Topic: The very sad truth about Bitcoin : It might die to gambling (Read 6968 times)

Check back in 5 years.  That should make the trend more obvious to you.

In that case, what are the charts you're showing me?  Price that Rick in the Wal Mart's parking lot is paying?  See my edit above

If you use Mt. Gox, or anything resembling it, you are doing it wrong.

Look at it this way:  
To fill up my car, i have to spend twice as many dollars today as i did when i was a kid.  Inflation.
To fill up my car, i have to spend I still can't fill up my car with bitcoins.  

Shall i make an interesting graph to explain this?
Do you understand that bitcoin is worth $113 at Gox and 99.68 at Bitstamp?  What's it worth where i am?  What's it worth at Gox if i can't get $$ out?
Not being able to buy anything with bitcoin is important unless i'm good with keeping it on Gox & watching numbers flash on the screen.
Cool thing with $$ is i can buy stuff with it.  
That's an important quality for money to have.

Edit:  Lol, just realized that you second chart (showing 2 years of bitcoin vs gold) would look pretty much the same if i substituted dollars for bitcoin   Y?  Because gold was taking a nosedive during that time -- anything compared to gold would look good.  I warned you that numbers can be tricky

Terrific.

The USD must be a truly wonderful thing.

Numbers can be tricky, don't get confused by them.  
Each dollar buys less (inflationary currency), but this is more than made up for by people *earning many more dollars.*  
That's how inflationary economy works -- each dollar buys less, you make more dollars, and as a result, *disposable income of Americans steadily rose since 1940, leveling out in 2008.*  

Bitcoin OTOH, having a 21 mil. ceiling, is not inflationary.  Once the 21 mil. have been mined, that's it.  Yes, it's a great store of value, unless its price crashes, at which point it stops being a great store of value.  
Being a [potential] great store of value also makes it hard to keep in circulation.  There is less incentive to invest, economy becomes stagnant & fails to keep up with population growth, yadda yadda yadda, ugly endgame.

TL;DR:  By comparing bitcoin to dollar, you are comparing a finite number (bitcoin) to an infinite [possible] number (dollar).  In other words, the total dollars continue to buy more each year, though each individual dollar buys less.  Who cares that a single dollar buys less when *all* the dollars you earn buy more.


That's how you get some babies that are billionaires, and some babies who don't have enough to eat.  
It's not the babies' fault that they are born pathetic and poor, and a country full of poor angry babies is a dangerous place.
That's why smart rich babies decided on a thing called taxes.  So that the poor babies would get enough to eat, and be less likely to roast rich babies & eat them instead.
That's important to understand.
 

That's why Cyprus is the bitcoin capital of the world.


Getting your funds where?  If you haven't been out in a while, i can tell you this:  I can barely convert my bitcoins into spendin' money in places i know well.  Trying to turn bitcoins into foreign coin in deep dark Foregny is a recipe for tears & fail.  
Kids, don't do it. If you just gotta fail, try crack instead.


Of course it is.  Paid informants are rats, not whistleblowers.  Spies and traitors get paid -- whistleblowers are admired because they do what they do for truth, always at a peril & loss to themselves.  Jeesh.  Learn to hero.

Thank you both for responding to the sample "Who Uses Bitcoin" promotion that I created (based on the "Who Uses Tor" promotion that I admired).  Since your posts were similar in style, and shared some common points, I will respond to some of the points you made here.

Bitcoin (still in its infancy) is volatile.  But it still has advantages over fiat currencies such as the USD.  For example, look at the value of the USD and the Bitcoin when they are Priced In Gold.





The value of the USD (priced in gold) has been declining steadily.  The value of the Bitcoin (priced in gold) has been increasing.

A parent should be able to directly give his earned and saved wealth directly to his children, without government involvement or limitation.

"Corrupt political jurisdictions" in this context, does not mean people incarcerated in camps.  Have you heard of Cyprus and Argentina?  They have access to computers and the internet.

Travelers using Bitcoins does not mean travelers spending Bitcoins to purchase food, lodging, and transportation (yet).  It means getting your funds there.  You can do that with a Bitcoin wallet, a piece of paper, or an email.  I recommend converting it into the local currency before spending it.

Paying a whistleblower is not "yellow journalism" is it?

True, people were born, they are greedy to grave. It does not care if it is bitcoin or not. There are many cases to follow up, if you like to play big, do network, then you have high chance to succeed.

Tax cheats are not as common as you think.  If you know of someone who passed on earned income and/or savings to his children via bitcoin, you have some mighty unusual friends.


Stop dragging my family into this.  Neither my family nor any of my close friends use bitcoin.  Investing in bitcoin to hedge inflation is simply nuts.  Have you tried getting your investment out of Gox lately?  I mean in $$$, stuff that my family could spend?


Certainly not me.  Who's selling songs & other intellectual property for bitcoin?  Are you double-sure it's not ripz & warez?  Please keep my family out of this, ffs.


