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Why invest in something that is clearly being driving up and down by bots? Virtual currency will never work so long as there is speculation. Fools gold.

kyberias 9y ago
Because there is money to be made as in any speculation.
ojr 9y ago
High Frequency Trading is in the regular stock market and has a larger barrier to enter
- gooseus 9y ago
  Right, but stocks weren't invented and sold to the digital community as a currency. Is that no longer a thing? Does the cryptocurrency community acknowledge that their product is just a big gambling machine requiring the energy a medium country? I recently was listening to a podcast (Sam Harris maybe?) where they were talking about the possibility of super intelligent AI being set to a complex task... but then finds itself spending some huge amount of resources churning out paperclips because of some erroneous assumptions about their value to solution. If we're the super intelligent AI designed by some other "real" intelligence for a purpose, I'd say cryptocurrency is our paperclip moment.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    The paperclip story is usually about an AI whose purpose is in fact to make paperclips, but it realizes that it can only create maximum paperclips if it prevents anyone from ever shutting it off. Then it solves the problem of subjugating humanity as an auxiliary task for the much more important goal of creating more paperclips. To stay with the analogy, cryptocurrency may be such an auxiliary task for the actual goal (whatever that is, I'm not really convinced that Coherent Extrapolated Volition can be made to work). There's an interesting game about the paperclip optimizer that was submitted to HN recently: http://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html http://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html
  - ojr 9y ago
    The fundamentals of the market demand for Bitcoin works, the liquidity is amazing
lojack 9y ago
There is speculation on every currency out there, and virtually all other assets as well. Speculation is unquestionably a good thing.
- powertower 9y ago
  The speculation driven movement of the BTC cannot be compared to the speculation on the USD or any other currency. 0.01% and 50000% are all percentages, but the number is so different as to completely change what we are talking about. > Speculation is unquestionably a good thing. Maybe, but usual only if the resulting volatility results in lower price for the consumer, or makes a market. But then again, BTC has no market for goods nor services compared to the currency it is bought and sold with (its legitimate non-fictional market is so low as to be non-existent).
  - lojack 9y ago
    > The speculation driven movement of the BTC cannot be compared to the speculation on the USD or any other currency. Care to explain this a little more? At face value I'm not sure I agree with that statement, but I get the feeling I'm not understanding what you're trying to say.
deleted 9y ago
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kyberias 9y ago

Because there is money to be made as in any speculation.

ojr 9y ago

High Frequency Trading is in the regular stock market and has a larger barrier to enter

gooseus 9y ago
Right, but stocks weren't invented and sold to the digital community as a currency. Is that no longer a thing? Does the cryptocurrency community acknowledge that their product is just a big gambling machine requiring the energy a medium country? I recently was listening to a podcast (Sam Harris maybe?) where they were talking about the possibility of super intelligent AI being set to a complex task... but then finds itself spending some huge amount of resources churning out paperclips because of some erroneous assumptions about their value to solution. If we're the super intelligent AI designed by some other "real" intelligence for a purpose, I'd say cryptocurrency is our paperclip moment.
- yorwba 9y ago
  The paperclip story is usually about an AI whose purpose is in fact to make paperclips, but it realizes that it can only create maximum paperclips if it prevents anyone from ever shutting it off. Then it solves the problem of subjugating humanity as an auxiliary task for the much more important goal of creating more paperclips. To stay with the analogy, cryptocurrency may be such an auxiliary task for the actual goal (whatever that is, I'm not really convinced that Coherent Extrapolated Volition can be made to work). There's an interesting game about the paperclip optimizer that was submitted to HN recently: http://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html http://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html
- ojr 9y ago
  The fundamentals of the market demand for Bitcoin works, the liquidity is amazing

lojack 9y ago

There is speculation on every currency out there, and virtually all other assets as well. Speculation is unquestionably a good thing.

powertower 9y ago
The speculation driven movement of the BTC cannot be compared to the speculation on the USD or any other currency. 0.01% and 50000% are all percentages, but the number is so different as to completely change what we are talking about. > Speculation is unquestionably a good thing. Maybe, but usual only if the resulting volatility results in lower price for the consumer, or makes a market. But then again, BTC has no market for goods nor services compared to the currency it is bought and sold with (its legitimate non-fictional market is so low as to be non-existent).
- lojack 9y ago
  > The speculation driven movement of the BTC cannot be compared to the speculation on the USD or any other currency. Care to explain this a little more? At face value I'm not sure I agree with that statement, but I get the feeling I'm not understanding what you're trying to say.

deleted 9y ago

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