Bitcoin Conference London 15-16 September 2012 | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin Conference London 15-16 September 2012

bitcoin2012.com

I'm tempted to get some tickets because I've always wondered what RMS talks are like, I'd imagine that they'd be rather critical but I wonder how the audience generally reacts to his somewhat controversial views

You can take a look here: http://audio-video.gnu.org/video/

Can't use bitcoins to buy a conference ticket? I love the irony :)

I laughed, but that's not true. It's the first payment option available: http://bitcoin2012.com/tickets

It's just done manually.

I saw that. But the price is quoted in Euros, not in bitcoins. It is a subtle but relevant difference.

The price is linked to Euro's, because of considerable fluctuation in bitcoin prices over the last few months.

Their reasoning for this is supposedly because their fixed costs are in Euros. Therefore if the price of bitcoin fluctuates, they may not make their money back even if they sell enough tickets, and they don't want to be in a position where they are betting on the price of bitcoin. Ideally, if the bitcoin trading markets were more mature, they could avoid this risk by hedging.

For example, let's say their fixed costs are 21000 EUR, which would require selling 300 tickets to break even. At current prices (8.4 EUR == 1 BTC), 21000 EUR is equal to 2500 BTC. Let's also say that in order to pay back their fixed costs, they must convert any tickets sold in BTC back to EUR at whatever the market price is in the future.

So, assuming they charge 8.4 BTC per ticket, the risk is that the price of BTC goes down when it's time to convert their BTC to EUR. If they sell all 300 tickets, but the price of BTC halves, they may still be in debt 10500 EUR.

If the bitcoin trading markets were more mature, they could hedge against this risk by selling bitcoins short at the time they pay their fixed cost. Then, if the bitcoin price does go down, they will make money on the short sell, and still be able to repay their fixed cost. If the price of BTC goes up - then hopefully they will sell more tickets (since they will be a better deal now), in order to make up for the money they lost on the short sell.

Hopefully next year they'll be able to charge tickets in BTC. Trading markets will hopefully allow more complex trades which facilitate hedging. Also hopefully the price will be more stable, which will reduce the need for hedging.

Makes sense. The thing is mature markets also rely on the currency value fluctuating within narrow ranges. Say, in the plain old currency central banks act (fiddling with interest rates, etc) to keep currency value "stable". Given Bitcoin's decentralized nature, markets will have a hard time trusting it (if ever).

As you said, this is only a qualification of 'mature' markets. Also, central banks do not fiddle with interest rates to keep the value stable. They fiddle with interest rates to stimulate economic growth, which causes instability through bust boom cycles...kicking the can down the road.

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