Bitcoins

[Deleted User]

DominicJ wrote: »

What entity can, in theory buy back every bit coin?

um, anyone can? If I had the money I could promise to pay everyone $0.01 for each bitcoin they hold.

DominicJ wrote: »

You laugh at my bank account, a promise from Lloyds to give me my money back, but Bitcoins dont even come with that fig leaf!

I'm going to assume your post is in response to mine, in which case:

You're clearly not reading and are so focused on being the winner here that you're failing to understand. Almost all of my assets are held in my bank account, in my pension and in my investments. I trust my net worth to the current financial system, I completely trust the financial system and my holdings in Bitcoin are just because I love the technology. I am under no illusion about the viability of Bitcoin as a currency, I'm not arguing you're a moron for using a bank, I'm arguing that the basis of your argument is fundamentally at odds with the reality of the banking system.

The reasons for unlikely long term viability are technical, the reasons for this are because it is at odds with the way people approach money at the moment. Bitcoin is not doomed to fail because no government backs it, that's such an unreasonable argument that it's just nonsensical.

You trust the government to buy back sterling if it fails. You trust the government to accept it for taxes. Your trust lloyds to pay out £1000 when you ask to withdraw £1000 from your account. The trust you put in those organisations far exceeds any trust anyone has to put in the Bitcoin network.

I'm happy to debate with you the value if Bitcoin as a currency, I'm happy to explain aspects of the network to you (did you know I could assign a share in my company to 1 satoshi and then that share could be traded within the network? No need for any 3rd part stock management companies!), but what you're doing is picking a worthless aspect of the argument against the viability of Bitcoin when there are so many valid arguments.

You're running into a PE lesson shouting "SPORTS IS STUPID NOBODY CAN TELL ME WHO HENRY THE 8TH FIRST MARRIED WITH WHAT THEY LEARNED IN THIS LESSON" and not willing to accept that maybe the premise of your argument is so flawed that what you're saying doesn't matter.

If you have an argument that addresses anything to do with Bitcoin (how it works, the viability as a currency) that extends beyond "it's dumb not government backed" please go ahead! There's always room for discussion about viability.

BoracicLint

Marazan wrote: »

Because pretty much an western government, or China or Russia could sink it right this second by building their own super computer cluster. BANG. Done. Bitcoin sunk.

It is techno-utopian bull relying entirely on the kindness of strangers.

Impossible, considering the distributed mining power is already 8 times more powerful than the top 500 supercomputers combined. It would not be practically viable, or in anyones interest to sink Bitcoin. The costs alone would make it unviable.

In fact, countries like China and Russia stand to benefit most from the cryptocurrency as it has the potential to shake the dollar's position as global reserve currency.

M.Johnson_2

BoracicLint wrote: »

Impossible, considering the distributed mining power is already 8 times more powerful than the top 500 supercomputers combined. It would not be practically viable, or in anyones interest to sink Bitcoin. The costs alone would make it unviable.

In fact, countries like China and Russia stand to benefit most from the cryptocurrency as it has the potential to shake the dollar's position as global reserve currency.

True in China the price topped out over $1200 per BTC.

In the rest of the world it only went over $900 BTC.

But the point stands there are many ways BTC could go to its intrinsic value of nothing.

BoracicLint

csm888 wrote: »

Its just that one has a central spokesperson and arbiter, the other is purely distributed.
Imagine you take the focussed power you see in our government and give it back to the people. The power (backing of money) is the same, its just in a different place.

This ^

Why not put your 'trust' in a pool of millions of like-minded people who believe in the value of Bitcoin? Surely that is a far better alternative than to trust a handful of the elite? Sure there will always be a minority who seek to destroy it, but they will always be overshadowed by the majority who want it to succeed.

Marazan

BoracicLint wrote: »

Impossible

You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

What you actually means is "expensive but easily and trivially within the budgets of a large, prosperous nation especially if they build using ASICs rather than generic super computers".

BoracicLint

Marazan wrote: »

You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

What you actually means is "expensive but easily and trivially within the budgets of a large, prosperous nation especially if they build using ASICs rather than generic super computers".

To what end though? Who benefits from destroying Bitcoin?

Marazan

BoracicLint wrote: »

To what end though? Who benefits from destroying Bitcoin?

You've just said that China and Russia would benefit from the US dollar losing it's reserve status. Wouldn't that hurt the US?

BoracicLint

Marazan wrote: »

You've just said that China and Russia would benefit from the US dollar losing it's reserve status. Wouldn't that hurt the US?

Not as much as systematically conspiring to destroy a global peer to peer network, along with the fortunes of every person who has ever invested in it. I think that would harm the US more than simply losing the dollar as reserve currency.

The point is the US would stand to benefit more from embracing Bitcoin than it would from destroying it, which is true for any party with the resources to achieve it.

dryhat

The exchange rate seems to be settling around the £400 mark.

Hopefully this will be the new "normal" for a while with no wild fluctuations in either direction.

csm888

dryhat wrote: »

The exchange rate seems to be settling around the £400 mark.

Hopefully this will be the new "normal" for a while with no wild fluctuations in either direction.

If you look at the recent traffic for "Bitcoin" on wikipedia and the traffic on the Reddit Bitcoin sub forum, there was a significant spike around the 19th November (Senate hearings)
http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoin/about/traffic
http://stats.grok.se/en/latest90/Bitcoin

I believe this will translate into a large sum of money being 'invested' into Bitcoin over the next few weeks. This money is currently in transit to the exchanges, but once this bull run finishes who knows....