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#201 |
Fiend God
Join Date: Oct 2005
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Posts: 78,460
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It has a value like any currency. Unfortunately that value can fluctuate wildly, and it seems that for high amounts it's hard to convert BTC to USD; tippit's claim nonwithstanding.
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#202 |
Master Poster
Join Date: Dec 2002
Posts: 2,183
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My point would be that if I as a person recognize that it stores no value, and that I would only use it for a temporary method of purchase (ie, buy a bitcoin in the morning, use it for a bitcoin purchase, and convert rest back to dollars), who would sell me that bitcoin in exchange for dollars? Who would keep a store of bitcoins (like a bank) for me to use when the value of the coin fluctuates so much?
I don't know if there is a business model that can operate for long term if their assets fluctuate as rapidly as the bit coin price. |
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#203 |
beer-swilling semiliterate
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Connecticut, or King Arthur's Court. Hard to tell sometimes.
Posts: 25,068
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There are only two ways to get BTC; mine them or buy them. Mining is quite expensive in terms of hardware and electricity and only people with high-end computer setups are doing it any more, pretty much; to buy BTC, you have to either know someone who has some or go through an exchange.
So, in our hypothetical, you buy, say, 10 BTC at the now-current rate of around $340 per through an exchange. You now have $3,400 worth of BTC; you cheerfully head off to eBay to go buy that jetski you saw there. But when you go to check out, you're told you only have $3,000 worth of BTC because the value of a BTC has dropped to $300 since you made your purchase. (To be fair, that much of a drop that quickly might be an exaggeration, but not much of one.) Again, to be entirely fair, there are positive swings of value for BTC, but the volatility of the price makes any kind of ordinary day-to-day usage extremely problematic. You simply don't know, when you go to sleep, if you'll have enough to buy your jetski when you wake up. |
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#204 |
Master Poster
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 2,941
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That's a great argument. I'm totally convinced and concede the point. However it seems then that toilet paper is by far the superior choice. You can wipe your behind much better, burn it for fire, attach to a stick as a torch, use it as a napkin, even write on it like a scroll. Seriously though stop making such blatantly ridiculous arguments.
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#205 |
Fiend God
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#206 |
Master Poster
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 2,941
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__________________
Straw Man, Ad Hominem, Moving the Goalposts, and a massive post count are all good indicators that a poster is intellectually dishonest and not interested in real discussion. Feeding trolls only makes them stronger, yet it is so hard to refrain. |
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#207 |
Fiend God
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#208 |
Skeptical about skeptics
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: 31°57'S 115°57'E
Posts: 13,880
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Obviously! You would have everybody believe that bitcoin prices will never rise again and that there will never be any satisfactory ways to spend or exchange bitcoins.
The problem is that you are not a fortune teller. Anybody who was not acting out of sheer blind prejudice would have observed some inverse relationship between bitcoin prices and news about the state of the economy. While the PIIGS and Cyprus were in the news daily, the price of bitcoin soared. With news about Europe on the economic front relatively scarce and the US economy having improved somewhat, fewer people are turning to bitcoin and this shows in the price. As far as spending bitcoins are concerned, you should monitor the progress of the Ripple system. https://wiki.ripple.com/Main_Page Under this system, a payer can send payment in one currency and the payee receive it in another currency (or even commodities like gold) and the network does the necessary conversions. Ripple Labs claims to have to have signed its first two U.S. banks to use the Ripple protocol for real-time, cross-border payments. (https://ripple.com/blog/ripple-labs-...-two-us-banks/) If this system continues to expand, it could revolutionize the banking system altogether. |
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"The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent." - Galbraith, 1975 |
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#209 |
Daydreamer
Join Date: Jul 2008
Posts: 8,044
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Back up to around US$350.
(Isn't there some informal rule that someone has to mention the price at least once per page?) |
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"That is just what you feel, that isn't reality." - hamelekim |
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#210 |
Skeptical about skeptics
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: 31°57'S 115°57'E
Posts: 13,880
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I can't believe that you would endorse such a desperate overreach.
Just to put this silly nonsense to rest, currency notes make for very lousy toilet paper - especially the plastic variety that are used in Australia and other parts of the world. I wouldn't be burning them in the fireplace either since I don't know what noxious fumes would be produced. If hyperinflation or some other problem rendered currency notes worthless, they would have no use whatsoever. Rather, disposing of the old notes would be the problem. |
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"The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent." - Galbraith, 1975 |
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#211 |
Master Poster
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Posts: 2,725
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"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." - Lord Acton |
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#212 |
Fiend God
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#213 |
Fiend God
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#214 |
Skeptical about skeptics
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"The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent." - Galbraith, 1975 |
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#215 |
beer-swilling semiliterate
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Connecticut, or King Arthur's Court. Hard to tell sometimes.
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So what is the intrinsic value of a Bitcoin?
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#216 |
Skeptical about skeptics
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"The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent." - Galbraith, 1975 |
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#217 |
Fiend God
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#218 |
Master Poster
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 2,725
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The intrinsic value of bitcoin, is nil. The extrinsic value stems from the fact that some people (not me personally) are willing to voluntarily accept it in exchange for money or goods and services. The fact that this de-centralized electronic "ledger system" works over the internet and great distances coupled with the fact that people are voluntarily willing to accept it makes it unique. At the very least, one is able to transfer funds into and out of oppressive political regimes in ways that are unprecedented before ever in human history. Of course, you have to expose yourself to some of the risk of holding such a digital "asset", but it still obviously has extrinsic value to some.
