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> Because they have already stopped No, tx/block certainly NEVER stopped increasing: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?showDataPoints=false&show_he

by 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-...
  - sharpneli 12y ago
    OP made the argument that it's enough for the price to go 10x and transactions 25x. That's why I pointed out the price. If the price stays down the transactions must go 250x. I didn't say this is necessarily the end of bitcoin. There are intermediate stages between "to the moon" and total crash. Personally I think it's quite likely that bitcoin will simply stagnate and remain little used. I don't doubt that the bitcoin purchases have increased since 2009. It's just that the raw numbers which we do have (your link did not have any hard numbers) show that it's not really doing that well when absolute sales figures are taken into account. The fact that only hard numbers which we do have show poor adoption indicates that it's the same elsewhere, otherwise we'd see bitpay and others jumping up and down and telling the great numbers to everyone to increase the adoption even more.

by vanzard 12y ago

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-...
- sharpneli 12y ago
  OP made the argument that it's enough for the price to go 10x and transactions 25x. That's why I pointed out the price. If the price stays down the transactions must go 250x. I didn't say this is necessarily the end of bitcoin. There are intermediate stages between "to the moon" and total crash. Personally I think it's quite likely that bitcoin will simply stagnate and remain little used. I don't doubt that the bitcoin purchases have increased since 2009. It's just that the raw numbers which we do have (your link did not have any hard numbers) show that it's not really doing that well when absolute sales figures are taken into account. The fact that only hard numbers which we do have show poor adoption indicates that it's the same elsewhere, otherwise we'd see bitpay and others jumping up and down and telling the great numbers to everyone to increase the adoption even more.