Bitcoin Plunges After Mt. Gox Exchange Halts Trades 249
Posted
by
timothy
from the well-at-least-dark-grey-friday dept.
from the well-at-least-dark-grey-friday dept.
krakman writes with this excerpt from Bloomberg News: "Bitcoin plunged more than 8 percent [Friday] after a Tokyo-based exchange halted withdrawals of the digital currency, citing technical malfunction. Mt. Gox, claimed in a blog post it needed to 'temporarily pause on all withdrawal requests to obtain a clear technical view of the currency processes.' It promised an 'update' — not a reopening — on Monday, Feb. 10, Japan time. This is day after Russia's Prosecutor General concluded Bitcoin and other digital currencies are illegal under current law."
Yet trading goes on (Score:4, Informative)
Things have taken a bit of a dive. [bitcoinity.org]
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Things have taken a bit of a dive. [bitcoinity.org]
What's interesting is that it hasn't totally tanked after a country like Russia declares it illegal, is happened with China.
Of course in Russia everything is illegal so maybe it's not that big a deal.
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Oh, and it seems to keep dropping [bitcoincharts.com].
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The declaration from China came in the middle of a bubble. In my analysis (yay, random internet guy analysis), it seems as if that drop was not because of any direct impact of the declaration, but simply came because enough people knew it was in a bubble and was simply waiting to sell as soon the bubble seemed to burst. The declaration acted as a signal for the end of the bubble.
Oh, and it seems to keep dropping [bitcoincharts.com].
Seems to be flattening out now that Mt Gox is allowing withdrawals again. I think it'll come back up now - until the next bad news story, just like any other currency :-)
I'm not sure how one can evaluate whether the bitcoin value is in a bubble or not as there is no way to evaluate how much it should be worth other than current demand, which will fluctuate based on whatever news is happening at the moment rather than on any intrinsic value or economic indicators which might be used to valuate real property
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Fiat currencies are taxed, which is a built in demand. In the U.S., at least, dollars can by law be used to settle any private debt, too. Bitcoin has demand among collectors and speculators, and for customers of businesses like Silk Road.
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After talking with several people who are rather educated in finance and the banking industry they all come back with the same response about fiat currencies: the entire system is built on bullshit
It's just a matter of time before those houses of cards topple over. Might as well jump on the future primary international currency.
Looks more like manipulation (Score:5, Insightful)
Rule 1 of currency trading: Economic news is bull. It's either used to mislead a trader before they pull the trigger on a trade, or it's a pathetic excuse they give you after they've yanked your money.
"'temporarily pause on all withdrawal requests to obtain a clear technical view of the currency processes" sounds like the latter kind of BS.
Yeah sorry traders, we just had a technical hiccup.... SLURP! YOU LOST YOUR MONEY THANKS FOR PLAYING
Three fat red bars on the chart going down, followed by a doji that's just waiting there for people to jump on board. Looks like market manipulation... look for the reversal set up.
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Rule 1 of currency trading: Economic news is bull. It's either used to mislead a trader before they pull the trigger on a trade, or it's a pathetic excuse they give you after they've yanked your money....
Markets are anonymous and deal with money or things denominated in money. How could there not be fraud?
Re:Looks more like manipulation (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe it is called a "stress test", one of the techniques that banks use to test the resilience of a trading system and how much liquidity it has. If they suddenly shutdown the exchange of currency, the punters are forced to make trades using other resources. How much of that other currency is used gives an idea of how is available. The Russians and EU did the same by restricting physical money currency transfers. The EU figured out there was black market the size of the GDP of the entire region.
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I personally use localbitcoins, because there is no fee's to sell, and you can get people to walk into a branch of your bank and deposit money directly to you and not have to worry about bank wire fee's in order to move your USDs out of an exchange.
That's a very good way to get your account closed by your bank. Might take awhile to trip the bots to flag your account, but they will find it, and if you're lucky they'll give you a week to find a new bank.
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It's how my tenants pay rent in Canada.
To let them do it, I had to have a note on my account and they have to show their ID when they make the deposit. The bank wouldn't permit it any other way.
I would have thought the bank would have been happy to have random strangers deposting money into accounts, but no. Not in Canada.
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It's pretty normal in the US. I can deposit money to a friend's account. They don't even want to see my ID.
