4 ms·

I wonder how much pressure IA feels to convert its donated bitcoin holdings to cash, given the run-up in exchange rates that has happened recently. Does IA pref

I wonder how much pressure IA feels to convert its donated bitcoin holdings to cash, given the run-up in exchange rates that has happened recently. Does IA prefer to support Bitcoin as if it were, as its proponents suggest, a real currency with sticking power for the long-term future? Or is there more real and permanent good to be had from converting that money to dollars to support the Archive's excellent programs today? Clearly the latter must trump the former at some price. I think that price may be well below the $/BTC exchange rate today.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
IA is using bitcoin to support its programs, by paying its staff (in part) in bitcoin. In other words, the institution is getting the services it needs in return for bitcoin.
MacsHeadroom 14y ago
The recent run-up is nothing. The price will be $300/BTC by next week and $3000/BTC by next year.
- unimpressive 14y ago
  I need to start recording bold predictions like this in some sort of journal. EDIT: I meant in general, not just for bitcoin.
  - Frozenlock 14y ago
    Don't! It will take more space than the entire blockchain!
    - unimpressive 14y ago
      The better ones could be added to an extension I was thinking of for the newsreader I still need to write. Basically it would take your karma on HN, and then pick a random (important) event that happened on the year that your karma currently corresponds to. (Years would be common era.) I was thinking after the current year I could start using stuff like that one XKCD comic that predicts the future based on stupid stuff people google search for.[0] [0]: https://xkcd.com/887/ https://xkcd.com/887/ EDIT: Oh yeah, I forgot to say what it did with the event. It just displays it somewhere on screen, like in the top corner or something.
  - drivebyacct2 14y ago
    Make sure you record the people a few weeks ago shorting it. And the ones a few months ago.
  - toomuchtodo 14y ago
    Want me to write a browser extension that submits such quotes to the Internet Archive in their WARC format? :)
    - unimpressive 14y ago
      I'm not really sure what the internet archive would do with them. It'd make more sense from their perspective to just save the whole page.
    - gwern 14y ago
      Does the IA even support such functionality? I thought they only took WARC dumps from outsiders in special cases of big batches.
  - gwern 14y ago
    http://www.predictionbook.com http://www.predictionbook.com
  - _pius 14y ago
    http://longbets.org/ http://longbets.org/
  - MacsHeadroom 14y ago
    The week just started and the price is already double what it was this time last week. It only has to go up 50% more before the end of the week. Looks like my first prediction wasn't such a long shot, eh?
brewsterkahle 14y ago
The Internet Archive is holding on to the bitcoins to keep the currency experiment going. I bought $1,000 worth of coins so I could make the bitcoin converter box at the Internet Archive and be able to give my friends 0.10 BTC when they got an address so they would ahve something to play with. the sushi place might cash in their BTC's into our converter box (honor based ATM), but maybe not. For me, the key to make a currency is to have it trade around before getting redeemed. We are in this for real.

waterlesscloud 14y ago

IA is using bitcoin to support its programs, by paying its staff (in part) in bitcoin. In other words, the institution is getting the services it needs in return for bitcoin.

MacsHeadroom 14y ago

The recent run-up is nothing. The price will be $300/BTC by next week and $3000/BTC by next year.

unimpressive 14y ago
I need to start recording bold predictions like this in some sort of journal. EDIT: I meant in general, not just for bitcoin.
- Frozenlock 14y ago
  Don't! It will take more space than the entire blockchain!
  - unimpressive 14y ago
    The better ones could be added to an extension I was thinking of for the newsreader I still need to write. Basically it would take your karma on HN, and then pick a random (important) event that happened on the year that your karma currently corresponds to. (Years would be common era.) I was thinking after the current year I could start using stuff like that one XKCD comic that predicts the future based on stupid stuff people google search for.[0] [0]: https://xkcd.com/887/ https://xkcd.com/887/ EDIT: Oh yeah, I forgot to say what it did with the event. It just displays it somewhere on screen, like in the top corner or something.
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  Make sure you record the people a few weeks ago shorting it. And the ones a few months ago.
- toomuchtodo 14y ago
  Want me to write a browser extension that submits such quotes to the Internet Archive in their WARC format? :)
  - unimpressive 14y ago
    I'm not really sure what the internet archive would do with them. It'd make more sense from their perspective to just save the whole page.
  - gwern 14y ago
    Does the IA even support such functionality? I thought they only took WARC dumps from outsiders in special cases of big batches.
- gwern 14y ago
  http://www.predictionbook.com http://www.predictionbook.com
- _pius 14y ago
  http://longbets.org/ http://longbets.org/
- MacsHeadroom 14y ago
  The week just started and the price is already double what it was this time last week. It only has to go up 50% more before the end of the week. Looks like my first prediction wasn't such a long shot, eh?

brewsterkahle 14y ago

The Internet Archive is holding on to the bitcoins to keep the currency experiment going. I bought $1,000 worth of coins so I could make the bitcoin converter box at the Internet Archive and be able to give my friends 0.10 BTC when they got an address so they would ahve something to play with. the sushi place might cash in their BTC's into our converter box (honor based ATM), but maybe not. For me, the key to make a currency is to have it trade around before getting redeemed. We are in this for real.