Bloomberg's Trading Terminals Now Providing Bitcoin Pricing

New submitter Raystonn (1463901) writes "Bloomberg has announced the release of Bitcoin support in their trading terminals, used worldwide by over 320,000 trading professionals. The market makers of the world will now have instant access to immediate Bitcoin prices on an industry-standard trading platform. This places the virtual currency before the eyes of the movers and shakers of most of the world's money supply as they decide where to invest their USD holdings."

Comments

Where?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not Bitcoin.

Re:Where?

[xorsyst]

Better get into bitcoin now, this could drive the price high. Or low. Who knows?

Beginning of the End

[cusco]

Now the professional speculators will trash it for good. Get the amateurs out of the way, time for a REAL pump-and-dump cycle!
 

Re:Beginning of the End

[UnknownSoldier]

/Oblg. Life cycle of currency ...

http://www.activemanagersresou...

Re:Beginning of the End

[cusco]

When George Soros and the other currency speculator scum get done with Bitcoin the holders of coins will end up owing money.

Re:Beginning of the End

[UnknownSoldier]

I don't see how that is possible. BitCoin isn't able to be controlled by a single entity.

Governments/Politicians can try to outlaw the currency but they are powerless to stop an absolutely new paradigm [in currency].

Re:Beginning of the End

[cusco]

Huh? The value of Bitcoin is driven exclusively by speculation, it has no intrinsic real-world value. The professional speculators like Soros and the slime at Goldman/Sachs have no interest in controlling the supply of rice, corn, tin, or Bitcoin, their stock in trade is running up the price of something, then crashing its value, buying up supplies at the new value, running up the value again and then selling as it peaks and then crashes again. They have hundreds of billions of dollars to play with and so far outclass the herd of Bitcoin fans that there isn't a chance in hell of the miners ever regaining control of their currency once the pros enter the market.

What's the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

The sole use of Bitcoins are for drug addicts and drug dealers. Why would stock traders care about these people?

Re:What's the point of this?

[fph il quozientatore]

The sole use of Bitcoins are for drug addicts and drug dealers. Why would stock traders care about these people?

Indeed, I find the mere association offensive. Drug addicts and dealers are respectable people.

Re:What's the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

The stock traders do not care about any people. You can make money from it, that is enough motivation.

Re:What's the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can think of a better way to buy hookers and blow you can probably get rich selling it to them.

Re:What's the point of this?

[cusco]

Drug dealers? Who do you think has been feeding the stock market rise for the last two decades? It's the best and easiest way to launder a billion dollars at a time. Why do you think Charles Grassley made a personal visit to the FARC in Colombia when he was CEO of the NYSE, and then retired with the most enormous bonus of any executive in the Exchange's history? Why do you think US Treasury Secretaries leave "public service" to go lead the money laundering, err, 'private banking' divisions of the mega-banks?

It's an enormous amount of money that needs washing every year, around half of it from drug sales, the entire worldwide Bitcoin pseudo-economy couldn't even begin to touch it. This is just to make it easier for the currency speculators to play with.

Re:What's the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I seem to remember that the Silk Road 2 had Bitcoins stolen after some cracker visit and were putting on a plan for getting able to reimburse their customers.

That seems more respectable and responsible than the "we will not be able to continue paying top bonuses to our mismanagers unless the public bails us out" regular banks. The banks are acting like modern-day robber barons.

Re:What's the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can think of a better way to buy hookers and blow you can probably get rich selling it to them.

Hookers love cash. I doubt they're really into bitcoins...

Re: What's the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Richard Grasso?

Re:What's the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

The banks are acting like modern-day robber barons.

They aren't "acting like" anything. They are the modern day robber barons.

Re:What's the point of this?

[sleigher]

The banks are acting like modern-day robber barons. They aren't "like" modern day robber barons. They ARE robber barons.

Re:What's the point of this?

[Chrisq]

The sole use of Bitcoins are for drug addicts and drug dealers. Why would stock traders care about these people?

Maybe its the one chance they get to be on the moral high ground.

Re:What's the point of this?

[Iniamyen]

Wow, 2 pointless syntactical corrections to the same comment whose intended meaning was obvious.

Re:What's the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Drug dealers prey on people so they can be exploited and taken advantage of. How can you find any good in that?

Re:What's the point of this?