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unusual mixed deposits of money orders, third party checks, payroll checks, etc., into a business account;
Yea that might seem like they only look at business accounts, but bots residential looks for anything that isn't a regular pa
Set for a crash anyway due to difficulty of mining (Score:3)
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Actually, this scheme relies on reliable ability to trade virtual money for hard currency. This makes exchanges the natural single point of failure.
It's yet another variation of the old xkcd joke: https://xkcd.com/538/ [xkcd.com]
Every time Mt.Gox, by far the most popular and basically main exchange went down, bitcoin's trade value against hard currency went down hard. The rest of the factors are mostly irrelevant because their importance compared to relative value of easy, functional and legal way to exchange bitcoin
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You're not the first person to make this observation, and you won't be the last. However, you are nonetheless mistaken. In your rush to pass judgement, you've missed some fundamental aspects of Bitcoin.
Either mining remains profitable, or miners will stop mining.* At the point where they stop mining, the difficulty goes down until mining becomes worthwhile again. The system was meant to balance itself in exactly this way, and it works very, very well. Yes, mining is an expensive proposition with a large ini
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In a few years we'll look back at this and laugh at the bitcoin pyramid players as if they were methheads. In the meantime it's a obvious scam baited for geek. We've become mainstream enough to attract predators.
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In a few years we'll look back at this and laugh at the bitcoin pyramid players as if they were methheads. In the meantime it's a obvious scam baited for geek. We've become mainstream enough to attract predators.
Six years ago, when bitcoin started, slashdot haters were "predicting" that this "scam" will collapse in months. Now it should last few years, that is improvement! In few years maybe you will even realize your error and admit that bitcoin is indeed revolutionary technology!
I choose not to be an amoral weasel (Score:2)
Leave the kids alone lowlife.
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Indeed there are many hobbyists like that - we were just asked to provide first gen ASIC hosting, the ASICMiner 10Gh blades :O
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Either mining remains profitable, or miners will stop mining.* At the point where they stop mining, the difficulty goes down until mining becomes worthwhile again.
Can you imagine what a rollercoaster this will be? Price of a commodity is set at an exchange with a simple phone call or with an electronic contract. This price is set and is changed (as need be) easily and effortlessly, with lag that today is measured in milliseconds. However in BTC land in order to send the message to BTC Gods you have to cl
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This is why I've always said BC is a Ponzi scheme, it let the insiders at the top of the scheme make a ton quickly and then cash out when it became no longer profitable to mine while those getting into BC mining now will never even make back the cost of power, much less hardware.
I'm all for a new cash that lets you bypass the Fed and their scams but this is just more of the same, the only difference is who got to make the big bux.
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There won't be any scarcity. Well, not because of increased difficulty, anyway. There are only two main reasons for scarcity within Bitcoin, and mining difficulty isn't one of them. The coin reward will happen, on average, every 10 minutes. If it ends up being faster than that, difficulty will rise until it averages out to 10 minutes again. If it ends up being slower than that, the difficulty will rise until (you guessed it) the average coin reward rate is every 10 minutes.
The two reasons for scarcity are (
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* Typo:
If it ends up being slower than that, the difficulty will rise until (you guessed it) the average coin reward rate is every 10 minutes.
Should read:
If it ends up being slower than that, the difficulty will fall until (you guessed it) the average coin reward rate is every 10 minutes.
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* Typo 2: ("I hate uneditable posts"):
The block reward will end in 2140.
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That's a very convenient mechanism to let the early adopters in the pyramid know when it is time to cash out.
To explain what seems to have been missed. (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, apparently if all "mining" stops then that will prevent transactions from occurring and render the tokens worthless. Whenever this has been brought up before the response of people involved in the scheme has been "mining will never stop", and the question otherwise ignored.
Re:To explain what seems to have been missed. (Score:4, Informative)
well - the thing is that difficulty can go down as well.
Therefore it is self balancing, sure if 80% of mining power disappeared all of sudden, it would take a LONG time before reaching difficulty recalculation, but it would eventually happen.
