What are your thoughts on BitCoin?

[Zelig]

Ho, buddy, we're talking about ease of use, not cost. Don't go moving those goalposts on me.

You can consider the fees the cost of doing business conveniently, or at least being assured that a blip won't erase your life's savings.

Putting your life's savings in any single currency is incredibly dangerous and foolish.

Your entire argument is based on "convenience" and your response to losing 30%+ of the value of your "currency" on an ill-timed transaction is "meh, no big deal, it'll average out?" Hilarious.

I don't think you have any idea what my argument actually is, since you keep ignoring every post where I sum it up nicely for you.

 

[dutchfire]

The problem with investing in 'value-storing' commodities is that you're inevitably trying to time bubbles. You can do very well if you're both wise and lucky, but it's tough to come out in the long run. The real question is 'what side of the bubble are we one'. Joe Sixpack isn't buying Bitcoins yet, but he's likely bought gold. Once Joe starts buying something, it's often time to sell very soon (though it's tempting not to). But, will Joe buy Bitcoins? It might be worth a $1000 gamble, or so.

I don't think anyone here is advocating use of Bitcoin as long term store of value, or speculating on Bitcoin. There are better alternatives available for value-storing purposes (as long as you don't live in China), and in terms of speculating it is pretty equivalent to betting on gold prices or sports matches.

 

[Crezth]

Credit card != 5 dollar bill

No, but if you're using an ATM you have a bank account...

Putting your life's savings in any single currency is incredibly dangerous and foolish.

True, but that's not really the point I was making. To buy BitCoins you need a bank account (or even better, a PayPal account) in the first place. Credit/debit cards are useful in a wide variety of countries and are a natural extension from socking your money in a bank account. You pay transaction/exchange fees, yes, but I think that's worth the extra trouble BitCoins impose as they are, which I've already summed up for you.

Using BitCoins "just" as a medium of exchange, or claiming they're so useful because of that, seems all the more silly when you're actually expecting an awful lot vis a vis internet connection and the long transaction time. Plus the price volatility stuff Symphony already mentioned.

The only way I can see this not being a problem is if you did all of your business online and had it worked out so you transferred your money into BitCoins just for the transaction automatically and fluidly. I think you avoid some of the major issues there (except transaction time which is unavoidable). I totally buy that. But it's not a long-term solution. Eventually those service providers who handle your exchanges and transactions for you (and, for mercy's sake, also handle the blockchain for you) will charge fees of their own. Especially once they realize there's no reason that they can't.

All in all it doesn't strike me as particularly easy to use. That it'd be more useful for me than the ruble, I think, is irrelevant - I don't want to use the ruble anyway.

 

[Symphony D.]

I don't think you have any idea what my argument actually is, since you keep ignoring every post where I sum it up nicely for you.

Maybe it's because they're terrible:

Bitcoin has fewer fees than credit cards.

You're more concerned about a few guaranteed percentage points on international purchases than you are about value-swings that can literally exceed the value of the order within the time it takes for the order to clear (either in your favor or against it). That's nonsensical. You apparently regard this as way too hard, and so therefore an obscure crypto"currency" with all kinds of terrible "features" is of greater utility to everyone in the world. I can sum up my dismissal of your point very simply with a slight twist on your own words:

Or you could just not [use BitCoin], and be just fine on average.

 

[dutchfire]

value-swings that can literally exceed the value of the order within the time it takes for the order to clear (either in your favor or against it).

Using BitCoins "just" as a medium of exchange, or claiming they're so useful because of that, seems all the more silly when you're actually expecting an awful lot vis a vis internet connection and the long transaction time. Plus the price volatility stuff Symphony already mentioned.

10 minutes is not a very long time. If you are buying something on the internet that will be delivered to your house, than the confirmation coming 10 minutes later isn't really a problem.

The average price volatility on on the time scale of one transaction (10 minutes) isn't really big, as I've mentioned a couple of pages ago (which was obviously ignored by everyone).

 

[Symphony D.]

10 minutes is not a very long time. If you are buying something on the internet that will be delivered to your house, than the confirmation coming 10 minutes later isn't really a problem.

