You're being deliberately stupid in order to make a very dumb point. People using their smartphones rarely hold it at an angle that would put people's faces in frame unless they're taking a picture (or video).

Knock off the false equivalence. Nobody is buying.

And this is why we hate glassholes.

You're starting with the assumption that Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme. That makes the rest of your comment rather questionable, but I'll soldier on anyway.

Most of the mainstream population is barely even cognizant of Bitcoin. They're certainly not cognizant of MtGox. Or at least, they weren't until Monday, when reports of their insolvency started appearing in the mainstream media. Regardless, MtGox has not been the go-to exchange for over a year. That position has been taken over by a variety of other entities, some of which are true exchanges and some of which are just portals to buy Bitcoin. Even if "first impressions" were important here -- and I don't really think they are -- then we've been sounding the alarm within the BTC community for over a year that MtGox is NOT the place to go.

Yes. And after every crisis, after every sudden dip in the USD/BTC exchange rate, Bitcoin has rebounded. It has continued to thrive. That's the really remarkable thing about Bitcoin, and why "us guys who buy into this thing" continue to believe that Bitcoin -- or something very much like it -- will be the future. We can see the potential, even if everyone else can't. And we're willing to risk money on it, even though we could very well lose it all. We are betting, in essence, that Bitcoin will be a success. And we're putting our proverbial money where our mouth is.

And that's a point that you all who don't buy into this are missing.

You're arguing that Bitcoin is bad because it has an image problem. Firstly, so what? Secondly, what's to be done about it? Nothing, that's what. A bad actor did something stupid and some people lost some money. We've all learned from this experience, and Bitcoin is stronger for the loss of MtGox.

Kind of like gold.

Actually, exactly like gold.

It has already largely recovered to it's pre-MtGox-meltdown level. So you're wrong. Just like it has always recovered before. If the (brief) history of Bitcoin has taught us anything, it's that underestimating the resilience of Bitcoin is a losing bet.

HODL!

Your statement would be meaningful, if only it were true. Or meaningful. It is neither. It would be necessary for the cost of a barrel of oil to be fixed to a static USD rate for your statement to be true. Since the price of oil clearly fluctuates on a regular basis, you're basically spouting a bunch of shit.

Ever watch a streamed movie?

Sure, although I would argue that the US dollar is backed by little more -- a promise, basically. And for that matter, gold is backed by... [drumroll] nothing at all. It is valuable solely because people value it. And Bitcoin is essentially the same, just with less people.

But all that aside, the term "fiat" inside the cryptocurrency community means somethings specific. The fact that you insist on sticking to a definition that predates the rise of this particular community -- when said community has agreed among themselves exactly what "fiat" means to them -- is a pointless endeavor. You might as well insist that "decimate" means to destroy 10%, instead of the common-day usage of that word.

You want me to list all of them?

You're being pedantic. In discussion of cryptocurrencies, the term "fiat" is universally used to distinguish cryptocurrency from government-declared currency. Yes, any unbacked currency is technically also fiat, and that includes Bitcoin. But that point is, as I said, excessively pedantic.

More likely, geekmux wasn't even born yet, or cognizant of the issues surrounding the removal of USD from the gold standard.

And a poor student of history as well.

This is an oft-heard sentiment that is extremely naive to the point of outright stupidity. The use of gold (and silver, and other precious metals) as currency is fraught with difficulty. It turns out that money is a *lot* more complex than most people really fathom. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...

We in the US stopped using gold as currency -- and then removed the US dollar from the gold standard -- because having gold and the dollar be linked causes more problems than it really solves. And as of today, there are zero nations with a gold-based currency.

Holding gold as an investment is one thing. Using it as a currency is pretty much impossible today.

Most products you consume -- things of value that were created out of nothing -- use electricity to do so.

And that was after how many years of the banks not being FDIC insured? If you only go back to the founding of the US (since FDIC is a US thing) that's still about 150 years. And of course banking as a concept goes back quite a bit farther than that.

It was. It hasn't been for over a year, which is an eternity for Bitcoin. Everyone involved in Bitcoin has known for a very long time that putting money into MtGox is extremely high risk. And when someone involved in Bitcoin says "high risk", it means something.

Coinbase. It's a US company with a strong fiduciary angle.

Not an exchange in the many-to-many sense, but you can still buy Bitcoin there. And that's where a lot of new Bitcoin purchasers are getting them.

If you'll read carefully, you'll see this tidbit in the post I was responding to:

Nope.