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> So the author ought to explain to us why he thinks such increases would suddenly stop Because they have already stopped. The price of bitcoin has only droppe

> So the author ought to explain to us why he thinks such increases would suddenly stop Because they have already stopped. The price of bitcoin has only dropped for the last year. You should give a reason why the drop should stop and it would start to rise again. > The author completely ignores the economic incentive of transactions within the Bitcoin economy itself. When I give 1 BTC to my father, he can spend 1 BTC on Dell.com. No fiat conversion takes place. Dell does not accept bitcoin. Dell accepts dollars from bitpay. The expense is paid by bitpay having a worse exchange rate than the normal bitcoin exchanges. So yeah there is fiat transfer happening. Out of curiosity do you know any single big retailer that actually accepts bitcoin in the sense that they are not being actually paid in fiat? > Yet 100,000 merchants are using Bitcoin... Merchants might use bitcoin. But customers unfortunately are not. Wordpress just stopped accepting bitcoin because they got only 2 purchases per week using it. Data from overstock suggests that it's far more common phenomenon. Thanks to bitpay there is not really any reason for merchants not to accept it though. They get paid in fiat and they don't get any expenses from accepting it.

vanzard 12y ago
> Because they have already stopped No, tx/block certainly NEVER stopped increasing: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?showDataPoints=false&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7&timespan=all&scale=0&address= https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?showDataPoints... And price is cyclical. After the bubble of June 2011, it took 21 months to surpass its previous high of $30. What makes you think this bubble and price correction is different? In fact, Bitcoin is on the rise since its $150 bottom on January 14th so it would indicate the drop in fact did stop. > Dell does not accept bitcoin This is irrelevant to the point the OP was making: transactions that remain within Bitcoin incur no fiat exchange fees. I sell something on craigslist for bitcoins, I use these bitcoins to pay back lunch money to my coworker, he gifts the bitcoins to his brother, his brother sends the bitcoin to his son overseas for remittance, etc. All this with zero fiat exchanges. > But customers unfortunately are not Growth is not through-the-roof, but it certainly is there: http://avc.com/2014/10/bitcoin-adoption-metrics/ http://avc.com/2014/10/bitcoin-adoption-metrics/ You cannot quote 2 anecdotes and infer an industry-wide trend. The plural of anecdotes is not data. Anyway it's again irrelevant to the point the OP was making: the blog post's argument is flawed, not everybody who uses Bitcoin is doing it for illegal purposes.
- sharpneli 12y ago
  tx/block did not stop increasing. But the transaction volume in USD has been flat recently due to the falling price: https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-usd?timespan=1year https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-... The amount of value transferred in bitcoin network has seen no growth at all lately. On the other hand it has not diminished either. I simply wanted to point out that you cannot cherry pick the time periods. Right now on a 6-12 month timescale bitcoin has been absolutely terrible investment. You are right that transactions that remain within Bitcoin do not incur transaction fees. However those transactions do not include the big merchants, which you did use as an example. So yeah you can give bitcoins to your friend without a fee but you cannot buy anything from a shop that 'accepts' bitcoin in practice without a fee. The annual revenue of the merchants in those slides is the total annual revenue. There is no mention whatsoever on how many purchases they have that is being made with bitcoin. So it's useless data in that sense. Do you happen to have any data about the purchases made specifically with bitcoin?
  - vanzard 12y ago
    > But the transaction volume in USD This is again irrelevant to the point the OP and blog post author were making. If the number of tx/block continues to increase, then the current level of network security will increase, all else being equal (eg. USD price of Bitcoin staying flat). > on a 6-12 month timescale bitcoin has been absolutely terrible investment Absolutely, but long price downtrends have happened multiple times in the past. That's why I asked "what makes you think this bubble, as opposed to the last N bubbles, is clearly different and clearly marks the end of Bitcoin?". > which you did use as an example Well I didn't, the OP did :) > There is no mention whatsoever on how many purchases they have that is being made with bitcoin. I was pointing to these slides because they show a multitude of metrics increasing. It seems unlikely bitcoin purchases would be declining given everything else is increasing: number of bitcoin startups, number of wallets, number of merchants, number of daily tx, etc. Individually these metrics mean little, but all combined... Heck we went from 0 to 100,000 merchants since 2009, so it is certain bitcoin purchases have increased in that time frame. Why would you doubt that? > Do you happen to have any data about the purchases made specifically with bitcoin? Very few merchants publish their bitcoin metrics. But 2 come to mind: Gyft and Newegg said that their 2014 Bitcoin black friday sales were the best ever: http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/12/09/bitcoin-black-friday-2014-recap.html http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/12/09/bitcoin-black-friday-2014-...

