out something I didn't expect: They're EASY PEASY to use... much easier than papal, credit cards, or even cash!
For those of you who don't know. A bitcoin "bank account" can be conjured out of thin air using randomness and some crypto algorithms. It consists of only two numbers, a public "bitcoin address" and a "private key". (kinda like an RSA key pair).
The moment you've created these two numbers, you can say to someone "hey, send your $$$ to my address". Then, any time in the future you can withdraw money out of the account via your private key. This last step (withdrawing your money) is actually the ONLY step that requires any real effort at all (installing software on your PC, or trusting an online wallet site) and that's STILL super easy.
EDIT: I think I ended up sounding too much like a cheerleader in this post... I'm talking purely about easiness from a theoretical standpoint. In the real world, there are clearly still many obstacles making bitcoins a PITA to deal with.
This ease of use is certainly attractive. Try sending a couple of BTC to a poker room online, and then cash out your winnings and have that BTC within your wallet in a matter of hours max, not days!
I can't wait till I can buy coffee and rent with BTC, it might never happen but I like the idea.
The backend is more complicated, involving databases that determine your creditworthiness, plastic cards, communication networks, monthly billing, fraud prevention, ...
All those things will happen to bitcoin if it ever gets anywhere close to being used as a real world currency.
You're comparing a completely regulated system against a completely unregulated system, one which also happens to be brand spanking new.
You're also bringing lines of credit into this for some reason, if you think people are just going to hand you out free bitcoin for your to pay back at a later date without wanting to know your credit worthiness I'm not sure how to explain things to you in a way you'll understand.
Fair enough... but you're acting like that card in your hand just appeared out of thin air. Are you saying you've never had a bad experience with a credit card company?
Not the person you're replying to, but I never have. Chase has been very friendly to me and even gave me a credit extension when I needed a new computer. Their customer support has always been helpful, and I have the security of chargebacks should someone scam me.
Then again, the person you're replying to was probably talking about debit cards, which don't come with the same securities as credit cards but are just as easy to use and don't charge interest. So really, one must wonder why you weren't using a debit card if bitcoins would offer you an easier experience than cash?
I was referring to both, I don't see much difference in the end user experience.
I am curious though, what is availability to you guys in the states? Does every store accept eftpos(debit)/credit? Here in NZ you cannot get away with not accepting eftpos (nobody carries cash really.) While in Australia I know you'll be hard pressed even finding a store that accepts it. Wondering if maybe the frustration displayed above was directed at the implementation/adoption you guys have.
Availability is almost ubiquitous. There are some places—"trendy" stores in urban areas, ma-and-pa stores in rural—that don't accept credit/debit cards for various reasons. The further away from a city you go, the more likely you are to be stuck in a place that's cash-only, but there's almost always a store that accepts it somewhere around you.
The frustration was probably due to implementation. Every store, even stores in the same franchise, handle cards differently. Some don't make you sign under a certain dollar amount (an amount that's different in each store), some let you swipe before the person is done ringing you up, some have annoying menus you have to trawl through (supermarkets are known for this... "Would you like to donate $1 to the X charity for sick X's? [YES] [NO, I AM HEARTLESS]"), some require you to tell the cashier if you want credit or debit, some make you show them your card (GameStop). There are even some that need to bust out one of these: http://i.imgur.com/EDlLYt9.jpg
For me, at least, it's still easier than dealing with cash.
Actually no, the only contact I've ever had with Visa was when I got mugged, and when they denied a 50c itunes purchase I made in my sleep [read some chech IP address and under a generic name], both times they were very helpful, cancelled my card and sent me a new one right away free of charge.
Regarding the apparent way I was acting I have no fucking clue what you're talking about. The bank sent it in the mail, how else would they get it to me. How is this complex or tedious, if I wanted it faster I could have gone down there and picked it up myself.
Could this be used (wholesale) to get around the US ban on online gambling? I read that the major sites were busted and execs taken to US courts but maybe this is more secure and harder to track? Probably enough serious gamblers and gambling sites will probably take the chance with currency fluctuations.
Not in itself: Bitcoins are actually embarrassingly easy to track (the full transaction history is available to anyone.) However, you can certainly go through some extra hoops to make tracking more difficult.
Whenever I engage with BTC, "easy" is the last thing that I experience. Let's say that someone wants to start using bitcoin: it's as simple as downloading the software, double clicking on the icon, and... waiting 24hours or more for the block chain to sync, while the i/o volume on their disk goes through the roof.
A few days later, you finally have BTC in your wallet, so it's time to start your bitcoin client again and use them. You double click on the icon and... wait 30min to 1hr for the block chain to sync.
Finally, you're ready to send them. Let's say you want to buy some music online, so you send BTC to an address that was generated by the site you're purchasing from and... wait 50 minutes to get enough verified transactions before they finally send you the music.
All of this would be completely impossible on a mobile device.
