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Comment by cocktailpeanuts | Hacker News Reader

I have some tens of thousands of dollars in bitcoin, and I keep track of all the Bitcoin/Blockchain news because I do think the technology has potential.

However my impression after following all these "bitcoin influencer" people on Twitter is: all they talk about is how Bitcoin will take over the world, again and again, and again, and again.

They don't even try to come up with a new spin. It's always the same message, they basically write blog posts and articles about how Bitcoin is a game changer, yada yada.

I expected to gain some insights following these people, as in they would actually come up with some fresh ideas, etc. But no, all they do is just the rehash of the same stuff.

It reached the point where I feel like I'm going through the movie "groundhog day", so I unfollowed all these people and only follow a couple of bitcoin related blogs.

Seriously, the circle jerking in the bitcoin community is too excessive.

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Anyone who is involved in the "bitcoin community" has a vested interest in seeing the price increase. You're never going to get critical or even neutral information from someone with such an obvious conflict of interest.

This is what I don't really get. If you want BTC to make it as a currently, you shouldn't want it to gain value in such a sudden way. I guess the fact that they all have a position book makes that irony clear to me.

Yes! This! For actual, practical use, you want price stability. Bitcoin supply grows steadily at decreasing rate. So the system is somewhat deflationary, by design. But the bubbles have been caused by speculation, and outright fraud. I've read that Mt Gox (or someone who compromised it) caused the bubbles in 2013-2014.

Who wouldn't want to make money simply by having money? Of course it has to end one day.

Would you rather see your store of value increase in value or get devalued?

The beauty of Bitcoin is that it behaves like a successful stock, but also as a successful currency.

The problem is speculation. Since it's an "open currency", the price is set by the market.

If every exchange says $1000, then you won't want to buy my Bitcoin for $1200. Supply and demand can cause issues.

For example, Bitcoin rose about 15% when Donald J Trump was elected since he said he wanted to tax remittances. Guess what? You can't tax something that's not controlled by the US government.

> Guess what? You can't tax something that's not controlled by the US government.

Uh... you might want to be a little less brazen and loud about your tax evasion.

Tax evasion is when you make a profit after selling your Bitcoins and don't report it.

I'm a good little US Citizen that always pays his taxes.

Of course you can. You can tax it at the exchange, when it becomes something controlled by the US gov't. And you can tax companies selling products or services for BTC.

You can tax Bitcoin for the US in an Mexican exchange?

No, but Mexico can tax it for Mexico. And then there are international agreements. Any state would love to tax anything that moves and bitcoins are no exception.

Perfectly fair.

Unfortunately, you can't tax against a commodity, it's not currency.

So, it's basically the same as trading Oil or any other basic commodity.

That's because it's a pump and dump scheme. They're just trying to rustle up some new bag holders.

It's not. I use bitcoin to pay for a few online services, including my hosting. I love it. It would be absolutely awesome if bitcoin succeeded, even if the price remained the same (I know it's mathematically impossible, but still). A currency that no single government/entity can stop or freeze. A currency that no government can dilute. It's kind of like digital gold, except the amount of gold in the universe is practically unlimited.

Bitcoin's value comes from it's acceptance and worldwide capability.

There's nothing that can allow you to move money to every country on the planet with such small fees.

However, you are correct. In order for Bitcoin's price to increase, people must value it and more people must use it.

There are plenty of us out there that are holding, have been holding, and don't talk about it much outside of when someone else brings up Bitcoin.

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