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Topic: MtGox's dead could endanger bitcoins as a whole (Read 2133 times)

full member
Activity: 182
Merit: 100
Forum would be burnt too as they are hosting it.
hero member
Activity: 717
Merit: 501
MT GOX went down several days and had little effect on the price of bitcoin.  MT GOX is just an exchange service and has little effect on the overall price of bitcoin.  There are dozens of exchanges already, and I am sure most would be happy if MTGOX burned.  From the ashes a new forest will grow.
legendary
Activity: 1442
Merit: 1000
You can always calculate the cost of producing bitcoins at current difficulty, thus agree on a non-speculative price. The bitcoin value is now:

~3.60000 USD/BTC

Price may vary if your electricity is not 0.15$/kWh and you get anything other than 1.5Mhash/J. Discuss...

Imagine GOLD would be evaluated on non-speculative way like you proposed for Bitcoin. Cost to mine.

Its just cost to produce, nothing related to ability to exchange it with something else. Its just indicator if your production is economically viable.
Well it is done like that. Otherwise why would some mines open and some mines close depending on the current price of gold? Miners already do this, as you can see the hashrate is falling as the cost to make the currency is higher than the value it can be exchanged against.
hero member
Activity: 740
Merit: 500
Hello world!
As the dominant exchange by far, MtGox will definitely affect bitcoin should anything negative happen to it.  But as the bitcoin economy grow, more and more exchanges will spring up and will slowly reduce such an effect should it occur.

People keep complaining about MtGox's market dominance, but they keep using it because it has the volume - so it's the users themselves who are perpetuating that market dominance.

Exactly, we can't expect users to change to a different service, which re-inforces the problem.
full member
Activity: 189
Merit: 100
lets BRING DOWN MT GOX!

- RoboTs

(its naive to think that destroying an exchange would increase or stabilize bitcoin trade)
hero member
Activity: 756
Merit: 500
Not having exchanges for a while would be one of the best things that could happen to bitcoin. If the only way to get bitcoins is sell stuff for BTCs (or to some extent, mining), and the only way to get rid of bitcoins is buy stuff with BTCs, we might actually start developing a bitcoin economy rather than a casino.

Exactly the same opinion here, bitcoin should function as a currency.
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 500
Not having exchanges for a while would be one of the best things that could happen to bitcoin. If the only way to get bitcoins is sell stuff for BTCs (or to some extent, mining), and the only way to get rid of bitcoins is buy stuff with BTCs, we might actually start developing a bitcoin economy rather than a casino.
sr. member
Activity: 252
Merit: 250
Imagine GOLD would be evaluated on non-speculative way like you proposed for Bitcoin. Cost to mine.
Its just cost to produce, nothing related to ability to exchange it with something else. Its just indicator if your production is economically viable.

It already is. In most countries, there are anti-dumping laws preventing businesses from selling their products below producing/buying costs (with special exceptions like assets liquidation and so on). There are also minimum wages laws, taxes, etc.

If a company were to mine bitcoins, it would have to keep a proper accounting of expenses/wages/incomes and then they would not be able to sell below a specific price (not easily, anyway. They would have to invent some limited promotion, or file for bankrupcy...).

Excuse the truism, but there is no such thing as a free market. Not yet, anyway.
hero member
Activity: 868
Merit: 1000
As the dominant exchange by far, MtGox will definitely affect bitcoin should anything negative happen to it.  But as the bitcoin economy grow, more and more exchanges will spring up and will slowly reduce such an effect should it occur.

People keep complaining about MtGox's market dominance, but they keep using it because it has the volume - so it's the users themselves who are perpetuating that market dominance.

The exchanges failing would have a big impact on speculators and on those who use the exchanges as a kind of bank to hold their Bitcoins and their money, but it wouldn't affect the success or failure of Bitcoin as a peer to peer currency.  A lot of people would probably abandon Bitcoin if there was no longer a relatively easy way to speculate with it, but that wouldn't necessarily a bad thing - in some ways a lot of the problems it's experiencing now are the result of people wanting a maturity from it now which it was never designed to have at this point.
full member
Activity: 196
Merit: 100
Lol. Good luck "developing the currency" with some bullshit web-of-trust arrangement. It works less online that it would in real life. The anonymity touted by Bitcoin is precisely why noone trusts it. The only hope is for exchanges like MTGox which are collectively recognized. Bitcoin has proved just how hard it is to achieve the critical mass for the adoption of a new currency. The mining concept was brilliant but ineffective as it turns out.

No one has to put their faith in MtGox or any other exchange or even any exchange at all. Granted, as long as the Bitcoin economy is little, little things will affect its exchange value. MtGox is not a specific case. Best remedy is developing the currency so that it gets resilient to these external effects. Let the currency speculators burn from perturbations in the meantime.

hero member
Activity: 531
Merit: 505
You can always calculate the cost of producing bitcoins at current difficulty, thus agree on a non-speculative price. The bitcoin value is now:

~3.60000 USD/BTC

Price may vary if your electricity is not 0.15$/kWh and you get anything other than 1.5Mhash/J. Discuss...

Imagine GOLD would be evaluated on non-speculative way like you proposed for Bitcoin. Cost to mine.

Its just cost to produce, nothing related to ability to exchange it with something else. Its just indicator if your production is economically viable.
legendary
Activity: 1442
Merit: 1000
You can always calculate the cost of producing bitcoins at current difficulty, thus agree on a non-speculative price. The bitcoin value is now:

~3.60000 USD/BTC

Price may vary if your electricity is not 0.15$/kWh and you get anything other than 1.5Mhash/J. Discuss...
sr. member
Activity: 369
Merit: 250
There are plenty of quality alternatives i dont know why people seem to think its the be all and end all.
hero member
Activity: 756
Merit: 500
As the dominant exchange by far, MtGox will definitely affect bitcoin should anything negative happen to it.  But as the bitcoin economy grow, more and more exchanges will spring up and will slowly reduce such an effect should it occur.
hero member
Activity: 938
Merit: 1002
No one has to put their faith in MtGox or any other exchange or even any exchange at all. Granted, as long as the Bitcoin economy is little, little things will affect its exchange value. MtGox is not a specific case. Best remedy is developing the currency so that it gets resilient to these external effects. Let the currency speculators burn from perturbations in the meantime.
hero member
Activity: 740
Merit: 500
Hello world!
It's been said before, and it holds true as ever.

Can anything really be done about this, or should we just keep placing our faith in this 1 company?

Just think of the market share they have!
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