Topic: [FORBES] The Bitcoin Crash - New Article, Forbes Claim is Doom - page 2. (Read 4068 times)
Bitcoin's value is that it is a people's currency, independent of central bankers, decentralized and therefore very hard for the Authorities to attack. They like to carve up the globe into little farms and prevent Their property (people's money) from moving from one farm to another. Bitcoin can be very anonymous and ignores farm borders, which makes it a very good option for people who want to move their money off one farm and onto another where they might have a little more pasture.
The only thing that will kill BTC are the hoarders who sit on more than 500 BTC hoping to just cash out. Spend your BTC on businesses that will, in turn, encourage more to accept BTC. If you won't spend it, give it to me and I will.
the problem is the article is partially correct.
If we continue down this path of stealing, hacking and robbing each other regarding bitcoins, it WILL fail. I spent large amounts of money building flexcoin... I'm betting big that we'll be okay.... but in order for that to happen there cannot be another "150,000 coins stolen / robbed " every 10 minutes....
think about it.
1 - dude saw 25,000 coins vanish from his desktop
2 - Goxed
3 - polish exchange 17,000 coins
4 - mybitcoin 150,000 coins
---- this list goes on....
I understand hackers... but what's happening with most of those cases isn't hackers... it's criminals and thieves... that's not the same thing... not even close.
hacking always meant (at least when I grew up) to try to break something... just to see if you can.... and if it turns out to be a security flaw you told the developer before publishing it.
This? These are people that steal bitcoins and in essence destroying what they are stealing, hence they are idiots.
Picture this... a company builds a program that secures stock transactions on NASDAQ and is listed on the said exchange.... hackers target the company, and hack their software where they "steal a bunch of shares of it" ... then the criminals try to dump it as everyone else is because their "secure" software isn't so secure.
In a nutshell, each time they are stealing it it's destroying the very nature of what makes it appealing... hence destroying it's value.
It's my feeling that these people are not actually motivated by money... they have a goal.. and that includes destroying bitcoins.
If we continue down this path of stealing, hacking and robbing each other regarding bitcoins, it WILL fail. I spent large amounts of money building flexcoin... I'm betting big that we'll be okay.... but in order for that to happen there cannot be another "150,000 coins stolen / robbed " every 10 minutes....
think about it.
1 - dude saw 25,000 coins vanish from his desktop
2 - Goxed
3 - polish exchange 17,000 coins
4 - mybitcoin 150,000 coins
---- this list goes on....
I understand hackers... but what's happening with most of those cases isn't hackers... it's criminals and thieves... that's not the same thing... not even close.
hacking always meant (at least when I grew up) to try to break something... just to see if you can.... and if it turns out to be a security flaw you told the developer before publishing it.
This? These are people that steal bitcoins and in essence destroying what they are stealing, hence they are idiots.
Picture this... a company builds a program that secures stock transactions on NASDAQ and is listed on the said exchange.... hackers target the company, and hack their software where they "steal a bunch of shares of it" ... then the criminals try to dump it as everyone else is because their "secure" software isn't so secure.
In a nutshell, each time they are stealing it it's destroying the very nature of what makes it appealing... hence destroying it's value.
It's my feeling that these people are not actually motivated by money... they have a goal.. and that includes destroying bitcoins.
I feel your rage but disagree about the motivation for the theft. It's mostly about the $ they can make. Sure, they're dumping and causing the market to fall but it is a 'bird in the hand' issue. Their 'investment' is the time and expense of stealing the coins, not mining or selling or other legitimate earning. Plus, if Bitcoin (the market and the algorithm) can't withstand this sort of problem, then fail it should. After all, we're always going to have thieves and the system must be robust enough to withstand them.
I like Bitcoin but I haven't bought any. I'm not motivated to otherwise earn any either. I simply don't have a warm fuzzy about their security...neither their future utility.
Quote
The puzzling thing about Bitcoin, which I pointed out back in April, is that the currency doesn’t seem to have any fundamental value at all.
This statement is nonsense. A bitcoin itself might not have any intrinsic value, but the bitcoin platform has plenty of fundamental value. The author is dead wrong on this point. The issues will get resolved in time, effective defenses against theft will be crafted, and bitcoin will survive.
Though this thread is not the place it will be heard best, great point regarding the misuse of the word hacker, which I know I do just to get points across to people. But in that dumbing down the terms used for people, that is really taking away from the positive aspects to hacking, I need to be more aware of that personally.
the problem is the article is partially correct.
If we continue down this path of stealing, hacking and robbing each other regarding bitcoins, it WILL fail. I spent large amounts of money building flexcoin... I'm betting big that we'll be okay.... but in order for that to happen there cannot be another "150,000 coins stolen / robbed " every 10 minutes....
think about it.
1 - dude saw 25,000 coins vanish from his desktop
2 - Goxed
3 - polish exchange 17,000 coins
4 - mybitcoin 150,000 coins
---- this list goes on....
I understand hackers... but what's happening with most of those cases isn't hackers... it's criminals and thieves... that's not the same thing... not even close.
hacking always meant (at least when I grew up) to try to break something... just to see if you can.... and if it turns out to be a security flaw you told the developer before publishing it.
This? These are people that steal bitcoins and in essence destroying what they are stealing, hence they are idiots.
Picture this... a company builds a program that secures stock transactions on NASDAQ and is listed on the said exchange.... hackers target the company, and hack their software where they "steal a bunch of shares of it" ... then the criminals try to dump it as everyone else is because their "secure" software isn't so secure.
