Bitcoin Exchange Value Halves After Chinese Ban 475
An anonymous reader writes with news of the latest major fluctuation in the price people are willing to pay for Bitcoins. From the article: "China's ban on its financial institutions handling bitcoin causes world's largest exchange to cease trading, halving the value of the currency from $1,000 to less than $500 in a matter of days. The country's central bank took a hard line on Bitcoin in early December when it banned financial institutions from handling the decentralized crypto-currency, and as a result BTC China, the world's largest bitcoin exchange, has stopped accepting deposits from its users."
Just watch that line trend downward.
And this (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I dunno....seems slightly more reliable than getting a mortgage from a US bank.
Re: (Score:2)
Fixed rate home mortgages in the U.S. are backed by the federal government, who provides insurance in order to "incentivize" ownership. For reasons unrelated to the present discussion, I think this is a bad idea, but that doesn't influence the main point that mortgages in the U.S. tend to have lower interest rates than in most other countries.
Re: (Score:2)
doesn't matter who it is backed by if they can just issue foreclosures on it at will and the court agrees for some weird reason("bank wouldnt lie, would they?")
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
While that has happened, it's extremely rare, to the point of not even being a statistic.
Re: (Score:2)
Does your statement make sense to yourself?
The only way the probability of an event can not have a statistic is if it is not measured.
And if fraudulent behaviour by banks isn't measured then the US really is stuffed.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Low interest rates because the govt is printing money (via the Federal Reserve) to lend to banks to lend to buyers.
If you actually had to borrow that money from people who are investing to, y'know, save for their retirement or rainy days & such, interest rates would be higher. Instead, they have to watch while their savings dwindle in true value due to inflation (the aforementioned printing).
Hence Bitcoin.
Yeah, the price dropped. Discovery is an interesting process. It's still up on April's ATH and more
Re: (Score:3)
You actually want to pay back a mortgage in a deflationary environment. You're nuts. Think about what that would actually mean.
Re: (Score:3)
As you say, people can always factor in a consistent level of inflation or deflation in their planning. That's easy.
For deflation it is not as easy as you think. You point out unpredictable deflation leads to things like the Great Depression. The problem is that predictable deflation also leads to recessions as well. Inflation destroys wealth, which is the value of past investments. Deflation destroys the value of future investments, destroying the value of current investments.
Nominal Interest Rates = Real Interest Rates + Inflation/(Deflation). The higher the deflation the lower the real interest rates are. The value of
Re: (Score:3)
You point out unpredictable deflation leads to things like the Great Depression. The problem is that predictable deflation also leads to recessions as well.
Not "unpredictable deflation", just significant decreases in the supply of money—planned or otherwise. Price deflation is not correlated with recessions in general, just in cases like the Great Depression where the supply of money underwent a significant contraction. You point out that a deliberate policy of destroying currency to manipulate its price relative to other currencies led to recessions. Well, naturally; that's what happens when you play with the currency supply, regardless of whether you'r
Re: (Score:3)
I have $100 in my pocket. A mortgage of 5%(APR), and there's deflation of ~1%. What will have the greatest change in my net worth 1 year from now, holding the $100 or paying it against my mortgage? (assuming it's an extra payment beyond the regular P&I, so it goes against principle only)
It's best to pay down your mortgage. Your ignorance doesn't change fact.
Comparison: Bitcoin is like 'Abortion' in the US.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Totally legal but...
States do everything to prevent access to it... shutting down clinics left and right..
And if you do find a clinic you to face a picket line
Given the responses from all these governments you can tell that Bitcoin is something big... that is.. maybe not the actual coins, but the intellectual underpinnings:
- Decentralized
- Limit in coins
- No one governs/owns
It is really what the world has been waiting for.. something that can not be corrupted by any government, is safe and fast. The internet needs this
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Comparison: Bitcoin is like 'Abortion' in the U (Score:4, Interesting)
Apologies, forgot to actually hyperlink...
