5 ms·
The price has gone up by 20% in 24 hours, not just doubled in the last 12 months - I think in twelve months (according to bitcoin charts) it has gone from aroun
by grey-area 13y ago
The price has gone up by 20% in 24 hours, not just doubled in the last 12 months - I think in twelve months (according to bitcoin charts) it has gone from around $10 to around $600 - 4900% increase. That's clearly unsustainable and yes it does look like a speculative bubble, particularly when people expect it to continue to grow indefinitely in price without a commensurate rise in usage as a currency.
It'll be interesting to see this play out as it's a great example of a completely unregulated market at work.
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg360ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zvzlzp http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg360ztgSzm1g10zm2g...
I don't see bitcoin becoming a world currency without some large changes to the protocol - for example to track users and link them with real world IDs, reversible transactions etc, and there are also political reasons which would make it very difficult - governments enjoy being able to fund deficit spending and control the economy by manipulating the currency, they won't easily give up that power.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- lettergram 13y agoI remember looking at it when it was below a dollar... at the time I had no money and told everyone I know to buy. I also managed to mine 50 coins, but have since lost the wallet. Now, my brain melts when I see the current price.
- sillysaurus2 13y agoObligatory horror story from 'mcantelon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6687580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6687580 I was going to buy $300 worth when they were 30 cents each. I didn't, though, as it involved travel to a nearby town and I was working on a book and thought I should be practical and spend the weekend on that. Ah well, one less house.
- QuasiAlon 13y agowhat does it mean you lost your wallet? #noob_here
- icebraining 13y agoA Bitcoin wallet is a file that contains the private keys that allow you to transfer bitcoins from a certain address. If you lose that file, you can't use those coins, they'll just sit there forever.
- yitchelle 13y ago#noob_here also If the bitcoins in the lost wallet never get recovered, does that mean that the amount bitcoins available for trading has just decreased? My small understanding of bitcoin tells me that there only a limited number of bitcoin available once it has all been mined.
- mordae 13y agoYes.
- QuasiAlon 13y agoso this should lead to an even higher exchange rate since there's even less supply. any estimates how many bitcoins are lost in oblivion?
- yitchelle 13y agoAlso brings in the question as to when bitcoin becomes useless as there are not enough bitcoin in the wild for useful trading.
- antonios 13y agoThis is pretty far away. Making some quick and dirty calculations: The lowest bitcoin denomination is one Satoshi, which is 0.00000001 BTC. If one Satoshi would equal one cent, this means that one US dollar would equal 0.000001 BTC. Given that the maximum number of Bitcoins is ~21 million, this amounts to a max capitalization of ~21 trillion USD.
- grey-area 13y agoMy sympathies. I do think the current price is due to speculation rather than real value, but what is the value of a currency? If it is simply what you can exchange it for, in the case of bitcoin that is a freely floating value based on confidence, which will go down as well as up.
- wallzz 13y agoLinking bitcoin to real world IDs is against the politics of bitcoin, remember nobody controls the currency