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Bitcoin Currency Surpasses 20 National Currencies In Total Value

Posted by samzenpus on from the fake-money dept.

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."

26 of 583 comments (clear)

  1. SELL!!! by BenSchuarmer · · Score: 4, Funny

    time to cash in

    1. Re:SELL!!! by jythie · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Pretty much, or at least potentially. Figuring out when to profit on irrational fear is a good key for success ^_^

    2. Re:SELL!!! by alphatel · · Score: 4, Funny

      1:11 PM - We own the planet!
      3:45 PM - Oh, crashed again...

      --
      When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
    3. Re:SELL!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I've been investing myself for about 25 years and I thought exactly the same thing when I saw this. There is clearly a bubble in the value of BitCoin right now and there is really nothing backing that value. In the past when the US dollar was "young" it was backed by gold. That ended long ago, but the value of the dollar on it's own had been long established before that change. Other currencies have similar histories. That's the the case here. Not only would I sell if I had anything in BitCoin now and move into either US dollars (being a US investor) or metals (silver, gold, platinum being the primary three), but if I had a few grand to gamble with I'd actually short BitCoin at these rates and make some cash as the value starts to slide - be that a short term correction or more likely a collapse of BitCoin altogether.

    4. Re:SELL!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I bought a load of bitcoins last April when they were 5 GBP... with a view to buying stuff off SilkRoad.

      Which I did... but I still had about half of them left. I just held onto them to watch the price (what the hell I thought.. let's see what happens).

      A few days ago I worked out that selling them would get me the equivalent of a month's wage. I could carry on watching and hoping it doesn't crash... or sell them and get a month's wage ON TOP of the drugs I bought (and enjoyed).

      Fuck it.. I cashed out.

    5. Re:SELL!!! by AlphaWolf_HK · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Not a bad idea by any stretch, if you already have them. Personally, I still have no faith in the bitcoin. Though to be honest, when I first started looking at bitcoins last october, they were $11 each, and I thought they were overvalued then. Now (as I write this) they are $86.71 a peice. Given that yesterday afternoon they were $89 something each, the price does seem a bit volatile, however it has made many similar fluctuations along the way up, so that doesn't mean it has peaked. If I had bought say a thousand worth and then sold them today, that is upwards of $8,000 of income.

      Where it will head from here is anybody's guess. I don't believe I am any good at currency speculation by any stretch, but I haven't seen any indication that they have topped out. Still, I wouldn't buy any myself, nor would I suggest anybody else do that either.

      I actually mined some bitcoins to pay for VPN and seedbox services (I make more than enough money in bitcoins per month to pay for these) using GPU power I already have (one 5750 and one 7850) at a combined 600MH/s, which at the current exchange rate yields about $100 USD per month. Thinking of using my spare bitcoins to buy an entry level asic, which will yield ten times that amount at about one tenth of the energy consumption.

      If the bitcoin does end up collapsing, I haven't really lost anything other than idle GPU time. Where I live (Arizona) electricity is cheap, and based on my current metrics (which I am able to monitor in 5 second intervals btw) I have probably thus far spent $5 on mining bitcoins over the four month span that I first started mining them. A general rule of thumb in investing is that you should never invest so much that if you lost it all, you wouldn't be able to afford to keep your house. I don't think I'll miss $5. Best of all, unless I convert it into real dollars, it'll never be taxed. Meanwhile, as time passes there are more and more goods/services that I can buy with bitcoins.

      If everybody does exactly what I'm doing, the value of bitcoins will only increase because more people will have a stake in them.

      And before any eco activists complain about my carbon footprint: My area is nuclear powered. Nuclear has an almost non-existent carbon footprint and is dirt cheap. (I'm not one to concern myself with carbon in any case - call me an anti-social insensitive clod or whatever incorrect label you want, but I just don't see the point worrying about it - see my recent comment history for an explanation.) You can thank the government if your area isn't nuclear powered.

      --
      Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
    6. Re:SELL!!! by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Funny

      Sounds a bit like Wall Street.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    7. Re:SELL!!! by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Informative

      You are incorrect on your tax idea there buddy. That is income and you should be reporting it. You might get away with not reporting a small amount, but if it is ever worth anything you will have the IRS after you.

    8. Re:SELL!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Can you imagine $1m for a Bitcoin? I could hold your family at gunpoint for one coin, and at worst get a few months in prison. Or just pay some meth head a couple hundred bucks to do it.
      Meanwhile, you can't prove I stole anything of real value from you - just a file from your computer. You can't insure it like a piece of property, you can't "cancel" it like you could a check, and nobody gives a crap where the BTC ends up because it doesn't count as real currency.
      So while it's fun to imagine, the moment BTC becomes worth more than harvesting someone's credit cards via botnet, they're coming for your virtual wallet and nobody will care, not the banks, not the government, and not the retailers, because they all operate on regulated currencies and the protections they afford.

    9. Re:SELL!!! by Dahamma · · Score: 4, Informative

      Except Wall Street is at least nominally speculating based on equity, whereas Bitcoins have less inherent value than a bag of tulip bulbs.

    10. Re:SELL!!! by TeknoHog · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Bitcoins have less inherent value than a bag of tulip bulbs.

      Try sending payments across the globe in 10 minutes using tulip bulbs.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    11. Re:SELL!!! by shaitand · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No that's the problem with gambling. And if you won it would bolster your confidence and you'd bet it all again. Speculative markets are nothing but high stakes gambling.

    12. Re:SELL!!! by ultranova · · Score: 5, Funny

      Try paying for anything in Bitcoins without electricity.

      As opposed to Wall Street stock exchange computers, which run on hellfire and are cooled by the blood of the innocent.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

  2. Is it really circulating? by dclozier · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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)

    1. Re:Is it really circulating? by Frobnicator · · Score: 4, Insightful

      claiming it is being widely used for every day living. I have yet to see anything to back up either extreme.

      Let me know when I can pay my rent in bitcoins, pay my fuel bill in bitcoins, or buy groceries in bitcoins.

      For now it is a geek-only way to exchange goods and services.

      --
      //TODO: Think of witty sig statement
  3. Re:Buy Now! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Perhaps Bitcoins can be packaged into securities, given a AAA rating, and sold to retirement funds. Win-win!

  4. Re:That's completely arbitrary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    It means that ALL bitcoins are collectively worth more than ALL currency of the 20 countries listed. They're not comparing individual currency units.

  5. They probably surpassed ... by ackthpt · · Score: 4, Funny

    They probably surpassed North Korea with their first nickel.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  6. Re:How to take a short position in Bitcoin? by wed128 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Borrow some bitcoin, sell it now, wait for the inevitable, buy it back when the bubble pops, return to owner.

  7. Re:How to take a short position in Bitcoin? by Gendou · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://mpex.co/
    https://campbx.com/faq.php#trading
    https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Futures
    https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Forex
    https://icbit.se/
    https://www.firstnationalib.com/

  8. Theoretical 1 billion not actual by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  9. Re:Bitcoin could reach 1 million per coin in value by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So could tulip bulbs, you better go get some quick.

  10. US debt by andersh · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  11. So you buy every bubble then? by Concern · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Enron's stock went up too. You might want to think about the fundamentals of what you're buying.

    --
    Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
  12. Not only that by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  13. Re:It will never be that cheap again by Ash-Fox · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There is no reason to expect it to ever get that low again. The market is bigger now and there are sites which accept bitcoins which didn't back then.

    Reminds me of what people told me about investing in Enron.

    --
    Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.