Topic: Do you actually USE Bitcoin? Or does it use you? - page 2. (Read 3136 times)

Possibly, but I'm not educated in ecenomics enough to see selfish profiteering and saving as supporting society. Assassinations, porn and Silk Road are also legitimate uses for bitcoin but depending your politics and religion, it's also potentially bad for society.

I don't see how someone buying a million bitcoins low and selling a million bitcoins high helps anyone long term other then the greedy person doing the buying and selling. What if a super rich person went to a small village and started spending lots of money and then suddenly left without notice. Do you think that would do anything but screw up their existing economy?

In that case, let's keep dreaming: there was nothing more profitable in 2010-2011.

What I mean is that saving and investing are also (legitimate and rational) ways to use Bitcoin (or gold).

I spent 100 BTC over the past week on digital products and services. I paid my dues to a designer, a programmer, and sent BTC to some friends in exchange for them purchasing something with paypal that I can't access in Korea.

I'd imagine there are many people hoarding bitcoins because the are interested in saving money (a healthy practice) and more or less an equal amount of people hoarding them because they don't actually need them and to those people bitcoin is nothing more than an investment vehicle.

Still, there are realists like myself who recognize bitcoin as a young utility with potential, but potential that is only truly realized through regular use. I'm far from rich and I certainly do my share of producing (I am now either owner or equity holder in quite a few bitcoin related businesses and have no other "job"... Having the time of my life too!), but equally I spend as a consumer does and I spend in effort to produce more (paying salaries, buying equipment, paying fees, etc.)

Ironically, although I'm often both the most misunderstood person and the biggest troll in the bitcoin community, myself and the people like me are who actually make bitcoin work. People like me actually need bitcoin for what it's used for. Speculating is for investors. Exchanging is for consumers. When will bitcoiners start to realize that they are what backs bitcoin? When will you wake up and start being a producer too?

They may be few or far in between, but If anyone out there is truly torn about not being a producer and wants to step up but isn't quite sure what they can do or what skills they have or maybe even wanting to start a business but not sure about it, I welcome them to contact anyone in the DCAO for assistance, myself included.

Those already producing, keep up the good work. Those interested only in consuming, thanks for sharing your wealth. Those interested in speculating the exchange rate of bitcoins to USD please understand to the producers in bitcoin you are about as useful as Atlas. The sooner you cash out and go on to the next 'big scheme', the sooner the rest of us actually using bitcoin can have some stability. Bitcoin speculators are no different than the 1%.

P.S. feel free to edumacate me Erik ^_^

my wife whould say: bitcoin does use me

Absolutely, and if you sold in 2011, your dream came true. For some time, anyway.

What about hoarding Bitcoin in 2010? Was it a wet dream?

I'd say hoarding Bitcoin today is more of a wet dream than sanity. The dream may or may not come true, but wishful thinking is not the same as sanity. Don't get me wrong - I save some, too, but the point of this thread was to discuss how much we use Bitcoin technology, and in what way. Right here and right now.

I use gold as a means to save, and to protect my purchasing power. I am 100% Aristotelian.

In this environment, those who hoard (those who save, to be precise) are not Platonic, they are sane.

As a matter of fact, I use gold to make stuff. Nanotechnology research.

Do you actually USE gold? Or does it USE you?

I currently live in Canada. I only use Dwolla to withdraw USD from the exchange into a US bank account.

Do you actually USE fiat money? Or does it USE you?...... This is the real question.


 Gotta love controlled slavery

Just out of curiousity, are you U.S. living in Canada?  If not, how does this impact you?
 - http://help.dwolla.com/customer/portal/articles/87276-can-i-use-dwolla-outside-the-u-s-

Folks, call me stupid and/or hyperfocused - all this time I was playing with Bitcoin, mining, buying high and selling low, getting genuinely excited about all the possibilities that Bitcoin seems to offer, pondering over questions that it opens, and dreaming up some distant future full of flowers and p2p transactions free of debt...   But I have a life, too, and part of that life for the past few years has been this routine of monthly exchange of my hard-earned Canadian dollars into US dollars that I send to a US bank: I often spend money in the US, online and offline. I never connected the dots until now.

Bitcoinless options are (1) a cumbersome and preposterously expensive currency exchange with an international wire transfer, or (2) exchanging currency, buying a USD draft (or "certified cheque") at my Canadian bank, and mailing this piece of paper to my US bank (credit union, to be precise), then waiting for a week hoping it doesn't get lost before it's deposited.

I'm sure you all see where this is going: I just walk across the street to the bank and deposit CAD cash into CAVIRTEX account (no fee); this is instantaneously available for purchasing Bitcoins; I send those coins to MtGox, sell them, and withdraw via Dwolla into my US bank (25 cents worth of fees). Ends up being ways cheaper and faster than what I've been doing this whole time.

In this moment of epiphany, I realize that my relationship with Bitcoin has evolved over the past year from Platonic, to a wet dream, and finally tonight to a fulfilling, full-fledged affair full of steamy quickies, and - who knows? - maybe an occasional multisig transaction if we feel like.