Friday's Big Swings, Mostly Down, Illustrate Bitcoin Value Volatility 476
An anonymous reader writes "As cool as Bitcoin is, it looks like it lost 1/3 of its value in the last 24 hours. Lots of big sells, complaints of liquidity, and pissed off nerds." The linked article goes on to explain that the value rose again, so the aggregate loss was considerably less. The author also helps defuse claims that Bitcoin is untraceable or otherwise especially well suited to nefarious activities.
I don believe in it. (Score:5, Funny)
I think it is weird and irrational that we should let our lives be determined by a totally imaginary thing, this "value," where all wants and needs are collapsed into one measure, "value" and its accumulation. Now if you ask me, I will stick to real value like dollars which is the natural measure of Man and all his works, not some silly thing on the internet that is really just an electron representing some fucked-up historically determined concept for which millions starve and a few prosper.
Re:Dollars... real dollars (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah exactly! Heavy, shiny metals were made by God to count and represent our worth to society and ourselves. It is so obvious that it requires no proof. Whereas wood pulp, that is fake value, it only exists in your head, I don't care WHOSE picture they print on it, even if it was Jesus giving George Washington a handjob while Abraham Lincoln and Adam Smith watched from behind a peephole!
Poocoin (Score:5, Funny)
I Now if you ask me, I will stick to real value like dollars which is the natural measure of Man and all his works.
I'm now selling my poo as a currency. Like bit coin it can only be mined at a steady rate so it can't be manipulated. My Poo is marked with my DNA so it can't be forged for less than it costs to make. It's Natural, and a work of Man.
Now rather than transport it to you in all it's glory, I have established a Poo Reserve. The Poo holding company issues signed electronic Goombah Poo Reserve Demand notes ("poocoin") backed, as gold once backed the dollar, with Poo, redeemable on demand of actual Poo.
I am also setting up the first Poo National Bank. The bank will accept deposits of your electronic Poo Demand notes. It even pays interest on your deposits.
The Bank will also manke loans against it's deposits. So you can take out a loan at a very modest interest rate, all payable in Poo Demand Notes.
What happens next is easy to anticipate. People will Borrow Poocoin and pay off their debts for goods and services. The people paid off, will naturally want to earn some interest so they will pretty much all deposit the poocoin back in the bank to get that interest rate until they need to spend it on something. IN the mean time, with all those fresh deposits, the bank can now make new loans.
After a time T, the total poocoin deposited in the bank has now doubled. The total amount of Poo has not doubled. But what has happened is there are the Liabilities (Deposited Poocoin) and the Assets (borrowed poo coin), that cancel allowing the effective amount of Poocoin in circulation to have doubled.
And pretty much every time T after that the assets and liabilities both grow by the same amount. forever. the BM2 money supply grows without bound even the BM1 amount of the intiall Poocoin the bank had has not changed.
Everything is fine unless of course too many of the people want to withdraw their deposits at the same time. Then unless all the loans can both be called and people can pay them instantly, there is a collapse.
Just like bitcoin but more natural and actually backed by something real and tangible, not "electronic work". You can redeem poocoin for manure but you can't redeem bitcoin for anything.
Re:Poocoin (Score:5, Funny)
Nefarious Activities? (Score:4, Funny)
The best currency is still Legislative votes. Untraceable and the people in charge of the tracing have a vested interest in keeping it that way.
Re:Bitcoins teach us a lesson. (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah exactly! Why should the government try to regulate the market of values? Everyone knows that the market knows best because commodity production for the accumulation of value is bound to make everyone happy in the long run. It's human nature, after all. I learned that from Robinson Crusoe, which proves it. If the government would just let me beggar my neighbor in peace then we would all become wealthier, or at least as wealthy as we deserve to be. But now you've got these socialists in power who are all about fixing the game to help the poor against the rich, when everyone knows that they are poor because they are lazy and don't contribute to society, probably because they are genetically inferior or something scientific like that.