[SinisterEVIL]

That's old hat. Virtual currency is getting widespread adoption. You can buy almost anything with it at this point if you know what your doing.

Re: What's the point of this?

[cusco]

Whoops, yeah, that's right. Had to go back and look it up, memory is going.
 
      "I invite members of the FARC to visit the New York Stock Exchange so that they can get to know the market personally." . . . Grasso told reporters that he was bringing "a message of cooperation from U.S. financial services."

Re:What's the point of this?

[CodeArtisan]

The sole use of Bitcoins are for drug addicts and drug dealers. Why would stock traders care about these people?

Because historically the traders have been some of the dealers best customers?

Re:What's the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, 2 pointless syntactical corrections to the same comment whose intended meaning was obvious.

I would suggest, "Wow, two pointless...", or is it four now?

Re:What's the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

WHOOSH! The joke was that stock traders are so much worse.

In reality, we know that stock traders are drug addicts and have close connections with dealers.

Re:What's the point of this?

[DanielRavenNest]

The 60,000+ merchants who accept bitcoin today would disagree. In fact, data from the Silk Road indictment and the bitcoin Block Chain show drugs were never more than 4% of total transactions. It was way more than 4% of *news stories*, because a drug marketplace grabs more eyeballs than paying for socks and sheets, or web hosting, but that's the mainstream media for you.

Re:What's the point of this?

[mlts]

Reputation also can have a quantifiable value. For example, if Mallory's exchange has a reputation of $25,000 and Alice/Bob want to do a $30,000 exchange, it might be worth it for Mallory to destroy the reputation of his exchange for the $5000 gained by seizing the transaction.

Part of the reason is that instead of regulation (the "trust us, we are a bank and guaranteed"), reputation is critical to their business. So when SR2 had BitCoins stolen, it was cheaper to replace the lost currency than to lose the reputation they are working on.

Re:What's the point of this?

[TheCarp]

Actually the vast majority of dealers are just addicts who started selling to people they knew to support their own habbit. That instantly makes them better than the majority of salesmen in the world since they are not only selling only to people who seek them out looking for their product, but sell a product that they themselves actually use.

In fact, if not for abusive prices that are the result of pieces of shit who think they can solve every solcial problem by banning the things they don't like and sticking their heads in the sand, the majority of them wouldn't even be dealers.

Re:What's the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

conveniently leave out where most of the transactions *do* come from, why don't you. Bitcoin's dirtiest little secret isn't SR, it's Just-Dice and friends. Bitcoin is a way for nerds to gamble at the craps table while telling themselves they are really investing.

Re:What's the point of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where'd you get that number from? I've heard that drugs were about 83% of bitcoin purchases.

"invest their holdings"

[gavron]

To "invest" is to put money where value is.

Bitcoin is a concept. It has no value. People can trade, arbitrage, wield, barter, or exchange for it.
It still has no value.

Best fortune to all those making money with Bitcoin. For every one of you someone has lost
an almost equal amount. (originally mined bitcoins loss value 0 but it grows exponentially).

And as for the holdback bitcoins created and untouched -- that's why bitcoin will NEVER be a currency.
"Oh we invented this so we kept some for ourselves." Yeah, do that. And doom the coin.

E

Re:"invest their holdings"

[Anonymous Coward]

shhhh do not speak such truths to the circle jerk!

Re:"invest their holdings"

[Savage-Rabbit]

To "invest" is to put money where value is.

Bitcoin is a concept. It has no value. People can trade, arbitrage, wield, barter, or exchange for it.
It still has no value.

Best fortune to all those making money with Bitcoin. For every one of you someone has lost
an almost equal amount. (originally mined bitcoins loss value 0 but it grows exponentially).

And as for the holdback bitcoins created and untouched -- that's why bitcoin will NEVER be a currency.
"Oh we invented this so we kept some for ourselves." Yeah, do that. And doom the coin.

E

Nothing has value unless there is a general consensus about it being valuable.Dollars are only pieces of paper that are no longer even backed by gold and that are valuable simply because everybody agrees they are valuable. If that consensus changes dollars become worthless. The same goes for commodities, you can build a huge stockpile of gold worth $100 million that everybody agrees is valuable until one day there is a super volcano eruption, civilization collapses and alluvasudden the general consensus on value shifts to your neighbours $1.000.000 (pre apocalypse value) stockpile of guns, ammo and canned food being way more valuable than your pile of gold.