The average price volatility on on the time scale of one transaction (10 minutes) isn't really big, as I've mentioned a couple of pages ago (which was obviously ignored by everyone).

One of my favorite commentaries on the whole thing in recent times was "Just bought a takeaway with Bitcoins, in the 4 minutes it took to process my order the value of Bitcoins dropped more than the price of my order."

Checkmate.

MtGox has routinely swung $50/BitCoin within the span of minutes. Get out.

 

[dutchfire]

Comparing the change in value of an arbitrary amount of money (in this case, 1 Bitcoin) to the value of a specific product is meaningless. I would have thought a smart guy like you could figure that out himself.

 

[Symphony D.]

Comparing the change in value of an arbitrary amount of money (in this case, 1 Bitcoin) to the value of a specific product is meaningless. I would have thought a smart guy like you could figure that out himself.

"Market volatility in a niche commodity dominated by a single exchange with a year-plus backlog in cashing out doesn't matter for day-to-day purchases, I'm talking about the hypothetical wide-spread use of something that's currently awful!" I thought I told you to get out.

What's that Mr. Bloomberg?

 

[dutchfire]

Comparing the change in value of an arbitrary amount of money (in this case, 1 Bitcoin) to the value of a specific product is meaningless. I would have thought a smart guy like you could figure that out himself.

"Market volatility in a niche commodity dominated by a single exchange with a year-plus backlog in cashing out doesn't matter for day-to-day purchases, I'm talking about the hypothetical wide-spread use of something that's currently awful!" I thought I told you to get out.

Well, it seems you couldn't and decided to use a wall of graphs instead.

The value in dollars of a million Euros regularly changes more than the value of a sandwich while I'm buying a sandwich. I don't see this as a sign that the Euro is too volatile.

 

[Tahuti]

"Market volatility in a niche commodity dominated by a single exchange with a year-plus backlog in cashing out doesn't matter for day-to-day purchases, I'm talking about the hypothetical wide-spread use of something that's currently awful!" I thought I told you to get out.

You have lies, you have damned lies and then... you have statistics, naturally!

Just look at the lowest y-values of the very first chart: I am surprised you didn't crop the y-values between 1300 and 1200, so you will have even more volatility!

 

[Symphony D.]

The value in dollars of a million Euros regularly changes more than the value of a sandwich while I'm buying a sandwich. I don't see this as a sign that the Euro is too volatile.

Yeah good thing a million Euros-to-Dollars is three orders of magnitude higher than a thousand BitCoins-to-Dollars and therefore a pretty crap analogy or else you might almost have something resembling a point.

Just look at the lowest y-values of the very first chart: I am surprised you didn't crop the y-values between 1300 and 1200, so you will have even more volatility!

Not my graphs. But I'm sorry you can't read:

There is the BitCoin fluctuating up $50 over the course of 5 seconds. That's exactly what I said it did. That's exactly what it does.

You can argue all you want about how these fluctuations don't mean much on micro-transactions but in real sums that real people buy real things in, they add up very quickly, and sum up to far more lost than ~7% in credit card transfer fees or currency exchanges. So you've lost on the convenience argument. Checkmate.

 

[Crezth]

10 minutes is not a very long time. If you are buying something on the internet that will be delivered to your house, than the confirmation coming 10 minutes later isn't really a problem.

This is papering over the problem. I don't care if 10 minutes isn't very long compared to, say, the average human life span - but I do care that I can make that same purchase in 10 seconds with a debit card.

Long transaction times are not a feature, nor should they be considered particularly acceptable for an item whose sole purpose - as has been alleged - is transactions.

The average price volatility on on the time scale of one transaction (10 minutes) isn't really big, as I've mentioned a couple of pages ago (which was obviously ignored by everyone).

What do you mean by "really big?" It regularly falls/rises by 5 USD in 10-minute spans. That's a combo meal at your fast food joint of choice.

 

[Symphony D.]

I'mma break this out in a way y'all can understand: you can't make an argument that BitCoin is super-convenient for all purchases abroad and way less hassle for anyone dealing with a non-native currency in all cases for all purchases and then turn around and argue that, well, the volatility of BitCoin doesn't matter because your individual purchases are so tiny, I mean, you're only buying sandwiches and such!

