If you're willing to spend more than a thousand dollars for a number, I can offer you a really great deal on the number "5" ...

Just soled every thing at 11 000 USD

Congratulations: you found a "greater fool."

But – that's not investing, and that's not currency – that's just gambling. "Russian Roulette." A speculative bubble is in progress and you don't know when it will end, but it will end abruptly and at a chosen time ... a time not chosen by you. The music suddenly stops and you realize that you're not one of the ones sitting in a musical chair. You wait for the music to start again. It never does.

Long ago, it was tulips. At the turn of the 21st Century it was "dot-bomb" stock certificates. Later, it was housing. (Several former-pastures near me are filled with cookie-cutter houses that never sold, and some of these are being dismantled to turn the land back into a pasture again.) The object of speculation varies but the fundamental swindle does not. The fact that "you made ten times the money" – or say that you did (but who's to know?) – means nothing. Zero. Zilch. Zippo. Nada.

When I daily read stories about "unbelievable" amounts of money that are supposedly connected to crypto-currencies, that's exactly what I think – unbelievable, as in, "false." Incredible, as in, "not credible."

if I were clever and found a market full of fooles I would go there at once to make a profit on those fooles, others that was even smarter or less foolish would do likewise and eventually there would only be a bunch of smart people left. Thats evolutions natural selection for you. Even so trading might not attract the most impressive specimens of the human race .

when I moved from home a couple of years ago I used to make money on trading out of necessity to pay my rent and I can tell that its way easier to make money on cryptocurrencies because there are fewer variables to consider (its simply not valid that its all down to chance). I have no interest what so every in trading actually its extremely boring in my opinion. Jet I can make a 20% profit or so on cryptocurrencies when ever I see the opportunity. I be happy to note my future investments in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as well.

I like to hear more about the grate conspiracy behind bitcoin? What secret viscus association controls bitcoin an by what means do they mange to do it? In a way bitcoin is creation of the imagination that came to life because of our curiosity and now it cant be forgotten about and hence will never disappear.

And also there are not a lot of money tied up in cryptocurrency not jet as you say. In fact the value of all the bitcoin in the world make up about 1/4 of Italy's BNP. That is one of the reasons why the potential is so grate just imagine what the impact would be if a fraction of Africans population started getting bitcoin at any given point.

Also In some places bitcoin can be a better option than the local money due to risk of bank crashes corruptions and fluctuations in the local currency. And all banks are more or less opportunistic institutions even in the develop world and we do have bank crashes a head of us so I would turn my back at them at any time. One interesting development is that people in Argentina has actually started using bitcoin due to the extreme fluctuation in there own currency. Nigeria is an other interesting country in that regard.

In my opinion the distribution of smartphones in poor country's will be a revolution for for bitcoin but also other cryptocurrencys its just logic that people would use it if they had the opportunity as bitcoin are way more attractive than the local money for a number of reasons. Unfortunately old Nokia phones are still widely distributed in poor country's but they will be replaced by inexpensive smartphones in the near future and that will add momentum to bitcoin for sure. And if huge amounts of bitcoin was used every day for buying necessities that would obviously add stability and less fluctuation.

Right now every one is selling of there bitcoin very slowly... Im confident that there will be an other slow increase flowing a similar the question is when. And in order to find out one needs some premises based on previous observations.

And forums dont work unless its a big hype around a new currency because no one will tell you when to run they wont you to keep on to it as long as possible disregards of there own planes.

In some countries (and, in some businesses), "barter transactions" are used routinely ... and "the local currency is one that no one has ever heard of" is one of those reasons. But the avoidance of taxes and fees is another (legitimate) reason. The parties who are trading with one another choose to denominate their accounts (among one another ...) without putting any sort of "currency-sign" after it. They regard it as a closed trading-system. They maintain their own private accounts.

But "crypto-currencies" in their present incarnation are frankly being devastated by rampant speculation. You'd be a greater-fool to attempt to contain "value" for any length of time at all because you have no way to know that the "value" would be preserved. The same is not true of Legal Tender, because these units do have an impartially-established valuation that has nothing to do with particular trades and which cannot be arbitrarily set or reset (unlike barter tokens ...) by the traders themselves.

As it is, they're nothing more than "tulips which don't taste like onions."

But I'm sure that the day will soon come when someone devises an algorithm that cheaply(!) produces tokens which have the all-important "block chain" characteristics. It took us a little while to arrive upon a "public-key cryptography" algorithm that worked, among quite a few candidates that were bantered about before "RSA" came along. I'm sure that the same thing will be the case here. But, people will continue to pursue this, because BCTs have compelling characteristics. (The current algorithms, alas, are "too damned expensive to compute.") As soon as we can "crank them out," they'll be a game-changer for the financial industry.

As Usual, the Russians have just aired a very informative episode on rt.com.

(If you ever wondered where "beefy broadcast journalism in America" actually went, check these guys out. Yeah, they're still doin' it ...)

– – –

Edit: But the smooth-talking bitcoin (exchange) salesman in the second half is especially enlightening. As usual, he proposes radical improvements for Pedro Péon, sure to appeal to any Libertarian heart who simply assumes that "the guy on the bottom never gets paid," while quietly overlooking how he gets paid. You look at the guacamole next to your taco, both of them somehow paid-for with bitcoin, and you feel real warm and fuzzy about it. What you don't know is that those avocadoes were bought and sold on futures-markets before they were ever grown, paid for with borrowed money and insured against crop failure. The proffered illusion is that, with bitcoin et al, the transaction will be instantly distributed directly to poor old Pedro. When in fact that makes no sense. But if it's good enough to fuel continued speculation, it's good enough for some people.