Re:"invest their holdings"

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither does any fiat currency. Its only useful because certain people will trade with it. USD is arguably better because the US trades in that. But there are some groups who trade in alternate made-up currencies (the Euro) that you can't pay taxes in, and as long as you can make the trade and both parties are happy you are good.

Re:"invest their holdings"

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a bullet press, you can always cast your gold into bullets.

Re:"invest their holdings"

[Intrepid imaginaut]

No, dollars are backed by a stable government and the GDP of the USA. Bitcoin is backed by nothing.

Re:"invest their holdings"

[Iniamyen]

Why do silver bullets always get all the love? Gold bullets would be awesome.

Re:"invest their holdings"

[SinisterEVIL]

Nothing has value unless there is a general consensus about it being valuable. As per your quote, millions of people think bitcoin has value as well as about $6billion dollars of market cap. That's not including the massive push by venture capitalist.

Re:"invest their holdings"

[cellocgw]

Why do silver bullets always get all the love? Gold bullets would be awesome.

In case you really don't know the reason, it's 'cause only silver has the ethereal purity to stop vampires. Heck, gold barely stops the Dane, and not for very long.

Re:"invest their holdings"

[perpenso]

Why do silver bullets always get all the love? Gold bullets would be awesome.

One of the James Bond films, The Man with the Golden Gun, may have them.

Re:"invest their holdings"

[DanielRavenNest]

You are confusing a data entry in a ledger (bitcoin transactions in the Block Chain), and the Bitcoin Network, which enables efficient delivery of money from one place to another. The latter has value for the service it provides, and from the software, hardware, and user base it includes. Those don't need backing by anything else.

Re:"invest their holdings"

[cusco]

Silver was for werewolves, not vampires. At least until Hollyweird got hold of it, now sunlight make vampires sparkle and most of the monsters are good guys.

Re:"invest their holdings"

[Dishwasha]

Bitcoin is backed by science. Which do you trust more?

Re:"invest their holdings"

[cusco]

Like Scientology?

Re:"invest their holdings"

[Dishwasha]

Just because the word scientology shares the first four letters of the word does not mean it is or ever was based on science. Regardless that's a troll argument since Scientology is a closed and secret system where as everything related to Bitcoin is publicly available for you to review if you are so inclined (or paranoid).

Re:"invest their holdings"

[Anonymous Coward]

a governement that is spending about 1.7 Trillion above income is not stable, it's in freefall, it just hasn't hid the ground yet

Re:"invest their holdings"

[cusco]

Of course it's a troll argument, sometimes they're just too obvious to resist :-)

What in the world is scientific about Bitcoin though? Just because something is documented doesn't make it science. Just because it uses mathematics doesn't make it science. I suppose one could make the argument that it might be a sociology experiment created by a guy who worked on classified military programs, but that's kind of dubious.

Re:"invest their holdings"

[Kalriath]

Nothing has value unless there is a general consensus about it being valuable.Dollars are only pieces of paper that are no longer even backed by gold and that are valuable simply because everybody agrees they are valuable. If that consensus changes dollars become worthless.

Wrong. Dollars have value because the government, charged with the creation and enforcement of laws, says they do. If the consensus changes, it doesn't matter, they're still worth what the government says they are worth. That's what makes a dollar stable, as opposed to say a Bitcoin, which is worth whatever a consensus of people say it's worth (down to and including zero).

Re:"invest their holdings"

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they should increase taxes. Rather than cut taxes and hope that somehow it all magically works out.

Re:"invest their holdings"

[BitZtream]

That ... and silver is actually hard enough to use as a bullet, where as gold would probably mushroom out, jam in the barrel and cause an explosion.

Re:"invest their holdings"

[labnet]

No, dollars are backed by a stable government and the GDP of the USA. Bitcoin is backed by nothing.

Yes, funny: but the true value of a currency is it is the only currency the taxation office takes.

Re:"invest their holdings"

[gnupun]

Those don't need backing by anything else.

Is the software, hardware and efficient delivery of money service worth tens of billions of dollars in total? Not, in my opinion. But in an age where an SMS mobile app is worth $18 billion, my valuation may be wrong.

As an aside, since the ledger entry is intrinsic to bitcoins and ledger entries depend on previous transactions of a user, doesn't bitcoins seem terribly big brotherish since the ledger tracks every single transaction you make using bitcoins?

