Bitcoins: The future of money?
 

"The FBI's shutdown of Silk Road rekindles discussion about the prospects for that
site's preferred currency."

See:

http://www.zdnet.com/debate/bitcoins...oney/10128933/



So, will BitCoin (or something similar) ever become a replacement for "conventional"
money? Or will it just be a niche phenomenon?

Well, who know? Of course, as I see it, BitCoin won't be acceapting easily in developing countries, where most transition is physical. Beside, trust is also an important elements. Goverment will always try to control the money flow.

Also, if you want something really invisible, choose fragtual diamond or somekind of gemstone.

Remember bitcoins crash last july? Bitcoins became worth over 200$, then crashed to 60$ in one fell swoop. During the crash, the biggest bitcoin exchange marketplace decided to arbitrarily stop transactions. This tells you two things. It's a volatile currency, and for whatever reason they want, bitcoins exchange can decide to shut off and leave you with worthless currency if they feel like it. The currency is backed by nothing. That being said, real life currency isn't any better, something like the Cyprus bank could happen here too. Some people think gold is the perfect currency, in an ideal world it's not a bad idea. But if something really bad happened tomorrow, something apocalyptic, people wouldn't care about gold. People would want food, lighters, antibiotics, gas, etc, those are the only things that keep value no matter what.

Money is a medium. And like all medium, it's unstable and better handled physically.

As a bitcoin trader myself, no, not in its current form. Especially now that Silk Road is dead.

I had never heard of Bitcoins until a month or so ago, and it looked like an incredible ripoff in conversion to me.

I don't get it...... Bitcoins? What is that?

^Electronic money of some sort

^ it can be hacked right?

What exactly do you mean by "hacked"? If you mean forge or compromise in some way, well the whole point of a (cryptographic) currency is that it is hard for anyone to forge or spend twice. The software itself was praised for its elegance, but everything has weaknesses.

I suggest if anyone is unsure they start by reading or watching the video about it, then if you're still not sure how it works or what it is, ask questions. :)

^ Anyway... don't like it..... I still prefer carrying cash.

I liked how I able to hold my money, count it with my hands and carry it anywhere I want. Bit coin is like points in an online game that only has value in a virtual world.

I'm once became happy that I was a millionaire in an online game, buying stuffs by the millions. But thinking about that time, no matter how rich you are in a virtual world... you can't really tell how rich you really until you have that visual cash be bought by real, physical money.... A fact that a million virtual cash only values a couple dollars.

Cash is just worthless paper, in the wrong circumstances. Same as electronic money. (Including that in your bank account.)

The whole based of Money is the Agreement of a Society about its value as a medium that acts like a bridge between mulitiply activities of Economy, basically is sell-and-buy relationship. So what matter is Trust. Isn't they write "In God We Trust" on the Dollar. "God", my friends, only exist when there are faith. And on this case, faith on a country or the world economy. But as history has put it, faith is unstable in front of the winds of history.

You can give me all your "worthless paper" then?:p

Better trust gold and silver.

I guess if Bitcoin doesn't work out, there's always BertCoin! :)


http://i.imgur.com/2SXNG4F.gif


http://i.imgur.com/dpYh5Yb.gif

Bitcoin or some clone of it could become a standardized black market currency, but there's no way it'll become a currency for normal every day usage. Even if there's a move to digital currency it'd be some government/bank controlled one.

Ignoring the issues of infrastructure i.e. who controls the servers controls the money supply and other hacking issues the fundamental problem with bitcoin is its finite supply. If we assume a growing economy then a money supply that does not increase in sync results in the value of goods and services declining because more goods are chasing the same amount of money. This leads to a decline in prices and which is bad for profits, investments and eventually general spending as people will hoard money in the hopes of getting a better deal tomorrow.

I suppose you could fix this problem by adding new denominations to the bitcoin currency but then if you keep expanding the money supply you just get the same issues that come with other fiat currencies.

The important point to grasp is that people often think that price stability comes from a fixed money supply but really fixed prices come when the money supply matches the size of the economy relatively speaking. If money supply grows faster than the economy you get inflation and if the economy grows greater than money supply you get deflation.

potatoes!!!!!

Tide!!!:

http://www.pe.com/local-news/local-n...drugs-cash.ece

Quote:

"Strange as it may seem, detergent — specifically liquid Tide and Tide Pods — has
become a currency on the black market nationwide. It is traded for drugs or sold far
below retail prices at open swap meets and clandestine meetings, law enforcement and
retail officials say."