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Comment by carbocation | Hacker News Reader

I think bitcoin is extremely interesting, but price reports like this are not intellectually stimulating. 1,000 is an arbitrary number. Let's talk about bitcoin, but for a volatile currency, let's not fire off news articles every time it crossed another arbitrary threshold?

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I don't think it's fair to say that it's entirely arbitrary. The 1000$ mark holds significant psychological impact. When the price rises, it's going to be reported on, and it makes sense for it to be reported on when it hits a psychologically important value like 1000$ rather than 947.13$

I don't understand this. "1" BTC is an arbitrary amount as well. Perhaps in the long run, mBTC or uBTC will be the perspective we hold of Bitcoin. From some of what I've read, that was sort of the point of the high divisibility.

It's like birthdays, completely arbitrary - yet we instill it meaning.

OK, but there's been an upvoted post on HN for each $100 increment. It's a bit silly.

Exactly. If the goal of bitcoin is to be a great buy/sell commodity, then it's definitely looking like a fun rollercoaster ride!

However if it truly wants to be considered a currency, the developments it needs are more ATMs (like the one Vancouver), more merchants accepting bitcoin, and more adoption in terms of velocity.

Primary value of Bitcoin is being money. To be good money it must be widely valuable, there must be as many hands willing to hold it, as possible. Since the supply is fixed, price must grow. So price acts as an indicator of liquidity. Other functions based on blockchain (contracts, timestamping, escrows etc.) are only valuable if Bitcoin has enormous hashrate and is trusted by everyone as money. Hashrate is supported by high demand for generated bitcoins and desire to make transactions (reflected in voluntary fees).

I wrote about it here: http://blog.oleganza.com/post/66953255676/transactional-curr...

What you say is interesting—so interesting in fact that I submitted your write up just now ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6808420 ). I would much rather read that than see a post about the current exchange rate of Bitcoin.

I waffle on this point. Obviously with limited adoption in terms of actual exchange of goods, $1,000 is an arbitrary threshold. That said, with limite adopton in terms of actual exchange of goods I can't really judge how much bitcoin is worth. I have a good understand of what $1 is work (1/2 of a carton milk, a candy bar, and so on) but really no concept of what a bitcoin buys me. So it makes perfect sense for me to relate its value to something I already understand the value of.

1 BTC is worth 1/20000000 th of the entire BTC economy. The current push in price comes mostly from an uptake in China.

Now that's 1 bn people there, so if it finds broader adoption in the country we could see further price increases (if we divide all Bitcoins that will ever exist by the population of China, everyone there will get 0.02 BTC). So if the current trend holds true and the adoption takes on there.. Now let's say India, Africa or most of south america get wind of it.. Africa in particular has difficulty with local currencies and a relatively good mobile network, so it is well possible and the other countries certainly don't want to be left out either. And then there is Europe and the rest of Asia..

So let's say 5 bn people want some part of it (just to buy 1/2 carton of milk), we are at 0.004 BTC. But then, some are greedy and want more than average, so.. you might get the idea.

Edit: thinking about it, at current price ca. 0.001 BTC / 1/2 carton of milk, you could actually buy all those people one serving (excluding shipping). Now if people want to buy cars or houses or ponies, we have to split that a bit further.

That still brings me back to "I know what a dollar is worth." The wealth will obviously not be evenly spread so figuring out how much each person might have doesn't really help us much, especially not until all bitcoins are mined. What I (and everyone who wants some part of it) want to know is "What does a bitcoin buy me" and right now literally the only benchmark of that for me is the currency which I currently buy things in.

But it's warped because I can't buy things in bitcoin. Not much, anyway. So I don't know what to think about $1,000 = 1 BTC.

Whilst indirectly, you can still purchase pretty much anything in BTC quickly and easily:

http://all4btc.com/ http://www.gyft.com/

For a currency who's primary promise was eliminating the middle man (payment processors, global exchange rates and so on), I find it ironic that it relies heavily on middlemen for adoption.

> 1 BTC is worth 1/20000000 th of the entire BTC economy.

There are only about 12 million BTC. The limit of just under 21 million will be hit in 2140.

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