I do not agree with psion's assessment that the concept of intrinsic value is "fictitious". The intrinsic value of the USD while not nil, is essentially next-to-nil. Of course like bitcoin it also has extrinsic value, but for reasons related to military violence and the threat of such violence, the force of legal tender law, and conventional acceptance as a result of these two forces. |
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"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." - Lord Acton |
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#219 |
Fiend God
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Well if you think about it, gold has no intrinsic value, either. Nothing does unless you give it one.
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#220 |
Master Poster
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 2,725
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That's ridiculous, as clearly there are things which either all, or virtually all people believe are valuable in and of themselves, not necessarily for what they represent or are symbolic of. Even if one of these things is not particularly valuable to you, as long as it has value to most others, you will find it valuable as well. The subset of these things which are not symbolic tokens can be said to have "intrinsic" value.
To discount this concept in favor of some absolute nihilistic concept of everything having subjective value isn't very useful when describing the real world. |
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"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." - Lord Acton |
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#221 |
Fiend God
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#222 |
Skeptical about skeptics
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__________________
"The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent." - Galbraith, 1975 |
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#223 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Jun 2010
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#224 |
Master Poster
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 2,941
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The only things that i would consider to have intrinsic value are those necessary to sustain life such as water.
Everything else has only as much value as the average person gives it. An abacus was once very useful and now not at all. Similarly things that are valuable today like a combustion engine car may be worthless in 100 years. Further just because someone is crazy and pays $1million for some actors used tissue doesn't make it worth $1million. I'd claim that most things value is what the average of a large group would pay for it. |
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Straw Man, Ad Hominem, Moving the Goalposts, and a massive post count are all good indicators that a poster is intellectually dishonest and not interested in real discussion. Feeding trolls only makes them stronger, yet it is so hard to refrain. |
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#225 |
Master Poster
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 2,725
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Indeed, the value of anything in the absence of people to value it is nothing, but neither is that a particularly useful concept. The concept of intrinsic value depends upon people. The fact that you, someone who values things, needs food to stay alive, means that at the very least, food has intrinsic value. So do the things required to make or prepare food, and to make the job of making food or the things that make food easier. Of course, there are a lot of other things that have intrinsic value, like water, shelter, tools, commodities, etc... The fact that the value of these things may vary from person to person, or from time to time, doesn't mean they don't have intrinsic value.
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"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." - Lord Acton |
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#226 |
Master Poster
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 2,725
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Anything tangible which has some property of being useful or appreciable by a large number of people has intrinsic value.
This does not include things with token or symbolic value. This doesn't mean that tokens can't have value, or that they can't even have some limited intrinsic value, but their value is "extrinsic", or more subjective and dependent on other things.
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"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." - Lord Acton |
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#227 |
Fiend God
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#228 |
Skeptical about skeptics
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Be careful not to conflate "economic value" with "non-economic value". The economic value of something is what people are willing to give in exchange for it.
Water is indeed necessary to sustain life and is priceless when your life is on the line. However if you live in an area where water is plentiful and freely available to everybody then you are not going to be able to sell that water so its economic value is not very high. Similarly, you might live in a desert and have access to the only source of water there but if there is nobody around to buy that water off you then you can't say it has economic value. There mere fact that the value of something can vary between large limits depending on location and circumstances gives lie to the concept of "intrinsic value". |
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"The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent." - Galbraith, 1975 |
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#229 |
Daydreamer
Join Date: Jul 2008
Posts: 8,044
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"That is just what you feel, that isn't reality." - hamelekim |
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#230 |
Skeptical about skeptics
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"The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent." - Galbraith, 1975 |
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#231 |
Fiend God
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#232 |
Illuminator
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#233 |
beer-swilling semiliterate
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Connecticut, or King Arthur's Court. Hard to tell sometimes.
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Aaaaaaaand... the big boys are in the ring now.
There are not one, but two competing digital wallets out: Apple Pay (backed by you-know-who) and CurrentC (backed by Walmart). Whichever system wins in this latest tech clash, Bitcoin loses. Once one or the other (or both) of these gain wide acceptance for e-commerce, BTC will be relegated to a niche product for people who want anonymity (a small but nonzero segment of the market). http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/spend...now/ar-BBcf6xs |
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#234 |
Skeptical about skeptics
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__________________
"The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent." - Galbraith, 1975 |
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#235 |
beer-swilling semiliterate
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Connecticut, or King Arthur's Court. Hard to tell sometimes.
Posts: 25,068
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I notice you didn't comment on Apple Pay, which is;
1. already rolled out (CurrentC doesn't roll out till January) 2. considered to be more secure than CurrentC anyway and 3. receiving positive reviews from retailers and users Anything to add? |
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#236 |
Fiend God
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#237 |
Skeptical about skeptics
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Apple Pay seems to be a little better than CurrentC - as long as you don't wish to go shopping at Walmart or any of the other retailers that have signed onto MCX.
But when I can simply wave my Mastercard Debit Card at a Paypass terminal and not press a single button, neither system seems particularly tempting to me. Either way, these are just alternative methods of having national currency deducted from your bank account. Maybe mobile phone apps will eventually phase out debit/credit cards but not as long as we have competing systems like these. These retailers would have been better off getting on to the Ripple network which is more universal and can deal with multiple currencies (including the crypto currencies). You could pay with bitcoins (or even gold) and the retailer receive USD in a matter of seconds. |
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"The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent." - Galbraith, 1975 |
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#238 |
Skeptical about skeptics
Join Date: Sep 2010
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Bitcoin can be as secure as you want to make it but it doesn't reward the careless.
I think I have made it pretty clear in the past that I don't see a major role for bitcoin in retail spending (not unless something like Ripple takes off). Its primary role is as a buy and hold commodity. |
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"The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent." - Galbraith, 1975 |
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#239 |
Master Poster
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 2,725
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"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." - Lord Acton |
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#240 |
Philosopher
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