Slashdot Mirror
Bitcoin Tops $1,000 For the First Time
An anonymous reader writes with this bit from The Next Web "Bitcoin hit a new milestone today, passing the $1,000 mark for the first time. The virtual currency is currently trading above the four-digit figure, with its highest at $1,030 on Mt. Gox, one of the largest exchanges. Last week, Bitcoin's high for the day was $632. That means its trading value has surged 62.83 percent in a week, assuming we're looking at just its high points. That figure could of course rise even further if Bitcoin continues to push further up throughout the day."
The price may go up a little more, but all indications are sell now before the crash.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Bubblicious!
why didn't I buy 1,000 bitcoins when they were $50 a few years ago!!!
It'll keep climbing forever. Trust me.
... then Bitcoin is like rat poison.
Seriously, its your protection against money printing.
Man, when this cash cow comes crashing to the ground its going to make a huge ass hole. Yes, it will come crashing down and I think it will be soon.
Bitcoins are a nice idea but people are not treating them like money. They are treating them like stocks and commodities. They are not commodities, they are coins and coins are supposed to be spent.
So when the fall does happen, and it will, then maybe we can start using them for what they are supposed to be used for. An not hording them like bunch of fucking dragons.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
They have 1% of the supply per wikipedia in 4/2013.
A good speculation for them with their FB winnings I would say.
Not too shabby. It's most interesting to watch people I know who started kicking themselves for not getting into bitcoins when it had skyrocketed to $600. Kudos to all those who got in sub $200.
This is just a hyper-volatile investment which can be bartered against goods from people who are either gamblers or clueless.
All currencies are volatile to some extent, but this thing has no fundamentals to back it up.
Presumably, people want Bitcoins for some reason, otherwise the price wouldn't go up. I can think of 2 reasons that could be driving it...
1. Pure speculation in a rising market and wanting to make money by investing.
2. BTC actively being used for something so they have actual value.
I've seen some minor gambling sites. And a handful of sites that accept them for services/products. There was silk road, but that's gone. With the bust, I have to imagine that people are skittish about the new silk road, so I have to believe those volumes are way down. But all that just doesn't seem to be keeping up with the extreme increase in value. Make me really think #1 is the more likely scenario.
What am I missing? How are these being used?
Side note... I've got 0.34 BTC from when I played around with it a year ago. Wasn't worth cashing in then and forgot about them. Glad I didn't lose the keys.
Seriously, isn't it mainly being used to support criminal and terrorist activites? Aren't the rest of you, who aren't criminals and terrorists, just "Useful Idiots", unwittingly facilitating crime and terrorism?
You realize the same argument has been used by proponents of abolishing cash, right? Oh, and the anti-oil types, although in their case they're actually correct.
Sometimes being able to buy stuff without being fucking tracked is not only perfectly reasonable, it's a damn good idea.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
With the high profile shutdown of Silk Road the number of things you can buy with Bitcoin would be considerably less. While it's true that there are other services available, it seems strange to me that so much money is being dumped into the system now. Maybe someone is trying to buy up enough coins for a trip to space? Or maybe someone is laundering a crapload of money and is having trouble on the outbound side (converting the money back into real life currency) and is creating a backlog?
Or it's an attack on the system itself, maybe someone figure out a way to race the market and make money?
I read the internet for the articles.
.Seems like March 1637 all over again.
The USD is used for more criminal activity in a day than Bitcoin is for several years. The argument is tiresome.
What about people who don't have bank accounts? Believe it or not there are many people in the world (hell, here in the U.S. even!) who are poor and don't have a bank account, living their lives entirely on cash basis. What about them? Also most banks charge fees to someone (the consumer, or the business) for EFT transactions; I see very often smaller, independent retailers won't even be set up to accept EFT or even credit card transactions, because banks are charging them too much to make it viable for them, and as we all well know, prepaid credit cards are a morass of tacked-on, hidden fees that often effectively cancel out any cash value loaded onto the card. Banks would have to be brought to heel by federal regulations, prohibiting them from charging fees like they have been, and since they have the money, they'd fight it for decades to come. Nope, I don't see cash being phased out anytime soon, and considering how public awareness of governments tracking of our everyday lives is on the rise, I'd expect more people to be using cash whenever possible in an attempt (futile as it might turn out to be, anyway) to preserve (or take back) their privacy.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I mined a few Bitcoins last winter using my GPU. I needed to heat my house a bit, so the cost for me was basically nothing. Today I sold the last Bitcoin - total profit: USD 6500... Happy, but I think I'll spend the coming week second-guessing my decision to sell today.