Re: (Score:3)
That paper has factual errors. For example, on page 6 it says "...because bitcoins are mined in integer units, not satoshis". This is incorrect. The mining reward halves every 210,000 blocks (about 4 years). It dropped from 50 in Jan 2009 to 25 in Nov 2012, the current rate. The next halving, in about 3 years, will reduce it to 12.5 bitcoin units per block. The arithmetic series 50 + 25 + 12.5 + . . . = 100, and since it stays at that level for 210,000 blocks at a time, the total number of coins has a
Re: (Score:2)
I think the problem the government has with bitcoin is that bitcoin has the potential of destroying the US government. In fact, any currency other than the US dollar does actually.
The government currently has a habit of going perpetually further into debt (spending exceeds income every year for the last few decades, the only exception being during the economic bubble of the late 90's where tax revenues were artificially high.)
So long as the government maintains control of the value of the dollars that it sp
Re: (Score:2)
So China is banning the currency because it wants to protect the United States?
Re: (Score:3)
I think the problem the government has with bitcoin is that bitcoin has the potential of destroying the US government. In fact, any currency other than the US dollar does actually.
The government currently has a habit of going perpetually further into debt (spending exceeds income every year for the last few decades, the only exception being during the economic bubble of the late 90's where tax revenues were artificially high.)
Just to point out, the last time the US Government ran an honest-to-goodness surplus of income, and paid down its debt because it had money left over (rather than increased its annual debt) was in 1957 under President Eisenhower.
It's been 3 generations since we've actually had a surplus at the Governmental level. The surpluses of the late 90s were strictly on-paper/on-budget items only, but every fiscal year since 1957 has seen the US Federal debt increase. Sometimes by huge amounts (like now), sometime
Re:Comparison: Bitcoin is like 'Abortion' in the U (Score:5, Informative)
"No one governing" the Euro is what almost caused the collapse of the EU over one small state having credit difficulties.
Wow. It's been a long time since I've seen such a high concentration of ill informed bullshit in one sentence...
Re: (Score:2)
One interpretation of "not governed" could be "not governed *well*". And it is fair to say that the Euro has not been governed well over the last few years. The ECB (i.e. Germany) has shown huge resistance to being a lender of last resort, and has run an overly tight monetary policy, risking deflation and only recently dropping interest rates to where the US Fed dropped them years ago (and even the Fed was not aggressive enough - witness the weak recovery).
This is the main problem with bitcoin. The decent
Re:Comparison: Bitcoin is like 'Abortion' in the U (Score:5, Informative)
Er, no. What people were worried about was that heavily indebted countries would voluntarily choose to exit the Euro so they could inflate away their debts by printing money as fast as possible, and bulk exits of countries from the Euro would cause problems. The "solution", if you want to call it that, was that after resisting for a long time the ECB (actually Mario Draghi) gave into immense political and personal pressure to start open-ended Euro printing in order to essentially reallocate money from savers in Germany and other northern states to heavily indebted, often highly corrupt governments in the south. In order to preserve the fiction that Europe is one big happy family all sharing the same wonderful currency, the ECB agreed to a global tax on all Euro savings everywhere and made lots of people who managed their finances appropriately very very unhappy!
This is not actually solving any problems - it just sends a powerful message from governments that only suckers try to save money because governments will inevitably confiscate it from you in order to pay for (e.g.) absurdly generous pensions in Greece or elsewhere.
Bitcoin does not allow governments to do this. If Europe had been running on Bitcoin at the time, then those governments would have had to go through an actual default and inflict the pain on the people who lent them the money - but on the other hand, if Europe was run on Bitcoin, it's very unlikely the southern countries could have got into so much debt in the first place. Who was lending such vast sums to countries that had such basic, fundamental fiscal problems? Banks, of course, banks who knew they would be bailed out (with yet more money printing) if something went truly tits up. They gambled that politicians cared more about keeping the Euro than protecting savers, and they were right. If Europe used Bitcoin for everything, the "moral hazard" of banking would not exist as they would know that nobody could bail them out, and they'd have far fewer deposits to play with anyway (or maybe none). As a result, far less money would have been invested into places like Greece and the economic distortions such huge borrowing allowed would have never happened.
