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Bitcoin is a bit tricky. Bitcoin has deflationary pressures assuming they don't become worthless with a stroke of a pen due to regulation. 3,600 bitcoins are mined every day, and as their popularity goes up so will their value which will produce a scenario where people see an investment potential instead of its transactional value. This will create a situation where they are more likely to be held instead of actually used which will erode the underlying purpose and value of bitcoin. The volatility of bitcoin also erodes its transactional value. Bitcoin's success might be it's own undoing.
I believe regulations will catch to up it eventually, as governments are known to prefer to have a monopoly on economic transactions with their own currencies. The Banking lobby might also be gunning to put an end to it. Nevertheless, it's going to be a dead currency eventually( decades down the line) as the last bitcoins are mined and people no longer have an incentive to mine(which is also required to process bitcoin transactions); but you never know, bitcoin could out last the Dollar, Euro, and Yen as it's completely virtual and doesn't rely on a government.
i can see regulation doing one of two things. yes it could destroy bitcoins. it could also drive bitcoins underground so to speak but hugely inflate their value. imagine if overnight you could no longer buy bitcoins at all with the assistance of traditional banking or using sites like coinbase to deposit froma bank account or wire transfer. the only way to get btc would be to buy face to face from someone off craigslist. bitcoins still has all the great features and properties of annonymity, no roadblocks etc but its hardd to get them and makes them even more valuable
CNBC had a guest yesterday and he brought his small mining device. The main device he said cost about $20. Then he said if he left it on 24 hours a day he might earn $1 a day.
Interesting guest and referenced to a link on CNBC's website. I think I heard him say he thought $5000.00 might be the low side and $400,000.00 the high side on the value of Bitcoin looking way into the future.
CNBC had a guest yesterday and he brought his small mining device. The main device he said cost about $20. Then he said if he left it on 24 hours a day he might earn $1 a day.
Interesting guest and referenced to a link on CNBC's website. I think I heard him say he thought $5000.00 might be the low side and $400,000.00 the high side on the value of Bitcoin looking way into the future.
The media covers bitcoin really poorly. They don't understand it and it shows. They also seem to be negative about it, probably because they are all owned by banks and large corporations who don't want bitcoin to succeed.
Those figures seemed kinda crazy as well. A good mining rig will cost thousands of Dollars, the most popular model normally retails for $16,000 but because of demand and backorder is selling for $25,000, so $20 for a mining rig is ridiculously low. Yeah there are little zip drives you can buy off ebay but they are crap.
Also, $1 a day seems really lwo although with a $20 miner that's probably about right, they would have to join amining pool however as no $20 machine is going to be able to mine solo. There are large companies building custom rigs that cost millions of dollars and take up entire rooms.
What value does bitcoin have to me, the average consumer who never conducts international or illegal transactions and doesn't live in a country with hyperinflation(I'm not sure how accessible e-commerce is in Zimbabwe, but I might pick up some bitcoins if I lived there and it was)? There is value in accepting bitcoins as there are no transactions fees, but the average person has little use in acquiring them outside of having an e-toy of sorts and/or speculative reasons.
The media covers bitcoin really poorly. They don't understand it and it shows. They also seem to be negative about it, A good mining rig will cost thousands of Dollars, the most popular model normally retails for $16,000 but because of demand and backorder is selling for $25,000.
There are large companies building custom rigs that cost millions of dollars and take up entire rooms.
There are bitcoin mining equipment selling on Ebay for $10,000. Several sold for that amount or around $9,000 in recent days and weeks. What do you make of that since the sellers got good feedback so the devices must be legitimate. It's a look at the photos, read the descriptions and then send the seller $9,000 - $10,000.
What value does bitcoin have to me, the average consumer who never conducts international or illegal transactions and doesn't live in a country with hyperinflation(I'm not sure how accessible e-commerce is in Zimbabwe, but I might pick up some bitcoins if I lived there and it was)? There is value in accepting bitcoins as there are no transactions fees, but the average person has little use in acquiring them outside of having an e-toy of sorts and/or speculative reasons.
