(04-12-2016 03:14 PM)CleanSlate Wrote:  Hopped on the bitcoin bandwagon with 1k usd to start with. Using Coinbase.

Question - what's the difference between BTC Wallet and BTC Vault?

You can read up about the Vault on coinbase. It's one of the only services that offer such a concept, and it is a way of storing your coins with supposedly more security, and that means that it takes further verification to get them out and at least a 48 hour waiting period. It could come in handy if you were told the release your bitcoins or you would be shot, because they would have to hold you for at least 48 hours to make sure you accomplish all the steps (and then shoot you after getting your coins).

With the vault, you don't really escape the exchange risk (meaning that the exchange still holds your private keys, rather than you holding the private keys).

I think it remains good and relevant to bat around our various aspects of our personal BTC holdings, personal strategies... including buying/selling strategies in order to attempt to improve our understanding of our BTC positions in comparison with what others are doing... But no real need to reveal exactly how many BTC that we hold (unless we feel like it is a good idea, especially, if we are just beginning to accumulate some kind of a BTC stash).

Anyhow, I have come across quite a few people in BTC forums and also in real life who really seem inclined towards too much risk taking and gambling with their BTC holdings in order to attempt to get rich...

My opinion is that when we use BTC as a vehicle towards gambling we become considerably and too much emotionally invested in becoming rich through BTC. .. then we start doing dumb things and even saying (posting) dumb things because we begin to notice that BTC prices will not go in the direction that we want/bet (for example, we begin to believe that BTC prices are not going up quickly enough).

Frequently, I have to fight back my own inclinations towards attempting to gamble through my BTC allocated funds....

For example, yesterday, BTC prices were hovering around the lower $425s (on Stamp).... and the situation seemed really poised towards moving up.. At that point, I was beginning to consider that the odds were in the 80/20 - ish arena that BTC prices were poised towards going up within the next hour or two. I began to think that I could make some quickie money, if I bet a bit on green... Accordingly, I took about 30% of my BTC allocated fiat, and I used that to buy at around $425.17. Then for about the next hour, prices went up and down and up and down... and I said, "Shit. That is really stupid of me to buy BTC on the way up when my overall BTC philosophy is to buy BTC on the way up and to sell on the way down."

Really at that moment I should have been planning to sell BTC rather than buy.... but to sell only if the BTC price goes up to meet my sell point (which was above $426 at that time)... and I said to myself,

"shit!!! what if BTC prices go down from here, and then I am going to be screwed because I am not going to have very much fiat in my BTC fund to buy BTC (because I had just used 30% of those allocated funds to bet on green, rather than saving those funds in case the short term outcome is red rather than green)..." I reflected that my behavior had been fucking stupid.... for me to take chances with my BTC funds and to be under stress about it... and really, even though the odds had appeared to be 80/20 in favor of Green, I realized that there are a fuckload of BTC price manipulators who want us regular people to bet rather than to have a trading plan (and then those manipulators force BTC prices in the opposite direction of what we had expected).

I said to myself, "fuck, i cannot be gambling with my BTC funds like that." Thereafter, in the next couple of hours, BTC prices kept bouncing back and forth, and little by little I was able to sell back those BTC that I had bought the $425.25 territory (almost no profit.. just purely reallocation of my funds).

Also, even though a few hours later, BTC prices shot up to $430, I had been much relieved to get my BTC portfolio into the proper allocation of selling on the way up and buying on the way down.. in order that I would not be gambling with my btc allocated funds.... .

So, in essence I believe that many of us have an inclination towards gambling with our BTC allocated monies, even when we attempt to be very diligent, disciplined and cautious about following some kind of a pre-formulated buy/sell strategy.

Wow!!!!

It's looking really good and exciting for Bitcoin these days, and it appears that there are five companies working on various implementations of the Lightning network with the some of those implementations projected to go live within a few months.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/gre...1461077424

Decent BTC price movements in recent days and weeks..... and beginning to feel a bit more safe from sub-$400 price territories


$450 and $467 are previous resistance points.... so it will be interesting to make it passed these two resistance points.