Price not value. (Score:4, Insightful)
Both parties in a trade value what they are getting more than what they give. The person selling the item values the cash higher than the item. The person buying values the item higher than the cash. The price is where the exchange takes place where both parties value what they get more.
Re:Price not value. (Score:5, Interesting)
For a certain definition of value, yes, but not necessarily for the common one. In an idealized market, you do hope this is true for the common definition also: people have independently assessed how much they value some commodity, and offer a price accordingly. The price then converges on some aggregation of values.
But in real markets, this is often recursive: someone is offering $x for a commodity not because they themselves consider it to have a certain value, but because they think they will be able to resell it for $(x+y), due to market fluctuations. They may themselves consider it a worthless pile of trash valued at $0; day-traders, unlike value investors, don't make trade decisions based on their own assessments of the underlying value of the commodities or equities they're buying and selling. Instead they base their decisions on statistical estimates of market dynamics, independent of whatever the underlying item is and whether it may or may not have any value at all (models often don't even consider the underlying item in the equation).
Re: (Score:2)
Speculators still value the prospect of future gains over the cash they give in the trade.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, but that's a market-internal "value" that doesn't lead to the kind of idealized market that actually makes any sense.
You can see this fairly clearly if you study dynamical systems. Some of them are "well-behaved", in which inputs/ouputs relate as you might expect. But many have internal pathologies that they can fall into if they reach certain states: feedback loops and chaotic behavior and such that's driven by system-internal (aka market-internal) dynamics and disconnected from anything else (such a
Re: (Score:2)
All value is subjective anyway which is why often it doesn't make sense. I don't understand why people get tattooed. You would have to pay me quite a bit of money to get one.
And yet some people spend fortunes on them.
To me it makes no sense.
Re: (Score:2)
Both parties in a trade value what they are getting more than what they give. The person selling the item values the cash higher than the item. The person buying values the item higher than the cash. The price is where the exchange takes place where both parties value what they get more.
This is a key part of the economic argument (The "Scrooge" argument) on why giving non-cash gifts is a colossal waste of time and money. It is difficult to know how much another person values something unless they tell you.
Re:Price not value. (Score:4, Insightful)
Both parties in a trade value what they are getting more than what they give. The person selling the item values the cash higher than the item. The person buying values the item higher than the cash. The price is where the exchange takes place where both parties value what they get more.
This is a key part of the economic argument (The "Scrooge" argument) on why giving non-cash gifts is a colossal waste of time and money. It is difficult to know how much another person values something unless they tell you.
Thats part of the fun of gift giving.
Litecoins (Score:2)
I guess this why Litecoins halved from $30 to $15 each too.
Re: (Score:2)
Not just yet, please. I'm just about to mine some myself. Not because I think I've a snowball's hope in hell of making a profit off it - I'll be lucky to pay for the power. I'm just interested to see how the maths works, and a good way to find out what this technology can do is to play with it.
Re: (Score:2)
Not just yet, please
If you're just starting mining, the difficulty dropping would be an excellent thing for you. It would mean you would have a larger share of the network hash rate and thus get more coin out of the same equipment.
Though a difficulty cut doesn't seem all that likely at the moment unless the current trend suddenly reverses itself. Even with the price drop, the network hash rate is flirting with 10 petahashes (up from about 6 at the start of the month) and it looks like the difficulty is going to break 1 billi
Re: (Score:2)
Not that I've got much hardware. I'm not going to throw money into this.
"Proof against tyranny" (Score:5, Insightful)
Kind of a sideline approach here...
This is the clearest evidence yet that the pro-bitcoin libertarian segment misunderstand how government control works. The argument goes "government prints the money, and tracks the money therefor can tax me." The presumption of bitcoins is if the currency doesn't come from the government, they don't have any means to control it.