In a nutshell, each time they are stealing it it's destroying the very nature of what makes it appealing... hence destroying it's value.
It's my feeling that these people are not actually motivated by money... they have a goal.. and that includes destroying bitcoins.
If we continue down this path of stealing, hacking and robbing each other regarding bitcoins, it WILL fail. I spent large amounts of money building flexcoin... I'm betting big that we'll be okay.... but in order for that to happen there cannot be another "150,000 coins stolen / robbed " every 10 minutes....
think about it.
1 - dude saw 25,000 coins vanish from his desktop
2 - Goxed
3 - polish exchange 17,000 coins
4 - mybitcoin 150,000 coins
---- this list goes on....
I understand hackers... but what's happening with most of those cases isn't hackers... it's criminals and thieves... that's not the same thing... not even close.
hacking always meant (at least when I grew up) to try to break something... just to see if you can.... and if it turns out to be a security flaw you told the developer before publishing it.
This? These are people that steal bitcoins and in essence destroying what they are stealing, hence they are idiots.
Picture this... a company builds a program that secures stock transactions on NASDAQ and is listed on the said exchange.... hackers target the company, and hack their software where they "steal a bunch of shares of it" ... then the criminals try to dump it as everyone else is because their "secure" software isn't so secure.
In a nutshell, each time they are stealing it it's destroying the very nature of what makes it appealing... hence destroying it's value.
It's my feeling that these people are not actually motivated by money... they have a goal.. and that includes destroying bitcoins.
And as always, you can always remove 'Bitcoin' and replace it with 'USD' and all statements will be true.
You're trolling, right? Because the reason the same isn't true of the USD is fairly thoroughly explained in the bit of the article BitcoinPorn quoted. 
And as always, you can always remove 'Bitcoin' and replace it with 'USD' and all statements will be true.
Bitcoin, the world’s first peer-to-peer digital currency, has lost almost half of its value against the dollar since the start of August, falling from $13.50 to around $7:
http://blogs.forbes.com/timothylee/2011/08/07/the-bitcoin-crash/
Quote
It’s now looking increasingly likely that the record-high price of $32 on June 8 represented the peak of a speculative bubble that is now slowly deflating. The interesting question is: where will the price decline stop?
Most assets have a “fundamental” value: the value that reflects the practical use to which that asset can be put. You can always live in a house regardless of what happens to the real estate market, so we can be confident that house prices won’t fall to zero. Similarly, if the price of gold fell too much, people could always use it to make jewelry, so gold is a relatively safe investment.
The puzzling thing about Bitcoin, which I pointed out back in April, is that the currency doesn’t seem to have any fundamental value at all. True, you can currently purchase a limited selection of goods and services with Bitcoins. But the volume of Bitcoin-denominated commerce is small enough that Bitcoin-denominated prices seem to be driven by the current value of Bitcoin rather than the other way around.
This is different from traditional currencies. The fact that there are 300 million Americans who use dollars for their day-to-day transactions creates a floor for the value of dollars. Most of us don’t pay much attention to the exchange rate between dollars and other currencies, because we’re used to thinking of dollars as our fundamental unit of value. And even if we wanted to stop using dollars, it would be hard to do since most of the people around us won’t take anything else. So, barring a major screw-up by the Federal Reserve, we can count on the value of dollars not falling very much.
In contrast, there’s no significant community of people who conduct commerce exclusively (or even primarily) in Bitcions. And you can’t eat, live in, or make jewelry out of Bitcions. And this means there’s no logical stopping point to Bitcoin’s price decline. So far Bitcoin enthusiasts have been buying Bitcoins as the price falls, convinced that the price will go back up eventually. But as the hoped-for rally has failed to materialize, more have gotten discouraged or bored and cash out, pushing the price down further. This process has been going on for a couple of months, and now it appears to be accelerating. I suspect it’s terminal.
Most assets have a “fundamental” value: the value that reflects the practical use to which that asset can be put. You can always live in a house regardless of what happens to the real estate market, so we can be confident that house prices won’t fall to zero. Similarly, if the price of gold fell too much, people could always use it to make jewelry, so gold is a relatively safe investment.
The puzzling thing about Bitcoin, which I pointed out back in April, is that the currency doesn’t seem to have any fundamental value at all. True, you can currently purchase a limited selection of goods and services with Bitcoins. But the volume of Bitcoin-denominated commerce is small enough that Bitcoin-denominated prices seem to be driven by the current value of Bitcoin rather than the other way around.
This is different from traditional currencies. The fact that there are 300 million Americans who use dollars for their day-to-day transactions creates a floor for the value of dollars. Most of us don’t pay much attention to the exchange rate between dollars and other currencies, because we’re used to thinking of dollars as our fundamental unit of value. And even if we wanted to stop using dollars, it would be hard to do since most of the people around us won’t take anything else. So, barring a major screw-up by the Federal Reserve, we can count on the value of dollars not falling very much.
In contrast, there’s no significant community of people who conduct commerce exclusively (or even primarily) in Bitcions. And you can’t eat, live in, or make jewelry out of Bitcions. And this means there’s no logical stopping point to Bitcoin’s price decline. So far Bitcoin enthusiasts have been buying Bitcoins as the price falls, convinced that the price will go back up eventually. But as the hoped-for rally has failed to materialize, more have gotten discouraged or bored and cash out, pushing the price down further. This process has been going on for a couple of months, and now it appears to be accelerating. I suspect it’s terminal.
http://blogs.forbes.com/timothylee/2011/08/07/the-bitcoin-crash/
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