It took a while before I somewhat understood why bitcoin should even exist. Here in the US we have USD and it's accepted mostly around the world. So why does Canada need their own currency when they could use ours? Why does Mexico need its own currency? Well if all these locations can have their own currency, maybe the digital universe needs [or at least, can have] its own currency too.

Cmon! http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/30...l#post44411152

I meant to the forum!

the reason is the same as the reason we "need[ed]" this:



when we "could['ve continued to] use" this:



valar's recent posts are solid. as he alluded to, it's not "a short-term negative." it's simply -- and i'm speculating here, but my speculation is backed by knowledge -- holding the price down over the short term. we shouldn't confuse these two things.

Could the holding down of the price over the short term prevent long term holdings and drive the market even lower?

What would cause a crash of bitcoin as a whole and what would cause a boom?

The number one driver for adoption thus far has been a rising price. Having the price plummet would drive many people from Bitcoin. People who weren't around in 2011 when this happened don't understand how hard the recovery path is.

I care about the Bitcoin ecosystem. This is only going to get built if it is a valuable platform. It is only a valuable platform if Bitcoins are a large highly liquid asset. This is diminished as the price drops.

Selfishly, I hope they are cheaper to buy, as I still plan on acquiring. I don't want to miss out on cheap coins. But it will just delay the really cool things coming. Merchant adoption is the most boring use case of Bitcoin possible. This is like having the internet to write a letter that gets delivered by the post office on the other side. I want to see innovation, changes of paradigms. A merchant who accepts for a marketing gimmick and dumps on the exchange and never even touches the Bitcoin is not doing anything. I give some credit for Overstock as they are looking for ways to take things further, but the rest seem like just doing it to drum up business while looking like some kind of friends. There may be some positives if these big boys can get a vested interest in keeping regulations from being crippling, but beyond that, it's not really anything to get excited about.

Countries have their own currencies because they want to control and benefit from their own monetary policy. Any country powerful enough to force its citizens to use its own currency tends to do so.

The market cap of transactions has a relation with the value of bitcoin but it is not that we need a 500 billion bitcoin market cap to do 500 billion worth of remittance. I can do 500 billion worth of remittance with a coin that has a 1 billion market cap. You just have to have 500 transactions for each coin over the period of a year. When you use bitcoin for remittance it is likely that the receiver needs local currency. This means the receiver sells the bitcoins immediately making them available to use for remittance again.

Credit Card purchases are also depending on this velocity and on top of that they are also based on buying on credit. Something that is not possible with bitcoin transactions. Anything on top of bitcoin that would mimic the credit part of a credit card would lose the decentralized benefit of bitcoin.

The gold store is the one that is interesting as that relates much more directly with required market cap to maintain it. However bitcoin has a long way to go before it is stable enough to be considered a store of value. It will never be able to compete with gold because the people that use gold won't use bitcoin for the same reason they don't use Swiss francs or US dollars. They want a physical store of value that is guaranteed to last.

Yes, I agree with the theory that merchants adapting bitcoin can cause sell-side pressure which could cause the price to go down. However, that is more of blaming the symptom of the disease rather than looking for the root cause.

It comes down to basic economics, supply and demand (from both the consumer and merchant sides). The supply of bitcoin is extremely high right now, as most consumers just hoard it and hope it goes up in value as opposed to having many good ways to utilize it. There is a huge supply of bitcoins out there, and the vast majority of them are dormant.

In theory, remittances could be done with a low marketcap. In practice, it's not going to happen. If remittances became common, there would need to liquid bitcoin exchange markets in all the countries involved. Plus, once people got used to bitcoins, they won't be instantly converted. People will hold onto them and just convert when needed. People will use their received bitcoins for internet purchases. Ways of paying directly with bitcoin would materialize.

By creditcard payments, I was mainly thinking of internet payments, not the credit part of the equation. Paying for stuff online with bitcoin instead of with paypal/credit/debit cards. That's the market I was thinking of, not sure the exact figures.

People who only want physical gold might not care about bitcoin, but what % of the gold market is that? Lots of gold EFTs are owned which just represent a form of digital gold. It is mainly used for its store of value properties and not for its physical properties. Gold is often used as a hedge against fiat, a role that bitcoin can also play.

The difference is you see this as a bug and I see it as a feature. Store of value is very important. Store of value is going to be an app that the unbanked of the world simply cannot participate in right now. Just having that ability will be huge for them.

Bitcoin MUST establish itself as a consistent store of value. The volatility it has means that it must have a higher expectation even than just remaining stable over the long run, it must compensate for this as well.