It is self balancing over:
Mining costs (electricty + hardware + human time) and Bitcoin value
Costs go significantly upwards -> Bitcoin value is bound to follow -> BTC value doesn't follow, miners are stopped or moved over alternative cryptocurrencies
Bitcoin value drops -> Miners are being stopped or moved over to alternatives -> Mining costs go downwards
Bitcoin value increases -> More miners will be purchased -> Mining costs go up -> BTC Value eventually follows
Very simple really.
Even hosting business has diminishing returns, yet, that industry is larger than ever, growing at ever growing pace.
Same for networking business (Those who lay the fiber), returns are diminishing, yet they continue on investing
Infact ... Almost every single business follows the same pattern of diminishing returns, for some industries, it's the inflation which does it, and for most technological innovation
When the diminishing returns and growth reaches an equilibrium -> There is barely growth, and the returns don't diminish significantly anymore, it's called a mature industry. ie. farming is a mature industry
When the returns diminish faster than growth it's a industry dying, the MAFIAA would like you to be believe entertainment industry is like so, but they are in a huge growth period right now.
Gone industries in the past are things like steam engine builders (barely any steam engines are being produced today), automotive phones (everyone has a cell phone, and having a phone just for the car doesn't make any sense, it was a fad to begin with), and what else has gone by the way of technological innovation.
If the diminishing returns is stopped, innovation is stopped, progress is stopped.
I think eventually bitcoin mining will reach a stage where it's roughly 2 years for hardware break even including operational costs, and the additional years is your profit. That's when ASIC manufacturing has reached the same processing node and complexity as CPUs today and been there for a significant time. and we are there already, with newest chips being 28nm, just like the latest AMD CPU series - intel is at 22nm now.
It is possible that large processing node, like 65nm ASICs will stay marginally profitable even then for some time - when compared to electricity and human resources costs.
As a comparison point i'm using dedicated hosting industry, some 5 years old servers are still being sold today, and many are in production still todate. :) :) Lifespan for those is 3years and then phase out, 60%+ is expected to survive the 3 years, and target average lifespan of disks is 3years, so there will be some disks being used for more than 4 years, but a marginal group.
Hell, the bulk of our cheapest option is with Q1'10 launched CPU, and we are still taking high end servers into use older than that (Intel L5520, which is 45nm)
Tho, in our use every single drive is new and minimum 2Tb size, not decade old models
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It's a fucking pyramid scheme baited for geek. "Innovation" doesn't come into it.
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Except you were unable to explain why... because it's not. Bitcoin isn't a scam because Bitcoin doesn't promise that you'll make money with it.
(If I'm wrong, then please show me where that promise is made. I'd really like to know about it.)
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Fuck you scammer. Being polite to you evil pricks just makes you think we are potential fresh meat.
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Let's hear you explain why it is.
Here [bitcoin.org] is Satoshi's original whitepaper, and the source code to the main Bitcoin client is available here [github.com]. Please point to the bits where it tries to scam you.
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That said, as transaction fees increase the value of the currency decreases, since it becomes less favorable to use it over other currencies with lower fees.
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Demand does not die where pressure grows (Score:2)
Would tulip mania have faded if every other flower on the earth were dying?
The thing that really keeps Bitcoin going is that mismanagement in "real" currencies and reduction in anonymity everywhere is driving people to Bitcoin as a real alternative, that's manipulated by a wholly different people. Do you see that changing anytime soon?
Exclusive Video Footage (Score:2)
This [youtube.com] was the scene today at Mt. Gox as people frantically tried to withdraw their Bitcoins. Err, no wait, that's a scene from Mary Poppins. Seemed legit.
A blog post? (Score:2)
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Well ... someone can always set up a new exchange elsewhere. It's not like it's black magic. You just need to have the funding in both currencies to be able to support the exchange. There are lots of private currency exchanges, who will happily convert national currencies. If they trusted in BTC, they could easily add that to their portfolio.
I could set up the better BTC/USD exchange tomorrow, but since I only have (checks wallet) 0.00000889 BTC, and almost a comparable amount of US currency, I would
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Mt. GOX withdrawals has been almost non-existant for the last year already, not for BTC side, but for FIAT side.
You had to wait 6+ months for withdrawals to go through, plus they took hidden charges they claim they don't take, don't provide receipt for that neither.
There are plenty of other exchanges, such as Bitstamp and BTC-E, they work just fine.
You can also go to localbitcoins.com and exchange for hard cash with someone in your local area.
