Bitcoin is soaring

I’ve heard is pretty foolish to buy now and mining is nearly impossible, but look at the best next thing: litecoin, feathercoin, etc. there are more chances of a new cryptocurrency blooming or disappearing all of them are pretty volatile.

I’m betting the bank on Dogecoin!

no one talked about this?

money.cnn.com/2014/01/27/technol … in-arrest/

It’s only foolish if you consider them (all cryptocurrencies) some sort of investment. It’s nothing more than a casino at this point. Some people like taking their money to the casino so it’s their choice.

[quote=“Abacus”]It’s only foolish if you consider them (all national and cryptocurrencies) some sort of investment. It’s nothing more than a casino at this point. Some people like taking their money to the casino so it’s their choice.[/quote]I fixed that for you. :wink:

It’s only foolish if you consider them (all cryptocurrencies) some sort of investment. It’s nothing more than a casino at this point. Some people like taking their money to the casino so it’s their choice.[/quote]

Yeah, but would you rather buy 1 bitcoin for 800 USD (Last year they peaked up to 1200 USD) or 23 USD for 1 Litecoin (last year started around 4 bucks) or some sparechange and buy feathercoin at 30 cents a piece, I’ll rather buy a hundred of the last one and kiss the money good bye, than bitcoin, besides they are easier to mine than bitcoin, and they also have a a flea market place kinda like eBay where you can sell the crap you don’t need and get some in you wallet for the future, but who knows. And people with bitcoins don’t want to spend it thinking it will keep getting more.

For those who are interested, Planet Money recently had an episode about the future of Bitcoin. A Bitcoin booster, and a naysayer, have a very low-stakes bet on where it’ll be in five years.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/02/05/272077743/a-venture-capitalist-is-betting-a-pair-of-socks-and-50-million-on-bitcoins-futur

It’s only foolish if you consider them (all cryptocurrencies) some sort of investment. It’s nothing more than a casino at this point. Some people like taking their money to the casino so it’s their choice.[/quote]

Yeah, but would you rather buy 1 bitcoin for 800 USD (Last year they peaked up to 1200 USD) or 23 USD for 1 Litecoin (last year started around 4 bucks) or some sparechange and buy feathercoin at 30 cents a piece, I’ll rather buy a hundred of the last one and kiss the money good bye, than bitcoin, besides they are easier to mine than bitcoin, and they also have a a flea market place kinda like eBay where you can sell the crap you don’t need and get some in you wallet for the future, but who knows. And people with bitcoins don’t want to spend it thinking it will keep getting more.[/quote]

This is a poor argument for determining valuation. Using your argument you should buy Blackberry instead of Apple.

Apple costs $520/share
Blackberry costs $10/share

Yeah, no kidding. I see people making this argument and it’s clear they simply haven’t thought it through.

[quote=“Deuce Dropper”]no one talked about this?

money.CNN.com/2014/01/27/technol … in-arrest/[/quote]

No more than this:
rollingstone.com/politics/ne … s-20110511

It’s only foolish if you consider them (all cryptocurrencies) some sort of investment. It’s nothing more than a casino at this point. Some people like taking their money to the casino so it’s their choice.[/quote]

Yeah, but would you rather buy 1 bitcoin for 800 USD (Last year they peaked up to 1200 USD) or 23 USD for 1 Litecoin (last year started around 4 bucks) or some sparechange and buy feathercoin at 30 cents a piece, I’ll rather buy a hundred of the last one and kiss the money good bye, than bitcoin, besides they are easier to mine than bitcoin, and they also have a a flea market place kinda like eBay where you can sell the crap you don’t need and get some in you wallet for the future, but who knows. And people with bitcoins don’t want to spend it thinking it will keep getting more.[/quote]

This is a poor argument for determining valuation. Using your argument you should buy Blackberry instead of Apple.

Apple costs $520/share
Blackberry costs $10/share[/quote]

Not trying to win any arguments, just my 2 cents. I mean theres the story of this guy that got 40 dlls of bitcoin at the beginning and forgot about it, and now… I dunno, have a lot more money, besides my take is mostly on MINING the currencies, not buying. People with huge mining rigs can’t get their electricity money back on bitcoin nowadays while on feathercoin they are making around 1,300 pieces a day (like 490 dlls) and you can also cash feathercoin the same day on human money or perhaps exchange it for another currency, I dunno, my crappy computer barely reads email.