Good ol' actually tyrannical China comes along, and does the thing any government is capable of doing. Saying "if we catch you dodging our system, our system will throw your stupid self in jail." Poof.
If having a wallet.dat is a crime, the fact that the coins inside of it are encrypted won't protect you.
Re:"Proof against tyranny" (Score:4, Interesting)
I think only the most naive anarchists argued that (and I've called them on it many times before in various Bitcoin forums). The gamble being made there is effectively that given a choice, a government would choose not to become totalitarian and oppressive, and would prefer to give up some control over the financial system.
Well, only an idiot would believe China would do that. They are already totalitarian and oppressive, no surprise they'd be willing to jail anyone who uses Bitcoin.
In contrast, many European countries are sorting out how they're going to handle it. See the recent announcement from Denmark saying that Bitcoin is fully legal, and people who want to run exchanges don't even have to be regulated as financial institutions at all! It seems very unlikely that the governments of Norway or Denmark are going to start jailing anyone who sells sandwiches for coins.
America is somewhere in the middle. It's not as free or liberal as most of the smaller European states, but it's not as oppressive as China. Hence the confused approach there where the US government is saying one day Bitcoin is cool and it's all OK, and then next day threatening Bitcoin businesses with jail time. They can't quite decide which direction to go in, it seems.
Re: (Score:2)
And, that seems like a perfectly reasonable belief. But bitcoin suffers from an excess of "true believers".
Re: (Score:3)
Huh? There's no confusion at all. The US Government is 'totally cool' with Bitcoins so long as you comply with existing financial regulations. The Bitcoin business (the physical coin dealer) wasn't threatened with jail because he dealt in Bitcoins - but because he didn't so
Re: (Score:2)
It is china, where they execute people for bankrupting a company. I doubt they'd just throw them in jail because of that.
Re: (Score:2)
Part of having inappropriate punishments for crimes is that they aren't necessarily going to correspond to any metric in particular, but the whim of the leadership. That includes light sentences sometimes.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh I know, I'm just expecting a news report that china executes someone for BTC use within the next year or so. After all, it is china.
Re: (Score:2)
Remember that the overarching goal of government in China is "glorious harmony." They want a monoculture, and they're more inclined to use work-camps with no trial involved than bring people up on summary charges and execute them. You basically have to be an image problem to get executed in China(they kill fewer people than the U.S., for example).
Re: (Score:2)
And that means a very vocal and visible dissident, or a high profile business refusing to comply. It's not like china hasn't had many of those cases.
Re: (Score:3)
Did I say no one breaks the damn law? That's so radically different what I said that I must question your basic verbal processing capability.
Re: (Score:2)
No, but they don't seem to have qualms executing corrupt politicians / business people who have done great harm:
http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-white-collar-criminals-death-sentence-2013-7 [businessinsider.com]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14197485 [bbc.co.uk]
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/business/worldbusiness/11execute.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 [nytimes.com]
This is just a clever trick by China . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Now that they have driven the price of bitcoins down, they will now buy up all of them at low prices . . . and then . . . announce that the will accept them as currency . . .
Profit!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Okay, great, so why don't you buy some now and profit too?
Buying bitcoins seems a lit like buying drugs or hookers. I may want to, but if I haven't done it before, I don't have the slightest idea how to go about it without getting screwed. Or not, in the case of the hookers.
Crypto COMMODITY (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish people would stop calling these "crypto-currencies", because it is a total misrepresentation of what these things are. They are crypto-commodities. BTC is just like gold right now - it is not used to transact, it is used as a value store - except it is much worse as a value store because it is orders of magnitude more volatile. No one can use BTC as a currency because its value fluxuates so wildly. Everyone who is SUPPOSEDLY using it as a currency just has it pegged to the US dollar with a live update.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Bitcoin is an innovative payment network and a new kind of money.
How about reading their their FAQ [bitcoin.org] where it specifically says Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency? You might learn something.