As for BTC being a fad, you clearly don't understand the whole co
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I think AC got most of what I was going to say. :)
I know there are other exchanges out there. Even if they all went down today, more would come up shortly after, as long as there is a demand for them.
BTC is a fad. It's becoming more accepted, but not well enough to say it will survive the test of time. It has an inherent flaw. There can only be 21 million bitcoins. If someone holding them loses their wallet, they're lost. They aren't reissued by anyone, since there is no central authority to do it.
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When I choose financial institutions, I prefer those named after children's card games.
I'm sure you have similar reservations about buying merchandise by a site named after a tropical rain forest, or getting search results from a site named after a mathematical term.
Re:Magic the Gathering Online Exchange (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand how bitcoins or gold either one retain their values.
Bitcoin is a bubble, though as with every other bubble there are delusional people who assert the emperor is not naked/that it all somehow makes sense. It doesn't... the valuation is absurd.
As for gold, I think the explanation is a mixture of inertia, rarity, resistance to governmental manipulation, and lack of corrosion.
Being able to beat it into a thin leaf is not a real explanation ("ZOMG! You can hammer this *how* thin?! SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!" said essentially no one ever). Saying it is valuable for jewelry begs the question (i.e. it's valuable for jewelry because its rare and expensive, but it's supposedly rare and expensive because it's valuable for jewelry?)
So, it really comes down to "it's always been this way", but everyone can be reasonably certain that there won't be a sudden massive increase in supply, and that their holdings of gold won't corrode away into nothing. Furthermore, the government cannot simply pass a law saying that there is now twice as much gold as there was yesterday; this security against manipulation is certainly a valuable feature (well, unless you believe Krugman, who thinks that the government should always be able to manipulate currencies).
Gold Lasts (Score:4, Insightful)
Gold had value historically because of permanence - even though it's somewhat delicate, it does not tarnish or rust which is a damn impressive thing in a world full of other things that fade away quite rapidly.
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And if Copper were rare, you would be talking about the exquisite shades of brown and green.
Gold has value in a working economy (Score:5, Insightful)
The gold fetishist believe gold has value, no matter what. It doesn't. Examples are for instance the holocaust, people ended up selling small fortunes of gold just to survive or even just to eat. The end of time of dreamers who think that once the government collapses, their gold horde will be any safer then a bank account, forget that when Mad Max becomes real, gold has no value.
THIS is why Fallout uses bottle caps. NOT because of anything to do with bottle caps, just to show value is without meaning. People value whatever they value. And I got food and you don't I am not going to give you my food in exchange for your gold because that would leave me holding no food and only worthless gold.
VALUE is ALWAYS what someone ELSE is willing to give up in exchange for it. Take the value of a dollar bill. How much sex does it buy? It can vary from woman to woman and even from moment to moment and from buyer to buyer. Or for something slashdot readers are more familiar with, how about a softdrink from the exact same factory? Can vary from 35 cents to 2.50 with in a few hundred meters (chinese toko to convention hall).
Bitcoins trade is one person selling and another person buying. The more such traders happen, the more you get an average price. But I am going to bet that if I showed up and wanted to sell a BILLION bitcoins in one go, the average price would not apply. Same as if the US tried to sell all its gold at once.
THAT is how easy value can change. Very few things have any intrinisic value whatsoever. What is the value of water to someone living near a lake? The value of food to a farmer with a bountiful harvest? Want proof, read up on changing eating habbits. Like pigeons, peasant food, flying rats or fine dining?
The hardest thing to accept in life after death is that value is fleeting.
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The value of gold is arbitrary to some extent, that's for sure, but it's been consistently high for a very long time. Bitcoins, on the other hand, probably won't do as well. They are valued for as collector items, as object of speculation, and for their anonymity. The anonymity probably won't pan out long run, which leaves only the collectors to trade amongst themselves. This will lead to high, erratic prices and low volume. No one else will have any reason to join in.
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So you decided to skip the whole value as a tool aspect. :)
Great trolling there
Sure, bitcoin has no uses what so ever at all - then why the f* have people bought them in the first place :)
Anyone not knowing:
Bitcoin offers the greatest value there is: Freedom.
Freedom to move value how you wish, where you wish, when you wish, without anyone stopping you and at a low cost to boot.
