Bitcoins

bowlhead99

JohnJLewis wrote: »

But its not possible to change from £ when setting the price on ebay.

Thing is, the BTC to £ changes all the time and as the majority of the global audience uses fiat, it wouldn't make sense to set the price in a currency most don't use. Particularly given ebay's background as an auction platform where you want to get maximum takeup and interest in an item.

- If you set a 'buy it now' price in BTC and that became very expensive in GBP, you would not get buyers who could only afford the old GBP amount which you would presumably have been happy to receive really.

-And presumably if BTC as a volatile currency drops by 20%, you yourself would much rather receive the higher sterling amount that was the old equivalent, even if that does mean you are going to take it and invest in bitcoins with a bit of a trading spread.

dryhat

JohnJLewis wrote: »

But its not possible to change from £ when setting the price on ebay.

Once they team up with Bitpay (as they have now done in the US) this will be done automatically and you will have the option of accepting bitcoins and having the GBP sent to your bank - without ever touching Bitcoin yourself.

TedButlerstheman

BTC under $350, whats going on?

sabretoothtigger

Nothing much, thats all it takes to bring price down. I imagine it'll go up again when some section of the globe finds a need to transfer cash fast with no dollars

Thing is with precious metals is they are a unique part of the universe so even when nobody wants them, they still qualify as useful to some small section of people.
Bitcoin doesnt have this, its a wonder its not more volatile with no base need

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/09/specials/build-tomorrow/?domain=www.cnn.com\&hpt=hp_c4


https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=y3dqhixzGVo

TedButlerstheman

sabretoothtigger wrote: »

Nothing much, thats all it takes to bring price down. I imagine it'll go up again when some section of the globe finds a need to transfer cash fast with no dollars

Thing is with precious metals is they are a unique part of the universe so even when nobody wants them, they still qualify as useful to some small section of people.
Bitcoin doesnt have this, its a wonder its not more volatile with no base need

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/09/specials/build-tomorrow/?domain=www.cnn.com\&hpt=hp_c4


https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=y3dqhixzGVo

I can see your point, silver will always be needed for new technology and water filtration etc. But gold and bitcoin are only perceived to have value because they are perceived to have value?

Ryan_Futuristics

TedButlerstheman wrote: »

I can see your point, silver will always be needed for new technology and water filtration etc. But gold and bitcoin are only perceived to have value because they are perceived to have value?

Well BitCoin's value is almost entirely speculative at the moment

A lot of famous investors don't like it because a basic principle of investing is working out what something's *actually* worth, then seeing if it's being sold cheaper ... Legendary investors like Warren Buffet don't typically take speculative risks on things they think might take off ... There's always valuation in every decision

What's BitCoin's actual value to society? How much is it being used to legitimately save people time and money, and facilitate transactions, and how much is just people buying up the currency in the hope it'll take off?


It's a tricky one

If it were to take off, an individual BitCoin could hit £500k ... But it needs to solve many usability and security issues first; it needs global support and backing from banks; it needs stability; it needs to fight off other potential crypto currencies along the way; and even if it solves all of these, it needs to avoid being regulated into something unrecognisably different

For a sensible investor, it's more likely a no-brainer: even at $350, it's probably being sold at 100x its actual value ... Assume anything you invest now will be worth next to nothing (it's a pure gamble ... I'm still tempted to hold one though - just in case)

TedButlerstheman

The question should what comes next, the world has been using a new international monetary system since 1971 and now that is coming to near its end. What comes next? Bitcoin or something else? I think something else.

bowlhead99

TedButlerstheman wrote: »

BTC under $350, whats going on?

Since you posted that it's been up to $390 on some exchanges- was still over $360 on Friday and and now in the $310-320 range. It's pretty much just a rollercoaster - 10% gain or loss in 24 hours is easy, without knowing which direction is next.

