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[misko27]

This is quite interesting, and has absoultely nothing related to dwarves ordwarf fortress in any matter whatsoever. Therefore, this should be in the Lower Forums.

[Capntastic]

Bitcoins are still a joke no matter how many articles are linked. 

[Boea]

Bitcoins are still a joke no matter how many articles are linked. 

Then a joke is about $12 USD.

Anyways, if you accept bitcoins, it's pretty much free stocks, at the very least.
The difference between a stock, and a currency, on the market is pretty low.

[Capntastic]

$12USD you can pretty much only spend on beef jerky, drugs, child porn from the Russian mob, or invested into a self-described Ponzi scheme.

There's a reason the majority of well known Bitcoiners are successful scam artists or people who have ridiculous pipe dreams like "open a movie theater" and trying to air movies without the licenses on a $200 Epson projector.  Bitcoiners are, by and large, people trying to invent a cargo cult economy.

[Capntastic]

Having a 'value' doesn't make something a stable currency.  Considering Bitcoins pretty much fluctuate at random I don't doubt that they've gone up from ~$6 earlier this year.  But at the same time, as soon as anyone with a sufficient amount of them tries to cash out it'll completely crash the market.  Like it always does.  It also does this when one of the main exchanges gets hacked, like it always does.

I'm not saying it's impossible to turn a profit off of it, I'm saying that it's incredibly risky and that the Bitcoin community is full of get-rich-quick idiots with blinders on, and a never-ending ouroboros of scam artists trying to get people to invest in their no foolin' super secret projects.

[Putnam]

Bitcoins are still a joke no matter how many articles are linked. 

Then a joke is about $12 USD.

More than, usually.

[Capntastic]

Despite notions of being honest, hard-working Ayn Rand-styled captains of industry, the majority of bitcoiners take pleasure in scamming companies by abusing RMAs and warranties to trade in blatantly abused hardware (10+ video cards running inside a cardboard box case, or no case at all, with a box fan as cooling).  Similarly, it's pretty commonplace for people to collude with each other, on the main bitcoin forums, to pay off mods and admins to ban or castigate competition as scammers, etc.

At the same time, while being endlessly pleased at the idea of rugged individualism offered by a truly Caveat Emptor economy, as soon as misfortune hits (scammers vanishing with sacks of bit-money, exchanges getting hacked, people defaulting on loans, etc), people immediately want to form regulatory bodies and commissions to reign that sort of behavior in.  There's been people trying to literally hire the Yakuza to kill people as vengeance.

Likewise, despite being 'untrackable', people routinely track transactions to see who is funneling money through who.

The whole operation is shambolic as heck, especially when last year the Bitcoin community had some sort of one-sided feud going with a comedy website of all things.

Overall, the disparity between the veneer of being the wise, liberty-laden currency of the future and what Bitcoin's actually comprised of is huge to the point of making Bitcoin absurd just from a cursory glance.  Again, no number of self-important sounding wiki-articles gleaned from some high schooler's economics textbook, no number of reams of fervent support, is going to be enough to really make the community or concept seem like less of a joke.

[Darvi]

Question: Why would anybody ever want to use a fake currency if real money can do the same things and more?

[Neonivek]

Question: Why would anybody ever want to use a fake currency if real money can do the same things and more?

Money Laundering

[misko27]

So, I was aloof towards this whole argument. But then I found this helpful website.
 
You can guess my stance towards them now. No. I am so incredibly glad Toady does not accept these. That's just a terrible idea. That's just, awful. Making your own money? There is no legitmacy. All of it is trash. I mean what the hell? I mean hell, it ignores every fucking law of investing man has created. I, can't even go into details lest I give up and start using rage all-caps.
 
Do me a favor. Ask people who invest in currencies for a living, what they think. Not bitcoiners, mind you. Let them explain what a good currency to invest in is.

[GoombaGeek]

I think they're silly. You don't need a special internet currency.

[AutomataKittay]

So, I was aloof towards this whole argument. But then I found this helpful website.
 
You can guess my stance towards them now. No. I am so incredibly glad Toady does not accept these. That's just a terrible idea. That's just, awful. Making your own money? There is no legitmacy. All of it is trash. I mean what the hell? I mean hell, it ignores every fucking law of investing man has created. I, can't even go into details lest I give up and start using rage all-caps.
 
Do me a favor. Ask people who invest in currencies for a living, what they think. Not bitcoiners, mind you. Let them explain what a good currency to invest in is.

It depends on who's got stronger economy, more stable value, or easier to trade in and governmental/organizational stability

None which bitcoins have, other than being supposedly self-regulating system. It's pretty much equilvalent of hard currency without governmental approval, or even closer to stock market or precious metal market, which have pretty much the same wild trends and dependancy on limited backing.

It's actually complicated, but I think generally the few I've noted ( Yen, Dollar, Euro and Pounds) are relatively stable on global scale, and each of them seems to take turns in being the strongest acceptable currency.

( I'm not a currency investor, but I'm familiar enough with principles and observed a lot of economical trends over time, free-floating currency exchange is a bitch )

[BinaryBeast1010011010]

What make a money acceptable is its backing, since in most cases people choose their government they indirectly make their own money. They just do it in a centralized way. And the money value being guaranteed by the government it is only a consensus between all the citizen. Consensus reached through government elections. Bitcoins seems quite the same to me, just that the consensus isnt reached through a government.
T'is just an idea that came to me, dont hesitate beating the living daylight out of it

[Boea]

Eh, an economy is based on supply and demand of generally anything, and you can't conceivably trade everything or anything of value at any given time, so currency and commerce was established; currency being an offset of value; commerce being the usage of currency in the economy.
The basis of it isn't hard set at all, you can practically trade anything for anything, it's just over time, conventions for trade, and the value of items are  established naturally.

Well then [Goombageek], you keep saying that you can have something to offset value [ gold nuggets, 256*256 images ], but it doesn't have the same value as the actual service or product you can buy with it, and that it is silly to associate the currency/medium with the actual value in service/product.

Hasn't that happened in the past with hyperinflation? Hasn't that happened in the past with most if not all currencies? [ Where people associated the medium used to represent value, like currency, with the actual value of services and products it represents, and went on a binge printing money wantonly. ]

[Reelya]

Nice thread here, i do enjoy discussing currency and economic ideas.

One thing I thought I'd mention is how fiat currency can have value if it's not "pegged" against anything ... e.g. wouldn't the value be purely based on psychology?

And the answer is no. The reason being the way modern central banks / federal reserves issue currency. Rather than just printing money and handing it out, they issue currency as DEBT (reserve banks loan money to other banks to be further loaned out). And debts always have to be repaid plus interest.

Think about what that means? For every dollar issued, more than that many dollars must be eventually repaid to the reserve bank. This ensures that the DEMAND for dollars is roughly proportional to the amount of money issued.

Obviously this is a simplified explanation, but you get the idea.