I agree that right now its pretty much speculative. My biggest issue is this. With huge swings in value it throws off buying. If I buy at todays bitcoiin prices but prices go up next week I potentially could have paid something like 60% less if bitcoin went up. This throws off peoples normal buying times and stuff as your waiting for prices to change to buy or you dont wanna spend your bitcoins b/c they may be worth more later.
I like some elements of Bitcoin. Certain industries, and no NOT just illegal industries, have trouble with banking. banks shy away from some legal industries. Also, some industries face a high % of chargebacks. Bitcoin solves both these problems. ONe other thing, recently chase sent out letters to all small business customers basically limiting wires or saying they wouldn't send wires, forcing them into other accounts with fees. You can restrict the sending of bitcoins so this also solves that problem. i agree bitcoin doesn't have a ton of practical value currently but i do see many positives for it over current payment methods
There are bitcoin mining equipment selling on Ebay for $10,000. Several sold for that amount or around $9,000 in recent days and weeks. What do you make of that since the sellers got good feedback so the devices must be legitimate. It's a look at the photos, read the descriptions and then send the seller $9,000 - $10,000.
it all depends on what type of mining rig you want. some are 25k, some are as cheap as like $3.
Lamassu will be bringing bitcoin ATM machine's to the USA eventually and we'll be able to insert our dollars and get bitcoin vs. the very non transparent Coinbase.....which seems to be advertised only by people who use it. I don't see Coinbase recommended by neutral third parties.
I wouldn't waste time mining... bitcoin mining is becoming more difficult by the day... either mine script based coins with AMD video cards or CPU based coins with your i7 processor. Your ability to profit from this depends on the value of the coin you are mining increasing... mine a coin that brings something new or useful to the table... datacoin lets you store data in the blockchain... NXT coin is fairly interesting... Ripples have potential but are overvalued right now... plus side to mining them is you are actually helping humanity since you are donating to world community grid in the process. There are other coins with unique features that I have not totally researched.
Although litecoin and dogecoin are popular at the moment, they bring nothing new to the table and I believe long term they will both end up worthless, poor substitutes for bitcoin itself. I would not mine or invest in these at current market caps.. just look at the doge coin website.. it was clearly intended as a joke coin that got popular due to word of mouth and reddit.
I don't like the fact that 2% of the bitcoin userbase holds 65% of the coins.. it's very top heavy... who knows how many of those coins are simply 'lost' by people who threw the hard drives out or reformatted their computers though. Lots of the alt coins are like this too.. I believe some alt coin that improves on bitcoin could take over down the road.. perhaps a proof of stake coin with features like NXT coin, or simply a coin that has a low, fixed block reward that goes on for a long time to prevent small numbers of people from hoarding large numbers of coin.
In any case crypto currencies are a fun diversion! What I'd eventually like to see is a coin that lets you trade and hold all other coins in the wallet, trading entirely within the currency, with no need for a middleman or third party to handle the transactions.. a distributed trading platformed maintained by the traders themselves, with a blockchain that can somehow be limited in size by trimming it down every so often. If we have to store 1TB worth of data on our drives, these currencies will not succeed.. but I'd rather not have to deal with a centralized service that could 'shut down' leaving me without my coin either. RIPPLE is headed that way but you still need people to set up a trading platform that could shut down at any time if what I've read is correct...
I'm not entirely trusting of cryptsy and the other trading platforms at this point, though I plan to toss a few bones in them soon....
Lamassu will be bringing bitcoin ATM machine's to the USA eventually and we'll be able to insert our dollars and get bitcoin vs. the very non transparent Coinbase.....which seems to be advertised only by people who use it. I don't see Coinbase recommended by neutral third parties.
honestly i think people who use coinbase are the ones you want to listen to. who cares what a third party site says about something they never used, i wanna hear from people on the ground using it is it glitchy, how are the fees, is it secure.
some people dont like that coinbase doesnt have an 800 number and doesn't hold your hand in helping you enter bitcoin. its by far the simplest site imho and much simpler than many of the exchanges. coinbase is a fast growing company, they dont have an 800 number because they wanna deal with real problems and growing pains with their site and not walk people through how to login to a website which is what i see many people asking questions about
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