Re:Crypto COMMODITY (Score:5, Insightful)
It does not matter what people intended something for, it matters what it is USED for in actual practice. Until people start actually using BTC as a real currency, it is not a currency.
I can write a bunch of numbers on post-it notes and claim it is a currency as well - it does not make it one.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bitcoiners on reddit are completely delusional (Score:4, Interesting)
Minor correction - dispute mediated transactions have been a part of the design since day one [bitcoin.it]. The problem is lack of surrounding infrastructure like "file dispute" buttons in wallets and the various protocols needed to organise that, companies that run dispute mediation services with those protocols and so on. But there is widespread consensus that it's a good idea and basically, it's just waiting for someone to do the design and implementation work to make it happen.
It's certainly a PITA at the moment, yes, although when Bitcoin is out of the public eye and governments aren't busy banning it there have been relatively long stretches of peace and stability. During those times you HAVE seen vendors price things in Bitcoins, actually, although yes most prefer to peg to an exchange rate.
Over time the instability will go away because governments will all decide on their policies around it, the technology will mature and become boring, most people will have heard about it and decided what they think, etc. The huge volatility you see at the moment is because almost every day there's some important piece of news that affects people's perception of future value.
As to the /r/bitcoin posters, yes, the over-excitability there is quite something. But that doesn't mean all people who use Bitcoin or like it think the same way.
Re: (Score:2)
Bitcoiners on reddit are completely delusional.
A sentence that is guaranteed to be true for two independent reasons. ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
Wake up people. This "currency" is never going to have anything close to wide adoption. The inability to charge back is the #1 reason that prevents any consumer from perceiving it as a safe currency against vendor fraud.
Do you feel the same way about cash?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A very happy bureaucrat. (Score:5, Insightful)
Somewhere in China a group of Bitcoin-speculating bureaucrats are very happy right now.
Must make the Bitcoiners really happy to know that their financial world can be so readily disrupted . . ..
No surprise in the collapse (Score:5, Insightful)
When a couple of my friends started posting "now is a great time to buy into BitCoin" messages on my Facebook feed a couple of weeks ago, I had a feeling the BTC price was about to take a strong downward turn. It is never a good sign when the "true believers" begin actively recruiting new buyers into a price bubble.
The collapse of BitCoin as a speculative investment is inevitable, and its own success will be its downfall. The speculative frenzy over BTC is based strictly on artificial scarcity. The problem is that there are an infinite possible number of cryptographically signed digital currencies. If only X amount of gold exists in the world, there is no replacement for it, assuming you desire the exact physical qualities of gold. But if only Y digital coins exist, it is trivial to create another digital coinage with a slightly different protocol that behaves exactly the same way as far as a user is concerned.
The boom in BTC has led to several new competitors, with similar frenzies growing around some of them. And given the low barrier to entry, you can expect more and more competing digital currencies to appear. It is only a matter of time before people realize that they're fighting over a particular set of tulip bulbs while standing in an infinitely large field of tulips. Once that happens, the speculative bubble will pop for good for all digital currencies. In the long run, this is a good thing, because once the speculators are gone, some digital currencies may actually prove useful as a real medium of exchange, with values that don't fluctuate wildly from one day to the next.
Re:No surprise in the collapse (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
to your first paragraph: it's said that Joseph Kennedy sold most/all of his shares weeks before the 1929 crash because "he knew it was time to get out of the market when he received stock tips from a shoe-shine boy." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_P._Kennedy,_Sr.#1929_Wall_Street_Crash
Personally I knew the "new market" bubble would burst months before it did - because everyone and their dog bought shares and told me to do so, too.
Re: (Score:2)
"it is trivial to create another digital coinage with a slightly different protocol that behaves exactly the same way as far as a user is concerned."
The sad thing is, this will almost single handedly end the bitcoin craze. With hundreds/thousands of competing crypto-systems of exchange who in the world is going to maintain and trust in these systems? Do you see valuation agencies looking at these things and go, uh yeah this is a good valuation? They will laugh at it and say there is no valuation to judge on
Re: (Score:3)
The problem is that there are an infinite possible number of cryptographically signed digital currencies.
