"Attackers wait until the price of bitcoins reaches a certain value, sell, destabilize the exchange, wait for everybody to panic-sell their bitcoins, wait for the price to drop to a certain amount, then stop the attack and start buying as much as they can. Repeat this two or three times like we saw over the past few days and they profit," Mt.Gox said.
atticus i cant tell if you are being sarcastic or serious, did you really put some money into bitcoin? at what $ level if dont mind.
There is no barrier to entry beyond name-recognition and the volatility in bitcoins will be a huge impediment going forward. Their anti-laundering efforts are IP-based (if you proxy you get flagged), so until that is addressed the entire mkt (beyond BTC specifically) is a novelty. You still have to xfer to buy the BTC at some level. Much in the same way as online gambling was hobbled by US regs.
Again, you're totally wrong. All physical tangibles (like gold, pm's, diamonds etc) are subject to: 1) Freight inspections/xrays/seizures 2) Customs inspections/xrays/seizures 3) Military inspections/seizures All digital fiat are subject to: 1) Banker regulations and transfer controls 2) Government capital/anti money laundering/anti-drug/anti-terrorism controls. Try smuggling a good delivery bar or 100,000 in cash through a fortified border and see how far you get. Diamonds? Maybe? Maybe you get caught. And you lose you're entire savings. And go to prison. Now think of the time it takes for you, to fly all the way around the world, with a diamond up your butt, to make payment to some guy, where your chances of getting caught are 50-50. Not exactly convenient, safe, or time-sensitive, is it? Anyway, horse to water. These are all relative distinctions. Try to grasp that. Relatively speaking, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies kick fiats ass, in many areas, valued by the marketplace. But you refuse to accept that. Fair enough. Were you aware that millions of dollars are being transacted, everyday, in real life (not theory), via Bitcoin? This is really working...
I absolutely did. Have you seen the chart? I bot the moment the funds were received by Mt Gox. $8k, which even at that level was uncomfortable, which is also an impediment.
Well, not entirely. But yes, most will go this route. I actually earned my first few coins from someone else for doing yard work, then slowly found out more about it. But you can buy as much BTC from private sellers as you want. You can buy and sell locally with other people. Just go meet up at a starbucks or something and do it there. Localbitcoins.com would be a good place to start. I also think, though, that this AML/KYC stuff is good for bitcoin. Makes it more legitimate for the bigger players. I don't have enough money to care one way or the other, but I do believe you CAN be much more anonymous with BTC than anything else. Whether you want to is up to you. I think the volatility will die down as the market cap continues to grow. Merchants can instantly buy/sell coins with Bitpay for example so they don't have to worry about instant volatility.
There's some definite advantages to market cap = stability. Litecoin market cap is huge. Copy-cats will proliferate, but this is what "competing currencies" are all about. Maybe Bitcoin gets smashed into dust, by a far superior iteration of the same concept? Nobody knows. But much the same could be said of internet search engines and websites in the early days, that simply got popular first, then grew an empire. A cool thing about the nature of cryptocurrencies is the inherent cost in producing it - giving miners an incentive to hold, and restrict supply. It's minimum value being the cost to mine it etc.
Look at BTC from the perspective of the size trader looking to move illicit goods. It simply doesn't work at it's capacity constrained and you must initiate with FX in some capacity. I mention the illicit trans. as there is no reason for legit business to deal with something so constrained. The mkt potential is limited until the thing trades a serious notional figure (like $1k per unit) and it attracts interest along the way. The barrier to entry is insignificant which puts a cap on price. Imagine the vcap interest in a new BTC-type startup if the notional hits a billion. Yeah, they'll be entrenched, but if a corporate name comes in the BTC will lose 60% overnight. So no reason to transact until it reaches some capacity and that would breed massive competition.