Topic: I feel like I'm dreaming, is this crap for real? For how long? (Read 5751 times)

I think his post just reflects the fact that only the bullish, the unwise, and the fools believe a $30/BTC is sustainable in the near term.  Next difficulty increase will likely see an average $18/BTC for that period, which was already overvalued last round at that price. I'm not banking on $30/BTC in the near term, and neither should anyone else without money to throw away. You ARE making less mining now than then, unless you're also day-trading every day, and smartly.

At this moment, the same seems to be true of Bitcoin.  That is, it requires new money, perpetually, to make the coins worth the cost of minting them, and to uphold everyone's faith in the system.  Picture my forefathers, some 200 years ago.  They had to start minting the US government's first supply of money, so some guy with a bunch of copper deposits tells the gov he'll go dig up a big chunk of copper in his backyard and break it down into chunks small enough that it can be pressed into pennies.  In exchange, he'll receive a few of these newly minted pennies that he can use to exchange with other people who accept pennies.  [Of course, the reason for such example is that the gov. had no other practical way to confer anything of value to the guy in exchange for his copper and his time, other than their coins.]  So he does as they wish, gets his pennies, pays for some more labor, maybe for more land with copper deposits, etc.  The point of this rather crude parallel is.. if the gov's source of copper dries up, they can't mint any new pennies, thus there aren't enough pennies in circulation to become useful to anyone.  Now that they've lost their utility, their value is gone as well, and people no longer exchange their time and talents for pennies.

Just sayin..

Who is stopping them from selling it?

What happens to the BTC economy even if they sell it? Absolutely nothing. It's called liquidity.
The market would be dead if nobody was selling. It would be impossible for non-miners to acquire bitcoins.

No, it's not going to crash because people change it to USD, EUR or JPY.

Is gold crashing because it's sold in massive amounts every day for fiat currency?
Gold is just a shiny commodity with no real value except that given to it by the market and it's rarity/difficulty of obtaining.

Paper and bank money is even more worthless.
It isn't even backed up by rarity and there's tons printed every day out of nowhere. Just look at the joke of a currency called Zimbabwean dollar (of which 100 trillion dollars is not worth even close to 1 bitcoin) because absolutely nobody trusts it anymore

Paper money doesn't even have trust or security backing it up (can be faked and passed off relatively easy even by semi-professionals), people only use it because other people use it and believe it's worth tangible goods.

Yeah, you're right. The gold rush is over. Might as well just sell your equipment while you still can.

I'll buy it.



No no no, he totally made less money because now he gets less bitcoin!



Seriously though, this is basic economics. People for some reason get stuck on one number.

Except, 1 BTC 2 months ago was ~4-5 dollars each. Now they are ~30.  You make more or less the same dollar amount now as you did 2 months ago.

Wow! Now there is a hard dose of reality. Difficulty, a miners Achilles heel.  

Yes and who bought your BTC? Why can't you accept the fact that one day they may decide to sell it for a fiat currency just like you did?

How many times do people need to hear it. It's not a fucking ponzi. I haven't bought a cent worth of BTC but I frequently trade them for tangible commodities, fiat currency and save them in encrypted wallets. It's called mining.

A ponzi scheme requires new members to pay to old members. If you start mining today you are not paying anyone anything with the exception of some hardware store and your electricity company. Chances are you already had internet access.

If someone wants to buy bitcoins then more power to them. Many people see it as a lot more hassle free than running mining operations, and it can yield a good return in the long haul too.

If someone wants to go on BitEgg and buy memory cards for their camera then more power to them. If they want to speculate on the price going up or down then more power to them.
If they realize it's a finite commodity that is practically impossible to forge, with very high levels of security and anonymity compared to ordinary money, even better.

Newsflash: The money I get in exchange for BTC in my bank account is virtual too. It's just numbers. There is absolutely nothing backing it, or its' value up except some vague promises from the state. BTC on the other hand is backed by extremely strong cryptography and a finite supply. A central bank on the other hand creates new fiat currency out of thin air.

IMO yes, faith is what drives demand and demand is one of the two factors driving value.

Do you see how circular an argument that is? A multi-billion dollar industry puts its faith into dollars. Therefore dollars have value because of the dollar value of faith lenders.

Anyway, I'm not saying that bitcoin is inferior or superior, but the argument that bitcoin only has the value that people place in it is not a valid one, as that is true of all world currency that are not guaranteed by anything tangible.

dont dream too long.

when I built my first rig 2 months ago I had a 8 BTC mining day with just 1000 mh/s

1000 mh/s mines between 1-2 BTC per day now.

and its only going to keep going up.

Green paper currency is backed by multi-billion industry/mining/services sector that puts its trust in it. Bitcoin OTOH is not.

Say what? All currency is a "store of value". Green pieces of paper have no more intrinsic worth than that people have agreed that it does.  And there have been far more than a few paperbacks that have ended up worthless because people lost faith in it and it had nothing to back it beyond that faith.

Publicly traded companies have no requirement like you specify. They need merely convince people that they will be worth more than they are now or interest people in the company, same thing.

Also as to drug trafficking, there is already a massive drug trade via bitcoin, to the point where senators are trying to shut down bitcoin because of it.

But anyway, that aside, bitcoin is in its infancy, whether it will be seen as a ponzi scheme or not will be decided in the future by its success or failure/.

I said "many similarities to a brilliant Ponzi scheme", you are describing one of the brilliant features, IMO.

What makes it a ponzi scheme right now, IMO, is the fact that Bitcoins are only a store of value.  That's all.  They're something that a few people agree have some worth.  Some will argue that mining is the "good/service" aspect of it - analogous to those stocks that keep getting mentioned.  That's incorrect.  There's a difference in Bitcoins and stocks.  Publicly traded companies MUST demonstrate utility, or a likelihood thereof, in order to get bought.  Bitcoins do not.  Bitcoins at this point are just an idea.  An idea with much potential, but an idea none the less.  I got into Bitcoins heavily when I saw the article on MoneyLaundering.com - that was my "buy" signal.  Some day it might have utility to criminals, but right now, who could a drug dealer find to move $50MM USD of currency across a border, in an end-to-end cash to cash exchange with Bitcoins as the conduit?  If such an exchange exists, they certainly don't make themselves known.  So until it has at least a modicum of utility, beyond storing value, it's nothing more than a house of cards.  And again, I'm hoping the utility aspect will improve, because the ideas are strong.

Who knows? That's what keeps the influx of new miners after all.

Yes, of course it is. And that is based solely on the fact that the early buyers made more money than you.  

Off-topic (probably my first completely off-topic forum post in history), but bleedkira, I love you.  That one liner just brightened my day, and I'm not just saying that because you have a BTC Guild sig.

calling it a ponzi scheme is like saying buy some shares in a company and in 10 years cash out cause they are 20 times more in value... now thats not a ponzi is it?

Don't you see the 1000 coin and up trades happening on mt gox? At what coin amount do you consider "cashing out" to be?