The Case that Bitcoin Is a Bubble (economist.com)

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the Economist: It seems that every day, Bitcoin seems to hit a new high. But the reported price can move up and down by $1,000 or so within a few hours. This might have made it a great investment for those who got in at the right price and are nimble enough to get out in time. But it doesn't make it a useful means of exchange (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source). When the price is rising fast, those who use bitcoin will be reluctant to part with it; when the price falls, those who sell goods will be reluctant to accept it.

Comments

Re:No future as it stands now

[Baron_Yam]

>Bitcoin, with the limitation is has on the final number which can be issued

Also the incredible resource wastage, no way to adjust it to affect the economy, lack of mechanisms for consumer protection, impossibility to use securely in any practical way, the transaction rate limit, the transaction time problem, the transaction cost issue, the storage needs, and bandwidth requirements.

But if you can get past all that, it's ALMOST as good as a debit card.

Re:Bitcoin are not tulips

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot that you can't tiptoe through bitcoins

Re:Hat Trick

[squiggleslash]

That's hard because of the way Bitcoin stories work.

As Slashdot mines the news for more Bitcoin stories, they become more and more computationally expensive to find. While there may seem a lot right now, especially as more and more submitters join the craze, mining Twitter feeds, various libertarian blogs, and Reddit for undiscovered Bitcoin stories, there will eventually be an equilibrium where they just stop being profitable to find. At that point the number of stories posted to Slashdot will decrease.

Advocates of Slashdot covering Bitcoin claim that when this happens, the stories published will be more and more valuable, but many feel that the very act of reaching this equilibrium will mean that there just aren't any interesting posts left, resulting in a complete collapse of interest in this shitty "currency that's not a currency".