Re:"invest their holdings"

[complete loony]

How many of the Dollars that you personally use are actually printed on paper (well, cloth or plastic in most places)? Most of the Dollars in circulation exist in bank ledgers, created by depositing the money from loans that banks have issued. Backed by the asset value of the banks balance sheet.

With the price of houses falling in the US, and the FED panicking and buying so many bank assets at face value...

Re:"invest their holdings"

[JesseMcDonald]

Dollars have value because the government, charged with the creation and enforcement of laws, says they do. If the consensus changes, it doesn't matter, they're still worth what the government says they are worth.

That will be really helpful when you go to the market and find that a gallon of milk costs $100. "What the government says they're worth" is meaningful only as long as the government has the goods you want to buy. Even if they tried to impose a price ceiling, the long-term result would simply be that no one would be willing to sell the goods at the mandated price. You can't legislate away the law of supply and demand.

You don't have to look far to see examples of government currencies which were devalued "down to zero", with said governments powerless to prevent it: Examples of Hyperinflation. In general these devaluations are due to massive increases in the money supply, which won't be an issue with Bitcoin.

Thompson Reuters leads the way.

[Anonymous Coward]

 

#irC.troLlltalk.com

[Anonymous Coward]

LeUaving corE. I

Re:#irC.troLlltalk.com

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm sad that tool Weev is out of prison. what a shame

Bloomberg rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just BitCoin, but he spend a sizable chunk of his own money to clean up the streets in the US of guns, so schools are safe again. Wish more billionaires were like him.

Re:Bloomberg rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

he isn't cleaning up guns to make the schools save,
he's cleaning up guns because whenever the difference between the haves and have nots gets to big that enevitably ends up with violence
and as a have his chances of survival rise as the armament of the masses lowers

I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

I always wonder what the vitriol against BitCoin comes from. I mean, its completely optional. You don't need to be involved at all. However from a technical viewpoint it is a very very clever system. I really don't understand why people get so upset. Is it because people are making money off of it?

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Its because it was posted on Slashdot when it was it was less than 3 cents a pop, and now its a few hundred. It was a risky proposition then. I have more than a little resentment that I didn't buy in.

Re:I wonder

[ArcadeMan]

Everybody who's against Bitcoin is mad because they didn't mine it in the early days.

Re:I wonder

[ArcadeMan]

Goddamn Bitcoins, worthless pieces of shit.

Re:I wonder

[i kan reed]

For me, like every other truly annoying thing, it's the fans.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody who's against Bitcoin is mad because they didn't mine it in the early days.

I didn't invest in google in the early days either, but I don't hate them.

I hate bitcoin for a number of reason. The few that top the list:
1) I hate the idea of having all of these computers working harder and harder, using more and more energy, and every day there being more miners setting up more computers, all of it in an unproductive pursuit of nothing but wealth. The energy wasted for no real societal gain makes it more socially useless than a marketing department for a law firm.

2) The price varies so wildly, but it's all based off of nothing. At least with stocks, you have company metrics and financials you can at least try to use to figure out where it's going. At least with national currencies, you can look at what the country is doing politically and financially to try and guess where the currency is going. With bithcoin, it's like it's decided by a magic eight ball...there is nothing you can base decisions on other than a random guess.

Re:I wonder

[Misagon]

I think it is because it is perceived as being money for nothing.

Re:I wonder

[medv4380]

You say that it's "optional", but it's not. If you view it as a scam investment like Tulip Bulbs that can bankrupt people you warn people away from it in some vain attempt to save them before they are ruined by it. It's not optional because when friends and family are dupt into it, and loose their shirt it's going to hurt you even if you didn't personally invest one penny in it.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it. It is optional. If you don't want to use Bitcoin, DON'T USE IT. Just because someone else decides to use it and it might affect you don't mean it isn't optional.

Re:I wonder

[ArcadeMan]

You didn't have to "invest" anything in the early days of Bitcoins either. You just ran a program that used your CPU, then later your GPU, to mine Bitcoins. Yes it cost you more on your electric power bill, but that cost vs the value of Bitcoin today is negligible.