In my case, the way I pay for my stuff is pretty similar, I make “stuff” for publishers, I get paid lets say between 3 and 7 USD a piece, depending on the licensed property, which sucks big time, but after they make publicity and all their magic I get back a 20% of my own approved product to sell and that dictates how much return I actually get.
I get every month different agreements, offering different licencee properties to work on but here’s where I need to manage my time and see which ones have a better return for me. For example this company offers me to work on AMC’s Walking Dead, selling every return on around 150 USD+ or Nobody’s Zombie Pool Party and the returns only sell between 5 and 20 USD, I sign to work on 100 pieces for Walking Dead and 10 for Zombies PP to keep the contact.

Now if I sell my own product direct to the costumer I only get between 10 an 20 USD sometimes 40 a piece, and # of pieces sold are even lower, perhaps not too related, but I’m more in the side of create/sell than buy/sell.

Does anybody now what I’m talking about? No? Is ok.

Not looking too healthy these days, getting interesting. Same argument still applies. It’s going to be awful hard for anyone to justify putting a significant amount of money into something that could easily be worthless overnight. Speculative plays rarely work out. I doubt this one will be any different…

Today I read some news somehow related to this… someone exploited a vulnerability in silkroad and stole a LOT of $$$ in bitcoins

Silk Road 2, actually. And it was likely a con. It’s an illegal market, should anyone be surprised that the operators would run off with everyone’s money at an opportune moment? Mt. Gox inadvertently provided them with a bit of cover when they blamed their incompetent management on transaction malleability… but when you look into the claims made by SR2 administration they simply don’t hold up to scrutiny.

Incidentally, for all the negativity about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general, it is worth putting things into perspective… what was the market cap a year ago? How about a year before that? I can’t pretend to be an expert on the matter, nor am I a true believer, but to me it feels like bitcoin is something fundamentally new… and genuinely new things are difficult to wrap your head around at first. You reach for the most appropriate yardstick you can find based on what this new thing looks like… hence all the comparisons with currency, stock, and more traditional financial instruments.

Now, the visionaries may be wrong… Galileo wasn’t just persecuted, he was also right… but in this case you don’t really need to risk a lot to get some skin in the game. I’ve been advising family back home to skip five lattes at Starbucks and sink $20 into this crazy scheme. Either they’ll lose out on $20 or it’ll be worth many times that some day in the near-future…

Not that we need more reasons why Bitcoin is very far away from having attributes of a real currency, but here’s another. The exchange price on Mt. Gox is 250$, but on other exchanges it’s still 500-600$. Have you ever seen US dollars, or any other real currency for that matter going for half price in a struggling bank? Was Citibank trading US dollars at half price in 2008 when they were going through their troubles? :roflmao:

Well I’m sure you are aware that the USD trades at a black market rate and a legal rate in many countries which have foreign currency restrictions. So it’s not that surprising to see these kinds of gaps.

I understand how a black market rate can arise, but this is surprising to me. I presume the Bitcoins are tied to the exchange in some way? What’s stopping me from buying them on Mt Gox and selling them elsewhere?

You can’t. They halted bitcoin withdrawals to deal with a potential exploit in their custom codebase. That’s why the price plummeted. People are betting that Mt. Gox is done for and they’re selling out for cheap. Other’s are placing the opposite bet, laying down cash for cheap coins that they feel they will eventually be able to take out of the exchange.

Focusing on the trials and tribulations of Mt. Gox will give you plenty of ammo for anti-bitcoin rhetoric but you’ll be missing the forest for the trees should you do so. Yeah, bitcoin is new, and Gox, the first big exchange, is run by a bunch of incompetents who haven’t been able to scale it successfully. Gox will die and the price will crash… but the price will bounce back and life will go on. Rome wasn’t built in a day but the ecosystem is becoming increasingly resilient as it grows.
techcrunch.com/2014/02/16/as-mt- … ly-stable/

[quote=“Xeno”]

You can’t. They halted bitcoin withdrawals to deal with a potential exploit in their custom codebase. That’s why the price plummeted. People are betting that Mt. Gox is done for and they’re selling out for cheap. Other’s are placing the opposite bet, laying down cash for cheap coins that they feel they will eventually be able to take out of the exchange.[/quote]

Ahh, I see.

Browse r/BitcoinMarkets if you’d like to put your finger on the pulse; it’s much more informative and grounded than the hysterical r/bitcoin, but still… buyer beware:
reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/