If that is not value - human kind has already lost, and 1984 has become reality for the elite better than they could have ever hoped
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I agree that's valuable, I think bitcoin will be seen to provide less and less freedom as people using it get exposed and taken down. I just don't think it's anonymous enough.
Re:Gold has value in a working economy (Score:5, Insightful)
The gold fetishist believe gold has value, no matter what. It doesn't. Examples are for instance the holocaust, people ended up selling small fortunes of gold just to survive or even just to eat.
Why were people willing to trade gold for food, but not, say, rocks for food?
The end of time of dreamers who think that once the government collapses, their gold horde will be any safer then a bank account, forget that when Mad Max becomes real, gold has no value.
Petrol may well be more valuable than gold in a Mad Max scenario, but don't think for a moment that any collection of humans will not want a way to disintermediate their labor and have a means of trade. Do you really think that in Mad Max's world people who have petrol will be more willing to trade it for rocks than for gold? Or for paper US dollars than for gold?
THIS is why Fallout uses bottle caps. NOT because of anything to do with bottle caps, just to show value is without meaning.
So all items have equal value in your Mad Max scenario?
People value whatever they value.
Exactly!
And I got food and you don't I am not going to give you my food in exchange for your gold because that would leave me holding no food and only worthless gold.
If you only have enough food to survive, then you clearly value food more than you value gold. The question arises when you have more food than you can eat, and it will spoil if you just leave it sitting around. One man offers you bottle caps, one man offers you rocks, and a third man offers you gold for that food. Which offer do you take?
Check out what Carl Menger [wikipedia.org] contributed to economic understanding.
Gold isn't [just] a fetish - it's a natural material that happens to have useful properties of money.
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The gold fetishist believe gold has value, no matter what. It doesn't. Examples are for instance the holocaust, people ended up selling small fortunes of gold just to survive or even just to eat.
Why were people willing to trade gold for food, but not, say, rocks for food?
Obviously because it is easier to go out in your back yard and pick up a rock than to grow some more food and give it to somebody in exchange for a rock.
However, if food were scarce people might not be so willing to trade gold for it, but they might be willing to trade for some other scarce commodity for it (like ammunition). God doesn't actually have much intrinsic value - it is just a useful currency because it is rare. Sure, you can make microchips using it, but such applications require very little ma
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Depends how many rocks this guy is offering...
Gold as a store of value (Score:2)
Well, I'll tell you what. Since gold is a store of guaranteed value, you'll appreciate the deal I'm about to offer -- I'll sell you all the gold you want at last February's price! Sure, since then it's dropped from $1600/oz to $1250/oz -- but, since gold is the true measure of value, that shouldn't matter to you. You shouldn't even care that I'm making $300 or so per ounce on the deal. After all, I'm just getting worthless greenbacks, and you're getting the real stuff.
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Over the long run gold tends to have a constant value adjusted to inflation. So what will happen in a decade or two is that the price of gold will come up again. Some say there was a speculative bubble that pushed the gold price up momentarily. Others say it was a massive cash injection after the crisis that caused the gold price to rise so much. AFAIK both are true. The price of gold is too inflated right now and gold always goes down as an economy recovers at the same time platinum goes up. Since platinum
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Right now, I have a family member that trade rocks for food, although money is an intermediary store of value.
Some people want large rocks for landscaping, building retaining walls, whatnot. *shrugs*
They'll even truck rocks across the state so they have the right rock.
It's not too odd if you think about it. Gold is just a special form of rock, purified. It's rare enough to be valued, yet common enough to still be useful a
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This only works in a society the size of a large family. Even Indian tribes used money in the forms of shells, rare feathers, and other items their society deemed valuable.
Using gasoline as a medium of exchange is a non-starter for practical reasons, I shouldn't need to spell them out. Not to mention what happens when you meet a caravan of traveling merchants whose vehicles are all diesel powered and who have plenty of fuel already? Even if one
what the hell does the beta want in this text box (Score:2)
forget that when Mad Max becomes real, gold has no value.
Post apocalypse, so will most other things we attach value to. For example, today's currencies (dollars, euros, renminbi, whatever) will also be in the "no value" camp. Bitcoin will especially be worthless, unless you think the Mad Max world happens to have functioning computers, high speed networks, and most of all buyers willing to accept it.