Re:I wonder

[BaronAaron]

1) I hate the idea of having all of these computers working harder and harder, using more and more energy, and every day there being more miners setting up more computers, all of it in an unproductive pursuit of nothing but wealth. The energy wasted for no real societal gain makes it more socially useless than a marketing department for a law firm.

A non-centralized, freely available to anyone with an Internet connection, digital currency is a huge gain for society. Miners insure the integrity of this system. It's not wasted energy if you value the idea behind it.

2) The price varies so wildly, but it's all based off of nothing. At least with stocks, you have company metrics and financials you can at least try to use to figure out where it's going. At least with national currencies, you can look at what the country is doing politically and financially to try and guess where the currency is going. With bithcoin, it's like it's decided by a magic eight ball...there is nothing you can base decisions on other than a random guess.

Bitcoin prices are driven by supply and demand. That's about as simple as economics gets. Just like gold or any other finite commodity, as long as it has value in the minds of people the price will go up in the long term because of the limited supply.

Re:I wonder

[SuricouRaven]

As do I. As do many

Re:I wonder

[SuricouRaven]

1. See conventional finance.
2. See conventional finance.

There are some valid criticisms to make (The idea of a deflationary currency will have economists collapsed in the floor laughing at how stupid that is), but yours are not really good ones.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

I got the RedHat "letter", didn't invest then, but I don't hate them.

I don't like BitCoin for a few reasons:

1: The mining of BitCoins uses a lot of energy for very little reward.

2: Said mining is starting to be done via unauthorized ways. I've cleaned off malware that had BitCoin miners built in, as well as dealt with people who put miner software on some production clusters.

3: What put BitCoin on the map was CryptoLocker and criminal activity. Because of this, the currency is "tainted".

4: The lie about anonymity. Every coin or satoshi has a blockchain that is tracable. This means that one can be forever haunted by any purchases unless one plays games with wallets (put a bunch of tainted coins in a wallet, trade the wallet to someone else in another country, etc.) Even with those games, eventually some big power will unravel the tangled web and start doing arrests.

5: The fact that blockchain tracing is becoming harder and harder with more energy wasted just checking that someone's stash is OK. Yes, you can trust an exchange to do the dirty work and cache the chain... but there are no regulations, and said exchange can happily double-spend your coins, or just take them and give you the middle finger without suffering any criminal liability.

Re:I wonder

[SinisterEVIL]

Amen. I wish I would haven't missed the boat. It sounded stupid to me until I understood it. Then it all made sense. It's a shame people are so afraid of what they don't know, instead of just trying to learn something they can't grasp.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitcoin prices are driven by supply and demand. That's about as simple as economics gets.

But its completely artificial. The supply doesnt really change (other than a steady, predictable, influx of new coins). And the demand is based on something you can't predict or even really guess at. Last november, the price went up over 4x. Was there any reason behind this? What triggered it? Nothing, it was purely artificial. At least when a company's stock goes up 4x, you can attribute it to something the company did or was involved in, which you have at least a hope of being able to predict if you keep informed on the market and the company's actions.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is having a good time. - H.L. Mencken

Re:I wonder

[cusco]

Frelling Libertardians have no concept of economy or community. Lost in their own little fantasy of independence and self sufficiency, they're utterly oblivious to the concept that what happens in the larger society will affect them whether they like it or not.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not optional because when friends and family are dupt into it, and loose their shirt it's going to hurt you even if you didn't personally invest one penny in it.

By that reasoning NOTHING is optional. Skiing "isn't optional" because a family member could break a leg and place their burdens on you.

Re:I wonder

[perpenso]

Yes it cost you more on your electric power bill, but that cost vs the value of Bitcoin today is negligible.

If you are using CPU or GPU it is not negligible, you are losing money. Even with some specialized hardware (ASICs) the power may consume 30-50% of the value. YMMV depending on the specific ASICs.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

1) You don't understand bitcoin. the computers are "mining" to form consensus on the last 10 minutes of transactions on the entire network. and appending that block to the blockchain. They are in effect creating transparency and a permanent record. without the need of a central authority. It is something that is completely new to mankind and has never been attempted before, yes the currency is a part of it, and it IS incentive, but the network that is being built has implications far beyond simple currency.

2) The price varies because of speculation, however I can not complain because speculation in this case is driving adoption, and that is driving liquidity, and now, terrible news from china that once caused massive price swings barely registers .. it is stabilizing.