I presume the latest drop is the news in the last couple of days that Russia published their draft rules to illegalize it. Fines for anyone (sliding scale for citizens, officials and corporates) who issues, creates or deliberately disseminates information about the release or operation of, digital currencies. Not exactly an endorsement. Pretty much the opposite of what's happening on the Isle of Man and other small locations where niche markets need to be embraced because they don't have billions of barrels/ tons of resources.

Perversely the gradual acceptance of bitcoin by a few retailers or other businesses may hurt the price.

If you were a bitcoin miner or speculator who'd had a few hundred of these since $10 and seen it become worth over a hundred times that at one point, you might have been upset by the drift back down but still be holding in the hope that you could see that again someday.

However, with the reality being recognised that you might lose 50% of what you have, just as easily as you might make it,you might now be grateful for the ability to just go spend a BTC or two on goods or services without it psychologically seeming like you are making a decision to simply 'dump your bitcoins and get out of the market'. That might be quite a welcome exit route.

Obviously the various companies who say they accept bitcoin as a payment method, are currently just doing this as a marketing gimmick to make positive headlines. Their business is selling goods or services not currency speculation - so they don't want to be holding BTC over the weekend when they can lose 15% from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning as it would have done this weekend: that's likely more than their operating profit margin for their core business. Any BTC they receive, will get dumped on the market pretty quickly.

So, BTC holders who think they are 'spending' their BTC as a validation of their decision to get some and wait for it to grow, are really just indirectly dumping their BTC on the market with the exact same effect on price as if they had placed a big sell order for the same dollar value.

It's next to impossible to forsee what will happen to the price by the end of the year or beyond. With this weekend's price drops I actually bought a few myself having opened up an account and put some cash in this week - I had planned to buy if it dropped to $333 as an arbitrary number that would make doing the rough maths on my costs quite easy to remember. Between looking at the price a few days ago and yesterday it had dropped almost $50 per coin so I went for it!

Of course, I'm under no illusions that this is an 'investment', it is just a bit of fun speculation. Not at all the MSE thing to do. But one of the luxuries of having a good income and an investment portfolio that does OK, is that from time to time you can have a dabble in something stupid without it being the end of the world when it doesn't come off.

I see the order book at Bitstamp seems quite stacked in favour of people wanting to buy rather than sell at this level but that will exclude all the people who haven't got open orders, which is of course the majority, and it's only one exchange, and everyone in the US is asleep, and many of the people with buyorders might have reconsidered if they'd heard the latest out of Russia - so it's difficult to read too much into it !

bowlhead99

So, not meaning to gloat too much but a virtual coin that I was buying only one weekend ago at $312 is now worth $412...
https://www.bitstamp.net/market/order_book/

This ties in with comments from the more level headed people in the 40 pages of thread above me who note that the value is almost entirely speculative rather than a replacement currency in the 'real world'. You simply can't have a currency that can go up or down 33% against the USD in a week, and have people migrate to it as a sensible medium of exchange.

Clearly this particular week it was a better thing to have held than a barrel of oil or a S&P500 or FTSE100 index, and the paper return was far better than a bar of gold which at least moved the same direction. But at the moment it's only something that works for speculators as those patterns can easily reverse.

I am still getting spam emails telling me it is the 'next big thing' and that it is up x% year to date (even though it's actually down almost 50%), because they were written a year ago and are still circulating and pointing people to dodgy sites full of bulls who want the price to go back up to $1000+ because a great many of them thought they would get the same return at $1000 as they saw people get from $10 a couple of years earlier.

Buyer beware!

puk999

bowlhead99 wrote: »

So, not meaning to gloat too much but a virtual coin that I was buying only one weekend ago at $312 is now worth $412...
https://www.bitstamp.net/market/order_book/

Just mildly curious, how should one interpret that order book graph? Does the graph represent a snapshot in time (e.g. a day)? I can guess the horizonal axis is something to do with price (only because it funnels down towards 410 and in the top left it currently says the Bitcoin price is $409), and the vertical axis is quantity traded. What's the green and blue blocks?