I'm not a BitCoin fan, but I'm not sure I buy this argument, because it seems too close to saying "gold can have no value because lots of other metals exist." How do you differentiate those two arguments?
Each metal has a set of properties that differentiate it from other metals that affect its desirability for various uses. The combination of gold's properties and its relative scarcity give it its value. Scarcity can vary over time, thus changing the value. An interesting example is aluminum. Before the techniques and technologies required for large (or even medium) scale smelting of bauxite, aluminum was almost as valuable as silver.
The difference with digital currency is simply that it is easier to assemb
No surprise in this trend... (Score:3)
Looking at the data provided in the summary's link, the value got from under 200 to over 1000 within a month. How is a drop of 50% within a few days any surprising? I would expect any currency that volatile and - above all - unregulated (in the sense of regulation through central banks), to do about anything.
Not China's Fault (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Bubbles sometimes need a nudge to burst. Just a small one. This story could be that nudge.
If it hadn't been this, it'd be something else eventually.
B-b-b-but... (Score:2)
Time to buy then? (Score:2)
Is it time to buy them now?
Re: (Score:2)
It's like "collectible" comic books all over again (Score:5, Insightful)
"I have zillions of dollars worth of comic books! Wizard says I do!"
"I have zillions of dollars worth of Bitcoin! The exchange says I do!"
*Together* Let's cash out!
"WTF? Nobody wants to buy my comics at massively inflated prices!"
"WTF? Nobody wants to buy my Bitcoin at massively inflated prices!"
Cue the Python!
SCAM! SCAM! SCAM! SCAM! SCAM!
BREAKING NEWS! (Score:4, Insightful)
Bitcoin value continues to be incredibly unstable! Also the sky is blue and water is wet! More updates as news develops!
This is exactly what Bitcoin needs! (Score:3)
It make take a while, but so long as Bitcoin remains uncorrupted by counterfeiting it will stabilize because it will remain out of the sphere of government influence.
Re: (Score:2)
That's cute.
What did you think the stock market was?
Re: (Score:2)
Not the members of 4chan. Arguably the most worthless site on the internet.
Re: (Score:2)
4chan worthless? (Score:2)
me too... (Score:2)
after I picked myself up off the floor and composed myself a bit, I still laughed to myself at how fast the BTC bubble burst
that said, I learned alot by studying & discussing how BTC worked & what it's benefits/drawbacks were...I wish I had found my BTC wallet info!
i bought exactly 1 BTC back in late 2009 IIRC but I was so busy with grad school it got lost in the shuffle
any idea that BTC could replace currency or be an investment vehicle were/are silly but its still noteworthy as a sort of 'prank' t
Re: (Score:3)
There may still be a niche in informal transfers: Party A buys coin, sends to party B, B sells coin. Potentially handy for those who are unable to deal with conventional payment processors (Criminals, activist groups under government oppression, those affected by international sanctions, people in obscure countries where Paypal does no operate) or who are just unwilling (Anti-corporate idealists, paranoid activists, people worried about the many paypal stories of those who struggled to get their money out).
Re: me too... (Score:2)
That's funny, the first time I read that the value burst, it fell 50 percent to around 100 or so.
Every time I see it loose 50 rapidly, it bounces back and further, see the various scandles, see when silk road closed. It's super volitile, but it has been fairly resilient too.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Then again, every time bitcoin bubbles and pops, it rises to unexpected levels later.
People like you were saying exactly this when it dropped from a high of $200 to a low of $50, and said the same thing in the bubble prior to that. My only regret at the time was that I believed it. Not long after, it began trading at $1300.
Anyways, I've actually profited rather well off of bitcoin; in fact the whole thing could collapse tomorrow and I'd still have made a profit. The silly thing is that while you've been rol
profit (Score:5, Interesting)
right, I'm assuming you mean you bought at a low price and cashed out at a high price?
what I'm wondering is, which BTC to $$$ service you used (Mt Gox?), how often you were able to cash out, what the daily $$$ limits were, what the transfer fees cost, etc.