I wish I'd bought some when they were $100. Maybe I will after the next crash.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Does anyone think that the rise in price might be a result of the new demand for Bitcoins due to Cryptolocker outbreak?
Sometimes being able to buy stuff without being fucking tracked is not only perfectly reasonable, it's a damn good idea.
Like elections.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
That's only because any self respecting criminal wouldn't accept Bitcoins.
If bitcoins go down or up it's not decision that normal people will make... Price of bitcoin is controlled now by BIG players, they are like in speculate heaven, they can do here what they can't on normal stock exchange... If anyone of you saw what was going on on big sales one week ago you would know what's going on... Bots buying/selling... If u think you know if bitcoin will go up or down they you are WRONG. People still don't get it that in long run only those whales make money, on stock exchange and on bitcoin exchange tooo... They just wait for normal people to buy more and more so finally they can dump what they have making price go down so everyone thinks it's crashing and they are selling everything they have, while big players just buy it off and then make higher price again... Capitalization of the market is too low that's why that kind of things we see atm... Price of bitcoin only depends on one thing at the moment : Big players want to invest long-term in bitcoin so i it will go up more and we will see no crash in next months... or more likely scenario : they are selling slowly now and soon they will dump lot of bitcoins making the price go down big time, so ordinary people will start selling their btc while whales will buy it off them...
That's totally unfair, singling out criminals like that.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
based on valueless commodities: tulip bulbs and diamonds are the first ones that come to mind. Good luck to all holding bitcoins- you're going to need it.
The arguments that bitcoin mining is wasteful are without merit. Ripping apart the earth's crust to get gold or minting coins and notes of physical currency is wasteful. A little perspective please.
I think the dump part is coming real soon
Forget CPU and GPU already. The mining difficulty has risen so much recently that what you can mine with them today won't event offset the power costs.
ASICs are the only viable option today for at-home mining, but I'm pretty sure they'll also be rendered useless soon by hosted mining services (CEX.IO already has 25% of the whole Bitcoin network mining power) that are able to consolidate costs and run their mining farms in countries with cheap electricity.
Isn't it interesting how quickly we see comments decrying bitcoin, instead of marvelling at its technological ingenuity?
For a nerd news site, there sure are a lot of people blind to the future. Scratch that, blind to what's happening right now, let alone the future.
There are other uses for bitcoin that haven't even ramped up yet. For example, sending money internationally to relatives, an $850 billion market, has an average fee of 9% from places like Western Union. That market is just begging to be undercut by bitcoin. However, it takes time to set up a network of currency exchangers, something Western Union already has. Give it a few years.
I remember a lot of argument on old bitcoin posts about whether bitcoins were a deflationary currency or not. It is certainly looking that they are right now. The value of them is increasing with time allowing one bitcoin to buy more and more with each passing day. So with the current market, why would someone spend bitcoins? They can wait a day and spend less coins for the same goods, or wait two days and possibly spend even less. This will kill it as a currency. Bitcoin will be solely used as an investment for speculation soon.
Aww bitcoin is a big boy now... you deserve it!
Sometimes being able to buy stuff without being fucking tracked is not only perfectly reasonable, it's a damn good idea.
Like elections.
Except that several websites keep a running tally of who has donated to whom, and how much.
Sadly, the people buying elections have so much money and power that fear of discovery doesn't even cross their minds; hell, some of them are proud to be subverting the democratic process.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
What about people who don't have bank accounts?
The oligarchs have accounted for this, which is why many large corporations are now replacing non-direct-deposit paychecks with what are essentially pre-paid VISA cards.