Accordingly, it seems that if we can get prices into the $470s or $480s, there could be a decent path towards the $650 arena...

Thoughts, anyone?

The below article gives a pretty decent overview of segregated witness and the anticipated timeline

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments...m_idea_to/

Some credit may go to segregated witness's status in terms of this latest BTC price optimism, no? Currently, as I type, floating in the $447 to $449 territory.

(04-21-2016 03:35 PM)Satoshi Wrote:  

Hi Satoshi:

Have you turned into a troll, or is there some kind of topical meaning behind your posted image?

I'm reading it as a broken record, but really, a few descriptive words from you could be helpful to understand the extent to which you may continue (or not) to act out your butt hurt.

Woops...

Since I had made a duplicate post... I may as well attempt to add a bit of content.


Guys who have been following bitcoin may have recognized that for the past several months there has been a lot of unsuccessful efforts to push BTC prices below $360, then $380, then $400.

There are fundamentals behind these failed attempts at pushing down BTC prices and therefore a certain momentum change in the BTC price direction and also difficulties to go back below those price points.

For example, in retrospect we can come to realize that the price point of $350 had become a pretty solid floor in recent months, and earlier during most of 2015, $200 had become a pretty solid price floor.

We only come to realize some of these matters after the fact, and after we make sure that our perspective has not become too clouded by either being butt hurt or by following various mainstream information sources.

In fact, we may not have realized some of these price dynamics until after reviewing price performance and trade volume spikes along with development fundamentals.

In the past few days, we have had a decent price run up to $452, yet we cannot rest on those kinds of laurels... Even though the momentum looks good, and the odds look pretty decent that we are going to at least toil with the $460s in the coming days, we could also experience a considerable price correction, so we should be prepared for either direction in bitcoin's prices... for example to pick up a few more coins on dips, or to sell a little bit of our investment to protect ourselves.

Personally, I remain disinclined to sell very much because the recent price run up has caused me to stack up quite a bit of fiat in order to be able to buy back in the event of some kind of short term (or even longer term) price correction.

Another bullish bitcoin article for today...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-21...about-soar

go figure.. bullish articles do come out while bitcoin's prices are on the upbound.

(04-21-2016 04:36 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  

(04-21-2016 03:35 PM)Satoshi Wrote:  

Hi Satoshi:

Have you turned into a troll, or is there some kind of topical meaning behind your posted image?

I'm reading it as a broken record, but really, a few descriptive words from you could be helpful to understand the extent to which you may continue (or not) to act out your butt hurt.

Yeah just saying that the record is broken, Jay.

Anyway, do you get any interest on your bitcoins? Can lend them for 0,03% daily interest rate at poloniex. That 10% yearly, quite good.

(04-22-2016 12:53 AM)Satoshi Wrote:  Yeah just saying that the record is broken, Jay.

I still don't quite get the broken record analogy... because bitcoin seems to be quite in a different place.... every month and every year because it is an evolving, developing and ultimately growing system.

On the other hand, my ongoing comments in this thread over the past couple of years may seem like a broken record because I have remained bullish in respects to bitcoin since posting in this thread and have often repeated various bullish ideas (not exclusively bullish, but continuing to invest type of bullish)

(04-22-2016 12:53 AM)Satoshi Wrote:  Anyway, do you get any interest on your bitcoins? Can lend them for 0,03% daily interest rate at poloniex. That 10% yearly, quite good.

This could work for some people who don't mind using some of their BTC to invest in sure fiat returns.... because, as you suggest 10% is nothing to sneeze at, especially when banks are offering very tiny and sometimes even negative interest rates... in regards to fiat.

