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Re:I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in M... by guelo on Sunday June 26, 2011 @05:46AM (#2697745)
If bitcoin was a currency the meal would have been denominated in bitcoins not dollars. Bitcoin is an asset like gold or a stock certificate, not a currency.
Re:I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in M... by beambot on Sunday June 26, 2011 @06:36AM (#2697789)
Following your logic, s/bitcoin/Euro/ would mean that the Euro is not a currency. That's just plain goofiness -- the USD is just the default currency at this establishment.
Re:I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in M... by brown9-2 on Sunday June 26, 2011 @10:14AM (#2698022)
The logic seems to say more that the owner is not treating it as a currency. You can't really define something as a currency or not based on one person's actions.
Re:I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in M... by jalada on Sunday June 26, 2011 @05:48AM (#2697746)
No, only because Bitcoin isn't stable enough right now to know what the price should've been in BTC.
Re:I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in M... by ars on Sunday June 26, 2011 @06:01AM (#2697755)
You mean yes, not no. It's precisely because bitcoins are not stable that bitcoins are not a currency.
Re:I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in M... by tftfmacedo on Sunday June 26, 2011 @07:45AM (#2697854)
You should try living a country with high inflation. People lookup exchange rates every single day.
Re:I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in M... by ars on Sunday June 26, 2011 @08:01AM (#2697869)
And those people do not willingly use that currency - they are forced to by their government.

Whatever currency it is that they are comparing to is the currency they really want to use, and probably do on the black market. I'm also confident that that is the currency they keep (or try to keep) their savings in.

Re:I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in M... by ohashi on Sunday June 26, 2011 @03:06PM (#2698774)
And you see real currencies being used in many of them as black market currencies instead of the national currency. You can also see countries trying to stop inflation by indexing to other, stable, currencies.
Re:I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in M... by mike_esspe on Sunday June 26, 2011 @09:15AM (#2697957)
That is not the problem of stability, that is because the restaurant is paying in USD to their contractors.

This should change in the future.

Re:I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in M... by gvsteve on Sunday June 26, 2011 @03:01PM (#2698749)
If you're trading Bitcoins for a meal, I don't think it really matters if it fits the dictionary definition of a "currency."