4 ms·

So far you have no flight out of BitCoin, however. The high-profile hacks do not seem to be depressing the price. Why? If even a loss of $500 million - gone in

by Aqueous 13y ago

So far you have no flight out of BitCoin, however. The high-profile hacks do not seem to be depressing the price. Why? If even a loss of $500 million - gone into the night with (so far, for anyone outside of the information sink of Mt. Gox) no trace - can't depress the price, what can? How many hacks is the critical number? Will even outlawing BitCoin depress the price at this point? Why is adoption failing to slow down, as it would if people were looking at this thing as just completely over-the-top risky? Perhaps most of us just view this as a practical concern. We have to figure out how to keep the coins safe. And until we do we're going to have hack after hack after hack... Surely this is possible, though, isn't it? We've solved harder problems. It's hard to say whether BitCoin will survive in its current form - legal and open. It is a big enough threat at this point to the establishment that we're going to see one of two things happen. Government and moneyed interests will either wage a foolish war against it, as they have with other nascent technologies like MP3. Or they will seek to appropriate it so as to profit from it. My bet is on the latter - which means BitCoin might just be here to stay.

mcv 13y ago
> Will even outlawing BitCoin depress the price at this point? Yes. You might remember that the last big crash was because of China, a major and growing part of the bitcoin market, banned it. > Why is adoption failing to slow down Adoption is slowing down. The growth this year isn't remotely comparable to that of last year. > It is a big enough threat at this point to the establishment that we're going to see one of two things happen. The main threat that bitcoin poses, is that it allows criminals to make large international payments easily. Beyond that, it really doesn't pose much of a threat, as you can tell from the many governments that have explicitly decided not to ban it, and even praised its potential. But they will probably regulate it to some extent, and the bitcoin community should embrace that. This recent string of fiascos shows how many untrustworthy folk are offering financial services in bitcoin. Some standards, some mark of reliability, is necessary. There's no way each individual user can check which exchange actually knows what they're doing. Just look how a bunch of ignorant amateurs managed to create the biggest bitcoin exchange in the world.
- Aqueous 13y ago
  The main threat that BitCoin poses is that it bypasses all existing financial institutions. The only way the financial industry is going to be OK with that is if they can find a way to profit more from BitCoin than they would have been able to otherwise.
bertil 13y ago
> So far you have no flight out of BitCoin, however. The high-profile hacks do not seem to be depressing the price. Why? I dont’t know, and that’s my point. I have the rare ability to understand that stuff really well, and it still gets over my head, everything is still based on anonymous forum speculation, and year-old leaks… Seriously? I’m not saying it’s crumbling (evidently, it's not) I’m saying people who are not invested are not going to be convinced by another layer of obfuscation. Why? I’d venture this is because whomever holds BitCoin has more to loose, namely their potential key position if the currency succeeds, than their current asset. But I don’t know these people; they only came out once, to say that MtGox was an isolated incident, crippled with cluelessness and that serious actors were not exposed, and that they are going to implement audit. I was expecting the next news cycle to be auditors with ties boasting on their portfolio of pen-test, accounting checks, etc. I was actually expecting to send an email to a couple of friends of mine (who have the perfect skill-set for that, and are both currently rotting in a soul-crunching position) to tell them to apply. Instead… The clueless club seems to enroll members, with an alarming (and admittedly anecdotal) k-factor. I do contagion studies; I don't like high k-factors. I like people who say ‘transparency is the best disinfectant’.

by Aqueous 13y ago

mcv 13y ago

> Will even outlawing BitCoin depress the price at this point? Yes. You might remember that the last big crash was because of China, a major and growing part of the bitcoin market, banned it. > Why is adoption failing to slow down Adoption is slowing down. The growth this year isn't remotely comparable to that of last year. > It is a big enough threat at this point to the establishment that we're going to see one of two things happen. The main threat that bitcoin poses, is that it allows criminals to make large international payments easily. Beyond that, it really doesn't pose much of a threat, as you can tell from the many governments that have explicitly decided not to ban it, and even praised its potential. But they will probably regulate it to some extent, and the bitcoin community should embrace that. This recent string of fiascos shows how many untrustworthy folk are offering financial services in bitcoin. Some standards, some mark of reliability, is necessary. There's no way each individual user can check which exchange actually knows what they're doing. Just look how a bunch of ignorant amateurs managed to create the biggest bitcoin exchange in the world.

Aqueous 13y ago
The main threat that BitCoin poses is that it bypasses all existing financial institutions. The only way the financial industry is going to be OK with that is if they can find a way to profit more from BitCoin than they would have been able to otherwise.

bertil 13y ago

> So far you have no flight out of BitCoin, however. The high-profile hacks do not seem to be depressing the price. Why? I dont’t know, and that’s my point. I have the rare ability to understand that stuff really well, and it still gets over my head, everything is still based on anonymous forum speculation, and year-old leaks… Seriously? I’m not saying it’s crumbling (evidently, it's not) I’m saying people who are not invested are not going to be convinced by another layer of obfuscation. Why? I’d venture this is because whomever holds BitCoin has more to loose, namely their potential key position if the currency succeeds, than their current asset. But I don’t know these people; they only came out once, to say that MtGox was an isolated incident, crippled with cluelessness and that serious actors were not exposed, and that they are going to implement audit. I was expecting the next news cycle to be auditors with ties boasting on their portfolio of pen-test, accounting checks, etc. I was actually expecting to send an email to a couple of friends of mine (who have the perfect skill-set for that, and are both currently rotting in a soul-crunching position) to tell them to apply. Instead… The clueless club seems to enroll members, with an alarming (and admittedly anecdotal) k-factor. I do contagion studies; I don't like high k-factors. I like people who say ‘transparency is the best disinfectant’.