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Wonder how much of that is being spent on the Silk Road?
by nthitz 14y ago
Wonder how much of that is being spent on the Silk Road?
- pdog 14y agoOr the other vice, SatoshiDice[1]. [1]: http://satoshidice.com/ http://satoshidice.com/
- Djehngo 14y agoFor those curious about the SFW-ness of the link it's the homepage for an online casino site accepting bitcoin.
- px43 14y agoI never understood why people put money into satoshi dice. In my opinion, betsofbitco.in is way more fun, though admittedly slower paced. Similar to intrade.
- stcredzero 14y agoDrugs, gambling...get hookers in there, and you'll have a legit currency. ;) No, seriously, once a currency gets to the point hookers accept it, it's indisputable that it's real.
- gojomo 14y agoIf you wanted to make the 'Uber of prostitution', you'd probably find Bitcoin helpful.
- stcredzero 14y agoIf someone did make an "Uber of prostitution," and avoided being shut down/eaten by the law/established interests, they'd probably become rich.
- SageRaven 14y agoWe're close. Online cam performers are taking bitcoins for sessions/requests. There's at least one subreddit for this, though I can't recall the name, having stumbled across it with the /r/random page. It wouldn't surprise me if bitcoins were already being exchanged for escort service or some kind of "hookup" business via side channels already.
- nas 14y agoOr poker (https://sealswithclubs.eu/ https://sealswithclubs.eu/). If you snoop around on the twoplustwo poker forms you will see there is some interest and decent reviews of the site. I imagine for someone that gambles regularly, it's easier for them to leave their bankroll in bitcoin rather than continuously exchanging it back to USD or whatever. I'm no economist but this is how I see a fiat currency like bitcoin deriving value. Even if no one used bitcoin for a currency, there would be some people who would be interested in buying some just for the novelty of it. That alone gives it a non-zero value. From there, if it has the properties of being a useful medium of exchange, people will use it as such. Over time, the value grows as the amount of "float" (value exchanged into it) grows.
- pixie_ 14y agoAs noted above, Bitcoin is not fiat currency. It can't be created on demand by any person or government.
- LatvjuAvs 14y agoThe more the merrier :)
- teebs 14y agoThis isn't a complete, up-to-date answer, but Nicolas Christin estimated in August 2012 that 1.2 million USD worth of transactions are made every month. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1207.7139v2.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1207.7139v2.pdf I imagine that number has grown, but odds are that the vast majority of Bitcoin usage still isn't on the Silk Road. Also, buyers on the Silk Road have to be careful about which services they use to buy Bitcoin. If CoinBase isn't anonymous (and I'd guess it's not, since it uses bank transfers), Silk Road transactions could be tracked back to the purchaser's bank account.