Topic: WTH? why a sudden drop by 10 cents? - page 4. (Read 13697 times)

lol of course they pay spot if the gold bars or coins you have are pure. It's when you buy from them when you have to pay 3-5% or so more then spot. Have you ever bought or sold any bullion bars or coins? I know I have.

You'll never get spot price, and there are very few places that will pay more than 90% of the gold value. It'll probably be closer to 70 or 80%. Same thing if you want to buy, most dealers will take a hefty profit. This is the main reason why I don't buy gold. Your best bet it to find another person to trade with, but then you have to find a way to make sure it's real and as pure as advertised.

If I own gold bars I can go to a local dealer, sell at spot price and buy what ever the hell I want and I can do so ALL OVER THE WORLD. Gold is still money, and the whole world knows it.

Some US states are even trying to get bills passed that would make it so official again:

from: http://le.utah.gov/~2011/htmdoc/hbillhtm/HB0317S01.htm
           8      General Description:
             9          This bill recognizes gold and silver coins that are issued by the federal government as
             10      legal tender in the state and exempts the exchange of the coins from certain types of
             11      state tax liability.

It already passed the house and is in the senate now, and if they pass it and governor signs it gold and silver coins are officially money in Utah. And that's just one of the 10 or so states that are trying to pass something like that.

I'm not a expert in financial dadada, but isn't gold harder to sell? With BTC we can actually use it as currency to buy things, who accepts gold anymore for bread and milk? (I know BTC isn't accepted either, but its getting there)

I doubt BTC will ever replace an actual currency, I like to buy food myself. 

You should instead be asking: "How exactly have people convinced businesses to accept gold before?" and learn from history.

Man it's frustrating to read your "we need more traders" posts when, and I already tried to explain this here, you actually need more miners and no one will listen.

If you think traders will come in and "invest" large amounts of their dollars, euros and whatever else while a small group is holding the vast majority of the 5.6mio BitCoins just because BitCoins have "good properties" as a currency you are sorely mistaken.

What BitCoins need is to be spread across many people in larger quantities who will eventually come to value them and will convince others who don't that they actually do have value and it's only then when you'll see traders come in and buy some and only after traders come in reputable businesses will think about accepting them.


I mean do you think gold became money because a few kings held the majority of it and offered them to their peasants for their goods and services and the peasants willingly accepted them just because of the properties of gold? Of course not! Many many people found gold around the whole planet and some found more and some found less but all of them started to value it because of it's properties AFTER they found it. And then they started to trade it for other stuff and when it spread it eventually got accepted as money.

I don't care if 50(imaginary number) original people who started BitCoins hold 4mio BitCoins right now. But that's me, someone who understands Austrian economics and the true value of this invention. But try convincing someone who doesn't.   That kind of person will only look at the number of bid vs ask offers and the volume and will only laugh at you.

I wasan't talkng about existing business accepting bitcoin, but a business created in the bitcoin economy, and operating primarily in bitcoins.

How exactly have people convinced businesses to accept bitcoins before?

Heheh, I like it.

Here's one underhanded way it could be done:

1. Get a stencil made which says "We Now Accept Bitcoins" and apply it to every advertising billboard you can find.

2. Customers ask these businesses about how to pay with Bitcoins.

3. Businesses recognize the demand and support Bitcoins.

4. Success!

Well, I've been doing my bit.

Now I'm considering a stenciling campaign, Banksy style.

yes, it is 2-fold need to grow:

1) more people acquiring bitcoins (traders, investors)
2) more bitcoin based businesses

Actually the reason we're on a downward trend with the USD bitcon price is the balance of trade. For all intents and purposes you can think of bitcoin as the currency of a very tiny country (the official currency of cypherspace?), and as such represents everyting that this cypherspace economy produces and exports.

A falling currency means that we are importing more than we are exporting. Many people including myself have been spending their bitcoins. The recipients have been exchanging these to pay for the products or services they provide.

We need to change this balance of trade, we need to export more than we import( at least for a time). Otherwise the trend will be continually downward.

Long story short we need more bitcoin based businesses. But for the time being we could see bitcoin drop back quite a bit from it's current low.

+1
This is absolutely true.


The Bitcoin market needs more traders, investors or speculators. Otherwise prices will fall.

Just think about that more than 10,000 bitcoins are generated daily. If miners cash out all or a proportion of it, the Bitcoin economy needs at least the same amount of new fund inflows and bitcoin buying to just keep prices flat (let alone rising).

In the recent weeks, no significant new funds came in, and hence we are in a downtrend that may accelerate unless 0.95$, 1.0$ and 1.1$ will be broken to the upside.

people holding bitcoins should better advertise it versus debating endlessly in this forum about minor things (and adding thousands of posts about issues that are beyond there circle of influence)

This is not meant badly, just to put the "moose on the table".

We do need more speculators and liquidity....the problem then maybe that modern speculators tend to be trend following, day traders...they profit by buying into trends and then sell out as soon as that trend reverses or stalls, or sell at a certain percentage loss (usually 3 or 4%) if there entry was wrong...often this actually increases volatility as 1000s of day traders jump in and out of trends at roughly the same time.

I'm very much in 2 minds as to whether liquidity = stability.

• The exchange itself changed hands today.
  https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/mtgox-is-changing-owners-4187
• This is the first weekend that CoinCard has been open.
  https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.55682
• Bills for hardware purchases that miners made are just now coming due
• 14,700 BTC was minted in the past 24 hours (294 blocks, per http://bitcoinwatch.com)
  Yet in that same 24 hour period of time, just $11868.22 worth of bitcoin has traded on the exchange.
  In other words, even if every bitcoin sold on the exchange were from mining activity, there still was more produced than was sold.  i.e., the accumulating continues.
• The Technical Analysis from s3052 indicates that there is strong support at the $0.80 price level.
  https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.58563

Personally, I consider Bitcoin's short term fluctuations on the exchanges to be of little significance.  I know that all bitcoins issued as-of today total 5.61 million BTCs.  I know that in January 2012, there will be about 8 million BTCs and that in January 2013 there will be about 10.5 mllion BTCs.  

If bitcoin continues to emerge as the leading digital currency, will the entire currency issued need to be more than $10 million USD worth by January 2013 to support the demand? I can't see how it cannot be.  And if that were to happen, each BTC would then be worth more than it is today.

Only if you hold on to your bitcoins now will you still have them to sell at levels significantly higher than where Bitcoin trades today.

And the price is back up, someone has spotted the bargain and bought, bringing up the price. still a little lower than it's been trading at but thats nothing to worry about. It should creep up over the next few trades.

So this is the result of a single person executing a fairly large( by our standards) trade. This causeda few automated ( or panic) sells.It's a small market and is easily moved. Sadly I wasn't in a position to take advantage of this drop. Im much too risk averse to take advantage of such a big price move.

The truth is we need more speculators. They would add cnsiderable liquidity, and make the price much more stable.

As soon as the price starts to rise to much too quickly they would sell, bringing it down. If the price falls too quickly by too much they buy, bringing it up.

You mean fairly large fluctuations in BTC/$ prices?  Yes, yes it will.  If you're looking for a stable, boring investment do not buy bitcoins.

I'm still surprised we haven't seen a real price bubble yet (where my definition of bubble is "doubles in price and then falls all the way back down").  Maybe we're in the middle of one still on its way up...

I saw the drop and bought more. Wish I would have waited a little longer though, and would have saved a bit more.