Bitcoin is about to hit $30. Here are comments from 200 days ago | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin is about to hit $30. Here are comments from 200 days ago

26 pointsXcelerate18 comments

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4330932

I don't want to be That Guy, but this isn't the first time Bitcoin hit $30.

What's this, like a stock pump and dump attempt?

It doesn't matter if bitcoin is high or low against USD. All that matters is stability. It's supposed to be a currency not an investment.

One has to wonder if this is a statement of bitcoin's instability, or a symptom of instability in the USD.

I think it's all about the throughput. How much money can I put in, move, then successfully take out. The market cap is bigger than it ever has been.

It is not supposed to be anything. If you understand why it's useful more in the future than it is today, you can treat it as an investment. If you see how it helps sending EUR to USD without paying 30 EUR conversion fees, you can use it as a payment channel (bitcoin-central.net - BTC - coinbase.com). Or use blockchain to register your bets, contracts or play in a provably fair casino. If it's not yet very good as a currency, all that matters is what it is good at already.

http://blog.oleganza.com/post/43384713336/philosophy-of-bitc...

"It is not supposed to be anything."

It's supposed to be a currency, arguments to the contrary are hand waving. Maybe Bitcoin's primary role in history will be as a placebo treatment for mild cases of paranoia. That certainly wasn't the intention though.

I really don't understand the whole Bitcoin thing and I'm not sure why people keep posting how much they're trading for. Is the government going to drop the USD in favor of bitcoin or something?

What if I told you that Bitcoin SOLVES counterfeiting?

What if I then told you that the US government spends billions of dollars fighting counterfeiting and governments like North Korea profit by printing USD.

Cheaper on the budget. Safer on the homefront. How could they say no?

(That being said, them actually accepting Bitcoin is insane, using the technologies Bitcoin has pioneered though... That could happen.)

Bitcoin doesn't solve counterfeiting, it just moves the goalpost from printing to hacking.

Bitcoin has cryptographic assurances against counterfeiting. Stealing money is still a problem.

You can hijack the entire currency with enough processing. Very hard? Yes. Still counts as counterfeiting.

Show me one example of the Bitcoin protocol being hacked.

The hacking you speak of is more akin to bank robbery.

A lot of bitcoin's value comes from being decentralized by design and therefore out of the government's reach.

And I still haven't managed to buy any. I thought I'd have a go, solely in the spirit of exploration, but after about six hours the closest I came was finding that sending a load of personal documents to the Japanese website formerly known as Magic The Gathering Online Exchange would perhaps enable me to transfer in some "fiat" money from somewhere.

I understand that acquiring BitCoins might actually be practical for US residents, but it seems pretty difficult here in the UK.

Link to various Bitcoin markets: http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/

I enjoy http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com

Looks like the price is rising faster than its relative value, in my opinion. This looks like a bubble to me. Unless Bitcoin's value has somehow almost doubled in the past two months. I think I might buy some bitcoins after the bubble pops.

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