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Bitcoin Currency Surpasses 20 National Currencies In Total Value
Velcroman1 writes "More than $1 billion worth of bitcoins now circulate on the web – an amount that exceeds the value of the entire currency stock of small countries like Liberia, Bhutan, and 18 other countries. Bitcoin is in high demand right now — each bitcoin currently sells for more than $90 U.S. — which bitcoin insiders say is because of world events that have shaken confidence in government-issued currencies. 'Because of what's going on in Cyprus and Europe, people are trying to pull their money out of banks there,' said Tony Gallippi, the CEO BitPay.com, which enables businesses to easily accept bitcoins as payment. 'So they buy gold, they put it under the mattress, or they buy bitcoin,' Gallippi said."
time to cash in
It's not a bubble! Push the price higher, higher, higher!
Or like has been stated before it's mostly being hoarded. (like when collecting anything, mostly of value to the collector and other collectors but not anyone else)
So, how do you "short sell" Bitcoin? I'd like to make a few bucks from this ridiculous bubble when it pops.
Bitcoin is probably safer than Cyprus banks.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
It means that ALL bitcoins are collectively worth more than ALL currency of the 20 countries listed. They're not comparing individual currency units.
They probably surpassed North Korea with their first nickel.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The article should say that more than 1 billion dollars in bitcoins theoretically exists on the web. Given the horrific problems that a few bitcoin exchanges have had in the recent past, I think some skepticism is warranted. My prediction is that sometime in the upcoming years some kind of attack nobody foresaw will happen on bitcoins and the attackers will get wealthy and the bitcoin holders will be left holding dust or bitcoins will simply be another bubble that collapses. I don't see a bright future for bitcoins.
Just a bit of Humor in good fun! "Bitcoin Miners Threaten Strike Over Fed Regulations!"
So how does this compare to the value of the worlds tulip bulbs?
If you wait for it to pop this time you'll miss out. It will never be $2 a coin again. In fact it's going to reach $1000 a coin by the end of the year.
I have some experience with both cryptography and decentralized systems of this kind. Which doesn't make me an expert. But I know enough to ask questions. I have had grave concerns about the validity of their design since I first read about it on slashdot some years back. It seemed to me the case had not been made that bitcoin was not vulnerable to rapid destruction of value, due to attacks on fundamental flaws in its design.
The thing that really surprised me was that people decided to try to use it anyway. But I guess our desires often cloud our judgment. As much as I would love a decentralized digital currency, I do not believe it yet exists. I wouldn't invest 90 cents in bitcoin.
Many currencies can appear to be stable until they're not.
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Such things always remind me of the exploration of the Americas, or at the simplified myth. In this story the English brought back potatoes and the spanish brought back gold. The question is who brought back wealth, and who brought back merely riches.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
So could tulip bulbs, you better go get some quick.
Quote me. A year from now it will be approaching $1000 a coin. It will never be $17 a coin again.
Have you seen the actual numbers? Who owns the US national debt?
- China 8%
US gov't and pension funds 46,1%:
- The Federal reserve 11,3%
- Social Security fund 19%
- US households 6,6%
- State & local gov't 3,5%
- State, local pensions funds 2,2%
- Private pension funds 3,5%
http://www.businessinsider.com/who-owns-us-debt-2011-7?op=1
It getting to be a little much. Have you really got so much money invested in Bitcoin that you are willing to sacrifice /. to advertise it?
Enron's stock went up too. You might want to think about the fundamentals of what you're buying.
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But there seems to be this misunderstanding that China can just "call in" the loans. They can't. US securities are sold for fixed periods of time. They pay off on a given date, period. There is no ability to call them due early.
So all someone can do who wishes to cash out early is to sell them on the open market, and of course if you dump a ton of them the price will crash meaning you'll take a sizable loss on your investment.
People really need to go and look at how public debt in the US works before they chatter about it. Too many think it is the US going to China The Loan Shark and begging for money on any terms. Quite the opposite, it is China buying US securities (denominated in US dollars, held and tracked in the US exchange) when they are auctioned off.
Because of it's deflationary nature and lack of manipulation by government entities, I agree that it will continue to rise.... unless:
1. Somebody hacks the protocol, maybe with a quantum computer. If this happens, all Bitcoins will be instantly worthless and the price will plummet to nothing.
2. A major exchange gets hacked. If Mt. Gox got hacked and 50% of the world's Bitcoins were stolen all at once (or the cash that people were trading for them), you better believe there is no way it is reaching the numbers you are saying. Confidence would be shaken for a very long time.