I know this is a shock, but real adults, as part of living expenses, routinely drop $1000 on things like rent or airline tickets or hotels or car rentals or even on disposable income purchases like clothes or electronics. $1000 is not some mythical, unreasonable, unworldly sum the average person moneyed enough to be abroad doesn't encounter.

So when you can lose $50 of the value of that $1000 on a purchase due to market volatility, it's kind of a big deal. P.S. no exchange rates do not fluctuate nearly this much with any regularity, don't even try that.

 

[Tahuti]

So you've lost on the convenience argument.

I've never made any convenience argument.

 

[Symphony D.]

I've never made any convenience argument.

Right, you are definitely the only person I'm talking to. Also, I appreciate your tacit acknowledgement of defeat.

 

[dutchfire]

What do you mean by "really big?" It regularly falls/rises by 5 USD in 10-minute spans. That's a combo meal at your fast food joint of choice.

This isn't really a useful way of looking at this, as explained previously, since the value of 1 Bitcoin is really high. So 5 USD is basically <1%, that's not really big.

 

[Tahuti]

Also, I appreciate your tacit acknowledgement of defeat.

This isn't a debating contest, so it shouldn't be about winning, but about gaining new insights. Something you are obviously not interested in. Your purpose in life seems to be debunking BitCoins. But if all your claims are true, then you shouldn't be debating it in the first place, as it BitCoins are bound to die off quickly anyway. Quite sad really.

 

[dutchfire]

This is papering over the problem. I don't care if 10 minutes isn't very long compared to, say, the average human life span - but I do care that I can make that same purchase in 10 seconds with a debit card.

Long transaction times are not a feature, nor should they be considered particularly acceptable for an item whose sole purpose - as has been alleged - is transactions.

Remember how we talked about transferring money from me to Zelig? My bank says this would take 5 work days.

 

[Symphony D.]

This isn't really a useful way of looking at this, as explained previously, since the value of 1 Bitcoin is really high. So 5 USD is basically <1%, that's not really big.

Since we're on the "utility abroad" argument, throw on the physical or opportunity costs of:

1. an internet-enabled smartphone, tablet, netbook, or laptop that can be used in the place you are traveling (stationary on-site computers that you can use for free cannot be counted on for convenience)
2. a (foreign roaming) data-plan that has the throughput to support BitCoin blockchain additions, let alone your other activities
3. a storage medium for said device that you can accommodate the blockchain on; may or may not be a big deal depending on the device
4. the fact that most places don't accept BitCoin, and so you have to cash out in some other fashion, probably through the (extremely sketchy) exchanges (with whatever processing time that has), all of which have their own problems, or find one of the handful of ATMs in the world that accept them (super convenient!)
5. any change to (4) starts running up against the scaling problem and will inevitably extend processing times and expansion of the blockchain, per (2) and (3), because BitCoin transactions are stored P2P

Also, let's make a note that an exchange time of several minutes isn't really acceptable for any kind of ordinary in-person purchase except at a sit-down restaurant. You're going to go to a grocer's and stand there for 10 minutes for your BitCoin to clear? It's awkward enough when it takes a credit card more than 15 seconds to clear.

This is similar to the notion that mining BitCoin is "free;" no, you (or someone) is paying for the electricity and the internet connectivity. Likewise, using BitCoin is not "free," because using it "conveniently" comes with an extended support network that its competition doesn't. It can be "cheap," or it can be "convenient," it can't be both.

This isn't a debating contest, so it shouldn't be about winning, but about gaining new insights. Something you are obviously not interested in. Your purpose in life seems to be debunking BitCoins. But if all your claims are true, then you shouldn't be debating it in the first place, as it BitCoins are bound to die off quickly anyway. Quite sad really.

"lol look at this sad nerd on the internet clearly his whole life is this thread

"
&#8212;Civilization Fanatics' Forums Off-Topic user Kaiserguard, who is here for new insights

 

[dutchfire]

Since we're on the "utility abroad" argument, throw on the physical or opportunity costs of:

We're not. I've mostly talked about transferring money from a country to another country, not paying for something in another country while you are there.