Part of the problem with this strategy seems to be that a guy does not get paid back from such a Poloniex loan in BTC but instead in fiat.... which could be pretty risky to take those BTC out of commission for the purpose of earning fiat interest, especially if BTC has a few explosive growth periods.. which really seem to becoming higher and higher likelihoods in the near future. ...with the current fundamentals

Personally, I do not invest in bitcoin in order to invest in fiat returns; however, I do measure the status of my BTC portfolio based on fiat value, and yep my BTC portfolio remains to serve as a hedge to my other fiat investments. If anyone were to invest BTC into such a Poloniex loan as you pointed out, they would need to consider such potential10% return as part of their fiat investment portfolio.



By the way, Satoshi, are you considering the Poloniex loan investment? You must consider that to be a fiat investment, as I suggested above, right?... and have you come around to recognize the upside potential of BTC yet (which we have already experienced in the past 8 months), or are you still bearish regarding BTC while it seems to be on the verge of another potential upward explosion... whether that be in the coming weeks or months?

(04-22-2016 11:01 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  I still don't quite get the broken record analogy... because bitcoin seems to be quite in a different place.... every month and every year because it is an evolving, developing and ultimately growing system.

Actually it's not evolving, developing nor growing. It didn't change much at all actually since the blockchain was started.

(04-22-2016 11:01 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  On the other hand, my ongoing comments in this thread over the past couple of years may seem like a broken record because I have remained bullish in respects to bitcoin since posting in this thread and have often repeated various bullish ideas (not exclusively bullish, but continuing to invest type of bullish)

Yes Sir. Your post six months ago are not much different from the post you did yesterday. That's why I'm saying, the record is broken.

(04-22-2016 11:01 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  This could work for some people who don't mind using some of their BTC to invest in sure fiat returns.... blablablablablablablabla and more blablabla

I'm pretty sure if you lend BTC you'll get interest in BTC.

(04-23-2016 08:48 AM)Satoshi Wrote:  

(04-22-2016 11:01 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  I still don't quite get the broken record analogy... because bitcoin seems to be quite in a different place.... every month and every year because it is an evolving, developing and ultimately growing system.

Actually it's not evolving, developing nor growing. It didn't change much at all actually since the blockchain was started.

I don't know why we have a different point of view, here, but it seems that we do. You seem to be failing and/or refusing to recognize a variety of networking and development effects in bitcoin. Surely, these may seem subtle, but they are not... There is no real reason to argue on this point, especially if you are working with the presumption that bitcoin is the same now as it was in 2009 - or even the same as it was in 2013. There has been millions invested and a considerable infrastructure built, but you want to act like none of this exists, it seems?

(04-23-2016 08:48 AM)Satoshi Wrote:  

(04-22-2016 11:01 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  On the other hand, my ongoing comments in this thread over the past couple of years may seem like a broken record because I have remained bullish in respects to bitcoin since posting in this thread and have often repeated various bullish ideas (not exclusively bullish, but continuing to invest type of bullish)

Yes Sir. Your post six months ago are not much different from the post you did yesterday. That's why I'm saying, the record is broken.

Yes, maybe this was your main point, in initially posting the broken record, without further explanation.

I beg to differ regarding the content of my own posts. Even though I remain bullish, and some of my ideas may recirculate, my posts cannot be exactly the same because some of my perspective has changed... Anyhow, seems quite irrelevant, because even though I post a lot, here, I am not the topic of this thread...

(04-23-2016 08:48 AM)Satoshi Wrote:  

(04-22-2016 11:01 AM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  This could work for some people who don't mind using some of their BTC to invest in sure fiat returns.... blablablablablablablabla and more blablabla

I'm pretty sure if you lend BTC you'll get interest in BTC.

Your summarizing my posts as "blablabla and more blablabla" seems to indicate the extent to which you are reading what I am saying or attempting to understand it.

Anyhow, whether you are correct or not regarding Poloniex, I don't give a shit about Poloniex's lending program because I suspect that most lending programs have the potential to 1) tie up your money and 2) potentially put your money at risk from either 3rd parties or loaning out risk... .