It's gonna be a world of all-barter items, simple tools, food especially.
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The main reason people in the real world value gold over bottle caps or fuel is that gold doesn't rust, doesn't evaporate and is reasonably easy to subdivide. If I buy gold I can be certain that in ten years that gold will still be exactly the same.
Bottle caps as currency is very unrealistic in a mad-max scenario.
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if someone put $1,000,000 worth of gold and $1,000,000 worth of bitcoins on a table (hypothetically) which would you choose?
it wouldn't matter which one you chose. They are both worth a million dollars.
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Selling gold is stupid easy. You can either use it for direct exchange or take it to a coin dealer and sell it. A reputable dealer will sell at a 2-5% markup and buy at or slightly below spot price. If the dealer steals your gold you know exactly who to send the cops after, your bitcoins get stolen and you'll be lucky to know what country the person who stole them is in.
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The Jews in that scenario didn't have to spend fortunes of gold to escape or eat because gold had suddenly lost value. They had to spend those fortunes because BRIBING PEOPLE IS EXPENSIVE. It is especially expensive when you have to do it on the spot and only have one chance to offer the bribe.
Picture the scenario, A family of Jews in Nazi Germany is trying to make it to Switzerland. They have their old Jewish ID papers with them, but purchased fake non-Jew IDs so as to be able to travel. They
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You realize that Bitcoin objectively has those exact same qualities, right
You will note that my comment was about bitcoin's valuation, not that it lacked certain qualities. If the price of gold had increased by approximately two orders of magnitude within in a year (like bitcoin has) then I would say that its valuation was absurd too.
I am not a gold fetishist. I perceive it as the most popular store of wealth of the type that is fairly immune to government tampering. However, these stores of wealth are not intrinsically appreciating investments, unlike, say, equities or bonds.
Oh,
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there is far far far less bitcoin than there is gold, and there always will be far far far less bitcoin than there is gold. Limited to 21million coins.
Bitcoin has built in appreciation - again - limited supply. It has built in appreciation because after some gain so much, others want to join the boat as well, bitcoins get lost and misplaced etc. The supply is dwindling, while demand is growing - built in.
Supply is dwindling because of the finite supply, lost bitcoins.
Demand is growing because more people le
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It's a bubble because absolutely no one, anywhere in the world, has any reason to tether themselves to the Bitcoin currency. You don't pay taxes in it. No one has to pay taxes in it.
There's no anchor to the currency. The only thing anyone has to do with Bitcoin is cash out to their local currency to pay taxes.
Re:Magic the Gathering Online Exchange (Score:4, Informative)
Total quantity in existence is completely irrelevant. People could create a currency backed completely by by copper if they wanted to. Copper historically WAS used as money for very low value transactions where dividing silver or gold was not practical. Being rare is not the be-all-end-all of currencies, it's an advantage, but not required. It is an advantage in that the resulting physical coins carry significant purchasing power.
Money has 7 characteristics and the more characteristics something has, the better it will serve as money.
(1) It must be durable, which is why we don’t use wheat or corn or rice.
(2) It must be divisible, which is why we don’t use art work.
(3) It must be convenient, which is why we don’t use lead.
(4) It must be consistent, which is why we don’t use real estate.
(5) It must possess value in itself, which is why we don’t use paper. (The US dollar was originally backed by gold, which is the reason people accepted it in the first place.)
(6) It must be limited in the quantity that is available, which is why we don’t use aluminum or iron.
(7) It should have a long history of acceptance, which is why we don’t use molybdenum or rhodium.
Bitcoin fails 1, 3, 5, and 7.
It is not durable in a practical sense because it relies on a global P2P network to work. Governments have taken their countries off the internet before. How do you spend your bitcoins during civil unrest when you can't access the network? It is also vulnerable to a 51% attack, which is well within the technological capabilities of many governments.
It is not convenient because it relies on both parties having setup a bitcoin wallet and having an internet connection. If I want to buy a used car for 3 ounces of gold, all I have to do is hand the seller the gold and they can verify firsthand that it is real and then I get the title to the car. I've gone to estate sales where there was no cellular or other data service and was not aware of this beforehand. Someone trying to buy via Bitcoin would be SOL, people using gold, silver, or paper money would go on with business as usual.
