Newb question. Coinbase says when i first link a bank account and make a purchase it will take ~4 days to show up in the account. If i bought today do i get todays price or the price in 4 days?

Catching and shutting down scammers is good news.

You get today's prices. You can't withdraw the bitcoins until your ACH clears. Some people try to scam them and cancel the ACH with their bank if the price goes way down after they buy but this is a good way to get banned from coinbase.

Yes it is. But it's not good in the short term for the general public's perception of Bitcoin.

What reason do we have to believe someone will come up a new application? It seems far more likely that governments will find a way to shut it down.

People knowing about it doesnt equate to them having confidence in it, but the vast majority of people who would have a use for it aren't average joes. It caters a specific type of end user who's likely well networked and is very likely to have already done all the necessary research.

What government will shut it down? The USG has no interest in doing so.

What government in the history of the world has ever looked kindly upon a competing currency? If it ever becomes widely adopted you can be sure regulators will be all over it.

even if it cost nothing to get on the internet in 1991, it wouldn't have exploded because there was nothing on it. it wasn't even that popular until 2005-2006, when facebook or youtube came along and had enough content and people to make it worthwhile to log on.

that's what its core usage is right now, but it can be used for a lot more than that. the demand by the internet of things for the programmable ledger is going to be colossal. it could serve as a backbone of the network of devices to transmit data between themselves. mobile devices, appliances, vehicles, etc. it has a lot of potential besides being a method of value transfer. if the platform of smart devices managing themselves becomes distributed, it cuts the costs of managing such a network to practically nothing. this is just one of the many uses that the blockchain will have.

uh, no. an apt comparison would be like the internet shortly after its creation where you had to ask your university to get an IP address assigned manually to you. none of the things you mentioned (download speeds, costs, youtube, WWW) of bitcoin even exist yet. but they will.

the only thing that's absurd is how ****ing thick you are. "bitcoin was almost on the level of basic physics - it enabled mass transfer of value of any kind from point to point instantly." what else can do that right now?

toothsoother, pls. it competed with radio. it competed with television. it competed with mail. and nobody wanted to use it until they realized it was a better medium for all of those things once enough people developed on the network to make it useful. additionally, in its early stages, the internet also competed with ibm network, at&t's network, deutsche telekom's network. and they were all more functional in the exact same way that the "50+ currencies, cash, numerous instant payment networks, and a global financial network of banks" are more functional than bitcoin today. but every new entrepreneur developed on the internet, because whatever they built, they got all the value for it, because nobody owned the network. and this is why bitcoin is like the internet in 1995!!!!!!!

just like the internet in 1995.
just like the internet in 1995.
just like there was for the internet in 1995.

"there had always been a massive demand for programmable money; in fact, it is a basic cornerstone of advancing civilization and had no alternative or competition" -toothsoother in 2025

generally, it's a bad idea to criticize things from a place of pure ignorance. let alone making your own ignorance the centerpiece of your criticisms. let alone repeating the same tired and stupid points over and over after getting owned as thoroughly and consistently as you have in this thread. you just have absolutely no clue what you're talking about. pls stop.

You seem a little angry I'm not buying into your ponzi.
Comparing the buildout of a network of pure information transfer (peerless, fundamental) with a network of arbitrary value transfer (non-peerless, non-fundamental) is just amazingly stupid, man. If you don't understand the difference, I don't even know how to explain it to you.

No it didn't. See below.
Nonsense. The Internet enabled instant bi-and-multi-directional transfer of high volumes of arbitrary instantly cloneable information. It had no peer. Radio/TV is one directional. Mail is not instant (far from it) or instantly cloneable (and neither is fax).

Bitcoin allows transfer of value. But this is NOT a new capability that didn't exist before. It is NOT an improvement in capability. It is NOT a speedup in capability (in fact, bitcoin is slower). This the opposite of the Internet, which was all three of these things. Moreover, a transfer of value is not a fundamental ability like information; value is just a form of information, which can take any agreed upon form (see:altcoins). Bitcoins offers absolutely nothing new on a fundamental level and no useful utility that didn't exist before. It is not unique. You're trying to compare the buildout of a peerless global information transfer system, with a heavily peered value transfer system, and saying "hey, use of the global information transfer system has skyrockted!! Therefore use of bitcoin will too!!!" It's completely absurd, dude. You're comparing the basic physics ability offered by global, instant, arbitrary, bidirectional cloneable information transfer system, created by an expensive hardware buildout, with virtual coins created in a software layer and completely copyable (see:altcoins). It's completely ****ing absurd, sir.

A better comparison would be like free software vs centrally controlled software. Apart from a few niche caches, the market overwhelmingly chose the latter even though free software was free.