The idea that has been unleashed on the world with bitcoin will change the world and there is no stopping it, I am surprised at how many on Slashdot can't understand this. I expect the vitriol from CNN etc .. but slashdot ? I thought you guys were smarter than this.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

A surprising lack of comprehension. I thought slashdot was smarter than this, but its almost as if intelligent people when it comes to bitcoin believe they are so smart that they can write bitcoin off as a scam before even studying the technical aspect of it, and the philosophical,, and socio political implications ..
Or maybe its that technical people do not generally have vision.

Re:I wonder

[Richy_T]

Yes, it's artificial. That's what supply and demand is all about. All value is artificial.

It went up ostensibly because China entered the market and pushed demand up. There may also have been links to Gox's suspending of dollar withdrawals

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

That's alright. Give it a couple years and it will be 3 cents, or lowet, again.

Re:I wonder

[Richy_T]

Someone did your 1 and 2. That's why Bitcoin was invented.

Re:I wonder

[Richy_T]

It is not money for nothing. I did a little mining once upon a time but now it is too expensive and risky for my blood. That's hardly nothing.

Re:I wonder

[Richy_T]

Statists, wanting to control everyone else's lives because they're just too fricking scared to live.

Re:I wonder

[Richy_T]

Oh, forgot the US federal government and New York hearings.

Re:I wonder

[DanielRavenNest]

One reason is fear. People who depend on a paycheck denominated in today's currency are afraid their pay and all their assets will be devalued if bitcoin replaces that currency. It's an irrational fear. There will be just as many opportunities to earn bitcoin as the alternatives it replaces. Things that have value (like houses) will still have value in a bitcoin economy.

The other thing is resistance to change. Lots of people don't like change.

Re:I wonder

[squiggleslash]

It's pretty simple. It has nothing to do with not being involved, or energy efficiency, or anything like that.

It's the fact that the logic behind it, the whole "it's kinda like a gold standard" type BS, is wrong, and there is nothing, nothing, more likely to upset a geek than someone on the Internet being wrong.

Re:I wonder

[JakartaDean]

Everybody who's against Bitcoin is mad because they didn't mine it in the early days.

I didn't invest in google in the early days either, but I don't hate them.

I hate bitcoin for a number of reason. The few that top the list: 1) I hate the idea of having all of these computers working harder and harder, using more and more energy, and every day there being more miners setting up more computers, all of it in an unproductive pursuit of nothing but wealth. The energy wasted for no real societal gain makes it more socially useless than a marketing department for a law firm.

2) The price varies so wildly, but it's all based off of nothing. At least with stocks, you have company metrics and financials you can at least try to use to figure out where it's going. At least with national currencies, you can look at what the country is doing politically and financially to try and guess where the currency is going. With bithcoin, it's like it's decided by a magic eight ball...there is nothing you can base decisions on other than a random guess.

Here's where we disagree. I don't believe fundamentals influence, in any way, exchange rates. What influences exchange rates is only expectations of future exchange rates. These are regularly very different from past experience. I speak from intense personal experience in Indonesia in 1999, when the rate of the local currency dropped from 2,500 to the dollar to more than 15,000 in a little more than a month.

Stock prices yes, exchange rates no -- they are solely based on subjective impressions of future trends.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, I don't get it. How is Bitcoin negatively affecting the larger society? It is optional. Don't participate in it. 99.99999% of people don't.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

I still do not understand why the vitriol is so focused on Bitcoin, though. Why don't you go around everywhere and warn people about the dangers of penny stocks? Or large scale frauds, like the one involving this fine gentleman? The money involved was a few times Bitcoin's market cap.

If you would be honest, you would see that Bitcoin is new technology with new possibilities. No where knows where it goes. It could crash, it could continue to enter certain markets. I do not, but you do neither! And it is definitely not a Ponzi scheme.

Wouldn't that the be the most honest position? Wouldn't it be advisable to give your peers the most honest information, instead of a dumbed-down -and thus dishonest- warning?

Re:I wonder

[Agent0013]

I see the stock values going up and down everyday without anything the company is doing being a cause for it. In fact, the times when there is a direct cause for the change in value of a stock coming from something the company did would be a very small percentage of the time. So to me, the stock market also seems completely artificial. Plus, with how much the traditional market is rigged and manipulated, the BitCoin market would be a safer bet.