It does not posses value onto itself. Lets say that one day, nobody wanted to use gold as money, perhaps everyone decided to use Platinum instead. Would your gold's value drop to zero? No, because gold has uses beyond being money, especially today with its many industrial uses. If people stop using bitcoin as money, the values goes immediately to zero.
Bitcoin does not have a long history behind it at all while gold has a record that spans almost all of human history. 5,000 years of use and gold has never gone to zero. I have cans of SPAM that are older than bitcoin. (and still edible too) Once it earns a reputation that lasts a few decades, perhaps it will gain more widespread acceptance, but it might as well be a
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Bitcoin fails 1, 3, 5, and 7.
It is not durable in a practical sense because it relies on a global P2P network to work. Governments have taken their countries off the internet before. How do you spend your bitcoins during civil unrest when you can't access the network?
How do you access your bank account via an ATM when the connection is down? Oh Noes! Any type of money accessed via ATMs and Debit/credit cards is not... um, money?
It is also vulnerable to a 51% attack, which is well within the technological c
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You're delusional if you think gold is not a digital good.
Re:Magic the Gathering Online Exchange (Score:4, Interesting)
When Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of German physicists Max von Laue (1914) and James Franck (1925) in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from confiscating them. The German government had prohibited Germans from accepting or keeping any Nobel Prize after jailed peace activist Carl von Ossietzky had received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935. De Hevesy placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. It was subsequently ignored by the Nazis who thought the jar—one of perhaps hundreds on the shelving—contained common chemicals. After the war, de Hevesy returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The gold was returned to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation. They re-cast the medals and again presented them to Laue and Franck.
"Destroyed", but, no, not really.
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The gold wasn't 'destroyed' merely dissolved.
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The gold atoms remained, but the metal known as gold (consisting of a gold atoms in a metallic lattice) vanished. The dissolved gold atoms don't any more have any of the properties associated with gold. Of course, it is not that hard to make new gold from those atoms provided you can get them in sufficient concentration, but that doesn't mean the old gold is not gone.
Anyway, if you go to that level of nitpicking, you also have to note that bitcoins consist of nothing but information, and according to quantu
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Re:Magic the Gathering Online Exchange (Score:5, Insightful)
Virtually anything you might buy or sell derives at least some of its value from faith, and currencies are no exception to this. In other words, as long as a sufficient number of people believe that 1BTC is worth ~$680, then 1BTC is indeed worth ~$680.
This is even true of gold to a certain extent - its value goes up and down too, though it's seldom as volatile because it has other uses beyond currency.
When something happens to shake that faith, the value drops. When something happens to strengthen that faith, the value rises.
Any currency that isn't backed by something tangible (eg. a precious metal) by definition derives more-or-less all its value from faith. This isn't usually a big deal - most countries came off the gold standard decades ago - but one side-effect is that if your country's government is unstable, there's a very good chance your currency will follow suit in short order. For extreme examples, see Zimbabwean dollars, Afghan Afghanis and German Papiermarks.
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FIAT currency value is 100% faith based, there's no backing etc. ....
If people decide today that dollar is valueless, the only value remaining is paying taxes, but if nobody accepts dollars anymore
Currently most, if not all, FIAT currencies are basicly money printing presses for the goverments, that's why we got so much inflation.
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Virtually anything you might buy or sell derives at least some of its value from faith...When something happens to shake that faith, the value drops.
I won't disagree with anything you said, but value also derives from usefulness. A working hammer is more valuable than a broken hammer, and while there is some element of faith in believing that it will still work on the next strike, it isn't much of a leap.
There aren't a lot of currency exchanges that convert bitcoins to traditional currency. If one of them closes up, then bitcoin has less utility, because I can do less with it.
If gas stations stopped selling non-diesel fuel then you'd see the value of
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But of course with precious metal money, all three can coexist.
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you'd need to carry around an entire tree to buy a pack of gum.
You haven't looked at the price of trees lately...
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beta version that they have tried to force inside everyone. I don't know what could possibly have caused me to think of that
It's completely obvious to everyone you're referring to Opera being rewritten into a Chromium clone with all the features that made it special or even usable removed. The classic version is still available but if you go to the Web site, you'll likely be directed to the shitty new beta version, which runs on fewer environments than it used to. We, the users, put up a stink but they told us to go fuck ourselves.