I've seen alot of people yammering about BTC but few claim to have made a profit...i'd like to know more about how
Re:profit (Score:5, Interesting)
thanks (Score:2)
Very interesting!
I like the Amazon gift card solution.
What exchange rate did Amazon use for the transaction? Was it based off Mt Gox?
Re:thanks (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazon doesn't use anything. Bitpay handles the conversion and the supplier of the cards gets paid in dollars (This is something I believe you said was just too difficult to implement in a previous thread). The supplier of the cards gets them from Amazon (and other places) at a discount and makes their profit that way. Bitpay takes a slice so the purchaser pays a slight premium. Then again, if you bought your Bitcoins lower, you probably still come out ahead.
Re: (Score:3)
Again, it is not Amazon. The company is gyft.com
I have no affiliation but have looked into what they offer.
Re:profit (Score:5, Interesting)
I got 2300 Bitcoin in 2011. I sold 500 at $119.99 earlier this year and bought a nice car. I sold 900 at $997 and am in the process of buying 3 rental apartments for case. I still have over 1000 Bitcoin.
Once you get Trusted on mt.gox you can withdraw $500k per month. Its not enough to do arbitrage but its not small change either.
I am not alone - lots of people have made huge profits on Bitcoin and we expect to make more. Its designed to work even if its made illegal to own Bitcoin. The price has always fluctuate violently because the markets are so small and liquidity is so poor. But its the most interesting social experiment on the Internet and I love being part of it.
Eheh, said by a WoW gold seller (Score:3)
Oooh, what a trustworthy source! Nobody rich is wasting their time on slashdot.
Now excuse me while I go back to my orgy with super models.
Re: (Score:2)
That's not really how currencies are supposed to work, though.
Re: (Score:2)
The bitcoin bubble gets inflated and bursts monthly. When silkroad closed the same thing happened.
The concept is neat, but the chance of it ever becoming more has always been nil.
Re: (Score:2)
Burst all the way to 3-4 times what it was a couple of months ago...
Re: (Score:2)
We've been hearing this on Slashdot for 3.5 years now and during the time bitcoin has gone from well below dollar parity, to here.
Re:i got some bitcoins (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, just use Electrum or equivalent if running the full-blockchain is too bothersome (it is for most, now). Avoid putting your bitcoins on *any* online account, that is way too dangerous. With Electrum, you don't have to download a blockchain, but only you still have the wallet.
Re: (Score:2)
It's only going to get bigger. Bit of a flaw in the system, that.
Re: (Score:2)
Not really "the system" so much as the current client implementations. There is provision (Section 7, "Reclaiming Disk Space" in the original whitepaper [bitcoin.org]) for reducing the size of the blockchain by discarding transactions where all the outputs have been spent again and those subsequent transactions themselves are buried under enough blocks. This lets you pare down the size of the blockchain considerably.
It's just that, AFAIK, no clients currently implement this.
Re: (Score:2)
You should realize by now all currency is fiat, including BTC, and especially included gold/precious metal backed. There is no value except what we decide it's worth. The gold is inherently not worth a specified amount, but has been decided to be worth an amount based on what someone thinks they can sell it for. This rage against nationalized currency is a fraud perpetuated by those attempting to rob the blind ignorant sheep who continue to buy their lies wholesale. Those same people bought up tons of gold
Re: (Score:3)
It lacks one central feature of a true fiat currency: potentially unlimited supply.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Darn! (Score:5, Funny)
silly me thought my 5GH miner was going to make me stupid rich...
One out of two ain't bad.
Re: (Score:2)
More like (nearly) thirded, it's gone from $1215 down to $425.
Re:history, itself, repeat, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)
Every sale is also a buy. Derp.
Re: (Score:3)
These price fluctuations are not the mark of money -- bitcoin seems more likely a wildly volatile commodity.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)