Re:I wonder

[cusco]

When Soros and the other currency speculator swine blow it up to a trillion dollars and convince all the 401k managers to invest, and then short it and collapse it to $1.15 it won't affect you? Let me guess, you thought the mortgage bubble wouldn't affect you because you didn't have a mortgage and weren't invested in them, right?

Unless you live in a shack in the mountains and grow your own food pretty much everything that happens everywhere on the planet is going to have an effect on you. I really don't understand why that is so hard for Libertarians to understand.

Re:I wonder

[ArcadeMan]

I was talking specifically about mining in the early days, with a CPU and then with a GPU.

Re:I wonder

[AdamHaun]

I mean, its completely optional.

Not if you're a Slashdot reader it's not. Unless you know of a way to block all the stupid Bitcoin stories? If so, please share.

I always wonder what the vitriol against BitCoin comes from ... from a technical viewpoint it is a very very clever system. I really don't understand why people get so upset.

I get that it's a clever system, but that's not why it gets a story a day here. Bitcoin is billed as a world-changing grass-roots utopian revolution to create a new economy based around a "hard" currency. As a revolution, it's bad economics and worse politics. As a social movement, it's driven by for-profit right-wing propaganda originally designed to scare people into driving up the price of gold. As a commodity of value, it's driven by speculators. As an economy, it's tailor-made for money-laundering and smuggling. If it succeeds, it will start an era of money-driven politics that will make Citizens United seem like a fond memory. There is literally nothing to like about Bitcoin aside from the technology.

As far as effects on the outside world, the coin miners have driven up the price of decent video cards. I guess it's better than the gold speculators driving up the price of wedding rings, but still annoying.

Re:I wonder

[Kalriath]

Uh, no, I can guarantee that zero people don't like Bitcoin because they are "afraid of it replacing currency". Because that won't happen.

People don't like Bitcoin because:

• It has more annoying fans than Justin Beiber
• The environmental cost of "mining" "cryptocurrency" is significantly higher than any benefits, making it a net loss
• and yes, the obvious, value being defined by the outcome of Math.random()

Re:I wonder

[BitZtream]

That, or they have a clue. Hey, who am I to inject logic into your silly little reality.

The only people who think BitCoin is something useful are those who want its value to rise so they don't lose money. The only difference between it and any other generic commodity is that BitCoin actually has no usefulness beyond speculators wet dreams.

Re:I wonder

[labnet]

We are against it because it can't grow or shink with the econmoic value it represents.
There will only ever be about double the bitcoins available as there are now. If the world switched to bit coins now, their value would have to hyperinflate creating economic carnage. Those of us that can see that want to warn the rest not to participate.
Bit coins are technologically clever but economically dumb.

Forget bitcoin ...

[Anonymous Coward]

320,000 Bloomberg terminals at $1500 USD each per month. That's 480 million USD - per *month*. Forget bitcoin, I want in on that action!

Read better

[Anonymous Coward]

OP's comment was specifically on "investing" in Bitcoins. He specifically pointed out that, like you said, it is useable for arbitrage. However, you cannot invest, merely speculate, in bitcoin. Gold, however, does have a real value, in that it does have a use beyond the arbitrage. It is used in several manufacturing processes. Yes, like all things it is subject to supply and demand, and is more fucked up from a economic theory perspective than most commodities, but you reinforced his point while failing to understand that there is a difference between investing and speculating.

Re:Read better

[alexander_686]

Sigh, no it doesn't. About 5% to 10% of mined gold goes into manufacturing. The rest goes towards bullion or jewelry (which for most people is the same as bullion – a store of wealth). We could shut down every last gold mine and have enough in our reserves to meet manufacturing demands for centuries. The price of gold is determined by the “investors” in gold – not the manufactures.

If you want to tie your currency because they have manufacturing value, chose copper, chromium, nickel, or tungsten

Everyones pissy

[SinisterEVIL]

If china is banning it and Big traders and investors are getting interested, it should tell you something. Just take a few minutes to learn how the protocol works before claiming it's worthless technology. It's worth the small effort, we're all tech savvy people here.

Drugs

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people are alcoholics, and some people are not alcoholics. The liquor store will sell to anyone who is willing to buy.

No big deal

[Animats]

You can get the price of every crap pink sheet stock on a Bloomberg terminal. It's not an endorsement of an investment.

