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Is this really a bad thing? Now people can stop hoarding them and start really using them as currency. It never really mattered what they were worth unless yo

Is this really a bad thing? Now people can stop hoarding them and start really using them as currency. It never really mattered what they were worth unless you were holding onto them. If you use bitcoins to enable transactions only and keep your money in real dollars then it can be pretty useful.

jerf 15y ago
It is if the only reason that they have value in the first place was the hoarding and speculating, which seems a reasonable interpretation of events to date. A currency of no value is not useful for trade. I mean that "if" as a true logical statement, not an implied assertion that it must be true. (I do believe that, but I'm not asserting it right now, because I'm not defending it.)
- joshontheweb 15y ago
  Its apparent that people are finding value in them aside from their speculated worth. They are using them to facilitate anonymous transaction and more easily transact internationally. Whether those use cases are valuable enough to keep people using bitcoins, I can't say.
- epscylonb 15y ago
  Bitcoins utility is a factor in its value. True, speculation and hoarding dominates its usage at the moment but there is still potential.
corin_ 15y ago
It's a problem because the people who are using bitcoin have seen the value drop to less than 10% of what it was, so why should they trust it to be a currency worth using? For it to be a currency it doesn't need a huge value per bitcoin, nor does it need to be constantly rising a huge amount - but it does need to be reasonably stable.
- fleitz 15y ago
  That's a great question as to why anyone would use a currency whose valuation had dropped to 10% of what it was. http://www.kitco.com/charts/popup/au3650nyb.html http://www.kitco.com/charts/popup/au3650nyb.html
  - redthrowaway 15y ago
    I'm failing to see the relevance of the price of gold to the bitcoin discussion.
    - william42 15y ago
      He's probably trying to claim that the 10x increase in the price of gold over the past ten years is a 10x decrease in the value of the USD rather than a speculative bubble in gold. (And even if it were, it wouldn't be remotely comparable to the 10x decrease in the value of Bitcoin over the past three months.) As a sidenote, that's a terrible graph(as are most graphs of this nature). There's a wonderful technology called a logarithmic plot for that sort of thing.

jerf 15y ago

It is if the only reason that they have value in the first place was the hoarding and speculating, which seems a reasonable interpretation of events to date. A currency of no value is not useful for trade. I mean that "if" as a true logical statement, not an implied assertion that it must be true. (I do believe that, but I'm not asserting it right now, because I'm not defending it.)

joshontheweb 15y ago
Its apparent that people are finding value in them aside from their speculated worth. They are using them to facilitate anonymous transaction and more easily transact internationally. Whether those use cases are valuable enough to keep people using bitcoins, I can't say.
epscylonb 15y ago
Bitcoins utility is a factor in its value. True, speculation and hoarding dominates its usage at the moment but there is still potential.

corin_ 15y ago

It's a problem because the people who are using bitcoin have seen the value drop to less than 10% of what it was, so why should they trust it to be a currency worth using? For it to be a currency it doesn't need a huge value per bitcoin, nor does it need to be constantly rising a huge amount - but it does need to be reasonably stable.

fleitz 15y ago
That's a great question as to why anyone would use a currency whose valuation had dropped to 10% of what it was. http://www.kitco.com/charts/popup/au3650nyb.html http://www.kitco.com/charts/popup/au3650nyb.html
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  I'm failing to see the relevance of the price of gold to the bitcoin discussion.
  - william42 15y ago
    He's probably trying to claim that the 10x increase in the price of gold over the past ten years is a 10x decrease in the value of the USD rather than a speculative bubble in gold. (And even if it were, it wouldn't be remotely comparable to the 10x decrease in the value of Bitcoin over the past three months.) As a sidenote, that's a terrible graph(as are most graphs of this nature). There's a wonderful technology called a logarithmic plot for that sort of thing.