Should I get my friends Bitcoin for their wedding present?

Dear members,
Please keep the discussion free of personal attacks. If you don't agree with someone, this is not a reason to call them troll. We accept hot discussions at LQ, but if they don't break the forum rules. Otherwise the discussion gets closed. Thank you!

An interesting tangent already becoming a reality mainly because of crypto-currency. The full article is on tecnologyreview.com but here is a teaser excerpt

There are indeed scammers under the umbrella of crypto-currencies as there are surrounding anything of value (not much percentage in a scam regarding garbage, unless you're The Mafia and own all of the garbage trucks) but that hardly means the thing itself is a scam, pure and simple. It's more complicated, widespread and fascinating than that.

There's no question at all that block-chain tokens (BCTs) will be truly revolutionary, as soon as we can make them cheaply and quickly. They'll be every bit as important as public-key cryptography, or maybe much more so.

What's your point? that economy is based on lended money that's supposed to one day be covered with growth? And you put this in relation to the demeaning concept of "porr pablo". ever considered what makes growth possible on whose expense it happens or how it affects others?

What enables the growth in the global economy is not pretty sight chinese workers dyes lewis jens 18h a day, that we where out of vanity, leaving them with nerve damages. Por workers use pesticides on their crops in order to keep production up and so one . All so you can live your comfortable life on lended money while writing this on your macbook. As you can see for yourself this make your comment on my relative wealth that i'm making on cryptocurrencies and that I use for food and for financing my studies funny and tradich at same time .

It self evident however that this fact don't make bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that has paid for my relative wealth any better as it couldn't exist without the global financial system. Could its despite this facts solve some of the problems pointed out? I don't know.

To start with, as noted above, I think you make another obvious point that istent question by anyone and jett put it forward as a key point that no one understands: that bitcoin in way is parasitic on the real financials system and could not exist on its own. But no one thinks otherwise so your parfrace on Dutch 17th century dutch tulip mania is not as interesting as you think.

Second bitcoin is not even a currency its possible an acet like gold that can be bought. Gold has some practical use tough so some gems could be a better comparison this fakt rases another interesting question: could a digital item be precious thing on its own like a diamond consider the fact that its limited in number? I thinks not . And this probable fact make it even less than a natural acet.

Now let's get get back to your first point that I never really commented on: That nothing can relay ever be paid for by bitcoin. But even so could the worker benefit from the peracetic extension of the real global economy and by doing so getting more for his hard work while the people typing this on their macbooks get less?

it seems to contradict the concept of a global economy that I believe in. And It's unlikely as por workers crops will have to be distributed by huge distribution chanes multi million business that would not accept bitcoins. Its and interesting question how high you can get in this chain of distribution with bitcoin. In my opinion nowhere. What production or export company would like to have its liquidity in bitcoin ?

Nothing stops the farmer however from selling his crops on the local market or a to a regional distribution company getting bitcoins on his cell phone paying for necessities and if necessary exchange them for dollars and paying for stuff that jet can only be both with dollar. Scaled up this overall idea is as noted contradiction to globalized economy. But paradoxically at the same time it's the opposite as it has the potential of bypassing the regional economical system. But what happen to infrastructure, local institutions and economic growth without regional economic systems? This is where its get interesting and where bitcoin could realize the anarchist libertarian potential was supposed to fulfill. And hence contribute to distribution wealth and power in a more even way.

The "Libertarian argument" is usually the one that's trotted-out by fraudsters: the world is full of injustices, and it's all caused by Greedy [Corporations|Governments|Banksters]™, and Pedro the Poor Farmer™ never gets paid. And, so forth. "So, we should take Money back into our own hands," and by-the-way I have something to sell you (for US Dollars, please ...), you Smarter Than The Average Bear™ bear, you!

It's been done before. It's been done to death.

The "perps" of this confidence game, whoever and wherever they are, are well-funded, experienced, and obviously-international. They have the ability to (for example) distribute "bitcoin ATMs" which will convert money into bitcoins – but, kindly notice, won't go the other way. They know how to stoke "Libertarian ideas," and to insist that governments and bankers are "afraid of" what they're doing – because, you know, "it would keep them from being Greedy B*stards™ and suddenly the World Would Sing In Perfect Harmony.™ They're also able to distribute stories of governments suddenly adopting crypto-currency for things like Oil, hoping that you won't notice that these same governments can simply issue Legal Tender instead.

Yes, right now they'll do anything that they can to persuade their "marks" that, this time, Charles MacKay wasn't right, way back in 1841.

... until, inevitably, "the trap snaps shut," as it always does, and the victims howl for the government to bail them out ... with Legal Tender.

The libertarian ider dosent work that way and cant be used making that argument.

Im truly amazed by the range of your conspiracy theory! As you might know a lot of people suffer from this kind of delusion brought about by a cognitive dissonance between personal ides, value and so and and an other unacceptable fact concept or idea that clashes with the once already held. It dosent even have to be an insult to there intellect ether.

But lets presume you're right because its a useful thought experiments. And because its never the less a reasonable way to think about the uncertain future. So what I like to know is how the presumably existing conspiracy with all the power that possibly can attribute to it could shut down its own creation bitcoin?

As you know shunting down the handful of bitcoin ATM:s around the world wont do any thing even though the grate conspiracy might have put them up only in order to bring attention to bitcoin.

And also you do know how the blockchain works so you know that no single person is actually supporting the bitcoin system one there own so no one can "pull the plug" that way.