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Bitcoin - Part 2

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jhunter1163 said:
All right then. Show me an exchange where I can cash out 10,000 BTC in 24 hours. If you can, I will withdraw my assertion.
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So now you are trying to equate limits on the size of withdrawals with "adventures people have had in trying to get their money out of exchanges".

Are there any straws left for you to grasp at?

jhunter1163 said:
And it sure looks like BTC gambling is a booming business, still.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Category:Gambling
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... Annnnnd ..... back to uncritical thinking mode! No matter how many gambling sites are on that list, it is meaningless without the bitcoin deposit rates for each site.

That said, there are not too many other ways that you could spend a currency/non-currency that was designed for hoarding. The deflationary nature of bitcoin and the use of transaction fees are both aspects of its design that discourage spending.
 
psionl0 said:
So now you are trying to equate limits on the size of withdrawals with "adventures people have had in trying to get their money out of exchanges".

Are there any straws left for you to grasp at?
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So, as I suspected, you can't. The point of my question was to show how thinly capitalized BTC is, despite the claims of "$6 billion market cap" and so on. Even at the current price, it's still a bubble.

ETA: $378 now. A leaking bubble, at that.

... Annnnnd ..... back to uncritical thinking mode! No matter how many gambling sites are on that list, it is meaningless without the bitcoin deposit rates for each site.

That said, there are not too many other ways that you could spend a currency/non-currency that was designed for hoarding. The deflationary nature of bitcoin and the use of transaction fees are both aspects of its design that discourage spending.
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So why on earth would anyone "invest" in something that has lost two-thirds of its value in six months, can't be redeemed readily, and can't even be spent readily?
 
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jhunter1163 said:
The point of my question was..................
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.............. to dodge my rebuttals to your arguments.

jhunter1163 said:
So why on earth would anyone "invest" in something that has lost two-thirds of its value in six months, can't be redeemed readily, and can't even be spent readily?
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You could have said the same thing in November 2011.
 
jhunter1163 said:
But you haven't rebutted my argument, which is that BTC is thinly capitalized and the so-called "$6 billion" in value is an illusion since the actual amount of cash in the BTC system is far less.
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That wasn't your argument . You argued that "gambling represents almost half of all BTC transactions" and that "ALL bitcoin exchanges have difficulty cashing out withdrawals".

The argument you switched to is also a non-sequitur because it tries to imply that the only reason that bitcoin exchanges can't process unlimited cash withdrawals is that they are bankrupt. The real reasons were explored ad-nauseum in the other thread.

You are just trying to recycle old discredited arguments to a new audience.
 
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psionl0 said:
That wasn't your argument . You argued that "gambling represents almost half of all BTC transactions" and that "ALL bitcoin exchanges have difficulty cashing out withdrawals".

The argument you switched to is also a non-sequitur because it tries to imply that the only reason that bitcoin exchanges can't process unlimited cash withdrawals is that they are bankrupt. The real reasons were explored ad-nauseum in the other thread.

You are just trying to recycle old discredited arguments to a new audience.
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You admitted yourself that there's little else you can do with Bitcoin besides gamble. And I never said that the exchanges were bankrupt; I said they are thinly capitalized. They might be able to cash out a small holder, say 10 or 20 BTC, fairly readily; they might be able to cash out someone holding a thousand BTC given a couple of days; but Tippit's friend with the 35,000 BTC could wait until the Rapture and never see his $14 million $13.1 million (at current prices).
 
jhunter1163 said:
Hovering around $380.

http://preev.com/
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Looking at the market-depth charts on the bitstamp exchange, it's probably not going to go under $375 for a while, there's a lot of standing bids at that price.

Ha... I just noticed that someone's got a bid for 0.02 bitcoins set at $357.48. I wonder what they were thinking? "I want exactly two cents of bitcoin, but I've only got $7.15 to spare"?


Looking at the price history, I see that this time last year bitcoin was selling for around $130, so long-term holders are still going good. (But I suppose that's no consolation for people who bought at over $1000 in late November.)
 
jhunter1163 said:
You admitted yourself that there's little else you can do with Bitcoin besides gamble.
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If you were honest you would acknowledge that I have long stated precisely what bitcoin is good for - hoarding. (I even repeated that a few posts ago).

It is a store of value. It is easy to store, portable and can readily be transferred over long distances (while ignoring international boundaries too). The cash value may fluctuate wildly over the short and even the long term but the latent value is still there.

Maybe none of that matters much as long as faith in national currencies hold. However, as events in Cyprus showed, even a slight case of the jitters is enough to send demand for bitcoin soaring and that is when bitcoin holders will come into their own.
 
psionl0 said:
It is a store of value. It is easy to store, portable and can readily be transferred over long distances (while ignoring international boundaries too). The cash value may fluctuate wildly over the short and even the long term but the latent value is still there.
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That's rather vague. How exactly are you defining (or can calculate) bitcoin's "latent value"? And if you can't, how can you state it's "there"?
 
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psionl0 said:
See paragraph 3 of the post you quoted.
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That doesn't help, to be honest. Faith--or lack of it--in national currencies tells me nothing about the "latent value" of Bitcoin, which is what I was asking about.
 
AdMan said:
That doesn't help, to be honest. Faith--or lack of it--in national currencies tells me nothing about the "latent value" of Bitcoin, which is what I was asking about.
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I don't know how I could dumb it down any further.

If faith in a national currency wavers then the demand (price) for bitcoin will increase. That is its latent value.
 
psionl0 said:
I don't know how I could dumb it down any further.

If faith in a national currency wavers then the demand (price) for bitcoin will increase. That is its latent value.
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I don't see how that follows at all. If faith in the baht, for example, falters, why would anyone go to something that is even less stable and backed by even less than the full faith and credit of some tottering government?
 
jhunter1163 said:
I don't see how that follows at all. If faith in the baht, for example, falters, why would anyone go to something that is even less stable and backed by even less than the full faith and credit of some tottering government?
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That actually happened to the Swiss Dinars vis-a-vis the Saddam dinars in Iraq after the 1990 Gulf War, despite the Swiss dinars explicitly being revoked legal tender status by the government. In fact, they even appreciated against the U.S. dollar at some point.

However, I don't think that example is analogous to Bitcoin vs. USD.
 
lupus_in_fabula said:
That actually happened to the Swiss Dinars vis-a-vis the Saddam dinars in Iraq after the 1990 Gulf War, despite the Swiss dinars explicitly being revoked legal tender status by the government. In fact, they even appreciated against the U.S. dollar at some point.

However, I don't think that example is analogous to Bitcoin vs. USD.
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Not really, no, though it is an interesting case.
 
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