I'm curious as to whether you've purchased anything with Bitcoin? Or transferred money to someone in a different country using Bitcoin?
The first time I sent Bitcoin directly from my wallet, to someone else's I was amazed at how quickly, and easily it was done - and blown away by the fact that it had been done in a decentralized manner.
I think all Bitcoin users (as opposed to speculators) are highly annoyed by the volatility, but keep in mind, by and large, none of the transactional users of BitCoin care whether the nominal value of a Bitcoin is $1, $100, or $10,000. All we want is for it to be stable so we don't have to keep sweeping our local currency in/out of Bitcoin as we use it.
I'm really curious as to where you are coming from, both personally and professionaly, when you utter single word sentences like, "You lost."
Your writing style makes most of the people who read you think you're just petty and looking for an opportunity to kick people who are down. Frankly I think the same. This kind of playground attitude rarely occupies the mind of good men.
If you've really been lamenting people's excitement over bitcoins as long as you say you have, I feel sorry for you and maybe you deserve this token of happiness. Fruitless as it is, you make it seem like you don't have much else.
I'd be interested in hearing your case for Bitcoin being fundamentally flawed. Honestly, I can only guess what you mean. Is is because it is deflationary? Is it because there are more speculators in the market than actual users? Is there some other, technical flaw, perhaps?
As somewhat frequent Bitcoin user - the recent volatility combined with lag in the MtGox exchange (in the United States) - has made it next to impossible to use Bitcoin as a medium of exchange, without a lot of back-and-forth refunds/top ups to make up for the rapidly changing value.
If I send you 2 Bitcoins expecting they will be $200 USD when they get to you, but when you transfer them back to USD, they are only worth $150 - then I still need to send you another $50 in bitcoins.
I can live with 10-20% volatility in currency a year, or even a month - but within a particular transaction? It makes the currency unusable.
One thing that no bitcoin user I've talked to who uses it as a currency mentions, is the nominal value. They would be quite happy (more happy) with a $1 USD BC that never, ever, changed its value.
There are a lot of reasons, I think. Here's a quick approach to it, though.
>Is it because there are more speculators in the market than actual users?
It's because you can't _stop_ that from being true.
Bitcoins are a form of money. Money has no intrinsic value--it's what you can do with it that matters, right? _Real_ money has commodities exchanges to track staples of production.
But we treat it with intrinsic value and we can do interesting things with it when we do. It occupies this nebulous space between inherently valuable and worthless.
The part where it's almost valuable by itself is what leads to greed, which is what leads to speculators.
So: Bitcoin doesn't solve the __real problem of money__ (because... is there really a good solution?), it just tries to pretend that decentralized and electronic money is better.
"Take no pride in your confession that you too are biased; do not glory in your self-awareness of your flaws. This is akin to the principle of not taking pride in confessing your ignorance; for if your ignorance is a source of pride to you, you may become loathe to relinquish your ignorance when evidence comes knocking. Likewise with our flaws—we should not gloat over how self-aware we are for confessing them; the occasion for rejoicing is when we have a little less to confess."
This has prompted some amount of introspection on my part, though probably not in the direction you intended.
I don't even view it as a flaw. Which is probably what _makes_ me not a nice person.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not cruel--I don't intend to hurt people. I just don't really mind if people feel stepped on because someone said something they didn't like.
I mean, I'm laughing that drivebyacc thinks his hands are any less mud-covered than mine. But I also look at that mud-slinging bit and think--well, I pushed him into revealing that he's playing at being an investment banker with Bitcoin, which is exactly what prevents Bitcoin from being a suitable replacement for the money we already have.
And I emphasized the gloating bit because it's a little true and I'm not angry and it gave that guy a bit of a shove. I think the emotion I feel about Bitcoin is similar to this XKCD: http://xkcd.com/194/
Bitcoins.
They don't work.
Now can we, as a technical culture, move on to something that will?
Up until about two weeks ago - Bitcoin has worked really well. I want to put $USD 2000 in the pocket of somebody I've never met, and neither of us want to use credit cards, or paypal, or pay fee's, or pay currency exchange.
He gives me a hex string, "1LnLfnc3nU3fYAY3DfuPsmqJqFAuRb4p9U".
Presuming, that Bitcoins are trading at $40 USD/ i type at the linux prompt, "bc sendtoaddress 1LnLfnc3nU3fYAY3DfuPsmqJqFAuRb4p9U 50"
15 minutes later, after three confirmations, he sells those 50 bitcoins at his exchange, and he now has $USD 2000.
That's the way it's been working just fine for the last 18+ months, until the recent couple weeks of increased volatility.
I don't see anything inherent in the currency that suggests we will have 10+% volatility every 15 minutes for the for seeable future. Doubling every month, of halving every month is fine, users of the currency can adjust for 2%/day volatility.
That's about the only problem I see with BitCoin as a currency right now. Let's check back in six months and see if we're still seeing the +/- 10% swings per day.
The first time I sent Bitcoin directly from my wallet, to someone else's I was amazed at how quickly, and easily it was done - and blown away by the fact that it had been done in a decentralized manner.
I think all Bitcoin users (as opposed to speculators) are highly annoyed by the volatility, but keep in mind, by and large, none of the transactional users of BitCoin care whether the nominal value of a Bitcoin is $1, $100, or $10,000. All we want is for it to be stable so we don't have to keep sweeping our local currency in/out of Bitcoin as we use it.
I'm really curious as to where you are coming from, both personally and professionaly, when you utter single word sentences like, "You lost."