Anyhow, I am not interested in complicating my BTC investment any more than it already is in order to attempt to get 10% interest on a loan program.... at least not at this point in my bitcoin investment. I also recognize that some of the bitcoin naysayers and alt coin persuers are frequently attempting to chase a higher percent of return.. Sure, it may work some time, but I am just not interested in complicating my situation more than it already tends to be with other aspects of my juggling my money around.. and other life activities.

I appreciate your posts about this topic, JayJuanGee. Thanks.

I just added bitcoin as a donation option for some of my work. Kept getting more requests for that. Immediately, someone tossed in a generous amount. I'll see how it goes.

(04-24-2016 06:42 AM)Gilders Wrote:  I appreciate your posts about this topic, JayJuanGee. Thanks.

I just added bitcoin as a donation option for some of my work. Kept getting more requests for that. Immediately, someone tossed in a generous amount. I'll see how it goes.

I would like to hear more about your business (work), and how you have incorporated bitcoin and how you consider proceeding with bitcoin acceptance. Do you use the blockchain app or some other app?

Do you have an online component to your business? How are you incorporating the payment mechanisms? Are you the only person who accepts payments on behalf of your business? Do you keep separate accounts or commingle your bitcoin accounts?

On a more personal, how long have you been involved in bitcoin, and if you have been involved for a while, what has been your process of acquiring and/or accumulating bitcoins?

By the way, it is a bit ridiculous how much the GBTC (BTC related stock) investment fund has shot up in the past couple of weeks... If it is not more volatile than regular BTC, it certainly is premium priced. In the past several hours, it shot up to $770, and as I type it is trading at about $736... wowsie!!!


https://tradeblock.com/markets/gbtc/xbt-usd/1d/

Below is a decent article that provides some explanation for the recent and current btc price rise

https://bitconnect.co/bitcoin-news/127/b...-revealed/

(04-25-2016 01:34 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  I would like to hear more about your business (work), and how you have incorporated bitcoin and how you consider proceeding with bitcoin acceptance. Do you use the blockchain app or some other app?

Do you have an online component to your business? How are you incorporating the payment mechanisms? Are you the only person who accepts payments on behalf of your business? Do you keep separate accounts or commingle your bitcoin accounts?

On a more personal, how long have you been involved in bitcoin, and if you have been involved for a while, what has been your process of acquiring and/or accumulating bitcoins?

I run an online service and publish articles, which are funded with donations. I do other things as well, but they're not relevant.

I simply added bitcoin as a donation option. Just to see what would happen. It's the first time I do something with bitcoin. Got a BitGo account to try it out. I'll let donations accumulate there and will transfer them to a personal account later.

I haven't had a reason to spend much time investigating bitcoin. So much else to do. Now that I have set things up, I'll think about it more. Once I have amassed a significant amount of coins, I'll evaluate. To me, it's one of many experiments.

(04-26-2016 04:44 PM)Gilders Wrote:  

(04-25-2016 01:34 PM)JayJuanGee Wrote:  I would like to hear more about your business (work), and how you have incorporated bitcoin and how you consider proceeding with bitcoin acceptance. Do you use the blockchain app or some other app?

Do you have an online component to your business? How are you incorporating the payment mechanisms? Are you the only person who accepts payments on behalf of your business? Do you keep separate accounts or commingle your bitcoin accounts?

On a more personal, how long have you been involved in bitcoin, and if you have been involved for a while, what has been your process of acquiring and/or accumulating bitcoins?

I run an online service and publish articles, which are funded with donations. I do other things as well, but they're not relevant.

I simply added bitcoin as a donation option. Just to see what would happen. It's the first time I do something with bitcoin. Got a BitGo account to try it out. I'll let donations accumulate there and will transfer them to a personal account later.

