Really hope this infiniti thing actually works.

Do they have a way to prevent it from just being a bunch of wangs?

Must have to Dox players before playing instead of before cahout I'd think, else we'll be treated over and over to the wang of some guy who knows how to get new IP address.

Is there a wang meme I missed somewhere? Guess I am glad about that.

There was a recent article out there that basically said that these Bitcoins are mostly being horded and not actually spent. In essence, it's a pretty useless currency because no one wants to accept it for any real goods.

And that is the weak link. No one cares if some people trade their hypothetical monopoly money on the interwebz. The government has authority and oversight where it matters: in the real world. The second you try to convert Bitcoins to real coins, they will know and it becomes just like any ordinary currency, with all it's regulations and tracking.

IMO, if you're gonna play this, it's probably best to ditch on exchanges as soon as you accumulate before speculators dry up/exchanges get shut down/payment processors stop processing. It's musical chairs for now, and the last people to hold Bitcoins will lose big.

I guess you are unfamiliar with Chatroulette, which was like 90% wangs.

Maybe most coins are hoarded, but you (the article writers) can't tell for sure. If a bunch of people deposit to an exchange and 10% of them use all their money every day, but exchange balances stay constant from deposits it will look like 90% frozen hoarded money, even if every 10 days everyone spends all their money.

It's also better to think of the blockchain as just the ultimate settlement mechanism. Bitcoin poker players settle in seals chips instead of actually sending to a bitcoin address. They both trust it and it is faster and always exactly 0 fees. Because of that some extra amount of Seals reserves sit idle.

I think 'real' bitcoin economic activity is and will continue to diverge from blockchain activity. But I can't tell, and I've yet to see any convincing way that anyone can.

Kind of natural IMO. Most people who like bitcoins at this stage are also gonna anticipate future value that's (much) greater than present value. So anyone who's spending them is very likely to also be hording them. (And there's no limit on what you can horde, whereas only certain things are convenient to spend bitcoins on right now.)

Minus what's ultimately important, that they don't control the supply of them.

And I think you overlook something significant about bitcoins. I can send a bitcoin from my computer to yours. I can't do that with a dollar without using some centralized 3rd-party.

I knew about chatroulette. The part I missed was that infinity poker had web cams. That seems dumb.

But you can't spend that bitcoin at 99.999% of merchants right now, so you have to be able to reliably exchange it for fiat for it to be valuable for general use.

Sounds accurate. (Or, way more merchants will have to accept it.)

Is that just a cool story or is it actually a response to one of the things you quoted from me?

The advantage of bitcoin instant transfers with little chance of interference is irrelevant if they are worth nothing. If you can't exchange them for fiat, then you are bartering goods with other merchants rather than using them like a currency

As I understand it, at the beginning they were worth close to nothing, because close to zero merchants would trade for them. Eventually, for whatever reason, a guy would take 10,000 of them to buy another guy a pizza.

More and more merchants started accepting them for goods and service, and while only a few restaurants in New York City could directly turn your bitcoins into food in your belly, there is a slow rate of increased acceptance for direct B-to-C commerce.

Your business gains a "hip factor" by accepting the currency now. The number of merchants has increased by almost an order of magnitude in the last twelve months.

Bitcoin isn't supposed to be the currency for your everyday life in 2012. It is a brand new thing that has a chance to eventually become the futuristic uncorruptible digital currency that would one day be your everyday point of sale currency when you stop for coffee in the morning. It is my thinking that while it's far from that point right now, it is moving swiftly and more "coffee shop solutions" are being developed with each passing month.

OK?

Why can't you exchange them for fiat?

Anyways, trading X for goods and services is the point of using X as currency.

You can exchange them for fiat, until the government intervenes and says you can't.

In the extreme example of every government in the world prohibiting and enforcing exchange of bitcoins for fiat, how much are they worth?

Probably the same. I don't want things more or less based on what government officials say, I don't know about you. Some people would be scared off, and maybe there would be legitimate risks, but that doesn't mean the market would price it different. The smart money would recognize the opportunity to profit from the artificial imbalance.

I was really sad when the government stopped everyone from using drugs, sucks that all they have to do is write stuff down and it happens.

I was really sad when I used to easily make six figures from online gambling until the government wrote down on paper that I couldn't anymore.

Can anyone sell me $200 in BTC for dwolla or paypal?

i have a $50 amazon gift card i want to trade for a few BTC.. if anyone is interested. Will send first to a reputable 2p2er.

You're talking about 2006?

Or you mean when they physically seized domains?

No way the same. How do people get them? Without new people getting them, then how does the value of the economy come from? From offering goods or services for Bitcoin? That's going to drastically limit the demand for them. Cut demand, and price falls, simple economics. Except to Bitcoin dreamers.

The question only becomes can they stop the exchanges. They can certainly stop or slow down the big ones. Any of them that deal with banks. So you are left to deal with highly inconvenient p2p transactions that have a ton of fraud risk or risk of getting robbed or at least are a huge pain in the ass.

Cut off the exchanges, and the value plummets. If they can't do that, then its a moot point.

Do you think the government has made the price of drugs higher or lower than it would be if it were legal? Do you think that has caused less or more use of it? This is simple economics. It's having an effect even if it isn't shutting it down.

Maybe in a linear-minded scare story this makes some sense.

But it's not really useful to think about the government doing this in a vacuum. To whatever extent they're willing and capable (think about what else they'll be doing) is when having bitcoins matters most.

Plus there's always speculation of a future when the government isn't doing this anymore. So no, it's not really that simple to effect the price imo.

Price up obv, but imagine 99% of people hadn't heard of pot when gov made it illegal, use would be up too and price would be up doubly. I'm not saying I know outlawing will be good for bicoin, but if it is a half-ass ban and just in the US it probably will increase usage.

There are people who only/mostly use drugs because they are an important part of their subculture which is in part created by the ban. There will be people who don't get bitcoin now who will rally around it because it is banned, I don't know how many or how important they will be, but there will be some. And some would stop using bitcoin, but I won't.