See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/business/as-pay-cards-replace-paychecks-bank-fees-hurt-workers.html?_r=0
http://www.forbes.com/sites/halahtouryalai/2013/07/23/are-hourly-workers-being-short-changed-the-truth-about-payroll-cards/
http://consumerist.com/2013/07/01/here-is-why-employers-and-banks-love-putting-wages-on-prepaid-debit-cards-and-why-employees-are-keeping-their-money-in-shoeboxes/
You might not be able to get blood from a turnip, but that little fact won't stop those in power from trying.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Getting really sick of people using troll as a "disagree."
Buy Price $968.80 Sell Price $963.76 (Coinbase).
Coinbase prices are real, because if you sell there, you get the money. Mt. Gox prices are higher, but you can't get US dollars out.
Bitcoin liquidity isn't that great - you aren't going to be able to trade millions of dollars of bitcoins very easily. Plus there's the risk of having all your bitcoins stolen if someone hacks into your bitcoin wallet. There really needs to be a Bitcoin ETF to address these concerns.
In until it pays off my mortgage.
Not sure why this was modded down. It's a simple econ question.
If virtually no one is willing to buy, then people who want or need to sell have to offer a price that the people who ARE willing to buy will pay. In other words, the price falls.
Can anyone tell me WTF any of these "indications" are?
I'm an incompetent investor so the idea of currency speculation (whether we're talking about Bitcoin or Euros or whatever, doesn't really matter) is totally mystifying. I simply have no idea what the exchange rate ought to be. Whether it ought to be $500=1BTC or $2000=1BTC I couldn't even begin to guess, except by flipping a coin.
All I know, is that nearly everybody who said "sell" when it was $60, proved themselves to be as ignorant as I am. Well, let me correct that: the people who thought "sell" were as ignorant. The people who said "sell" were that plus ARROGANT, probably with a dose of DISHONESTY.
Are you one of those people, who said "sell" earlier? If so, please tell us, to help us calibrate your intellect and character.
Or are you one of the people who (rightly, we now know from hindsight) said "buy" when it was $60, but is now saying sell, because you've calculated that a Bitcoin ought to exchange for about $712 or something like that? And your calc is based on ... some kind of "indication?" Tell us more about these indications.
Not that I'm going to take your advice anyway (I only buy BTC to send money, not to invest; I'm simply not cut out (yet?) for currency investment), but maybe I'll learn something from the Master.
Does anyone who does this for a living/hobby consider whether those fancy miners are profitable? The price has skyrocketed, but also has the difficulty in mining the coins, has it balanced out or are people losing money all the time?.
True to form, slashdot is sceptical as ever.
We had the same baseless naysaying when it spiked to $200, and the same smug "told ya so's" when it crashed back down to $100
There is something bitcoin has that diamond and tulip bulbs don't, and even if crypto isnt your bag, I' expected more insight from such and otherwise smart crowd.
Don't be stupid, they aren't remotely similar. You can't sleep nekkid on top of a pile of bitcoins in an old cave.
Not that I have tried.
Don't judge me.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The deflationary nature of Bitcoin and the fact that transactions can't be reversed pretty much guarantees that it will never be used as a currency, but those two features could be strengths if you think of Bitcoin as virtual gold.
BC is deflationary in the sense that there are a fixed number of BC that can exist, and as time passes more are revealed. They are used by humans, who have been growing at an (low,and variable, but) exponential rate, causing an increasing demand for them. I am going to say that the growing number of humans interested in BC will exceed the 'production' of new BC, so I am not sure that calling the currency 'deflationary' is quite accurate. Technically any currency is only inflationary or deflationary if the production of it is out of skew with the units of man hours of work that are being added or subtracted from the work pool at any given time.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
isn't this about on the same level, fundamentally, as collecting Magic or Pokemon cards (hell, or Beanie Babies for that matter)?
Magic or Pokemon cards and Beanie Babies are all real things. Bitcoins are data. It's more like catching all of the Pokemon in a Pokemon video game, or collecting mp3s.
