Topic: Here is the fundamental value of Bitcoins. (Read 2162 times)

I think the extreme price volatility is going to prevent hoarding, people who loaded up on bitcoins at $5 or less are going to be perfectly willing to unload them at current prices and take their profits.  If the bitcoin price stabilizes vrs the dollar, we might have Gresham's law kick in tho, which could encourage hoarding.

Gresham's Law, "Bad money drives out good", just means that if you have two currencies in your pocket, one you trust, and one you trust less, when you buy something, you'll prefer to dump off your less trusted money and keep your bitcoins, or silver, or whatever it is that you have the most faith in for future use.

He may not have a counterargument but there is nothing wrong with the opposite view.

This place is basically a community of bitcoin enthusiasts, most of whom cannot see any flaws in it or are in self-denial.

I wonder how many people are willing to pour thousands of dollars of their own money into bitcoins and I don't include mining because that is a profitable operation anyway.

But put your own hard earned dollars into BTC? I don't know anyone pouring thousands into them. Nobody really has any great confidence in this currency yet. Especially when you can get your wallet stolen so easily. All that money in one tiny little file on your hard drive - what a joke!

By the way, you have to love the OPs username, "wallet_dat"


As for the person who quoted a bitcoin Wiki as a source as if it were gospel, come on!


I agree with the other guy: this currency needs to establish credibility first. While people are hoarding and not willing to spend their currency, trade will never evolve. And without trade, this currency is nothing.

Also, the classic argument that early adopters profiting is not ponzi because this also happens with corporations is totally flawed. Corporations do not create money out of thin air. Capital that they raise comes from the existing economy.

The big problem with BTC is that it is not exclusive. You can create infinite number of virtual currencies that are preprogrammed like it is. What happens then?

At least when a currency issues new currency, it is backed by something. Used to be backed by gold but now by government guarantees. What is BTC backed by? Absolutely nothing. Imagine 50 different BTC deriviatives similarly all based on nothing. They won't even have any trust value.

I personally think that BTC will slowly become worthless, panic mode will set in and those who have hoarded will try to get off the sinking ship a.s.a.p. Then it will become truly worthless.

Currencies have to be backed on something, even if it is shaky. And BTC cannot be considered a commodity like precious metals either because there are finite varieties of precious metals. BTC has neither and that will be its downfall.

If BTC were a barter currency (promise to pay the bearer etc.) then it would work. The transaction proof is transparent and this is great. But its not a barter currency due to the way that it is slowly created over time, the mining etc.

It is destined to become worthless, the OP is right.

I like the way they taste.

Anduril - Thank you for your skepticism. We all need to remember that forums are supposed to facilitate discussion. As a minority community attempting to demonstrate the benefits associated with BTC adoption we should always be honing our arguments and solidifying our opinions.

That said, I have been thinking that hoarding is a big problem. But, have you heard about the event that occurred on April 4, 2011? Supposedly 30,000 BTC were sold over a short period of time. Considering that the supply of BTC was just over 5 million, this is an extreme amount. Indeed, a transaction of this size did have some control over the market - we saw the USD/BTC drop considerably. However, soon after the ratio adjusted back to its original level. This indicates resilience in BTC itself and maturity in the BTC community. For this reason I'm encouraged that hoarding isn't the biggest problem that BTC faces.

Furthermore, you're right in being concerned with the liquidity of BTC. In many capacities this goes hand-in-hand with the hoarding problem. Several things are certain, however: As more people accept BTC in exchange for goods and services, the more likely others will follow, the price will become less volatile, and the more liquid it will be.

A bar of gold won't feed your family, keep you warm at night or make a useful weapon.

You are right about the fluctuations throughout the day but I am willing to bet that if a retailer was just to take an average it would pan out to be the same as spending all the time trying to calculate the current rate.

I personally like the volatility...some currency traders would agree, some might not...I dislike how the stock market in particular has artificial circuit breakers to stop rapid changes in price...kinda seems like fixing the game...I would rather see things able to crash if they are broken (that gos equally for BTC).

The fundamental value is not 0 as you are able to buy real tangible products and services with bitcoins. 

I wish this forum had a reputation system.

The trade values do flucuate madly, certainly have done recently. I guess difficulty is more predictable but a big jump in value can feedback into the total hashing power and cause difficulty to increase. I have just been shown this site for visualising the block chain and the different transactions, its pretty cool: http://www.bitcoinmonitor.com/

Indeed. I still see a problem with adoption as a currency. Currencies need some stability to work. At the moment if I sit down to eat at that restaurant in NY which accepts BTCs, there is a good chance that I would be paying much more by the end of the meal, so there is no encouragement to spend BTCs. As a merchant, I would be nervous of accepting BTCs if that same meal loses me money.

Stability and liquidity will have to be solved for Bitcoin to work. The problem is that I believe miners are also hoarding, and as far as I can tell, mining is reaching a point where it is more difficult to be profitable. With mining rigs going up, difficulty will jump again, hoarding will continue, etc. You could have a noxious spiral soon.

For the sake of some of the good people of this forum, I sure hope I'm wrong  

Look at the Mt. Gox charts vs. Block chain and you will see that happens.  It will become less and less as the currency spreads out...I hope.

I've read all of the basics, and more. Still trying to find a good way of calculating mining cost based on current difficulty levels. I see that too many people are calculating profitability based on current exchange rates, which might be wrong.

I have actually been reading the forum for a week or more, and have been a bit disappointed by the level of discussion in many threads, so I decided to join. The forum does need a healthy dose of skepticism, I see too many people making assumptions based on liquidity that is not there (too much hoarding). I'm also seriously concerned by the fact that the system is set to disproportionately favour early adopters, who have way too much power over the exchange rate. You get a single early adopter dumping large volumes, and the value would plummet.

I'm willing to learn more, but at the moment I would not invest a penny. But I really find the concept of a cryptocurrency interesting, and it is something the Internet has been in need of for a while.

Check out the links here:
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=15918.0

That is the proper way to go about finding out more.  Typically these suspect posts do not address the matter how you did.

I'm not defending the OP (which seems to be indeed trolling).

However, I have noticed that this is a forum with very thin skin, and critics are instantly tarnished as trolls.

I am joining a forum because I find Bitcoin interesting for various reasons, but I'm very skeptical of the fundamentals behind it.

Yep...never a "What has your experience with bitcoin been?" or a "What is this all about?"...always "you are stupid with your pyramid scheme wasting power on fake money, I was ripped off by hackers/mtgox...oh wait its fixed"...granted that was a drastic combination of about 5 posts I have read lately.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Myths#Bitcoins_have_no_intrinsic_value_(unlike_some_other_things)

Ye ye, every new users take their time to register here just cause they feel compelled to point out all the weaknesses.

Its very strange to me that someone would go through the trouble to register just for that without even mentioning 1 or 2 strong points according to them.

gtfo.

I'm still a newb here, so I don't know, but saying that bitcoin's fundamental value is 0 is pretty lame (not to mention wrong).  If someone asks a serious question about bitcoin fundamentals, I'm sure they'll get a serious reply.