Topic: BitCoin Death Knell? (Read 4388 times)

Are you seriously claiming that bitcoin WAS mainstream and now is less used?

I think you are confused from the language.

The idea that Bitcoin used to be mainstream is silly because it is more mainstream now than it has ever been, unless your definition of mainstream is something other than the number of users.

As for floating the decimal point to keep the exchange in a fixed range... people buy gold at thousands of dollars an ounce, I don't see why they wouldn't eventually do so for Bitcoin.

This sounds like a good idea to me. It's much easier to convince someone that this weird computer money is worth "$0.50 each" than "$5.00 each", regardless of how big an "each" actually is compared to the supply.

Bitcoin's high price is probably slowing adoption.

why its "just" silly ?
does it less "silly" than other nowadays money ?

1)

The Firm: As per USD is: Mutum Sigillum LLC  http://www.mutumsigillum.com/

Registered in DE with the Secretary of State. And its Registered Agent is: CORPOMAX INC http://www.corpomax.com/edelaware.html

Used to preserve anonymity. However, since Dwolla is being used openly(not in Delaware), anonymity has been lost. One dispute will expose the registered Bank Account and Owner. Corpomax is european(French) in nature not Asian. The law firm focuses on Trade Mark and Patent Law.

The first lawsuit, will unravel much of the anonymity. And there will be lawsuits, especially with the money involved. One disgruntled trader that looses his money will start it. Forensic Accounting Review. MTGOX is also a .com which falls under ICE's Our Sites Operation.

2&3)

MTGOX will not have to give this information, it is a statistical calculation that will fall within a predictable percentage of error. The numbers can't be hidden. Site statistics, volume, etc..., etc...

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/mtgox.com#


4)

They should, at least from the main exchange. They should and can exist, outside of the main exchange. Like certain ECN transactions do between big businesses.

As far as how I figured out the DarkBids, well I will keep that secrete for now.

I want MTGOX to succede, but I want him to succeed in the Open, not the shadows.

PS. HINT: Site data can predict the future. The PRICE of BTC. hehe. Especially if site data is live, and covers specific addresses.

So lets see how a professional might try and analyze the market:

Primary Age group: 25-34  Secondary: 18-24  What are habits and spending capacities of these age groups with the following data:

Primary Education: Graduate School.. Hmm... Not looking good for the masses with a 1:4 ratio on graduate school.

Primary Gender: Male .... eliminates >50% of possible users.

Has Children: No... another curious fact. How can we use it.

Browsing Location: Home...  Time and Frequency of trades can be predicted with time zoned data per unique page views by location.

And this is just public information. Specialty services will provide yet another advantage.

Now, we can add in the Mining DATA, Client DATA, Percentage of BTC in Circulation, etc...

Now the real question: Why would someone bother researching all this information? Because the PRICE is HIGH and there is a lot of money to be made. And that money will be taken from newbies that want to try out the system and be discouraged because they will loose all their money

Nanotube,

  I don't see what is going to happen in the future, I look to what has happened in the past. Currently, BTC is priced to high, IMO. We currently can not look at it as a currency but a commodity. A commodity with out price regulation of derivatives. It is the Corn of the 70's, the Gold of the 49's, etc..., etc...  

 I see the argument of the Price is the Price, and agree, if one is willing to pay $7 it is worth $7. But look on volume as to the price, so many take the trade of 1 BTC at $7 as meaning all 6 Million BTC are worth $7. Now, you know this is a fallacy. Lets just try to lesson the hurt, when it comes.

the question of whether bitcoin is 'overvalued' is only going to be empirically determined by what happens in the future. seeing as how my powers of future prediction are pretty shabby, i'll refrain from fretting about this. i think your powers are probably no better so i can suggest the same approach to you.


indeed these are good points - and i think all these things will happen with the site redesign in the near future.

Bitcoin is divisible to a point where it can be afforded by anyone. Berkshire Hathaway is not. I believe BRK.B can't be purchased at units less than 1 share, currently, $78

You can purchase .01 or maybe even .001 BTC now for possibly less than one US cent.

Oh, so you do think BTC is like a Stock or more appropriately a Commodity. But using your analysis of Berkshire Hathaway, how many people own shares? Is it the Masses or is it a sub-group? Can you buy 1 share of Berkshire Hathaway? So, if you can't buy 1 share of Berkshire, what other stock will you buy? However, BTC isn't a stock. Its intent is to be used as a currency. So what you end up with is a price that no one can afford, so no one will use.

Nanotube,

  You make a good point about providing solutions. I can't control the masses (thats a good thing), but there were people during the dust bowl telling 'farmers' to take it easy and be respective of the land. But they ignored them, and continued to 'farm' away with out consideration. Then finally the 'Dust Bowl' stopped them.

