Topic: Hoarding Vs. Spending (Read 4168 times)

Sounds more like a bitcoin arms race to me. Whoever gets first to the ASIC supply chips gets to control the BTC market.

 

Honestly this makes a fair amount of sense.

1. Earn more fiat and/or BTC.
2. Spend less fiat on goods/services.
3. Convert fiat into BTC.
4. Save some BTC and spend some BTC on goods/services.

If enough people do this, fiat currencies will die through hyperinflation. And they call bitcoin a ponzi...

Anyone with enough hashing power has a vested interest in the success of bitcoin. Unless the Chinese government take over AM of course....maybe AM is the chinese government OMG!!

....horder/trader

Apart from that?  That is quite a lot actually.

What will get the attack to stop, other than defeating it?

So a hashrate / difficulty increase is a call to arms for those that would defend the currency.
The army of gamers and their GPUs can be called on via bitcointalk and STEAM and WOW (or whatever game might be popular now) to leave their raids and get to mining instead.  That is our bitcoin Paul Revere
These gamers are our minute-men and women.

The alerting and alarming systems should be prepared and tested if we are going to expect them to be effective.

No. The effects of a 51% attack are only temporary. As soon as the attacker stops attacking, or is overpowered by legitimate miners, the network will instantly resume normal operation. Some people may have been ripped off the attacker's double-spends, and everyone will be forced to temporarily stop accepting bitcoins to avoid becoming a victim of a double-spend themselves, and the exchange rate will likely take a massive hit as many people lose confidence in the currency, but apart from that it'll be as if nothing ever happened.

Everyone should do a bit of both. Save and spend.

Having the MAJORITY (51%) of the hashing power, more or less ends the currency, doesn't it?  The goal for sustainability is widely distribute the hashing power.

Well said, indeed!!!

At least not in UK. Not even academics that I know of, know what a bitcoin is because they think of it as a fluffy technology. My guess is there is a lack of education in economics in that people still think that fiat money is backed by the gold standard and regard bitcoins as something that can be created out of thin air. This is what I thought of 3 years ago when bitcoins was introduced to me.

I believe that to get people into the mode of using this alternative new currency, first they must understand the economics of fiat currency and how inflation affects their money. That is, money is created via loans (i.e borrowed money = debt money).

If I gave you the BTC would you be able to buy a fridge, even a shitty one? The problem is not enough merchants know about Bitcoin, and those who do probably don't see many people spending it. I have been suggesting that spending will be beneficial as more merchants will see it as a viable option worth implementing. This is not about supporting a consumer culture which I totally disagree with, this is about showing businesses that Bitcoin can be used as money and they will get earn new revenue if they start using it. Imagine if articles started popping up showing new businesses making a killing through the Bitcoin community buying their products, this would quickly encourage new merchants, new customers, new savers, new spenders and everything in between. The alternative would be a continued progression of some new merchants, some customers and a shit load of new hoarders lol.

I have to agree with the OP here. It is hard already to acquire bitcoins and there are already transaction fees involved in sending money to mtgox to their polish bank. The other alternative is in purchasing mining rigs which are itself liquid assets and thus mine bitcoins at a slow but steady pace.

I would like to see smaller communities in the UK embrace bitcoins to buy goods instead of using fiat GBP.

It was a reference to bitcoin base units, not bitcoins per se.

Here's an interpretation of why I said what I said.

Mind you, it's only a hint.

Yes, constant economic growth is declared to be always good and that's not true.
E.g. if everyone sells shitty fridges that have to be changed every year, you will have more "growth".

I think "hoarding" has too much of a negative connotation to it nowadays. Might have something to do with the talking head rhetoric all over the media proclaiming spending and spending and spending some more is the way to prosperity.

The hoarding (aka. not spending your money on stuff you don't need, especially if you can get that stuff for currency inferior to Bitcoin) aspect of Bitcoin is brilliant in my opinion, because it pushes us from away from the exponential growth oriented economic models of today and towards sustainability.

That being said, I view spending some BTC here and there essential towards helping adoption and thus stability and arguably value of Bitcoin.

Personally I do it like this:

every month I buy BTC for a certain % of my (variable) monthly income. However many BTC I buy I divide them between a savings wallet and a spending wallet in a way where I put whole Bitcoins into the savings wallet and whatever fraction above a certain Bitcoin I bought into my spending wallet. For Example I end up buying 2.345BTC so 2BTC go into savings and 0.345 BTC go into my spending wallet. If I had a particularly good month and manage to buy lots of BTC I might put some extra BTC into the spending wallet. This way I always have some BTC looking to get spent (with the added benefit of generally increasing in purchasing power) as well as a growing stash of BTC in reserve.

That's false.   Bitcoin's issuance is fixed, so even with majority of the hashing power the only thing that attacker can do is be the recipient of the entire block reward subsidy.  But even with a majority of hashing capacity does that give the attacker the ability to issue more than the Bitcoin protocol allows (currently 25 BTC every ten minutes).    So "endless" in terms of no upper limit, is not possible with Bitcoin.

Not after today's sell out. Then it will be at least another 2 years of drought, as after the 2011 crash.

Don't undersell yourself, that's all I'm saying. We need to establish BTC prices the right way.

Selling at a lower price provides value to the client but in the long run I make up the difference and then some once the prices rise. I have made more from lower BTC quotes then I have my average FIAT prices so I am not in doubt of the strategy, I would not continue to use it if I was losing out. Remember the miners make profit too so they could sell their BTC lower (cutting into profits) but without cutting into the base cost of running the rigs, your proposition assumes anything lower is taken out of the running costs. If a miner was to sell lower this would give them a competitive edge over other sellers so I see no reason why a miner wouldn't also use this strategy.

Freelance services and mining are two very different income streams anyway, a good illustrator could spend an hour creating an image and sell it for upwards of £300, if he was to sell at 2BTC(lower) he still made a good amount considering he spent an hour working.

Just a thought, do miners sell BTC for less FIAT than it costs them to generate each BTC?

Every 100 new dollars that are put into circulation merely represent 100 new rows in the dollar block chain; just like the inclusion of additional 100 base units in every bitcoin would amount to 100x21MM new rows in the bitcoin block chain. The only difference is that new dollars are put into circulation through borrowing, and not through adjustments to an algorithm.