I haven't had a reason to spend much time investigating bitcoin. So much else to do. Now that I have set things up, I'll think about it more. Once I have amassed a significant amount of coins, I'll evaluate. To me, it's one of many experiments.

Yeah, there is only so much time in the day, but setting up such an account does seem to cause an incentive for you to look into the matter.

When I find people in real life who are interested in finding out about bitcoin, I frequently suggest that they start out small by setting up an account to purchase bitcoin, and then on about a weekly basis invest a small amount that you can afford.. such as $10 per week.. or some other amount that is reasonable for you... over the years, you will likely learn more and be grateful for your early investment, even though it seems a fairly small amount and the price could go either way during the time that you are dollar cost averaging into having a higher stake in it.

Also, I would not expect anyone to have time to read all the posts in this thread, so if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask... and maybe some day (when we reach either $800 or $3k prices), some other RVF guys will chime in, too...

I have a question for all you bitcoin experts on the forum. I got into a discussion with a friend of mine who argued against bitcoin.

My question is, how do people buy products using bitcoin if the prices are always changing. For example I know you use to be able to buy drugs off silk road. So if you were to buy a gram which is $10 where I am, how would the seller on silk road set the price to reflect $10 and how would you know what the bitcoin price was set at?

Another example would be roosh's books. I know he plans on selling his books for bitcoin, how would he set the price if the value of a bitcoin is always changing

The argument he gave was that, if Walmart were to start accepting bitcoin, they would be doing it as a gimmick that benefits them. Say they price things and you go to checkout and it is priced to reflect the value of an actual good. So if you got a widget and it cost $10, Walmart would spot the bitcoin price at its equivalent value in USD but then add their own fee of converting the bitcoin to USD. He says Walmart would never hold bitcoin as it is a volatile currency and that means they would never be able to record a bitcoin value on their books.

Essentially he argues that with credit and debit cards, the merchant pays the fee per transaction but with bitcoin it would be the consumer.

I've tried to google the answer but haven't found something good yet. Best info has been from here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comment...ging_then/

Quote:everything is valued in the local fiat and converted to bitcoin at the point of sale.

How does that work if the value of a bitcoin jumps from say $10 to $1000 within the span of a day continuously as it was when I first saw this thread.

It seems like if you want to buy a widget that was say $100USD you could buy 10 BTC and then wait for its equivalent value to go up until it hits the equivalent value of $100USD and then buy the widget

Another comment

Quote:The same way you set a price in Dollars, Euros, Pesos or any other currency.
Nearly every time you buy something you pay a different price. Consider gasoline, eggs or milk.
If you don't pay the same price in your local currency for basic items like gas, eggs and milk, then the value of your local currency is continuously changing too.
You've come to believe that your currency is stable, and that price of everything else changes. This not not true!
Have you ever heard an old person describe how inexpensive things used to be? Did the value of those things go up, or did the value of the currency go down?
Considering this question is the Matrix-equivalent of taking the red pill. You will probably never consider fiat currency in the same way again...

This is true that prices change but a carton of eggs isn't jumping for 50 cents to 100 dollars in the US, it sticks at say 5 dollars. So if i wanted to buy a carton of eggs with bitcoin am i suppose to go to the store and then wait for the price to jump around until it hits 5 equivalent us dollars and then buy the product?

You raise a few decent points, and others can chime in here too, hopefully, to the extent that they may have their own experiences using bitcoin.

(04-28-2016 01:02 AM)CaptainChardonnay Wrote:  I have a question for all you bitcoin experts on the forum. I got into a discussion with a friend of mine who argued against bitcoin.

There is a lot of misinformation and generalizing... and surely, the bitcoin space continues to evolve too, so there are applications and services that may vary in terms of fees or options for either the consumer or merchant.

I doubt that we should be attempting to make an argument for or against bitcoin based on a variety of user-friendly complications or even confusion within generalizations.. each of us should be able to consider ways in which we may want to use bitcoin.. I don't personally use bitcoin very much in terms of making small purchases, and if I do use it for some kind of a purchase, I replace whatever i use (at least these days, I am attempting to maintain and accumulate bitcoins).