There are plenty of ideas for making bitcoin more usable, but they all unfortunately involve mitigating the strengths of the bitcoin as a concept.
Blockchain.info gets you a free wallet. Signed client-side so they can't mess with it. You don't need to run the "client" (which is really a "node") at all. The fact that this is not communicated well is a communication problem more than a technical one.
localbitcoins.com if you want to buy some from anyone in the neighborhood.
The thing that makes bitcoin different than other online payment systems or virtual currencies is that it's distributed. That property, however, is also what makes it difficult to use.
It's true that if you re-centralize things by trusting someone else with your wallet, or outsourcing block chain verification to a central party, then it can be quite usable.
From what I can tell, nobody is entirely comfortable with the direction that's headed, which is why there's a lot of handwaving about things like javascript-based cryptography, which just doesn't work.
localbitcoins is cool, but a friend bought some BTC off me the other day, and it took over an hour (for the above reasons).
Don't get me wrong, I think all of this is really interesting and amazing in a lot of ways, but not "easy peasy" as the parent commenter was saying.
Please see any of the very many recent in-depth discussions about the security of webapp-based cryptography. Sure, it "works" in the sense that it's very easy to use, but it is by no means secure.
I'm sure all of those other "online wallet" services that lost or disappeared with everyone's BTC also had plenty of users.
you realize that they dont have your private key right? and that you can verify the javascript wasnt poisoned by having a hash of the legit javascript and comparing it? with a handy toolbar?
Moxie, given your background in cryptography, do you have any ideas on how the Bitcoin community could improve the user experience without compromising security?
There is so much misunderstanding around cryptography.
Steps To Hack Blockchain.info
1) Discover a zero-day exploit in the operating system that Blockchain.info runs on
2) Hack it
3) Compromise the javascript that it delivers to the client
4) For the next 10 minutes or so (or up to the point the hack is discovered), anyone who logs into Blockchain.info via the web app and types in their password is compromised. Period.
Now, granted, this won't affect EVERYONE who has a Blockchain.info account, only the ones who log in while it's hacked.
> The thing that makes bitcoin different than other online payment systems or virtual currencies is that it's distributed. That property, however, is also what makes it difficult to use.
This to me highlights just about everything there is to know about Bitcoin. People are too easily turned off by the amount of effort it takes to properly command a Bitcoin wallet. At least with the traditional banking system, a big bank is there to lend you a hand should you need anything or should something go wrong with one of your transactions.
But there's a big tradeoff: when you utilize the traditional banking system, you must entrust at least some of your wealth to an entity you have absolutely zero control over.
Right now that's fine, but personally I like the idea of keeping external dependencies to a minimum, especially when it comes to money.
The price of Bitcoin remains affordable for now, and will continue to do so as long as people don't have a compelling reason to get off their behinds. For some perspective, the Bitcoin market cap is $332M. At a $1000M ($1B) market cap and ~12.8M BTC in circulation, the price per Bitcoin would be roughly $78. At a $10B market cap it would be $780. The market cap of Facebook is $68.7B. When you compare a global financial system with censorship resistant properties (Bitcoin), and give it a valuation six times less than a global social network (Facebook), 1 BTC is still worth $780. If Bitcoin is 60X less valuable to the world than Facebook, it's $78/coin. 120X less valuable and it's $39/coin. Meaning if Bitcoin truly provides the world less than 1% of the value of Facebook then it's still undervalued at $30.
IMO the world is practically crying out for an alternative financial system free from high risk banking, but I digress. Average people will not actively seek any competing financial system Bitcoin included until they have a compelling motivation eating away at them 24/7. There are scenarios which could create those circumstances, but they're long shots that hinge upon various social, economic and political factors at some vague point in the distant future. I can at least see Bitcoin having a $1B market cap for now, but for BTC to really come into its own, average people will need to get off their behinds. In other words, don't count on it.
Still the market cap of Apple is $450+ billion, and I'd like to think a global Internet currency/financial system is worth at least 10% of that to our society.
"Waiting 24 hours or more for the blockchain to sync..."
Wrong client. Try blockchain.info. Instant sync.
"You can purchase some bitcoins, which involves..."
Wrong method. Try BitInstant. Instant.
"Wait 50 minutes to get enough verified transactions..."
Could be a few seconds.
As a seller, you can choose the number of verifications you wait for. My web shop waits for the first only (fine for sub $100 purchases), so verification takes about 5 seconds.
If you wait for 10 verifications, well, yeah it's going to take a while, but you don't need that level of security unless you're buying a house.
"All of this would be completely impossible on a mobile device."
Yes, again, I totally agree that there many ideas for making bitcoin more usable, but they all unfortunately tend to undermine bitcoin.
Bitcoin's fundamental core strength is being distributed. That's also the thing that makes it mostly unusable.
Sure, if I just trust someone else to manage my wallet and verify the block chain for me, it becomes usable. This is the exact reason why people keep getting taken by bad "online wallet" services -- they can't bear to do it themselves.