As the overall value of Bitcoin increases, we see more infrastructure built around it. You have something valuable and you need to secure it. You see improvements in wallets, offline storage, offline keys, etc... These are essential next steps. These do not happen if it is worthless. This infrastructure is essential for bringing on the next set of people - the less technically savvy and businesses who may wish to use Bitcoin to help serve a business purpose (other than cashing out). We should be eternally grateful that there is such a large holding by believers who are in it for the long term and still believe it is undervalued and will continue to hold far into the future.

- Wences Casares

Did the ice bucket challenge 2 weeks ago, didn't donate because there wasn't a way to do so with bitcoin. Now there is. Article up on coindesk. Just gave .05 btc.

For the lazy here is a direkt link to donate

Should be standard for all donations, so many people are willing to donate, but not to waste more than two clicks.

Just used the bitcoin deals on new egg. That was as efficient and pain free as using a CC if not more so if you don't have a saved CC.

Certainly less annoying than paying with PayPal by quite a margin.

This might be a stupid question, but most people that are donating are doing so with CC's. Are CC's charging their typical fee's or do they waive their fee's for charities?

A quick google search:

http://www.freemoneyfinance.com/2011...edit-card.html

Also on American Express's site
https://www.americanexpress.com/us/c...bers-give.html

In the fine print:
Please note: American Express will deduct a transaction fee of 2.25% from the donation to cover processing costs. The charities will receive your donation amount, minus the 2.25% American Express processing fee,

Yes, there is.

For anyone that doesn't know what the WoT is and would like to learn more, this article explains what the WoT is for, how it works and how you can use it. Most people don't take the time to learn and understand the finer points. A prime example being someone with a high rating means they can be automatically trusted and that it's safe to send them large amounts of money with minimal investigation because hey, they have a high rating.

Further reading may be had here

Have you stopped to consider why Newegg et al are offering discounts when customers use bitcoins at checkout? What is the benefit for a company that turns around and sells those coins to BitPay and takes a loss of 10% on the final sale price?

It's clear that companies like BitPay and Coinbase won't be around in the long term because middlemen that deal in fiat are not needed in a bitcoin based economy. Why would anyone start a business that so obviously has a short shelf life and lack of profits? One might begin to consider the possibility that such a company is nothing but a front for obtaining bitcoins but for whom?

Who can print money at will and is threatened by a system where that power loses it's effect? Would you not begin to print as much money required and offer discounts to acquire bitcoins and sponsor the middlemen (BitPay) with your worthless fiat to assist in the process?

Your coins flow from your wallet to Newegg to BitPay and then onto the United States government and all they had to do was offer you a 10% discount.

you're delusional, and so is anyone else who thinks that cryptocurrencies will supplant fiat as the primary means of value transfer between parties within our lifetimes. This idea that we wont need to depend on middlemen in bitcoin is purely utopian and laughable in the current climate.

I don't pretend to have a strong grasp of ecommerce economics, but I know that margins are fairly low and profitability depends on volume. Because Bitcoin is so transcendent as a technology wrt to value transfer, there is a great deal of incentive to convince people to transact. If you do not believe for one second that etailers like newegg already do not have business plans for 2-5 years into the future to convert x% of their transactions from CC/Paypal to cryptocurrencies you are naive.

Newegg is most likely offering the 10% discount for the same reason they offer other discounts. The publicity it generates is worth a lot more than the cost of the discount. This is especially true for bitcoin as the volume is low so the costs are low but Newegg is probably the first company people mention when spending bitcoins is discussed.

Bitcoin is what, a factor 1000x away from the scenario you are talking about? I would say it's already halfway there on a log scale. It is far away, but not impossible and not laughable. It's just as improbable as getting to where we are.

I agree, checking out with paypal is super tough. You have to type in an email and password and click submit, so much work. Paying with bitcoin online is also so much better than credit cards. Who cares if you get 1-2% back with a credit card, paying with bitcoin shows your support!

You realize not everyone has credit cards?

That argument is not very good because at the moment those people are also very unlikely to be able to get their hands on bitcoins.

There is a lot of smart people, money and work going into reaching those markets. Things like Zip Zap, people like Tim Draper, bitcoin ATM's, etc. Its more likely these people will get their hands on bitcoin before a credit card.

you know what's even more work?

Having to make sure that I regularly change my passwords because you can never trust any of these sites.

Having to write down all the security questions and answers

Having to retrieve said passwords for the sites I don't regularly use:

like paypal

What if I was super paranoid and used a seperate email account? Yeah, gotta remember that too.

Now I have to also make sure that not only do I have all of those things handy, but I also have a pin number so that I can actually log into my paypal account. So basically my phone has to be on me anytime i want to access paypal

That's real work, dickhead

With Bitcoin I know exactly 1 password and the underlying security behind the network is the same exact one used to secure the most important financial transactions in the world: international wire transfers.