(04-28-2016 01:02 AM)CaptainChardonnay Wrote:  My question is, how do people buy products using bitcoin if the prices are always changing. For example I know you use to be able to buy drugs off silk road. So if you were to buy a gram which is $10 where I am, how would the seller on silk road set the price to reflect $10 and how would you know what the bitcoin price was set at?

Most services will show the price in terms of both dollars and bitcoins, so you can figure out what the conversion rate is and whether you are being charged over or under the current exchange rate. I personally like to use Bitstamp as my measure of current bitcoin price, but some services may peg their rate to another exchange or some conglomerate of exchanges (like an index).

(04-28-2016 01:02 AM)CaptainChardonnay Wrote:  Another example would be roosh's books. I know he plans on selling his books for bitcoin, how would he set the price if the value of a bitcoin is always changing

depending on the service that he uses, he only would have to state the price in dollars and the service will automatically adjust the price according to the current exchange rate with whatever index it uses.

(04-28-2016 01:02 AM)CaptainChardonnay Wrote:  The argument he gave was that, if Walmart were to start accepting bitcoin, they would be doing it as a gimmick that benefits them. Say they price things and you go to checkout and it is priced to reflect the value of an actual good.

Whether you or your friend is adopting this "gimmick" language, the choice of words seem a bit loaded and jaded.

Yeah, I understand that there are a lot of bad players, bad companies and even misleading and deceptive companies, but I doubt that there is any real practical reason to start out with some kind of presumption that businesses are trying to trick you in order to make more profits with bitcoin versus what they would make with fiat or credit cards.

In the end, really you should be able to determine by looking at the price whether you are paying more or less when you use bitcoin, and whether you have an incentive to use bitcoin for your own personal reasons. Like I said, if I ever buy anything with bitcoin, I tend to replace within a short-period of time.

For some of the reasons that you suggest in your posting including bitcoin's volatility, a large number of merchants tend to cash out of bitcoin as soon as they receive it. Accordingly, they have no volatility risk because the payment is converted to fiat right away. That is the choice of the merchant, and there will be some merchants who will choose to hold bitcoin or at least a certain percentage of bitcoin (and some bitcoin merchant services allow for merchants to set the amount of bitcoin that they want to convert immediately to fiat (and along the same line keep in bitcoin). You are also correct for accounting purposes, it is likely a whole hell of a lot easier for merchants to convert 100% to fiat...

(04-28-2016 01:02 AM)CaptainChardonnay Wrote:  So if you got a widget and it cost $10, Walmart would spot the bitcoin price at its equivalent value in USD but then add their own fee of converting the bitcoin to USD.

Whether there is a fee, this is going to vary. Some merchants offer several percentage points discount... so I would not believe any blanket statement regarding some kind of hidden fee, because you can figure out means to check the rate yourself and determine whether you are getting a better deal with bitcoin, an equal deal or a worse deal and if it is still worth it to you to use bitcoin, as opposed to some other payment method.

(04-28-2016 01:02 AM)CaptainChardonnay Wrote:  He says Walmart would never hold bitcoin as it is a volatile currency and that means they would never be able to record a bitcoin value on their books.

I suspect anyone who talks in absolutes. Some merchants do choose to hold some of their bitcoin. I think Overstock is public about holding a certain percentage of their bitcoin proceeds in bitcoin (maybe 10% or something like that, at least they did at one time in the recent past).

(04-28-2016 01:02 AM)CaptainChardonnay Wrote:  Essentially he argues that with credit and debit cards, the merchant pays the fee per transaction but with bitcoin it would be the consumer.

I don't necessarily disagreed that there may be many cases in which accepting bitcoin is better for the merchant than for the consumer, but that does not make bitcoin a bad thing, and each of us should be able to determine the extent to which we may want to hold some bitcoin, in case we want to use it for consumption purposes. Like I said, I don't, but some people do chose to use bitcoin for various consumption purposes.