Mobile wallets are a great example. There are two types of mobile wallets: the kind that wingnuts struggle through using because they're bitcoin fanatics, and the kind that are actually interesting for people drawn to convenience. The former actually verify the block chain, the latter are a thin client over an API to someone else that's managing that off the device.
Bitcoin is distributed, and some people choosing to yield their micromanaged control to enjoy the dividends of convenience does not make the system any less distributed.
With Bitcoin you CAN run your own node, you CAN mine your own blocks, you CAN verify the integrity of every transaction that every person has ever made in the blockchain, but that does not mean that you HAVE to do these things. Because this is an open-source currency, WHEN you choose to yield to a third party, you get to choose one based on their merits because the barrier to entry to become a service provider is so low, thus competition is fierce. Compare with the banking oligopoly.
This is on par with Linux. You CAN build every binary on your machine from source, but you do not HAVE to and most people choose to yield their compiling duties to distributions and just install pre-cooked binaries. The benefits of open source continue to shine upon these people, because they get to choose their distribution, and they benefit from the fruits of the bazaar development model even when they are not actively engaging in it.
Was that running bitcoind on a server somewhere, or on a consumer laptop with a home internet connection?
Even if it "only took about 2 hours," we're living in a world where companies are living and dying by shaving 30ms off page load times and a/b testing the color of their signup buttons.
You make some valid points regarding the inverse relationship between convenience and security with bitcoin. However, the latest version (0.8.0) of the bitcoin reference client is a significant improvement in terms of initial syncing speed and overall optimization. Being experimental software, there is still room for improvement.
wallet - use blockchain, no need to sync, or on your desktop the electrum client, alternatively in the official client it will be much faster from version 0.8.
buying BTC from mtgox sucks, buy them from bitcoin-otc, localbitcoins.com or other private selelrs for a much easier and quicker transaction.
You can do this on a mobile device, I buy of bitmit.net and only use my smartphone to do so.
Regarding your claim of waiting 50 minutes for some music, I dont nknow what site you are using but i bet most music download sites would only require 1 or 2 confirmatons so 10 - 20 mins
Along the lines of the real world PITA you acknowledged at the end: getting dollars out of mtgox is a nightmare and don't expect for a second that you won't be giving up all your info to the government.
I had some BTC lying around there for a year or so. When I came back, they had upgraded their security methods to the point where I had to:
-submit proof of residence
-submit a valid photo ID
-wait several days
-ask for verification on dwolla
-wait several days
In addition, there is a disclaimer on mtgox explicitly forbidding Tor and using proxies. There's not a shred of anonymity in this process.
The fundamental issue is that holding is what increases the value (because, really, it is an exchange medium; the world still ultimately prices pegged to their respective local currencies, no matter what any bitcoinite insists), and as the value increases, you are incentivised to hold.
It is going to be interesting to see what happens when the bubble bursts (and it will, to some extent), and how big it gets, as most of the bitcoins held will probably be owned by users who have been through a crash before. This could mean we are only just starting the bubble-- increased confidence may let it grow far beyond the previous one.
The rising price just makes me laugh. I "invested" $1,000 in BTC during the early hype as it was approaching $32.00. I told my co-workers how cool of a concept it was and that my investment was sure to pay off with a skyrocketing price.
After months and months the price drops and drops. My $1,000 is worth $200. I go through a ridiculously long process of proving my identity to Mt. Gox and Dwolla just to get real USD back at 1/5 their original value.
Now if only I had kept it in there for the long haul, I'd have my $1,000 back.
It's precisely this volatility that personally makes me skeptical of it truly reaching a critical mass of any sort.
You made the cardinal mistake of investing: you bought high, and sold low. Many rookie investors make this mistake because they are unable to control their emotions when the value of their investment takes a downturn. It can be nerve-wrecking to imagine all your money evaporating.
Fortunately, your mistake cost you only $800. So it was actually a good learning experience. From now on, buy low and sell high. For example, the best time to buy is when a (recoverable) disaster or sensationalized story cause a financially strong company's stock price to dip. That's the perfect opportunity to buy some of that stock.
Sorry enraged_camel, but I think most people would consider this very bad investment advice. There's much, much more thinking that needs to go into speculative investment decisions than just the phrase "buy low sell high". In fact, that phrase is pretty useless advice on its own and often invoked as a joke among investors.
(Though there is truth in your specific point that people are at risk of making irrational decisions they regret when investments go sour.)
What is high and what is low is of course speculative.
When investing in the stock market I of course use that basic logic by analyzing the KPIs of the securities. This was less of an investment and more of an experiment in modern technology, prompted by some skeptical comments from my friends. For that reason it was more like purchasing a lottery ticket.
My $1000 lottery ticket didn't perform well, but due to my real investments paying off well over the years, I can handle the loss without much thought. Win some. Lose some.
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