vanzard 12y ago

> Because they have already stopped No, tx/block certainly NEVER stopped increasing: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?showDataPoints=false&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7&timespan=all&scale=0&address= https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?showDataPoints... And price is cyclical. After the bubble of June 2011, it took 21 months to surpass its previous high of $30. What makes you think this bubble and price correction is different? In fact, Bitcoin is on the rise since its $150 bottom on January 14th so it would indicate the drop in fact did stop. > Dell does not accept bitcoin This is irrelevant to the point the OP was making: transactions that remain within Bitcoin incur no fiat exchange fees. I sell something on craigslist for bitcoins, I use these bitcoins to pay back lunch money to my coworker, he gifts the bitcoins to his brother, his brother sends the bitcoin to his son overseas for remittance, etc. All this with zero fiat exchanges. > But customers unfortunately are not Growth is not through-the-roof, but it certainly is there: http://avc.com/2014/10/bitcoin-adoption-metrics/ http://avc.com/2014/10/bitcoin-adoption-metrics/ You cannot quote 2 anecdotes and infer an industry-wide trend. The plural of anecdotes is not data. Anyway it's again irrelevant to the point the OP was making: the blog post's argument is flawed, not everybody who uses Bitcoin is doing it for illegal purposes.

sharpneli 12y ago
tx/block did not stop increasing. But the transaction volume in USD has been flat recently due to the falling price: https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-usd?timespan=1year https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-... The amount of value transferred in bitcoin network has seen no growth at all lately. On the other hand it has not diminished either. I simply wanted to point out that you cannot cherry pick the time periods. Right now on a 6-12 month timescale bitcoin has been absolutely terrible investment. You are right that transactions that remain within Bitcoin do not incur transaction fees. However those transactions do not include the big merchants, which you did use as an example. So yeah you can give bitcoins to your friend without a fee but you cannot buy anything from a shop that 'accepts' bitcoin in practice without a fee. The annual revenue of the merchants in those slides is the total annual revenue. There is no mention whatsoever on how many purchases they have that is being made with bitcoin. So it's useless data in that sense. Do you happen to have any data about the purchases made specifically with bitcoin?
- vanzard 12y ago
  > But the transaction volume in USD This is again irrelevant to the point the OP and blog post author were making. If the number of tx/block continues to increase, then the current level of network security will increase, all else being equal (eg. USD price of Bitcoin staying flat). > on a 6-12 month timescale bitcoin has been absolutely terrible investment Absolutely, but long price downtrends have happened multiple times in the past. That's why I asked "what makes you think this bubble, as opposed to the last N bubbles, is clearly different and clearly marks the end of Bitcoin?". > which you did use as an example Well I didn't, the OP did :) > There is no mention whatsoever on how many purchases they have that is being made with bitcoin. I was pointing to these slides because they show a multitude of metrics increasing. It seems unlikely bitcoin purchases would be declining given everything else is increasing: number of bitcoin startups, number of wallets, number of merchants, number of daily tx, etc. Individually these metrics mean little, but all combined... Heck we went from 0 to 100,000 merchants since 2009, so it is certain bitcoin purchases have increased in that time frame. Why would you doubt that? > Do you happen to have any data about the purchases made specifically with bitcoin? Very few merchants publish their bitcoin metrics. But 2 come to mind: Gyft and Newegg said that their 2014 Bitcoin black friday sales were the best ever: http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/12/09/bitcoin-black-friday-2014-recap.html http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/12/09/bitcoin-black-friday-2014-...