(04-28-2016 01:02 AM)CaptainChardonnay Wrote:  I've tried to google the answer but haven't found something good yet. Best info has been from here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comment...ging_then/

Quote:everything is valued in the local fiat and converted to bitcoin at the point of sale.

How does that work if the value of a bitcoin jumps from say $10 to $1000 within the span of a day continuously as it was when I first saw this thread.

You are being a bit extreme with your volatility description. Bitcoin did jump from $100 to $1,200 in a couple of months, but not a day. Anyhow volatility could affect your transaction, and possibly each of us needs to get used to measures that we can take to off-set some of the volatility that is likely to continue for many years into the future.

(04-28-2016 01:02 AM)CaptainChardonnay Wrote:  It seems like if you want to buy a widget that was say $100USD you could buy 10 BTC and then wait for its equivalent value to go up until it hits the equivalent value of $100USD and then buy the widget

Again each of us choses how much bitcoin we want to hold, and to determine the extent to which we believe it may appreciate in value. I personally believe that it is going to continue to appreciate in value, but my belief does not mean that it is going to appreciate in value. It could also depreciate in value, and one of the risks of volatility is the asset can go either direction.

One way to consider investing in bitcoin is to start slowly and invest $10 a week or some other amount that you are comfortable with, and then learn more about it as you continue to accumulate some of it and continue to consider whether you should continue to accumulate or disinvest... those are personal choices that depend on a lot of factors including your own risk profile, your income stream, your timeline, and other financial investments, amongst other factors..

(04-28-2016 01:02 AM)CaptainChardonnay Wrote:  Another comment

Quote:The same way you set a price in Dollars, Euros, Pesos or any other currency.
Nearly every time you buy something you pay a different price. Consider gasoline, eggs or milk.
If you don't pay the same price in your local currency for basic items like gas, eggs and milk, then the value of your local currency is continuously changing too.
You've come to believe that your currency is stable, and that price of everything else changes. This not not true!
Have you ever heard an old person describe how inexpensive things used to be? Did the value of those things go up, or did the value of the currency go down?

The value of lots of things are constantly in flux, and a basket of goods is a kind of fiction that evolves over time, but items in that basket are going to appreciate and depreciate at different rates..... accordingly, bitcoin is likely a good thing to accumulate because it will likely have an interesting relationship to the various items in our future basket of goods.

(04-28-2016 01:02 AM)CaptainChardonnay Wrote:  Considering this question is the Matrix-equivalent of taking the red pill. You will probably never consider fiat currency in the same way again...

I don't know if red pill is a good analogy, here, but yeah, anytime you learn about interesting things, your view of the world will likely change forever in ways that you could not previously had imagined.

(04-28-2016 01:02 AM)CaptainChardonnay Wrote:  This is true that prices change but a carton of eggs isn't jumping for 50 cents to 100 dollars in the US, it sticks at say 5 dollars. So if i wanted to buy a carton of eggs with bitcoin am i suppose to go to the store and then wait for the price to jump around until it hits 5 equivalent us dollars and then buy the product?

I don't think you need to wait for anything. If you choose to use bitcoin, then you go to the store and you see the price and decide if you want to use bitcoin or not.

It may well be cheaper and more convenient to use fiat or a credit card rather than bitcoin. I think part of the reason not to spend bitcoin yet, is because there are a lot of immature bitcoin systems, and I would not advocate that currently it is a great system for many micro payments. I would rather spend my depreciating cash first or use a credit card and get some points or rebate or miles... and hold onto my bitcoin for other reasons (storage of value and travel and speculation, etc).

Here are a couple recent status update articles that I read today.



