Agreed. I don't trust the dollar as investment and I don't understand why people consider bitcoin something worth investing in. Sure, for trading stuff between techies it looks fair enough but it'll never reach the general public.
The whole banking system works hard to earn the customers' trust and any small mistake damages that. Bitcoin doesn't provide any assurances, support, etc...
Looks like another fad the computer industry created for its own amusement. Let's see how long it lasts. I'm sure all the revolutionaries out there fighting the man will come up with solutions for the trust issues.
>I don't understand why people consider bitcoin something worth investing in
You don't understand the power of frictionless micropayments and monetary privacy?
Re:Bitcoin falls from $266
by altcognito on Wednesday April 10, 2013 @11:53PM
(#5529897)
Frictionless? Isn't the very definition of how bitcoin is secure the opposite of frictionless? It derives it's value from friction.
I was referencing the fact with Bitcoin micropayments are practical because there are no transaction fees.
The main friction IMO is exchanging fiat currency for btc. It's ridiculous. Sign up for gox, send a bunch of private identifying documents (to a site that's been hacked), send a wire transfer, wait a week... craziness.
I wanted to buy $10k of btc last week @ ~$100, I didn't have any open accounts anywhere, so I used coinbase... which limited the amount I could buy. I ended up with 0.2 BTC, which didn't post in my account until late last night.
Looking at today's quotes, it probably for the best.
For now. Once mining becomes slow enough (and it has to slow down over time), exchanges will have to charge transaction fees to make the "proof of work" worth their while.
You don't need to use an exchange to make a payment, though.
Re:Bitcoin falls from $266
by bill_is_here on Friday April 12, 2013 @06:04AM
(#5537533)
Its actually the miners who will be getting the transaction fees once the supply of bitcoins stops growing.
Who did yell this time?
>>the more people around the world who adopt it
Who shall be those people?
Are we, by any chance, thinking that we should count the people in mining bitcoins or adopting a currency based on algorithms(let alone the talk about encryption/bits/bytes/code) which they do not have an iota of idea about?
Or are we considering that "naah, it's not for them 'non-techies' anyway!"?
Well, in that case it's actually fine if bitcoin is to be restricted to paying for goods/services that we (the 'techies') shall buy and we'll buy from us (the 'techies'). But then, this will go nowhere.
But 'they' can buy the bitcoins at those exchanges, can't they? No, they shall not buy sth fluctuating in price(paid in dollars and rupees) which shames any share price fluctuation or currency value change except Zimbabwean dollar. And certainly not sth that they do not understand and sth where they have to remember a cryptic and random long string and if they misplace it, forget it or even change it accidentally - well, they just lost all their bitcoins!
There's no support number to call to, no branch manager to go to and tell "well, I just happened to have my id/pwd forgotten".
To me it doesn't even look like a currency. It just looks like, from an average person's point of view, another merchandise(if we do not call dollar a merchandise)/online-'stuff' that people(better say enthusiasts) are buying. Like some share which are generated by running more and more computers.