Re:No big deal

[Richy_T]

It's not an endorsement but it is a recognition. Which is exactly what Bitcoin needs to increase adoption.

Re:No big deal

[UnknownSoldier]

Exactly.

Bloomberg "legitimizes" BitCoin is the take away here.

That is how all currencies start. An obscure commodity used by the minority. Momentum (popularity) builds until it is used by the Majority.

Tulips

[sjbe]

Everybody who's against Bitcoin is mad because they didn't mine it in the early days.

I didn't invest in beenie-babies or Miami real estate or any number of other tulip crazes and I don't regret missing them either. My life will happily go on without ever hearing another word about bitcoin. It serves no purpose that I care about. Spend your life worrying about opportunities missed and you'll live a very unhappy life.

Still not sane

[sjbe]

It's not an endorsement but it is a recognition. Which is exactly what Bitcoin needs to increase adoption.

They "recognize" penny stocks too but that doesn't make them a sane place to put your money.

Re:Still not sane

[Richy_T]

What's your point?

Re:Still not sane

[Kalriath]

That Bitcoin is not a sane place to put your money.

Re:Still not sane

[Richy_T]

True or not, no one was claiming the this announcement changed that. Still, no point wasting a chance to do some hating, I guess.

Re:Still not sane

[Kalriath]

Hah, absolutely. This is the internet after all.

Having worked on the terminal codebase...

[key45]

I can only imagine how many FORTRAN shared memory fields were abused to make this happen.

re: invest = putting money where value is

[King_TJ]

Sounds to me like you're just playing a game of word masturbation here.

Sure, you can claim that the word "invest" is only supposed to indicate spending money on a tangible good of intrinsic value. But every day, millions of people use the term differently.

One could just as easily say that putting money anyplace where there's a relatively good chance of that money increasing is "investing". My retirement fund, for example, is based on holding a bunch of mutual funds -- assets which are no more tangible than Bitcoin.

When it comes right down to it, almost nothing you can think of has a long-term guaranteed, stable value. Historically, precious metals have been considered among the most stable -- yet in a catastrophic "collapse of civilization as we know it" scenario, it quickly gets called into question as having ANY real worth anymore.

A basic necessity like food? Sure, as long as humans need to eat, it would be hard to envision it becoming worthless. But it's not a great investment idea either, in the sense that most food perishes after a certain length of time -- and it would be exceedingly unlikely that your food items would suddenly surge in value enough to justify your costs of storing it.

Just what we needed

[GameboyRMH]

A way for fatcat bankers to put all the world's money into deflationary virtual tokens.

Actually this could be fun to watch...lulz ho!

Re: invest = putting money where value is

[alexander_686]

There is a simple way to identify something as an investment or speculation. If something has a cash flow (or a yield) it is a investment. If it doesn’t it’s speculation.

If I purchase 1 BitCoin and 1 ounce of gold today, I will have 1 BitCoin and 1 ounce of gold 1 year from now. That’s speculation – you are hoping that the price will change.

If I buy a bond it has a yield. If I buy some stock I am going to get a slice of the company’s earnings. If I buy property I will get rent. If I buy some forest my trees will grow – this is my non-cash example. These are investments.

...ya good luck

[Anonymous Coward]

ya...good luck keeping greedy people from jumping in on huge speculative bubbles.

If they can look at the chart for a particular product that's gone hyperbolic, and they still think it's a good idea, nothing will stop them.

People want to believe, if you try to stop them they will say thank you while thinking "fool".

Yes. Mining is wasteful. And we know it.

[Anonymous Coward]

As for 1, this is a sore spot with many people in the bitcoin world as well, and there is a rising tide of support building for a 'post mining' securitization system that is much less wasteful of resources (on the order of 100 times less or more) and doesn't depend on solely dedicated and costly mining farms and the increasing consolidation of control that comes with them.

A couple of the current contenders for this are Proof of Stake system and Proof of Transaction (not competitors, they can be used together and work best that way), both of which tackle the mining (which is really securitization and maintenance of the protocol; the 'mined coins' are just a form of payment for performing this service) in a way that only uses resources that are needed for the transaction confirmation and network upkeep process, and does away with the arms race of pointless busywork that Bitcoin has fallen into.

Whether or not Bitcoin as a community can accommodate these ideas without imploding or fracturing is a very difficult question to answer.