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Please quit with the superficial throwaway comments, that's two content-free crowd-pleasers in under 15 minutes. In answer to your question, pricing goods in a

Please quit with the superficial throwaway comments, that's two content-free crowd-pleasers in under 15 minutes. In answer to your question, pricing goods in a fluctuating currency is a well understood problem, and even with a single Google you'd find the Bitcoin community already have established solutions. The short answer: spot price is 99% noise, so don't use it. Unapologetic for being annoyed at this stuff. Check parent's submission history, top-voted wise cracks have a ripple effect on the remaining comments for a particular submission.

ajross 14y ago
I just did several googles, and can't find an answer to that question. Maybe you could enlighten us on the "well established solutions" (or just some google search terms to pull them up)? It seems like a serious question to me. Currency volatility in the real world is generally considered a near-disaster-level problem. So if Bitcoin has truly solved this in a "well established" way I'm sure there are a bunch of national bank managers that would love to hear about it.
- hosay123 14y ago
  There is at least one web service that produces an average over some period. As to how you pick a good weighting, it probably depends a lot on how fast you intend to flip outgoing goods/incoming currency, or where you store value. Try terms like "VWAP", "Bitcoin average price" and so on. I have no doubt a momentary search over on SSRN will produce a hundred papers entirely dedicated to formalizations of this process.
  - georgemcbay 14y ago
    Once you formalize the process, how do you get people to buy into it? This seems like a typical techie thing of coming up with a mathematical solution to an issue that is really more about human psychology. When you have admittedly linkbaity websites screaming "Bitcoint has lost half of its value" all over the place, good luck explaining to people that we should really be averaging the value and everything is fine, and keep selling your goods at the current average price, etc. This all speaks to the immense difficultly of real-world adoption of any currency that isn't backed by real government policy.
nemo 14y ago
What should you google to find out about how people with goods/services are handling instability in currency value? Even if a vendor updated pricing indexed to the dollar regularly (which is not desirable at all) it's seems like it would still be hard to manage keeping any cash reserves of a currency that is not a stable store of value. I'd be interested to read about what vendors are doing to deal with this.
knowaveragejoe 14y ago
The problem is the prices of physical goods through bitcoin-accepting vendors are pinned to USD prices, albeit by proxy through bitcoin. Automatically adjusting the price of items, even using an average, doesn't change the fact both you and the vendor run a high risk of taking a potentially huge opportunity cost.

ajross 14y ago

I just did several googles, and can't find an answer to that question. Maybe you could enlighten us on the "well established solutions" (or just some google search terms to pull them up)? It seems like a serious question to me. Currency volatility in the real world is generally considered a near-disaster-level problem. So if Bitcoin has truly solved this in a "well established" way I'm sure there are a bunch of national bank managers that would love to hear about it.

hosay123 14y ago
There is at least one web service that produces an average over some period. As to how you pick a good weighting, it probably depends a lot on how fast you intend to flip outgoing goods/incoming currency, or where you store value. Try terms like "VWAP", "Bitcoin average price" and so on. I have no doubt a momentary search over on SSRN will produce a hundred papers entirely dedicated to formalizations of this process.
- georgemcbay 14y ago
  Once you formalize the process, how do you get people to buy into it? This seems like a typical techie thing of coming up with a mathematical solution to an issue that is really more about human psychology. When you have admittedly linkbaity websites screaming "Bitcoint has lost half of its value" all over the place, good luck explaining to people that we should really be averaging the value and everything is fine, and keep selling your goods at the current average price, etc. This all speaks to the immense difficultly of real-world adoption of any currency that isn't backed by real government policy.

nemo 14y ago

What should you google to find out about how people with goods/services are handling instability in currency value? Even if a vendor updated pricing indexed to the dollar regularly (which is not desirable at all) it's seems like it would still be hard to manage keeping any cash reserves of a currency that is not a stable store of value. I'd be interested to read about what vendors are doing to deal with this.

knowaveragejoe 14y ago

The problem is the prices of physical goods through bitcoin-accepting vendors are pinned to USD prices, albeit by proxy through bitcoin. Automatically adjusting the price of items, even using an average, doesn't change the fact both you and the vendor run a high risk of taking a potentially huge opportunity cost.