Bitcoin thread anyone?

P,

This is how I feel about the others.....

If it can open peoples eyes to ask the questions, What is money? Where does it come from? How is it "made"? Can it be debased? Who controls all the money? What can I exchange with this "money"? Who accepts it?

Then Bitcoin, bbqcoin, litecoin, seashells, or furs.... Whatever the market decides...If I want to take litecoins in exchange for a car I'm selling, gold,silver, seashells, furs....That is all that matters. The market will have the final word.



I'd rather there be many digital currencies that can't be debased , than many paper currencies that can. It will take time but I feel this is on the cusp of a big change in "money" as we currently know it.


"Give me control of a nations money, and I care not who makes its laws"


Disclosure, I have no position in any coin except gold n silver as those coins have survived as a form of exchange for thousands of years and are the coins I currently have the most confidence in as a means to preserve purchasing power over time.

 

Ok, I see it, so you are not a bitcoin fan, just someone who doesn't like the US dollar that much. That is a big difference. Maybe google "most stable currency", if that is what you are looking for.

It is a mistake to think that just because there is a limited or finite supply of something, that thing is going to hold its value.

First, right now bitcoin is still in the inflatory phase (even though its price is going up) because it is being made in a rather fast fashion. About 1 million coins per year for the next 5 or so year are being created and that is still a big chunk of the existing coins.

Second, just because valuation of bitcoin has been going up for 3-4 years, that doesn't mean it will continue forever or even just for the next 5 years. Now you are looking for stability, right now it isn't stable at all, and there is no guarantee this ever will be.

Third, once a newer, better coin comes (and there is a good chance of that) bitcoin will lose value like an aging prostitute. Even just with other similar coins, the undebasable feature is out of the window, since if everything is being equal litecoin does the same as bitcoin and even better.

Bottomline is, digital currency isn't the solution against printing money.

 

I'm going to do some backpeddling here on my conviction level after doing a lot of research over the weekend. I still have conviction, but I have found a couple problems that I wasn't aware of.

First, There are a shitton of these ALT cryptos coming out like bbq coin feathercoin, poopcoin ect. Anyone can just copy an algo and make their own and say oh look at has these extra features that bitcoin doesn't have ect. I feel that the market is going to kill off a lot of these altcoin pump and dumps and stick with "majors" if you will like Bitcoin and Litecoin.

Second, There is a prob with bitcoin that I have discovered on my research. The "blockchain" that has to be downloaded to your computer for your "wallet" takes forever , like 2 days..... and in the future it has to get larger right now its like 10 gigs but before too long you'll have to download like 100gigs to get the chain on your comp. For mass implementation they will need to find a solution to this. The solution to this is to have your wallet online but that kind of defeats the whole purpose of bitcoin decentralazation in the first place right? So I'm thinking the btc community is working on things to get around this for future use.

I actually mined 3 different Alt currencies this weekend and it was a very enlightening and informational experience on the whole thing. The altcoins out there are friggin crazy lol It's seriously like the chineese pump and dump pinksheets right now, It was fun to mine and then dump the shitcoins on the open market (cryptcy) in exchange I got like 30 usd worth of bitcoin.

What people are doing right now is using their old hardware that mined bitcoins that can no longer keep up with that and they are using it to mine altcoins, then turning around and dumping the altcoins for bitcoin that same day....Some people will hold these altcoins in hopes of big future rises in value like a pinksheet or whatever.

So all in all this weekend was a good learning experience,still a believer in the innovation and there is a place for it. It still does serve many good purposes but there are still kinks to be worked out... like I have said before, as far as a USD hedge or Bank goes tits up hedge, I like having some gold/silver burried in a safe place and now I have .00X bitcoins lol

 

What I have found when it comes to the alt coins is the following:

-How strong is the developer team? You need a devoted team.
-How strong is the community around the coin?
-What are the distinct features of the coin regarding technology?
-How good is the coin name?

Three examples:

Diamond (DMD is the name for this alt-coin):
51% attack nearly killed the coin. Left for dead. Forum members there begged for someone to fix it so cryptsy would list again for trading. Someone jumped in, fixed it. Supposed to get re-listed soon. No solid support there.

Sexcoin: My opinion, is all hype. I got in at .002 usd.coin and sold three days later at .16 usd/coin with a high of roughly .20+ USD/coin. Now trades under 5 cents/coin usd. Flash in the pan.

GoldCoin: Has been a solid favorite of mine. Strong community where everyone chips in with effort, marketing and so on. Donates to people gldcoin as pmt. Solid dedicated developers and code to eliminate the network 51% issue. Solid name, may have a future we shall see.

All of this stuff reminds me of very young markets. The exchanges cannot keep up with the business. Issues left and right. The other day, trade confirms took many minutes to never. This reminds me of ECN's in the young days.

 

The current exchanges out there that I know of, Cryptsy, and btce have a lot of kinks to get worked out. Many are complaining their account goes negative, transactions take forever, Bids above offers, ect. They need to get some good exchange technology out there with like K algo or something and a stable exchange. I guess nasdaq isn't much better lol jk .

I'd love to trade these cryptocurrencies on a more stable platform when it becomes available. It sounds like currency futures in the early days where there is tons of room for growth.

The platform that wins the exchange battle and gets the most stable one out there is going to rake in a lot of money.

One more thing,

Coinbase is suppose to be the paypal for btc. One of the founders was also one of the creators of "litecoin" ....Charlie is his name. I wonder why he doesn't have litecoin incorporated with coinbase yet?

 

Good points, thx for info

 

...until blockchain.info gets hacked and everyone's BTC get stolen, like has happened on other online wallet sites already.

 

Downloading the whole blockchain isn't needed with the following wallets:
-Multibit,
-Electrum,
-and the smart-phone wallets, like "Schildbach".

BUT: be very careful with ANY wallet until Hardware-wallet-devices are released next year (like Trezor).

As soon as those devices are available it should be MANDITORY (regulated by government, if you ask me) that every crypto-user has such device. That will solve nearly all bad experiences with hackers and thefts.

 

Libertarians like me cringe at calls for new government regulation.
There is no governmental role in protecting people from their own stupidity.

Government regulation is anatema to the Bitcoin philosophy.