Re:Enough with this "fuck beta" nonsense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice sock puppet. Wonder who modded this up?
Sure as shit not a real user.
The people who made this site - the real grown ups who don't post AC - object not just to the technically poor execution of the latest sites; (both the mobile and the beta desktop sites suck). No, what they loath is that they took time to give feedback, as I did - in detail - which was ignored...and then the beta was just rolled out.
Hence the rather "childish" fuck beta campaign. Treat people like kids, don't be surprised at what you get back.
On a final note, fuck beta, and fuck you AC.
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Slashdot's content is produced by the people (you and me and 3 million others.) We are supposed to write comments on this Web site. So a better analogy would be: you go to a concert, but the performers are singing protest songs because their manager threatens to disband the group. You may not like it... but admission is free, so you cannot demand your money back. If you walk away and ignore the event, the band will be soon gone.
Slashcott is a boycott of Slashdot. No visits, no submissions, no comments ne
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The grown ups want to discuss the news.
Why don't all of you Anonymous Coward "grown ups" hop on over to Huffington Post to discuss the news? Here's a fucking link [huffingtonpost.com] for the lazy. In a month you can come back to Slashdot and you won't even know the difference.
Re:Enough with this "fuck beta" nonsense. (Score:4, Interesting)
Grow the fuck up and stop spamming the comments. The grown ups want to discuss the news.
What a childish thing to say. When I was younger and naive I thought that voting and going through proper channels was how people changed the systems that govern them or otherwise affect their lives. When I became an adult, I put away childish idealism and threw out the narrative fairy tales of the indoctrinators. Once I let only observation and fact shape my thinking I was able to clearly see that voting doesn't matter. [snagfilms.com] The systems are rigged. [snagfilms.com] If you do not know this, then you are ignorant of history. The rulers react only to save face when confronted with loud and vocal and persistent protest. Just look at the majority of changes enacted by the world's peoples.
It is been made painfully and bluntly apparent that here at slashdot we do not even have the illusion of a vote. We therefore use our voices as it is all we still have, for now. Fuck Beta. The grown ups know how the world works better than some ignorant, complacent, and short sighted children. Rarely do rulers actually know what's good for the people they rule, and nearly universally do they reject the Scientific Method -- a means by which they could discover the correct course of action! This is because they care not for what's best for the people. We have to make them care. It is the very grown ups who see in longer terms and are willing to sacrifice the comments here for a while if it means there's a chance we may not let the community be destroyed. Extract your head from your ass: The beta makes discussion of the news difficult. A few weeks of pain is nothing compared to eternity.
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You will then realize is an abomination
Who put you in charge of my opinions?
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Are you using the beta? Do you actually like it?
If you don't like us talking about the site we like then piss of to somewhere else and quit your whining.
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I have used Beta and I hate it way less than the Beta whiners that dump on every thread. Do they live here or something? Is Beta throwing them out on the street? I don't get it.
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Yes I have been using it. I'm indifferent to the current quality since obviously it will get better over time.
I am ESPECIALLY indifferent to extra whitespace, because it doesn't matter much to me if I have to scroll more. Would I like to see it tighter up? Yes, but it is absolutely not worth the 24x7 beta trolling.
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If you're too stupid to have noticed the functional changes, then you're quite simply too stupid for pretty much anything. In particular as people have repeatedly whined about those functional changes.
Enjoy your dumbed-down slashdot beta, you sound like a perfect match for it.
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It's just a website full of egotistical nerds. It's entertaining and interesting at times, and that's about it. If you leave no-one will notice.
Re: Slashdot Traffic Plunges After Beta ... (Score:2, Insightful)
"Slashdot traffic plunged by way more than 8 percent" /. although it might make it worse. The beta-numbnuts on the other hand are totally destroying it right now.
That would be awesome! Then the other 91+ percent could get to read comments again.
beta is not ruining
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Re:paste this to cut the BETA (Score:5, Informative)
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Musk ox?!? (Score:2)
What sonny?
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tried to convert them to real money at the same time. Yeah, that would make it drop and would shut down the exchanges.
Keep mining those bitcoins!
Not in the slightest. MtGox has been in a death spiral for almost half a year. Please read my earlier response. [slashdot.org]