Command-line Bitcoin price board

Re:Command-line Bitcoin price board by Jtsummers on Thursday November 21, 2013 @02:30PM (#6776815)

Volatility won't "go away", but it may diminish over time if bitcoin becomes a currency and not a commodity. It will, however, still be a deflationary currency which means the value of an amount of bitcoin should trend upwards. So if this gains traction as a currency and the speculators stop rushing the numbers up higher than what the economy can actually support, BTC might find a stable deflation rate and its volatility should diminish. (I'm actually very skeptical of both deflationary currencies and bitcoin in particular, but this is the bitcoin proponents' theory as I understand it.)

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Re:Command-line Bitcoin price board by gnaritas on Thursday November 21, 2013 @06:09PM (#6778197)

To think bitcoin can acquire a stable deflation rate is to assume that the economy stops cycling, that's simply not going to happen. Every boom will cause a massive deflation period, it can't be stable.

Speculation is the least of bitcoin's problems. I think a crypto-currency is inevitable, but it'll be one that has a mechanism in it to inflate and deflate to match the demand for currency in the market. During a boom there's a higher demand for currency and the supply must increase if prices are to remain stable, otherwise deflation is going to happen in an amount that matches the boom; that's not stable.

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Re:Command-line Bitcoin price board by lectrick on Thursday November 21, 2013 @11:49PM (#6779345)

So you're saying the Fed prints dollars by the millions during booms and destroys them again by the millions during busts?

Who cares if prices stay stable or not? The value represented by whatever price is attached to those things won't change

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Re:Command-line Bitcoin price board by gnaritas on Friday November 22, 2013 @11:22AM (#6781697)

The government has more than one control over the current money supply, fractional reserve lending allows the money supply to grow and shrink as demand requires while the fed attempts to maintain an overall small inflation rate to avoid the ill effects of deflation.

> Who cares if prices stay stable or not?

Everyone who understand economics even a little bit.

> The value represented by whatever price is attached to those things won't change

People aren't paid in value and they don't spend value, they're paid in currency and they spend currency and they all care that prices are stable because their paychecks aren't going to suddenly change.

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Re:Command-line Bitcoin price board by lectrick on Friday November 22, 2013 @05:43PM (#6784241)

If it is not useful as a value store except to speculators, then it still has plenty of utility as a value transfer mechanism or a universal FOREX.

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Re:Command-line Bitcoin price board by gnaritas on Saturday November 23, 2013 @01:04PM (#6786783)

No one said it didn't have value, merely that it's not a good currency because it won't have a stable value if used as a currency.

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