  What I am saying is that the problem will resolve itself, but it needn't be so harmful to the community with a little forethought.

This might be a surprise, but many do not follow MagicalTux, the IRC, or even this Forum. They goto his website, and the Lack of information puts a pause in their intent to trade or get involved. It feels, not quite right. With the lack of contact information, phone numbers, business information, dispute resolution, etc... They will not get involved with the community.

Now, if the intent is to keep it in a sub-group of a small amount of technical and semi-criminal types, then keep it as is. But if the intent is to have BTC used by your neighbors at the grocery store, gas station, etc... It needs to change. So, my solution, I can not enact because it requires an attitude change on many.

Here are some of the rulings on organizations for which fincen.gov in the US had an administrative ruling, as not being a money services business, amongst others:

http://www.fincen.gov/financial_institutions/msb/rulings.html

Yes, Berkshire Hawthaway has been punished in the marketplace for having such a high price. /double facepalm

Plus it is so much easier to buy fractional BTC than fractional BRK/A or BRK/B.

I'm starting to really enjoy these "Bitcoin can't succeed because (choose one: mining too hard/early adopters getting rich while I'm new to it and poor therefore it sucks/govt will shut it down/deflation can't work/the cryto sucks/if someone spends X million$ they can take over and shut it down/lost coins are gone forever/it's not backed by anything/it's anonymous and won't be accepted/it's NOT anonymous all transactions are public/it needs inflation/it needs *insert random monetary policy* theory/terrorists and child pornographers and drug dealers use it/it's just like egold, liberty dollar, flooz, or beenz/mining is cracking passwords and everyone will be arrested)" .. ad infinitum.

The more I read them the better I feel about the long-term prospects! 

Shouldn't Bitcoin's value be adjusted (split/merge factor 10 by moving decimal place) to always reflect a value between 0.5 and 5.0 to one of the dominant fiat currencies to accommodate the human psychological factor?

The total number of BTC's remain 21 million.  The divisability of BTCd as opposed to BTC just goes to 7 decimal places instead of 8 if 5 USD/BTCd becomes 0.5 USD/BTCd.  (BTCd - BTC displayed, In effect if you had 1BTCd on display, you have 0.1 BTC of the total 21 million BTC's ever to be issued).

The opposite happens when 0.4 USD/BTCd is split to 4 USD/BTCd, the divisability for BTCd goes from maybe 7 decimal places at that stage back to 8.  BTC's divisability can not be changed as it is fixed at 8.  Shouldn't BTCd divisability be dynamic for user friendliness - just like the price of shares split/merge, except maybe those of Berkshire Hattaway?

Yep, it's only up (or down to near nothing) from here.

Come on. Bitcoin used to be mainstream? This is just silly.

magicaltux's name and location are known. firm information i recall seeing as well. but you can email him for this information if you want.

how many accounts - i think he has stated some days ago a rough approximation of number of accounts.

money flows - that's proprietary information and you probably won't get it.

dark pools: they are going away with the upgrade in june.

anything else?


yes so... what exactly were you proposing to do, by way of solving the 'bitcoin price' problem that you perceive? or were you just talking without having any solutions in mind?

if the latter is the case, then i'd like to join you and also complain about the us national debt, corrupt politicians, street crime, and rainy weather.

That's exactly what I'm saying. If smaller units are to be used, the value of a bitcoin needs to increase significantly so that units like 0.01 bitcoins, or a bitcent, have substantial value.

Not quite, there will be about 21 Million but that is 1.00 BTC's. The base unit of BTC is 0.00000001. So comparatively, there are 21 Quadrillion base units.  Like a $1 is just a 100 pennies, or $10 a 1000 pennies, $100 is 10,000 pennies.

You must look at it from its base unit.

If there was for lack of better words a "stock split" or move the decimal place one place to the right to reduce the price to new comers, I would feel better. But that would reward early adopters by increasing their holding by a factor of 10. However, with the exchange, it might not be that big of an increase.

I think prices need to go up significantly or else the total amount of bitcoin in circulation won't have a high enough value for them to be used in a significant amount of trade.

If there is only $43 million worth of bitcoin, then millions of people cannot possibly have enough to use in trade. If the value increases to $2 or $3 billion, then what we consider a low value amount of bitcoin now, e.g. 0.01 BTC, will be enough for a substantial trade, and there are enough bitcoins for a large number of people to have at least that much.

Your Cartel scenario might not be far off. Right now there is basically ONE. But lets look a little south and see what happens when multiple Cartel's deal in the same product, they will tear each other apart at the cost of the community. This is happening with miners, it will start to happen with Exchange's as soon as there isn't a basic monopoly. However, collusion usually comes into play at first but then degrades into straight up competition as users move away.

To be frank, currently the competition is for the USD BTC. Without the USD volume, BTC is not worth much. Much like drugs, hmm...