Topic: Vow not to exchange bitcoin for fiat - page 2. (Read 3855 times)

Excellent post. And it illustrates just the type of MLMers who latch on ro these things.

By the way, I've always loved your avatar. A perfect flip of that stupid intro!

Yeah you are correct of course I don't mean the federal government should insure bitcoin. I think indeed that some entity should invest in protecting Bitcoin companies. But how?

Let's pretend you don't actually mean FDIC, but just reputable auditing and insurance services.

in regards to netrin's post... My thoughts are closely related to yours as well.
We need a FDIC insurer but for Bitcoin is really what we need.

So are you saying it comes down to weighted trust?

I may trust that...

 * my bitcoins will not be stolen from my computer by any method.

 * my financial institutions won't freeze my accounts or reverse charges.

 * cash will not be stolen or lost from my home or pocket.

 * a merchant will send goods that I purchase.

 * a customer won't reverse charges for goods I've sent.

>> You're ignoring the possibility of Bitcoin being lost when an exchange*
>> gets shutdown. At least with that dirty FIAT money you've got an
>> opportunity to use the system that already exists to attempt to get
>> some of that money back - as yet, Bitcoin has grown no such system.

This highlights the concern I tried to express earlier. I perceive the bitcoin ecosystem to be under attack and thus risky. Mt. Gox might get shut down because it facilitates the exchange of bitcoin, or withdrawls may be blocked, confidence may diminish, etc. The environment is hostile. I do not deny that. But given that I am engaged in this risky environment, I trust bitcoins in my hand over fiat in an account sans lunettes roses.

There have been other threads about "who's spending instead of selling" and so on, if you take away the hard-language of "pledge" this idea is no longer silly, but it is a little bit redundant.


Your statement here only holds true because you're ignoring a few key points: You're ignoring the possibility of Bitcoin being stolen from you via malware or whatever.

You're ignoring the possibility of Bitcoin being lost when an exchange* gets shutdown. At least with that dirty FIAT money you've got an opportunity to use the system that already exists to attempt to get some of that money back - as yet, Bitcoin has grown no such system.

Finally, you and Xenland both are ignoring the fact that sending someone BTC for a product/service relies on you trusting that someone to actually deliver the product/service - there is absolutely zero recourse to get it back if they fail to deliver (again, Bitcoin will likely grow something of this nature eventually).

I'm not saying Bitcoin sucks and fiat money rocks, I'm simply saying that Bitcoin only looks 100% rosey if you're wearing rose colored glasses when you look at it.

Edit: * To clarify this point, I didn't literally mean "exchange" in all cases, but I'll leave the language here in case someone quotes it. Anyway, most of us who are merchants will likely use some form of a payment processor at some point (some of which are exchanges). There's a chance any of them could shut down at any point, and if you have "fiat dollars" with them, you stand a small chance at getting it back. With Bitcoin, by design, there is no way to compel them to hand it over.

Consider even if you run your own bitcoind with scripts to handle the payment processing, if it gets hacked then any BTC on there is gone, even though the coins are technically under your control.

I agree with alot of what your saying,  I was just kind of adding on to what you were saying earlier(and I did actually read most of it btw ).

The way I thinking about it is if even if everyone stopped cashing out to fiat it shouldn't hurt the BTC economy as far as value because the idea is to spend Bitcoins for how much you think they are worth. Of course this isn't true since we are tide to fiat wholesalers and suppliers. So the fiat issue will only be a short-term blow to the BTC economy if we all pushed to spend Bitcoins as if we use them to buy gas or groceries then they will be "worth" something just for the act of spending them. Of course this is just the idea

I can see the words 'pledge' and 'vow' are rubbing everyone the wrong way. I've been fortunate (g*d bless my parents) not to have ever been indoctrinated in any cult during childhood, saluted a flag, or any such ceremonies that I remember. These words may have different power to some of you. Anyone who gets my drift want to re-word my OP proposal? To me it's more like a bumper sticker that says "Honk if you love bitcoin" rather than a secret blood pact.

I just want to know who's in it for the technology and potential and who's in it for the 'musical chairs'. I don't hugely care and will happily trade with everyone. I'd just like to know from what perspective the people I'm dealing with are operating. I want us to mutually scratch each other's back. It's the same reason I support and lend money to my family and friends.

I have to say one point regarding fiat vs bitcoin and the exchanges. I fear that the exchanges will get shutdown with my FIAT money. Bitcoin in my hand is SECURE. Dollars in an account somewhere is NOT MINE. I absolutely disagree with elggawf's notion of fiat accounts and credit security. If you don't hold it, you don't own it.

I was hoping you would notice ;P

I like how you wrote "TLDR" then almost wrote as much as I did.

You're wrong on a few points though, and I'll tell you why. Yes, you have to keep an eye on your accounts with "fiat" dollars, but at least you have some recourse. If someone makes off with your BTC, you're fucked. Our economy still hasn't evolved any sort of market for insuring them (which is probably what's going to have to happen for it to be safe, but people will resist that because it's a peer2peer system, and history has shown us that trusting some centralized service with your Bitcoins is akin to grabbing your ankles in a communal shower).

As far as overdraft fees: learn how to manage your money. You don't look at your balance and think "this is how much money I have to spend" unless you're a teenager. That's true no matter what currency you work in, and it'll likely be true in BTC eventually.

For the record: I haven't cashed out any BTC to USD in (almost to the day) three months. It hasn't been worth it. Instead, I spend whatever I earn or mine. I'm literally already doing everything this pledge is talking about, and I still think the pledge is a dumb idea. Bitcoin's just imaginary play money to me, I don't notice the minimal impact on our electric bill (I'm only running one very modest GPU without any overclock/overvolt) and I get some goofy shit like games or whatever without "spending any money" (it's purely psychological).