The only thing new about bitcoin is that you don't need an intermediary. Well, except for the miners, who you have to trust to not leave themselves open to attack or be greedy or fork the chain. Except for the currency converters, so you can move money in and out of bitcoin. Except for the software itself, which might be flawed.

Lack of an intermediary in a value transfer is the ONLY new thing that bitcoin offers in terms of new utility. That's it. Full stop. But most people don't give a crap about an intermediary. They have an account number where money goes in that works just like a bitcoin address. They have a card that's fraud protected where they can buy from any merchant instantly in the world. They get paid interest. Their value stays stable from day to day. It all works great. They can store and transact value easily. They have their Internet of value and it's mature and highly stable and reliable. They don't want your alternative. And it still doesn't solve the problems of centralization, because converting to fiat (necessary forever no matter how bitcoin does) requires a centralized account somewhere. Just like their bank, but more work. Less secure. Insanely less stable. Potentially disappearing into the ether entirely if there's some unknown flaw, or if the Internet goes down for days. So you're back to square one, and bitcoin hasn't doesn't jack **** for anyone.

Compare that with a hardware buildout offering instant large volume bi directional information transfer, a capability which simply didn't exist at all before.
You're confusing your layers of abstraction. You're confusing the Internet (the global physical infrastructure buildout enabling information transfer) with the general software layer/protocol (TC/IP, the WWW, etc) with niche software/hardware networks (AOL/IBM). Which is why you get confused and make absurd claims:
Yeah, I don't think you understand how the Internet works. You have trusted local networks, owned by a central provider, which talk to other networks, forming a global chain. All have agreements on the free passing on of information they receive. No local network (AT&T, Deutsche Telekom) could form the Internet because each region had their own providers, usually government owned, all with different politics. What we saw arise was inevitable given that fact. The Internet didn't win because it was "free", it won because there was no existing global network to transfer information quickly.

Money already has a vast multi layered global network to transfer value. The Internet of money has been built, and it works very well (except for a few things like the speed of international remittances, but that will be fixed). Now some dude is coming along from Sealand:


and saying "Hey, come buy my coins! I'll transfer them anywhere and no one can stop me. You might lose 50% of value in a few weeks, but **** government!!!". Predictably, the people that buy in are criminals, speculators, and gamblers. The mainstream ignores him.
It's an equally bad idea to defend things from a position of ignorance. Comparing the Internet in 1995 to bitcoin today just makes you look like an idiot. I can guarantee you that anyone who hasn't bought into the hype (and lost 75% the last year!!) thinks it's more than a bit silly too. You're not helping your cause by over reaching. I'm doing you a favor by pointing that out.

I fail to see how I'm getting owned. This is just another thread where the bulls are irrationals and fail to see the huge flaws.

"Find a way to shut it down".

Good luck.

It's virtually impossible to shut down without killing the internet (and even that is insufficient).

The timing of bitcoin leads me to believe it was a revolt against monetary policy following the 08 crisis -- something to replace the dollar in the event of a Weimar-style hyperinflation.

But even if there's a dollar crisis and/or a global monetary reordering (something like another Bretton Woods), I think mainsteam adoption would still be a huge longshot. I think people would flee to gold in the event of a legit monetary collapse, and would be even more hesitant to go all-in on a digital currency instead of hard money.

Most likely, though, I think the dollar would still be king even after a monetary reset.

Lots of them...

There are African countries where the U.S. Dollar is basically the currency now. Their own currencies are worthless because the government prints so much.

There are many countries throughout the World where the Dollar has a strong presence. ATM's dispense it etc.

In Macau all the casinos only accept Hong Kong Dollars. Everything else is in MOP.

I'm sure there are many other examples.

Governments seem to allow it if it's in the best interests of their economy.

Sorry for self-quoting, but I am really curious of what you'd say to that....
Also wondering why, if bitcoin is as insignificant as you say you think it is, do you spend so much time talking about it over the internet ? When you see idiots being idiots on a forum, aswell as in life, the right move is to not get involved :-)

Bitcoin was designed and developed with this in mind. It is suppose to be regulation proof. I bet Satoshi thought when he made it that if he made 21,000,000 and $1 each, it would make a good thing to trade services over the internet.

How is Bitcoin not just a symbol of value?

Interesting question !


The decentralised aspect of it (and all of what that means in terms of supply, creation....), implies its price is a pure reflection of what the market thinks its valuable in itself, as a commodity ; there's nothing else (law, govt, fed...) that's there to manipulate it / enforce what it's worth / purely create it /...

So I think it's reasonnable to say it has more intrisic value, and is less of a symbol than fiat.

LOL, I suppose they could buy up all the coin, but I'd be cool with that.

