“Will Work for Bitcoin” Coder Says Most Using It as Investment Vehicle | Hacker News Reader

“Will Work for Bitcoin” Coder Says Most Using It as Investment Vehicle

betabeat.com

24 pointscitadrianne18 comments

That's the rational thing to do if you expect the value of bitcoins to keep skyrocketing.

Ultimately, people will want to cash out. If they cash out by trading for dollars, bitcoin will fail. If they cash out by buying stuff, we'll have a new currency on our hands.

There are no transaction costs with Bitcoin, or close to zero, and that is great, nor forex. It is also instant, unlike wire transfers.

What must happen with bitcoin now (I think), is people with large stashes of Bitcoin, or anyone that wants it to see it succeed must give it away to people who promote it, in the same way PayPal gave $5 to new sign-ons.

One way to do this is by having a site that authenticates against a twitter account, and then posts a promotional tweet to collect free bitcoin. The tweet is checked that it stays on a timeline for a length of time. If it does, the tweeter gets their free coin (and their followers can emulate.) The account is then nullified, or perhaps another promotional tweet after a set time with more free coin.

Ways to guage a twitter account's worth: is it verified, its metrics, or through APIs http://www.retweetrank.com/view/api http://developer.klout.com/api_gallery http://dev.peerindex.net/docs/profile/show

Site takes a commission. I just mentioned this to Mt Gox to consider something like this.

Add: the site can have a leaderboard: who gave the most coin away (# and $ at the time) and to whom, and how many signups were created as a result (and subsequent follower-follower signups.) People that reach the top have traded their coin for merit and can champion the bitcoin reality.

From pyramid to sphere. I have the name bit rific if anyone wants to build it with me.

I'd be willing to work at a lesser rate for bitcoins too. The problem is that the overlap of people that want web/social media crawlers and/or data analysis and the people that are willing to spend bitcoins to hire them are effectively nil.

I am sure the people investing the the Securities Exchange Company aiming to get in on the new international reply coupons also thought of it as an investment vehicle...

Pretty sure governments will muscle in on bitcoin. The way governments work is by ensuring that they exist to mediate, ostensibly to streamline and maintain a higher authority in case things go wrong. I wonder how long it will be until these middle-men want-in on this as well. Governments hate it when independent, optimal and thinking networks with free nodes emerge. On the other hand the potential to abuse the system exists as well.

I'd be willing to sell shares in my startup for bitcoin. I can then pay developers with the proceeds to guys like Nick. I can then collect btc payments to my startup in order to pay back investors. It's a viable system. Beats having to go to the same old cast of characters for investment. Customers can become shareholders too. Bitcoin is family.

edit: can be family

Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme. Its value is driven by pure speculation and nothing more. When the music inevitably stops and everyone rushes for the exits, any 'family' left holding the bag is going to be well and truly screwed.

Same is true of, gold, silver, and all those pieces of paper. Money is only valuable if you and everyone else believes in it. Conversely I believe in the US dollar, and not bitcoin, for a myriad of reasons. I think that's the real difference between a speculator and investor. The investor believes, the speculator doesn't, and one of them will be right at any given point in time.

Rum and tobacco were also currencies and had unarguable, inherent value across borders, just like bitcoin.

The problem is everything you mentioned except for bitcoin has something backing it up. Gold and silver have thousands of years of history being regarded as valuable backing them up (rare metals with pleasing qualities/applications). And those "pieces of paper" have governments (with guns) backing them up. Unlike bitcoin this makes these items far less likely to have a Wile E. Coyote moment.

Gold and silver situation is a bit weird for me. Sure, it's got some market value in general, but how much is it worth accumulated in a single place? I believe it would be "worth more" distributed between many people. Large parts of the reserve cannot be spent, used, distributed in any significant way. So how much that gold backing part of the system really worth?

If we go in the direction of crazy theories - who can assure that the gold backing the system is actually there? ;) You have to believe a lot of the system works correctly, to believe in the value of paper money. Not saying that it's reasonable to suspect otherwise, but at the moment it seems we use money, because the government tells us it's OK to do so and what the value is. Is it really the gold backing anything in that case?

Sure, it's got some market value in general, but how much is it worth accumulated in a single place?

The same as its market value in general.

Large parts of the reserve cannot be spent, used, distributed in any significant way. So how much that gold backing part of the system really worth?

I believe you're referring to the U.S. gold reserve at Fort Knox?

That reserve is worth its value to the owners (U.S. citizens) as an asset. For example, your family might have an expensive set of solid gold and silver cutlery, continually handed down. It's never actually used, and is kept stored away. However, if one generation of your family loses absolutely everything, at least the gold and silver cutlery would be one valuable asset your family could cash in on.

Not saying that it's reasonable to suspect otherwise, but at the moment it seems we use money, because the government tells us it's OK to do so and what the value is. Is it really the gold backing anything in that case?

President Nixon removed the U.S. dollar convertibility into gold in 1971. It is not gold backing that currently gives the dollar its value.

Gold and silver is useful for other things and will never be worth zero.

Have a look into bitcoin and you'll see it's useful for things that conventional currencies aren't well suited for..

The value of the Bitcoin currency is driven by speculation. The value of the Bitcoin system-for-distributed-transactions is driven by utility.

If you don't trust the value of the Bitcoin currency, that doesn't stop you from using the Bitcoin system as a replacement for Paypal et al. for 1) anonymous transactions, 2) payments to a trusted recipient, and 3) micropayments.

Exchanges will compete to convert Bitcoin into your "trusty" local peso/lira/drachma, although their primary customers will probably be speculators for the near future.

"A de facto currency is a unit of money that is not legal tender in a country but is treated as such by most of the populace. The United States dollar and the European Union euro are the most common de facto currencies."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_facto_currency

Bitcoin could become a world de facto currency. A crypto one. That's the counter reality to the one you propose.

So could Beanie Babies. Or comic books. Or baseball cards. Or tulips. Or any given penny stock. But they won't, and neither will bitcoin.

I'd be willing to work for BitCoin, too. But preferrably for smaller projects atm. I am not sure yet how to best convert BTC to EUR - did some trades on BitMarket.eu, but it is pretty low volume.

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