Topic: [2017-06-09] You can't hold a bitcoin, but the web currency's value has... (Read 5432 times)

again,I CAN hold a bitcoin,if you took the  effort to learn more about bitcoin
you would have known that bitcoins do exist in physical form (casascius the one that springs to mind,also there are plenty of coins with wallets embedded) so you can hold them,massage them,dive into them Scrooge style etc:
http://www.coindesk.com/10-physical-bitcoins-good-bad-ugly/

the whole article is based on the wrong premise and is a whole load of nothing,including the good old pizza for 10k coins story and a Q and A
kindergarten style,probably aimed at people who are not familiar with bitcoin at all

If you took the effort to properly read the article, you would know that they are referring to the fact that Bitcoin doesn't exist in physical form, and thus there is nothing that you physically can hold.

That aside -- people shouldn't care about the lacking physical aspect of Bitcoin, since modern economies are more and more heading towards a cashless economy. I for example barely use physical money anymore. I either use my bank card to complete purchases, or my smartphone. I only use cash money in case I go to the local bazaar, where in some cases it's only possible to pay in cash. The 'you can't hold Bitcoin in your hand' argument is old and has never made any sense....

Bitcoin has become a way for many to make money. Bitcoin is more invested than is used as money. I think that now even more people will just keep bitcoin for the future

erm... how is that I can't hold a bitcoin?
I hold,for example ,seriously authors,express yourselves properly
there is no doubt speculators and traders love the volatility of an asset,but if it was gold or oil or any other asset
with 200-300$ swings,they would love it instead,nothing new
doesn't mean they understand or like bitcoin or want it to succeed,they see it as an instrument to get more money,thats all

You can't hold a bitcoin, but the web currency's value has skyrocketed. Why?



Even so, there is excitement - and speculation. And a wild rollercoaster ride.

The price of bitcoin has more than tripled in the past six months. At one point in May, the value of a single bitcoin spiked above $3,000, only to yo-yo back down to around $2,245, before nearly hitting $3,000 again on Tuesday. Daily price fluctuations have been as high as $200 or $300.

Once only a curiosity with strong appeal to libertarians and technologists, bitcoin's supporters now include hedge fund managers, titans of industry and a former Treasury secretary. Some say the currency - and its unique underlying technology - have crossed a threshold of respectability, even as new problems loom.

"I love this stuff," the chief executive of Fidelity Investments, Abigail P. Johnson, said in New York City May 23 at a conference on digital currencies and the decentralized, tamper-resistant so-called blockchain technology that supports them. She noted that the cafeteria at Boston-based Fidelity now accepts payment in bitcoin. Employees can approach a payment terminal and scan a machine-readable code on their smartphones.

She suggested that bitcoin's underlying technology may be part of a revolution.

"What if this technology could do for the transfer of value what the internet did for the transfer of information?" Johnson asked.

Some mystery surrounds the emergence of bitcoin in January 2009. It was the brainchild of Satoshi Nakamoto, who invented the electronic cash system and the seamless underlying database that makes each linked computer a continuously synchronizing repository of all current and past transactions. Nakamoto is likely a pseudonym. No one knows if Nakamoto is a he or she, or a group of people. After introducing bitcoin, Nakamoto vanished.

What remains is a universal currency, independent of government or bank. Transactions are verified and recorded through a database shared on at least 10,000 computers spread around the world. No one owns the bitcoin system but anyone can participate. Experts say its genius is its simplicity. No middlemen extract fees.

The first known transaction occurred on May 22, 2010. A programmer on a Bitcoin Talk forum paid another user 10,000 bitcoin to buy two Papa John's pizzas. Bitcoins were worth pennies then. If he still had those 10,000 bitcoin, the programmer, Laszlo Hanyecz, would have more than $22.4 million today.


Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-06-bitcoin-web-currency-skyrocketed.html#jCp