Considering that a good deal of the bitcoin ventures prove to be scams, enough to warrant a subforum explicitly dedicated to scam accusations, i'm sure irreversibility of bitcoin transaction does indeed lower the cost of doing business.


What J603 said


Most nonprofits specifically disassociate themselves from bitcoin when the subject comes up.  See Wikimedia.


Paying for information is yellow journalism at best.  Those accepting payments from journalists & the media are anything *but* whistleblowers.  Unless you're talking about the Judas Iscariot sort of whistleblower.


Only exceptionally stupid and/or criminally insane travelers.  Finding a vendor of *anything* (who accepts bitcoin) is impossible.  Everywhere.

Except that BTC is tied to those inflated fiat currencies, and is far more volatile than any other currency. One day your savings will be worth 100,000 and the next they're worth 90,000. If you bought BTC when they were really high then you lost more than 50% of your wealth.

Waiting 3 days for a wire transfer, and then an hour for confirmations to clear is far from convenient. I'd say Itunes has this covered, if you're going to pay in the first place.


Not sure how the cost of running a bitcoin business is any cheaper than a fiat business.


Really? Do they just set up their desktop in the middle of the refugee camp?


Which isn't a lot of places. As far as I know no medical charity organization accepts BTC. You won't be donating to red cross or MSF any time soon.


I don't know about this.


How? Unless they have memorized their wallet they need some physical way to keep track of the address and private key.


Here's the real major groups that use BTC:

Investors

People use BTC as a commodity or stock, instead of a currency.

Drug Users

People who want the best strains of weed can purchase it anonymously and easily.

Gamblers

People who don't want their gambling activities to be public can also use BTC anonymously for transactions.

Okay, uhm, i didn't read all four pages here, but i think that one of the biggest problems for Bitcoin are upcoming gambling regulations that will follow now that Bitcoin has been declared as legal currency.

After regulations show up, and people will need to show their gambling license to host Bitcoin gambling sites, many of them will obviously have to close and thus, Bitcoin loses alot of liquidity (did i use that word correctly? My native language isn't English).

The best advice I ever got from a teacher was: you are your own most effective teacher. It's great, you can choose the topics, and the syllabus, and the marking scheme. What you choose will end up defining you, not what someone else wishes for you. Be original, it's more interesting all ways round.

Who Uses Bitcoin?

Normal People, Family & Friends
People like you and your family use Bitcoin to transfer earned income and savings directly to their children, without government intervention.

Normal People, Whose Savings Are Being Destroyed By Inflation
People like you and your family use Bitcoin to to preserve their savings from inflated fiat currencies.

Normal People Making Small Purchases on the Internet
People like you and your family use Bitcoin to conveniently purchase individual songs and other intellectual property on the internet.

Businesses
Businesses use Bitcoin to avoid expensive chargebacks from dishonest credit card purchasers, and to lower the cost of doing business.

Refugees from Repressive Regimes
People trapped in corrupt jurisdictions use Bitcoin to protect what they have earned.

Philanthropists and Other Generous People
People who learn about genuine suffering use Bitcoin to eliminate the middle-man and send anonymous contributions instantly to wherever they can help.

Journalists and the Media
Journalists and the media use Bitcoin to provide incentives and protection to Whistleblowers.

Travelers
People who travel for business or pleasure use Bitcoin to reduce the risk of carrying cash or credit cards.

the only known thing popular about bitcoins today are drugs and gambling. You never hear anything different. I honestly don't see the future of it ruling over real money. Many people today don't even know what bitcoin is. If i asked my teachers they wouldn't even know what the hell i'm talking about.

And lets say if bitcoin was entirely popularized than real life money, and more people knew about it. The only thing that would be known about it is drugs and gambling like i said before. So much that bitcoin would be probably banned, just my theory.

Rest assured there are people who are working very noisily in the background on stuff that has nothing to do with drugs, gambling or mining hardware, you just have to look around a bit more .

Actually, like it or not, bitcoin is currently so widely spread and "successful" because of all the gambling and drug marketplaces. If it wasn't for those things, the average Joe wouldn't have heard of bitcoins, let alone had any.

Cash, credit cards, wire transfers.

let's just wait until industry is finished with polluting air around us.
imo water industry is already perverted in many countries.
the most ironic thing is that nestlé even named one of their water brands "Pure Life"

http://www.worldcrunch.com/poisoning-well-nestl-accused-exploiting-water-supplies-bottled-brands/business-finance/poisoning-the-well-nestl-accused-of-exploiting-water-supplies-for-bottled-brands/c2s4503/
mentioned documentary (highly recommended): http://www.bottledlifefilm.com/index.php/the-film.html

edit: sorry for the off-topic posting

Crazy indeed. I'm not going to waste my money on an air purifier.

Gambling seems to be one of it's main uses currently.  Since it's fast, easy to move, and anonymous what else could you expect.