Bitcoins

Satoshi

Something I am trying to get my head round is there are only supposed to be 21 million bitcoins in supply right? But they are infinitely divisible?

What if the decimal point was moved over 1 place to make 0.1 as the value of 1 bitcoin? Then it would be like 210 million bitcoins in supply?

It all boils down to there is nothing there. Its just numbers and how many numbers are there? Infinite.

With something physical that is used and needed like silver that is really there not virtual then the supply really is restricted to what is available in the world. But this is not true with something virtual that is infinitely divisible.

JohnRo

I'm trying to get my head around how many baked beans there are in this tin...if I cut them all in half the number doubles. So I can fit twice as many beans in the same tin.

If I keep cutting them in half the number of baked beans I can fit in this tin is infinite.

What an amazing tin.

[Deleted User]

Satoshi wrote: »

Something I am trying to get my head round is there are only supposed to be 21 million bitcoins in supply right? But they are infinitely divisible?

What if the decimal point was moved over 1 place to make 0.1 as the value of 1 bitcoin? Then it would be like 210 million bitcoins in supply?

It all boils down to there is nothing there. Its just numbers and how many numbers are there? Infinite.

With something physical that is used and needed like silver that is really there not virtual then the supply really is restricted to what is available in the world. But this is not true with something virtual that is infinitely divisible.

You're misunderstanding. Something being divisible doesn't make more of it. 1 bitcoin will always be 1 bitcoin. As John says, dividing the beans up doesn't make more beans.

Think of it like a pound, right now a pound is made up of 100 pennies, the government could conceivably create a new unit called a "plum" that is 1/10th of a penny, so now there are 10 plums in a penny and 1000 plums in a pound. The value of a pound hasn't changed, more pounds haven't been created, but you can now use plums for even more granularity.

grey_gym_sock

JohnRo wrote: »

I'm trying to get my head around how many baked beans there are in this tin...if I cut them all in half the number doubles. So I can fit twice as many beans in the same tin.

If I keep cutting them in half the number of baked beans I can fit in this tin is infinite.

What an amazing tin.

but it's even better than that ... the tin is also something physical that is used and needed and that is really there ... forget bitcoins! we should be using baked beans as the new currency system. (and now i see the real reason that warren buffett bought heinz.)

[Deleted User]

PayPal president David Marcus: Bitcoin is good, NFC is bad

"The leader of the payments business looks to the future and says Bitcoin is a good idea -- but not yet actually a currency. Tap-to-pay, meanwhile, is a dud."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57615080-93/paypal-president-david-marcus-bitcoin-is-good-nfc-is-bad/

Satoshi

citricsquid wrote: »

You're misunderstanding. Something being divisible doesn't make more of it. 1 bitcoin will always be 1 bitcoin. As John says, dividing the beans up doesn't make more beans.

Think of it like a pound, right now a pound is made up of 100 pennies, the government could conceivably create a new unit called a "plum" that is 1/10th of a penny, so now there are 10 plums in a penny and 1000 plums in a pound. The value of a pound hasn't changed, more pounds haven't been created, but you can now use plums for even more granularity.

Yes something real that actually exits can be divisible but soon it gets so small that its impracticable, if its virtual it can just keep getting smaller its just numbers after all. So that 21million could be 210million or 210Billion if you keep moving the decimal point.

Its just numbers there is nothing there.

grey_gym_sock

Satoshi wrote: »

Yes something real that actually exits can be divisible but soon it gets so small that its impracticable, if its virtual it can just keep getting smaller its just numbers after all. So that 21million could be 210million or 210Billion if you keep moving the decimal point.

Its just numbers there is nothing there.

you are very confused. things do not get smaller when you conceptually divide them.

i have an apple. to put it another way: i have 4 quarters of an apple. to put it another way: i have a billion billionths of an apple. and so on. any of these may be a useful way of looking at it. but i still have an apple.

the real is no different from the virtual in this respect. you can think of them as consisting of however many smaller parts as is useful to you.

BTW, everything is numbers.

richie799

Governments would say its a threat to the economy... more like its a threat to them who control the economy. They don't like it because its not a currency they can control...(i.e print more or less of)

padington

Yeah problem for governments with bit coins isn't really that criminals use it. Criminals have always used cash for small business and art for big business. The problem is that governments can't print more of it and hence hence tax everyone on the sly.

The remedy will be to tax the !!!! out of bit coin. The only problem however is that it's going to be as hard for them to do that as it is to stop music file sharing.

So what they will do is probably try to criminalise it and close ranks against it (news out that Apple is banning apps from taking bit or helping to trade bit coins - time to go android).

It's going to be a very rocky road, with lots of dips and spikes and many many buying opportunities for clever investors but one hell of a roller coaster.

Satoshi

One of the new bio currencies will prob kill bitcoin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K81tyUYt1E

not based on fresh air:rotfl: