Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency. It does not rely on a central server to process transactions or store funds.
Why is bitcoin appealing?
Because it cut downs the middle-man. No banks, no fee (or very negligible ones). It is also unregulated, meaning that you can buy, sell and own bitcoins regardless of your age and country.
What can it do for me and teamliquid?
Bitcoin can be a wonderful tool for gaming communities like Teamliquid. It makes it easy to donate small amounts of money to anyone. Example would be donating to your favourite streamer, tipping someone for helping you out or organizing tournaments like sc2btc.
Where can I get bitcoins?
The fastest and cheapest way is localbitcoin. If you don't want to go that route you will have to register and deposit in a currency exchange, just like stocks.
When I look at the charts the prices seem so volatile, what gives?
Recent media coverage, euro prices, cyprus crisis, finances speculators etc.. have took the prices on a real rollercoaster. It is an highly volatile and risky market. However merchants can protect themselves using services like bitpay. Users can also protect themselves by trading their bitcoin for their favourite currency on exchanges.
Concerns Since it's all virtual it's susceptible to hacking and other type of attacks. It happened once in 2011 and could happens again. Countries can also vote new laws that would change the game. I invite you to read this : Concerns
I would love to see teamliquid accept bitcoin donation and accept it as a payment method in it's store. I think it's perfect because of the international user base of all ages. You can see an example of the fees you save here.
This thread is mean to be a discussion for fellow enthusiast, newbie and skeptics. I welcome any questioning and criticisms
I think Krugman put it best, we don't need Bitcoin. Money only is worth something because we trust it's worth something and therefor accept it as a form of payment, credit, and so on. Try paying your groceries with Bitcoins and see what happens.
It's a gimmick, a toy, that you can play around for a while and some people probably made some good money off of Bitcoins. If they are smart, they don't gamble, though, and change it back to USD, EUR or whatever currency they prefer.
I would recommend zerohedge.com for anyone who really wants Bitcoin information.
Very heated debate typically, and the articles tend to be dense with financial language, but if you can wade through it you should get a good idea. Basically, these guys had the Bitcoin bubble predicted with a surprising amount of accuracy on top of being WAY ahead of the game in terms of financial information in general.
That being said, I strongly recommend that people without much financial know-how look into bitcoin (at least academically) as it will invariably lead to better understanding of what money is, how it's manipulated by Central Banks, and how detached our financial systems in the West are from reality.
I think Krugman put it best, we don't need Bitcoin. Money only is worth something because we trust it's worth something and therefor accept it as a form of payment, credit, and so on. Try paying your groceries with Bitcoins and see what happens.
It's a gimmick, a toy, that you can play around for a while and some people probably made some good money off of Bitcoins. If they are smart, they don't gamble, though, and change it back to USD, EUR or whatever currency they prefer.
And you don't think the dollar or the Euro aren't equally "toys" detached from anything remotely imposed by natural scarcity? It's just a bigger game.
It's in the vested interest of the current money issuers (Central Banks) to stomp competition out (bitcoin). Really, they both function on the same premise and neither one is intrinsically superior to the other seeing as (in the case of the United States) the Federal Reserve is privately owned anyway.
On April 19 2013 00:08 KillerSOS wrote: I don't think Bitcoin is useful as a real method of payment yet. I for one wouldn't accept it from anyone.
What do you think of services like bitpay? (Implying that you are a merchant)
Doesn't USD dollars with theses fees is as real as it gets?
That chart and the video are interesting to me from a fraud perspective, I work in fraud prevention so to me it is only a matter of time before this system gets figured out. So according to that video, for digital products as it specifies, I am paying with Bitcoin and only am required to provide an email address, I can only provide an email address for things like e giftcards and mobilize that giftcard to a rechargeable visa or other products as soon as I can, getting real cash.
I am not 100% on how the system works yet, still sifting through the site, but this is really an interesting product considering my profession.
Bitcoins is a bit like a pyramid scheme. The ones that benefit most by it becoming popular are the early adopters. They made a shitload of bitcoins in the time it was easy to mine them. They are the ones that benefit from a high demand/price of bitcoins. Although the general idea of the coin is good, with the way it was set up, I will not use it.
I have been following BTC for a couple of months I guess, since it was around ~52 USD, and it has been a very exciting road so far. I didn't invest any at the time, due to lack of capital at the moment, but I certainly wish I had because they got up to 220 USD very rapidly. However, the prices have been going a bit crazy lately, and I think that, more than anything is what's hampering the bitcoin. It's very difficult to accept as a retailer until it stabilizes, and it can't stabilize until more retailers start accepting them. Will be lots of fun to watch though. Very exciting stuff
Some guy offered me a bitcoin for one of my TF2 items and I had no idea wtf he was talking about. Obviously I didn't take it. While I have nothing to add, I guess that this thread helped me know what they are now... kinda?
On April 19 2013 00:34 Marradron wrote: Bitcoins is a bit like a pyramid scheme. The ones that benefit most by it becoming popular are the early adopters. They made a shitload of bitcoins in the time it was easy to mine them. They are the ones that benefit from a high demand/price of bitcoins. Although the general idea of the coin is good, with the way it was set up, I will not use it.
Basically every new technology is a pyramid scheme by that definition. No shit when something becomes valuable the people who acquired it when it was considered worthless make bank. When Thog found you could burn the coal deposit in his cave he got pretty popular, doesn't mean anything about the value of coal as a fuel.
On April 19 2013 00:34 Marradron wrote: Bitcoins is a bit like a pyramid scheme. The ones that benefit most by it becoming popular are the early adopters. They made a shitload of bitcoins in the time it was easy to mine them. They are the ones that benefit from a high demand/price of bitcoins. Although the general idea of the coin is good, with the way it was set I will not use it.
100% agree.
However, this is only because Bitcoin is a limited release currency and people are not used to having to subdivide their currency as opposed to simply inflating it in order to match growing production and consumption.
The truth is, Bitcoin is just as reliable (arguably more so because it IS limited release) than most of the major currencies utilized today. The only thing which makes the major currencies more desirable is subjective dispersion and use. Institutionally and intrinsically, there is nothing which makes either the USD or the EURO superior forms of currency. Just more people use them.
Edit: Essentially the only thing keeping me from jumping on with Bitcoin is human interaction's as they currently stand. Seeing as currency issuers (Central Banks) are, and have been, engaged in currency wars for the last few decades, throwing more competitors into the ring probably won't go over so well with most of these institutions. I expect one of two things to happen (though I'm leaning towards the first):
1. They unite to manipulate the markets to the best of their ability to maintain their financial "Phenotypical" hegemony and crush Bitcoin if it appears to be catching on. (To not do this sets a bad precedent and undermines their integrity and decades of convincing people that only central banks can be trusted to print currency).
Or...
2. One of the Central Banking entities decides to "Go Nuclear" and prop up Bitcoin and use it as a Cats Paw against the other Banks. I find this highly unlikely as it sets a non-profitable precedent for the Global Banking Community. This option would be the equivalent of actual Nuclear war during the Cold War without any considerations for MAD.
Thanks. That's certainly interesting. Could you comment a bit more on the algorithm though? It's surprising to me that you'd need specialized hardware to do it. Strange that a firm would be selling these instead of running a mining operation themselves.
I've been reading about those a year or so ago, seemed a very good idea at the time (like someone else said, anything that can hurt central banks...). But, reading more about it recently, I don't really see the difference between that and any other "polluted" form of money. I mean, right now, popularity is going up, so is value, and the cycle goes on. What will prevent that kind of money from suffering the same fate as any other bubble that puts value on nothing ? Made me think that the issue with these bubbles, is that we value stuff on how the value of said stuff goes. So, rising means more, stagnating means everybody freaks out because it's not rising anymore, and then starts the fall. Is that anywhere near correct ? I don't know much about economics...
On April 19 2013 00:22 Kimaker wrote: I would recommend zerohedge.com for anyone who really wants Bitcoin information.
Very heated debate typically, and the articles tend to be dense with financial language, but if you can wade through it you should get a good idea. Basically, these guys had the Bitcoin bubble predicted with a surprising amount of accuracy on top of being WAY ahead of the game in terms of financial information in general.
That being said, I strongly recommend that people without much financial know-how look into bitcoin (at least academically) as it will invariably lead to better understanding of what money is, how it's manipulated by Central Banks, and how detached our financial systems in the West are from reality.
I think Krugman put it best, we don't need Bitcoin. Money only is worth something because we trust it's worth something and therefor accept it as a form of payment, credit, and so on. Try paying your groceries with Bitcoins and see what happens.
It's a gimmick, a toy, that you can play around for a while and some people probably made some good money off of Bitcoins. If they are smart, they don't gamble, though, and change it back to USD, EUR or whatever currency they prefer.
And you don't think the dollar or the Euro aren't equally "toys" detached from anything remotely imposed by natural scarcity? It's just a bigger game.
It's in the vested interest of the current money issuers (Central Banks) to stomp competition out (bitcoin). Really, they both function on the same premise and neither one is intrinsically superior to the other seeing as (in the case of the United States) the Federal Reserve is privately owned anyway.
One of the problems as Krugman pointed out is that one of the major benefits of paper money was to replace a currency (gold) which required sizeable infrastructure to produce, with a currency (paper) that required almost none, thus freeing up that infrastructure to produce other things. Bitcoin is doing the reverse, returning to a currency that (as time goes on) requires sizeable infrastructure to produce.
But what it really all comes down to is that all value is subjective. What a person is willing to pay for something is always based entirely on their subjective opinion on what they need or want. No currency or even a return to barter economy is going to change that.
EPT