My point was that the economic activity is so low at the moment that if everyone pledges to only spend their BTC and some of us pledge to only spend BTC with people who pledge to only spend that BTC, then sooner or later there's going to be people who wind up just holding that BTC. There aren't any businesses yet who only have expenses in BTC, so there aren't many businesses who can afford to not cash out their BTC. So we again arrive back at the situation with people resisting the urge to cash out, and the person who profits most is the first person to break that pledge.

Spending BTC is always good, but realize sooner or later someone has to cash out. It's just better to let people do what they wish with it, let the market do as it pleases and avoid any meddling.

TL:DR

I think the whole point is to spend Bitcoins on products and services instead of converting them then spending it in your fiat money, Not to outright hold the fuck outta them until we reach a huge bubble then convert. Open up your eyes bro its not always about the money its about convince of the Bitcoin service.

I feel soo safe spending my Bitcoins and keeping them under my pillow. With fiat... I'm constantly spending money for services watching credit score, identity theft and those things only tell you "after" you've been stolen from. Dealing with credit/debit cards are such as hassel becuase once a company has those numbers you better trust thos companies with your life as some of them find it an inconvience to charge you on the spot and will charge you when you feel like it... mean while days/weeks go by and you think "yeah all those charges went through i'm back to zero" then BAM! your hit with a huge over-draft fee becuase you thought all 11 companies already charged you.

no no Bitcoin is much more then just a pump-and-dump experiment its a new kind of entity in its self.... we still don't even know wtf to call it yet.... Is it a currency, commodity store of value.... all right answers depending on whom you talk to...

I am not proposing this pledge as a martyr or to fix the exchange rate. It's an acknowledgement that for some services, the dollar or euro exchange rate is irrelevant. I want to use bitcoins because they are interesting and want to work and trade with others who share 'the love'. With others I am also perfectly happy to trade goods and services at 'real world' rates.

If a group of developers worked on a specific project for the lulz, we could offer up tasks and reward each other with bitcoin, thus establishing bitcoin as an arbitrary boo. I imagine donators not directly participating in the development who support the effort may additionally respect the pledge and give generously where they feel most confidence; Myself as donor included. I would just as happily trade with like minded merchants and use bitcoin primarily to balance accounts.

I am interested in many forms of crypto-finance, credits, ripple, ot, etc and want to interact with others who sincerely share the same fascination to help build a community in action. Rather than the legions of talkers, I want to know who's walking.

Thanks Goat, Evoorhees, Holliday, Wisdomtool, Xenland, FreeMoney, and Mjcmurfy. Even "not a vow, I do it anyway" is good enough for me.

I think this is a great idea.

I too am putting my name on this list. I vow not to exchange any bitcoin revenues generated by my business BitCoinTorrentz for fiat, except that which is required to pay expenses that cannot be otherwise covered. It would just be a blind-faced lie for anyone to say that they won't exchange any coin, ever, but I pledge to keep the amount I exchange to an absolute minimum.

Since I have very few expenses that cannot be paid for in bitcoin, this will not be too difficult of a promise to keep.
I have not exchanged a single coin for fiat to date.

+1. Please be selfish, we don't need any martyrs here.

You can't pay your taxes in BTC and you can't make anonymous purchases with electronic fiat transfers. There are uses for both but vows to use the former in a strict manner are useless in a publicly-traded currency. People will only stop converting to fiat when they have an incentive to do so, and that will only come when the services are readily available and easy to purchase in BTC. And THAT will only happen when more merchants have a strong incentive to get on board with a volatile currency...

*broken record*

+1

I vow not do convert my bitcoins to buy drugs, ever again.

I vow (okay actually not, just a statement of what I do) to convert to fiat whenever I need to. This is because I hold my value in coins which is what I do because I think it is best (for me).

I will vow to never convert all profits with Cheaper In Bitcoins to any fiat currency as for the items sold is a different story since no wholesaler accepts Bitcoins so I will always be forced to convert more then 90% of any bitcoin flow to fiat.

What is this bullshit?

No offense, but this idea is stupid as hell. That bubble to $30 was nothing but an elaborate game of musical chairs caused by rampant speculation. But who cares about fixing that, and encouraging an actual, stable, and sustainable economy. No, let's just repeat the thing by having everyone pledge to hold coins and artificially inflate the price again! \o/

Again, we'll be starting a brand new game of musical chairs, only this time people are "pledging" not to sit down when the music stops. Do you not see how completely fuckin' retarded such an idea is? If I had to put my finger on the pulse of the one chief issue that's plaguing Bitcoin, it's that it rewards people who are dishonest at the expense of those who aren't. This idea of yours will do exactly the same thing, those who break their pledge first when the price gets too delicious will benefit at the expense of those who hold to the pledge.

Here's an idea, let the market do what it wants... isn't that, you know, the whole economic reasoning behind Bitcoin after all? Exactly how full of shit are the libertard ideals that make up much of this community if it's "laissez faire" until the market does something we don't like, then we conspire to "fix" it? Oh, let me guess - it's only market manipulation when the government does it? If it's private people it's just the invisible hand, right?

This is just wrong, wrong, wrong. If I send you Bitcoins, do whatever the fuck you want with them. With any luck and some really well funded market makers, we'll end up at a stable price (whatever that may be, it really doesn't matter) and we can go back to encouraging more merchants to use it.