If you use a HSBC bank account, you can freely transfer between your own multi-national accounts for free and then do a transfer at the cost of a 'local country' transfer (in some countries, a local bank transfer doesn't cost anything). If you are a smart person, you would use these accounts for transferring money to relatives.
This is probably less expensive than the conversion fees and cuts that Bitcoin exchanges would take and any additional payment provider system to get that money to the person would (since it appears most Bitcoin exchanges don't handle currency themselves, but instead use payment services).
Bitcoin needs to undercut decent banks like HSBC, I don't see that happening unless people are paying everything through Bitcoin.
I suspect by then, many of the international banks would have duplicated HSBC's offerings which would compete well against this. I also suspect Western Union will take different business approaches to counter this as well.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
It costs me $0 to transfer dollars to relatives electronically, bank-to-bank. No fees at all.
Also, perhaps you are unaware, but Western Union has been losing business for two decades now. Many immigrants now send money home by opening a bank account and mailing a physical ATM card to their relatives, which can cost as little as $0 if the relatives withdrawal the cash in $ (which many can), and can be as little as 1% if a currency conversion is involved.
Even using a non-network ATM typically has a fixed charge, e.g. $3/$300 = 1% charge to get a hard currency in one's pocket.
Bitcoin cannot do better (people who think they can transfer BTC for free are ignoring both the exchange spreads and the time/volatility factor).
-Matt
Using some simple math, with over 4% of the worldwide population using Bitcoin, the value of 1 BTC should settle somewhere between $20,000.00 and $500,000.00
There will only be 21,000,000 bitcoins ever made.
There are roughly 314,000,000 people in the U.S.
The average worldwide salary is $1,480.
21M / 314M = 0.06687898089172
0.06687898089172 / $1,480 = 0.0000451885006
$1 = 0.00004518 BTC
1 BTC = $22,129.52
With a worldwide population of 7,127,000,000.
21M/7.127B=0.00294654132173
0.00294654132173/$1,480=0.0000019909063
$1 = 0.00000199 BTC
1 BTC = $502,283.80
All the people that say "You can't buy anything with it, it's worthless" or "it's too volatile to be of any value" are missing the forest for the trees.
The simple fact of the matter is that even on the most fundamental level, bitcoin takes Visa/Mastercard/Amex/Discover/PayPal and all of the associated fees out of the equation. If you buy something in bitcoin you're saving the merchant anywhere up to 5% of the cost of goods sold which, in turn should reduce the price you pay. The price may be volatile at the moment, but it is certainly by no means undervalued given the size of the potential market. Buy some coin by transferring money into an exchange and buying them (might cost you up to 20 bucks and 0.5% in fees) or buy them in cash for "free" with localbitcoins.com and just don't spend them any time the price is lower than what you paid for them. Alternatively, provide a good or service and accept payment in bitcoin yourself.
The fact that bitcoin is peer to peer and run by the community should be enough reason for any Slashdot user to take a serious look at it now that it has received enough scrutiny to know that the math is safe.
Silly goys. Wait till your Judencoin crashes, the exchanges freeze up, and the tax man shows up at your door. Schlomo Shekelburg is probably laughing right now at the success of his invented NWO Judencurrency. The fact the US government hasn't shut it down proves that Judes are behind this heist.
Arbitrary thing passes arbitrary number. http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/11/27/142234/nasdaq-4000-this-time-its-different
Film at an arbitrary number between 10 and 12
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Bitcoin with an automatic devaluation if not spent within a month or so is desirable because Bitcoins are limited to 21 million.
Casteism
Cash = Unlimited demand and unlimited supply
Bitcoin = Unlimited demand and limited supply (21 million)
Casteism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
-- 29A the number of the Beast
How to get rich with bitcoins:
1 mine bitcoins using expensive solar power and expensive hardware asic chips and code running on nvidia video cards
2 !!!!!!
3 profit!
Remember that simpsons episode where they eat a bunch of greasy food so they could collect the cooking oil? "But we _made_ money"!
- Justin Goldberg, trying to reclaim /~Justin+Goldberg since 2001! Dammit, that expired tulane dot edu account! cmdrtaco is a jerk.