Bitcoin stories

College kid holds up sign with bitcoin logo and QR on it, gets 26K bucks donated to him:

http://i.imgur.com/q1aR9Ee.jpg?1

He said he will send everything above ~2 bitcoins to charity....

Edit: The plot thickens:

"Actually 2 addresses, sending him a total of 20 bitcoins between the two. Both of those original sending addresses appear to have had 10 bitcoins each in them plus some extra for fees. All of the original transactions are within just over a minute. If you follow the transactions back you can see he sent the money through a tonne of addresses. This address sent money to two other addresses that sent money to the two addresses that made the big donations to HiMom.

What I think happened here is, he sent himself the big donations to get into the news and hopefully create a bandwagon effect. Pretty clever, it looks like he got himself about 2.3 bitcoins so far."

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rtcql/over_26000_was_donated_to_the_kid_that_held_up/

 

Arbitrage:

"I was running arbitrage for the last week making 15% returns by buying large on bitstamp and selling to loads of small time buyers in the UK. It mostly bitcoin newbies, had to automate the process of releasing escrows which helped was doing 50 or so trades a day which would be time consuming unless I hadn't partial automated it

Now though the margins have dropped massively to 3-4% over bitstamp prices it was great while it lasted

Because of the difficulty of buying in the UK I was hoping this was gonna be something I could do as a business long term but alas I fear maybe not. If I can at least earn 5% maybe it would be worth doing long term but right now its just become a race to the bottom.

To be clear these were all online, not face to face. Helps when you have a bot scanning your online banking for new transactions

Well bank tranfers in the uk are irreversible so there are no real risks of charge backs. Local bitcoins keep the bitcoin in escrow and have been pretty good when people have tried to pull on over on me. Also I would never trade more than 1 bitcoin at a time just in case.

You could use venmo with localbitcoins if its got a low risk of charge backs. People here also use pingit and okpay sometimes but uk bank transfers are fast and free which is quite nice"

 

Just recently bc is about = to 1 oz of gold. Is this a coincidence ?
Or is bc pretending it is backed by a vault of gold somewhere ?

That's what worries me is, it is all up in the air somehow. Too good to last ?

As soon as the herd have bought into the idea then shamus and his legal buddy shyster disappear into the financial woodwork, leaving Joe Slow to hold the losses.

 

Bitcoin isn't backed by anything but its usefulness.

Some respectable analysts try to value it (these links) but if you asked me: none of them can even slightly image how useful it will be in future (it's like the Internet back in 1990...)
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/885843-banks-research-report-on-bitcoin.html
http://www.streetinsider.com/Analys...+10-100x+Current+Price+-+Analyst/8936836.html

 

..and the ride continues. From 1100 to 600 in 14 hours, and back to 850.

Gotta love it....

Argument #1: Well, retailers are afraid to use it, if it is this volatile.

Argument #2: They can cash out immediately, so there is no risk for them.

Argument#3: Then what is the point of using bitcoin?

 

The retailer doesn't have to pay (at least) 3% to the CC-company/Bank, as Bitcoin is free. And yes: BitPay will give them zero risk by immediately BTC->cash exchange (BitPay asks a small fee). For a small retailer, this is a huge benefit.
Further the retailer gets a lot free publicity when he offers Bitcoin-payments (newspapers, social-media and sometimes even television will enter his shop, and Google will find him much easier).

For the client (owner of the BTC), the volatility is more of a concern.

 

Good point but:

1. They can just refuse CCs, and accept debit cards, Paypal, cash (you know) whatever.

2. The cost is transferred to the costumer, because there is cost associated with getting BTC in the first place. (bank money transfer etc.)

3. They can just charge 3% more for CC and transfer that cost to the costumer.

Bottomline is, somebody, somewhere always pays...

 

Bitcoin is progrmable money. Just think of the options that in of itself has

 

in all cases: Bitcoin-fees are zero or much less.


2. The cost is transferred to the costumer, because there is cost associated with getting BTC in the first place. (bank money transfer etc.)


No the retailer has none, and doesn't get BTC at all !!!
The payment-processor is in between the customer (who pays BTC) and the retailer (who get only USD).
Please go to BitPay's website....and do some homework


3. They can just charge 3% more for CC and transfer that cost to the costumer.
Bottomline is, somebody, somewhere always pays... [/QUOTE]

On the contrary. The retailer gives (part of) the saved costs to the Customer. He make promotions in the way of "pay with Bitcoin, and you get 2% reduction".

 

Greenspan is too old to understand new technology:

"Bitcoin’s rally was also blunted after Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, said Bitcoin prices are unsustainably high, calling the gain in prices a “bubble.”

“It has to have intrinsic value,” Greenspan said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Washington this week. “You have to really stretch your imagination to infer what the intrinsic value of Bitcoin is. I haven’t been able to do it. Maybe somebody else can.”