Reminds me of what they used to say on some BTC traded stocks I would call out as scams. The stock I remember labcoin was still reading at like a 200% profit of it's IPO and I consistently told everyone it was 100% a scam because these guys could never produce pictures of the miners they had supposedly already made. (It ended up going to 0 as a scam) I was constantly asked why do I waste my time there. I guess it's for entertainment/ educational value. It beats watching tv and you do learn something. Idiots drive the prices of a lot of things and if you can learn how it all works together, you can profit.

You know ToothSoother is winning the debate when conspiracy theories like this start getting deployed.

Leads you to believe?

I mean, it's entirely obvious, since the genesis block had this message in it:

"The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks".

ToothSoother is just typically smart enough to only argue with people dumber than even he is.

I disagree with some of ts's stock analysis, but he is spot on in regards to Bitcoin.

As much as I agree with Tooth on basically all topics of economics, finance, and the markets, I think he's overstating things just a bit when it comes to bitcoin. Although TomCollins and I used to have some disagreements years ago, his view and/or general knowledge has shifted to the point where he is spot on about bitcoin, and we tend to be in general agreement about everything lately.

The only fundamental difference I have with tooth is in regards to it being a ponzi, and I think if he took a step back and evaluated bitcoin production/consumption/investment in terms of a business model that requires capital input, he would realize that it is not a ponzi, even if it is flawed in numerous other ways.

Seeing you on his side only confirms my original statement.

Tooth's problem is he views things statically. He sees a situation today and doesn't realize things were different not that long ago (internet), or will be different in the future (likely Bitcoin). It's easy to dog on Bitcoin now, because really, it's pretty useless unless you want to buy drugs or maybe speculate that it will go up. Yeah, if you find the coincidence of wants where someone has Bitcoin and meets someone who wants it, it's pretty useful to send (I've spent some in the past because I was too lazy to get out my credit card, but copying an address was easier!).

I do look at things from a perspective of, if no one used the legacy systems or Bitcoin, and started from scratch, which is superior. I think Bitcoin is much better in that case. But with any legacy system, even a superior system will lose (say Google+ over Facebook, hypothetically), if it doesn't offer a significant advantage over the status quo. So much focus on Bitcoin has been on useless applications where it isn't really any better than the status quo (lol Bitpay), negative-sum games (lol mining, lol Cointerra), or just on-ramps that (lol Coinbase/Circle). Bitcoin has some more expenses, as you say - it requires capital input. This decreases with time, and is intentional (or accidentally genius). Bitcoin incentivized building a huge degree of security, far more than it actually needs (lol onemoretimes thinking otherwise with his estimates of what it takes to attack the network), far earlier than it actually needed it, such that it would be resistant to attack before it was mature. Long-run- that goes away, and transaction fees are king, and people pay for a service, rather than just paying for being a user. This is ending fast. There still will be a cost. Now is there a benefit? Right now? Mostly not. Bitcoin dreamers have their head stuck in an echo chamber and think everyone hates governments and fiat and all this nonsense, and they don't. Whatever, it doesn't matter. If there's a useful part to it, Ben Bernake will use it.

Bitcoin offers an edge in the following areas- censorship resistance, lack of trust, anonymity (when used properly, or used in ways that aren't done now, but are easy to add on). If you think those aren't important, then it's easy to think Bitcoin will die. That's fine, but you are wrong. Censorship resistance is incredibly important. Maybe not in the US as much (but those who saw Black Friday would realize that's wrong), but certainly in more restrictive parts of the world. There are some pretty ****ty governments out there who are incredibly restrictive on its citizens, and the ability to circumvent that is huge. Even if you feel that the US government isn't one of them (if you don't, you aren't paying attention, but it doesn't matter, we can all agree there are much worse ones). If you have gotten ripped off on the internet, you can see where trust comes into play. Building a system without the expense of manual escrow for trust, and making it optional helps. Avoiding chargebacks is huge in many spots (look at online poker, were chargebacks were a huge expense). Trust goes both ways, as there are complex mechainisms to mitigate trust - I don't have to lock up huge funds on a poker site for a long period of time, I can easily bounce back and forth within minutes, with little trust. I can keep a small portion of my bankroll on a site, then add more as needed, rather than have to wait days through other means. Anonymity is also huge. Sure, Bitcoin is a public ledger. But there are so many ways to obscure this, even though it's not commonly implemented, it can be done, and quite easily. People tend to assume things are safe until proved otherwise, and once they get a wakeup call that they need more privacy, they'll switch to using private means. Not even from governments, but from thugs and criminals who can identify large holders, and hold them hostage until coins are released (see Hal Fenney).

There's a lot of potential here, even if Bitcoin never grows beyond a black market currency. Though I argue if it does ever become a de-facto black market currency, it will inevitably grow to the de-facto currency of the world, just because there will be so much demand for it.