I could go on, but it's certainly not fool-proof. There are several scenarios where it could be devalued instantly.
That said, I believe there is no better investment opportunity on the planet right now and if you can afford to risk a small amount of money, you should probably look into it.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
It's only worth what people are willing to pay for it.
If confidence goes, so does the value.
No sig today...
Gee elucido; after seeing you post how bitcoins will increase 10x by 2014 in three posts now I can see that you selflessly want us all to partake in this great opportunity. I think I'll go and get some now!
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
I read the Nakamoto paper. Here are my concerns.
The system is secure as long as honest nodes collectively control more CPU power than any cooperating group of attacker nodes, or so it is hoped. But pervasive communications are also assumed so that chain length can be measured, for the CPU-power argument to be possible to begin with. Consider how many key elements in the protocol require extensive communication, for instance to determine chain length. Between botnets, transparent proxies, ASICs, domestic and foreign powers with extensive eavesdropping, intercept, and computational resources... who by the way might be rather put out at having their currencies threatened... do you really want to trust any hard earned cash to this system? Or... if it is easy to make or get bitcoins without hard work, how much can they really be worth?
Meanwhile, is it anonymous, or has this massively transparent electronic P2P currency been designed to keep a particularly difficult to erase record of every transaction completed with it? From the paper:
Some linking is still unavoidable with multi-input transactions, which necessarily reveal that their inputs were owned by the same owner. The risk is that if the owner of a key is revealed, linking could reveal other transactions that belonged to the same owner.
...aaaaaaand, the section ends. So good luck, silk-road purchasers.
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I think his point is that down the road, potatoes did more for the English than gold did for Spain. Spain's situation as of now speaks for itself compared to that of the Commonwealth...
Nothing is enough for whom enough is too little - Confucius
That is a place where you see that level of volatility. Something that can be worth a ton one week, down a bunch the next, back up, back down, etc. Also has daily volatility like one. If you compare the charts to a thinly traded stock, it looks much more like that than a currency.
The IRS considers Bitcoin an good not a currency.
You got a citation for that? I'm pretty sure the IRS will consider it a negotiable instrument which is not a good. And yes I am an accountant.
It isn't income until/unless you sell it and realize a profit.
Properly stated until you sell it, it is an unrealized gain and typically is not taxed, though there are some special cases.
We all know inflation on the dollar is crazy and trending toward never getting better.
We don't "all know" that, because it's not true. Inflation is at about 2% and has been basically unchanged since 1984 or so. Any ideas to the contrary are primarily in the minds of those who have a financial interest in convincing people holding dollars to buy some other kind of asset e.g. Glenn Beck and his gold interests.
I am officially gone from
MIT aggregates about a billion prices and comes out with pretty much the same number as the CPI, which has recently been around 2%.
http://bpp.mit.edu/
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/billion-prices-project.html
What you are describing is exactly my point. USD has a transaction niche, you can buy and sell stuff with USD in the USA with no problem, but not so much in China. The transaction niche is what gives it value. In the past, currencies have all developed transaction niches because the governments imposed rules and regulations in the purpose of creating them. Bitcoin is different, since it has a natural transaction niche. No one had to set it up, or enforce it. It's just better at transferring funds around the world then any other currency. There are billion dollar businesses to accomplish this (ex. Western Union) and bitcoin does it faster, easier, and cheaper.
As long as there is a transaction niche (ie. as long as you are able to use a currency to perform a trade much easier and cheaper than using any other currency), someone somewhere will use it. Regardless if they pay $1 or $1000 for a gallon of milk, if that is the by far the easiest way to buy milk, then they'll go buy some dollars to go buy some milk. The same is true for Bitcoin.
Now imagine, millions of people coming to the same conclusion and using bitcoin for transactions where it is better than anything other. Those millions of people need to buy a certain amount of bitcoin to complete their purchases. That is what is referred to by the bitcoin economy.
The price is where it is, because many people believe the bitcoin economy will need a lot more BTC than it does today once more and more people start using it. There is the value, that's why its market cap is $1B or so and rising. Many people believe that the BTC economy will grow to this size and larger. There is the underlying basis.
or try Glenn Beck's paranoid ranting... and selling gold during the commercials on Fox "News"
i really hope someone at slashdot is getting a kickback for the pumping going on here
for the rest of you: time your sell right!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Only if you enter the right Personal Identification Number number.
The government has this bond as an asset and a liability
But how can this be?! One of the great economists of this or any century has clearly said that you can't have the same thing being an asset and a liability. I think MY HEAD IS GOING TO ASSPLODE !!1
You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".