BitCoin

All I know is that if I found myself stuck with any right now I'd be on a Silk Road spending spree... (checks) the prices haven't gone up...? It was 6-7 per 100g MDPV before, and it still is.

(...I'm not advocating buying drugs, by the way. It was just the only one I could remember.)

Quote: EvenBob

I find it fascinating that it went up so high
and came down so fast. Is it due to speculation?
Can we always expect this kind of behavior from
Bitcoin? How can it be called a currency when
it fluctuates so wildly? Is it trading right now
or is MtGox still in emergency shut down because
of the selling panic.

Of course it is due to speculation. The swings should lessen (by %) over time, but as long as someone is running the dump and DDOS the exchanges playbook there will be fluctuation.

Many currencies fluctuate wildly. Mt. Gox is down due to their complete lack of technical capacity to handle the volume and DDOS. It's worth noting they deny DDOS. I have been convinced otherwise by technical people.

This crash event will certainly shake confidence the currency, as it has before. What it tells us is that the current exchanges and trading capacity simply can't handle the volume when there is a sell off or major buying event. The shaken confidence could, however, create a decent value.

I am not a big fan of putting and real amount of USD into bit coin. The only time I did it was when it crashed from 30 to 3.

Yeah, that sounds like a Cloud 9 plan there. I'll hoard json wallets like Beanie Babies and keep them in my fire-proof box.

There will be buying opportunities following this crash just like there were back in September. Probably just won't last as many months until more people understand crypto currencies.

It will probably only be a few months before a more battle-hardened service (EG: Ameritrade) allows you to buy and sell bitcoins or an ETF that represents the value of the bitcoin on some other exchange that is more foolproof.

The underlying problem isn't the technology for the currencies. It's the technology for a centralized web-based trading system that is lacking.

Quote: 24Bingo

All I know is that if I found myself stuck with any right now I'd be on a Silk Road spending spree... (checks) the prices haven't gone up...? It was 6-7 per 100g MDPV before, and it still is.

(...I'm not advocating buying drugs, by the way. It was just the only one I could remember.)

Even getting to the silk road requires more sophistication than late-comers to bitcoin have.

Quote: Ahigh

There will be buying opportunities following this crash

There were lots of buying opportunities after the market
crashed in 1929. Most of them were bad. Crap will always
be for sale to those who want to pay for it.

Quote: bbvk05

Of course it is due to speculation. The swings should lessen (by %) over time, but as long as someone is running the dump and DDOS the exchanges playbook there will be fluctuation. Many currencies fluctuate wildly.

Quote: New York Times

By CARTER DOUGHERTY Published: September 22, 2008

Financial deregulation in the 1980s fed a frenzy of real estate lending by Sweden’s banks, which did not worry enough about whether the value of their collateral might evaporate in tougher times.

Property prices imploded. The bubble deflated fast in 1991 and 1992. A vain effort to defend Sweden’s currency, the krona, caused overnight interest rates to spike at one point to 500 percent. The Swedish economy contracted for two consecutive years after a long expansion, and unemployment, at 3 percent in 1990, quadrupled in three years.

CIA World Book lists Sweden's M3 money supply at US$440.2 billion as of 31 December 2011 (top two dozen in the world). If you can jerk around a currency worth $100's of billions then you can certainly jerk around something worth less than a billion dollars.

Quote: Wikipedia

On September 16, 1992, Black Wednesday, George Soros' fund sold short more than $10 billion in pounds, profiting from the UK government's reluctance to either raise its interest rates to levels comparable to those of other European Exchange Rate Mechanism countries or to float its currency. Finally, the UK withdrew from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, devaluing the pound, earning Soros an estimated $1.1 billion. He was dubbed "the man who broke the Bank of England". In 1997, the UK Treasury estimated the cost of Black Wednesday at £3.4 billion.

So given the history of national currencies, why would you expect anything less of bitcoins.

Quote: Ahigh

I do think he (EvenBob) is learning stuff. That much is good.

If you make enough statements, eventually one will turn out to be true. I think that's part of it too.

I doubt anyone is following along with Bob's assertions about how currency and money work, though.

But you can't just post articles with a short comment that doesn't even show you understood what you posted and expect people to take you seriously.

And I'm also certain that I could go find articles making the opposite claim. It'd be legitimate if you actually examined some article you posted.... but I suspect you won't because I'm not sure you do understand what you're posting. And by posting these articles, and then asserting that Bitcoins aren't money, you are making an assertion. Your assertion may be that you agree with these experts - but you can't, or haven't, defended that assertion so you come off like you're just seeking attention and nothing more....

If I posted a paper about quantum mechanics, that would give no indication to anyone that I understand it. And trust me, I wouldn't.


And you earlier asserted that the hallmark of currency is it's stability.... that is not true. Although - unstable currencies often become useless - that can and has occurred in the past with both government and privately created currencies... I doubt that's the path of the Bitcoin, I also don't expect it to be the a very useful or valuable currency in the future. And yes, it is obviously unstable. Although I think it's going to have more periods of relative stability with short spurts of corrections....
understand it.

EDIT - I quoted the wrong post here...

EvenBob doesn't have to understand, as long as EvenBob is right, and EvenBob is always right, because the definition of "right" is "EvenBob."

...aaaanyway...

I may have to eat my words here, but I think this is the end of the bubble. I don't think any of the speculators stuck it out through the crash there, so I expect it's just going to level off now that the more opportunistic ideologues who held out or sold are buying (back) in.

(Quietly reboots miner...)

Quote: Boney526

But you can't just post articles with a short comment.

Sure I can, because I'm posting for myself and not you.
Or anybody else. Once you start worrying if you're
pleasing everybody, you'll never post anything.

Quote: Boney526

And you earlier asserted that the hallmark of currency is it's stability.... that is not true.

"Exchange rate stability (of currency) is the hallmark of economic performance."

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Exchange+rate+stability+is+hallmark+of+economic+performance.-a0257306909

Well you can always be right if you slice people's sentences apart in order to ignore part of them.

You can do whatever you want, but as the second half of my sentence said, don't expect people to take you seriously.


See how you skipped over the important part?

Anyway I'm not trying to "combat" you here. I'm just saying that it is illogical for you to expect people to take your comments seriously, if you are posting for yourself - then do as you please. Personally I don't see the point in putting a comment on a public forum if the comment was meant for yourself. If that's what it's meant for, why not just think it and not waste anymore time?


I would go into why that description is wrong, but I'll just leave it alone. It's clear that you have your opinion, and since your comments directed at other people are posted "for yourself" I'd have to assume that you don't care about what's right or wrong, or what is logical.