News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Bitcoin Takes Bigger Wall Street Stage with Smooth CME Debut by sillysaurus3 on Monday December 18, 2017 @11:04AM (#15952551)
It's worth worrying that it won't. There's no upper bound on the price, and everyone who thought BTC wouldn't continue growing exponentially was wrong.

BTC is gearing up to be the biggest financial disaster in history, and it's better to start planning for it now.

Re:Bitcoin Takes Bigger Wall Street Stage with Smooth CME Debut by atentaten on Monday December 18, 2017 @11:38AM (#15952878)
>BTC is gearing up to be the biggest financial disaster in history, and it's better to start planning for it now.

I can see how one can arrive at this sentiment based on how quickly the price has increased, but I wonder how bad it would really be since the vast majority of Bitcoin investment is not debt based. Additionally most people I've talked to on the matter, only invest what they are willing to lose.

Now, if a significant amount of investors get in via margin and other debt-based approaches, then that could be problematic. BTC have seen huge drops in value in the past, how individuals new to the space react is unknown.

Re:Bitcoin Takes Bigger Wall Street Stage with Smooth CME Debut by JumpCrisscross on Monday December 18, 2017 @11:38AM (#15952881)
> BTC is gearing up to be the biggest financial disaster in history

Lots of value evaporating doesn't necessarily make for a disaster. It only does that when it interacts with the larger financial universe in unexpected ways. In countries where people will start missing their mortgage payments as a result of Bitcoin losses, yes, there are systemic risks. In the United States, we're still far from that point.

Re:Bitcoin Takes Bigger Wall Street Stage with Smooth CME Debut by sillysaurus3 on Monday December 18, 2017 @12:31PM (#15953388)
Another concern is that Satoshi probably passed his coins to his heirs. Whoever they are, they could emerge a de-facto world power since they alone control ~5% of wealth.

And there's no way for society to decide that should change. They can act as evil as they want with no fear of losing their coins.

Re:Bitcoin Takes Bigger Wall Street Stage with Smooth CME Debut by dpc_pw on Monday December 18, 2017 @02:33PM (#15954645)
Re:Bitcoin Takes Bigger Wall Street Stage with Smooth CME Debut by mancerayder on Monday December 18, 2017 @06:27PM (#15956405)
The upper bound is how much capital can be deployed to pump it up.

It's one thing if hedge funds are pouring in, another if housewives in Japan (if the press stories are to be believed), but at the end of the day there's a finite amount of capital that will be pumped into it, as capital wants to go to other investments, too.

Re:Bitcoin Takes Bigger Wall Street Stage with Smooth CME Debut by hndamien on Monday December 18, 2017 @07:21PM (#15956733)
All that will happen is that the growth rate will slow down. When that happens, the opportunity for people to spend on investments that offer a greater return on investment will become attractive to holders.
Re:Bitcoin Takes Bigger Wall Street Stage with Smooth CME Debut by IamNotAtWork on Monday December 18, 2017 @11:14AM (#15952633)
Are you just sad that you didn't buy in a year ago? Don't worry, me too. :) Heck, my brother in law who is a lawyer and don't know anything about blockchain bought some and my niece's college education is paid for now. LOL.
Re:Bitcoin Takes Bigger Wall Street Stage with Smooth CME Debut by deadmetheny on Monday December 18, 2017 @12:02PM (#15953099)
Ah yes, the "you're just jealous" argument, champion to people who are too blind to realize that BTC has serious downsides. Look man, a massive speculative bubble popping is gonna have huge repercussions to a non-trivial number of average non-techie people who read an article about how some nerd got rich on digital Beanie Babies and threw their life's savings at it. Those are the people who are gonna get fucked, not the people over at Bitcoin Idiots, LLC who can afford to lose some fun money betting on Internet bucks.
Re:Bitcoin Takes Bigger Wall Street Stage with Smooth CME Debut by mrlinx on Monday December 18, 2017 @11:17AM (#15952663)
You should check his comment history, its worth reading.
Re:Bitcoin Takes Bigger Wall Street Stage with Smooth CME Debut by pyvpx on Monday December 18, 2017 @11:19AM (#15952678)
has he successfully converted his bitcoin into "fiat" currency? or does the college accept and denominate tuition in BTC?
Re:Bitcoin Takes Bigger Wall Street Stage with Smooth CME Debut by pbrb on Monday December 18, 2017 @11:45AM (#15952952)
It's pretty easy to do - sell for fiat on any exchange that trades in it, and deposit fiat to your linked bank account. Unless you're unloading millions, then you're better off doing an auction.
Re:Bitcoin Takes Bigger Wall Street Stage with Smooth CME Debut by wakkaflokka on Monday December 18, 2017 @12:05PM (#15953126)
Serious question - is there any doubt that one can successfully convert BTC to fiat? I've done it many times on the major exchanges (Gemini & Coinbase) with absolutely no problem.
Re:Bitcoin Takes Bigger Wall Street Stage with Smooth CME Debut by pyvpx on Tuesday December 19, 2017 @04:09AM (#15958818)
because past $100K it becomes difficult rising to impossible from every person I've directly spoken to