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Bitcoin Exchange Value Halves After Chinese Ban
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 is why we're still decades away from having mortgages denominated in bitcoin. :P
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
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
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.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
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.
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!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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 . . ..
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.
It's not the fall that kills you. It's the sudden stop at the end. -Douglas Adams
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.
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).
As a medium of long-term storage, or even something you could price goods in, it's just too volatile.
It lacks one central feature of a true fiat currency: potentially unlimited supply.
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.
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.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
"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...
silly me thought my 5GH miner was going to make me stupid rich...
One out of two ain't bad.
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 rolling on the floor laughing at me, I've been rolling in cash.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Apologies, forgot to actually hyperlink...
[FUCK BETA]
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.
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
Thank you Dave Raggett
They promised that THIS time it's DIFFERENT!
And with that comes its inability for supply and demand to move together to smooth out the insane price fluctuations. Bitcoin holders who are worried about the theoretical possibility of hyperinflation in a well-managed fiat currency scheme seem to be ignoring the actual hyperinflation and hyperdeflation of their currency.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Minor correction - dispute mediated transactions have been a part of the design since day one. 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.
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.
Every sale is also a buy. Derp.
"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!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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.
I prefer ass quarters -- they're ribbed for your pleasure!
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Again, it is not Amazon. The company is gyft.com
I have no affiliation but have looked into what they offer.
Bitcoin value continues to be incredibly unstable! Also the sky is blue and water is wet! More updates as news develops!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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), sometimes by small amounts (late 90s, mid 2000s), but an increase in debt annually nevertheless.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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.
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.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
These price fluctuations are not the mark of money -- bitcoin seems more likely a wildly volatile commodity.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
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 limit at 100 x 210,000 = 21,000,000.
The mining algorithm is a basic feature of the bitcoin system. If the paper's author got that wrong, I don't have much confidence in the rest of his arguments.