1) http://cryptohustle.com/bitcoins-consume...tion-phase

Talks about various bitcoin phases, and emphasizes discussion of the consumer adoption phase.... Brings up a lot of good issues, even though there seems a long way to go in each of the earlier phases (that the article suggests have been somewhat completed)


2) http://cryptohustle.com/10-reasons-why-b...-of-crypto


Provides 10 reasons why bitcoin is king of cryptos. Seems a bit repetitive, but nonetheless, provides a good outline of basic reason why bitcoin is number one and other cryptos are likely not to catch up any time soon. I could elaborate on some other examples including the power of the computing infrastructure and the difficulties in changing governance as being two additional bitcoin positives... but anyhow the article does a pretty good job of outlining it's 10 asserted reasons.

This guy has come out today and claimed that he is Satoshi:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/video_and_audi...s/36185265

A quick glance at the Bitcoin subreddit suggests they're all a bit skeptical to say the least. Thoughts gentlemen?

As an aside I've been chipping away and buying approx 0.25 BC every month for the last couple of years. When I started I had a figure of 10 BC in my mind, and when I reach that point I'll think I'll just hold on to them and watch what happens rather than keep buying.

(05-02-2016 01:35 PM)Rain Wrote:  This guy has come out today and claimed that he is Satoshi:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/video_and_audi...s/36185265

A quick glance at the Bitcoin subreddit suggests they're all a bit skeptical to say the least. Thoughts gentlemen?

Yeah... initially the BTC market seemed to have reacted negatively to this news because it brought a lot of potential uncertainty, and then dumping coins becomes kind of contagious in attempting to figure out whether the news is correct or not.

Within hours the news had been fairly clearly debunked based on the lack of evidence and the extraordinary claims. For example, a question really remains why anyone with such an important claim, would provide non-proveable, indirect "evidence" rather than more simple evidence that he would surely have access to, if Wright's claim of being Satoshi were really true.

It ends up being a bit of a sham on the bitcoin community, and likely will further tarnish Gavin's reputation. Gavin corroborated Wright's flimsy evidence, and then had some of his github commit privileges tentatively removed based on such outrageous claims (probably especially since Gavin had already appeared to have been engaging in a kind of bitcoin coupe with his proposed hardfork changes in bitcoin's governance through XT and Classic and this kind of undermining of bitcoin could help to prop up some of those coupe terms of XT and Classic). It's likely that Gavin's credibility in the bitcoin community is going to go to shit as and after this plays out.

(05-02-2016 01:35 PM)Rain Wrote:  As an aside I've been chipping away and buying approx 0.25 BC every month for the last couple of years. When I started I had a figure of 10 BC in my mind, and when I reach that point I'll think I'll just hold on to them and watch what happens rather than keep buying.

Each of us has to decide the extent to which we feel sufficiently invested in order to have a sufficient stake in BTC. Maybe after you have achieved your 10BTC goal, you may want to reconsider your plan in another way at that point.

I would recommend considering your goal in terms of fiat rather than BTC. In that regard, maybe investing on a weekly basis of approximately $25 a week or some other convenient amount that is priced in dollars rather than BTC. Accordingly, you measure it up with your fiat cash flow, and if prices are high you buy less and if prices are low, you buy more... and you continue to accumulate. At the same time, you can consider that if we get a 2x, 5x or 10x price upsurge, you may want to consider pulling out some of your fiat.. and possibly holding some of it for reinvestment and some of it to take out completely. Each of us has to decide for our own situation how exactly to accumulate and then from time to time reallocate in accordance with all of our various investments and the extent to which to include BTC in such investment mix.

Here's a couple of decent links on the topic of Wright claiming to be Satoshi, again.



This Forbes article shows that the claims seem fantastical and the scam had happened previously.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewst...1d084f708f


Andreas Antonopolis posted that he had been contacted to verify the identity of Satoshi and to sign a non-disclosure agreement. He was sceptical regarding the need to verify Satoshi through appeals to status, rather than actual proof (and whether any such need is present in bitcoin to appeal to authority... so who cares?)


https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comment...two_weeks/