The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers

BAT rumor thread

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Ananda:

--- Quote from: Kindler on December 01, 2017, 08:57:17 PM ---At this point, it's basically just a commodity that's also a medium of exchange. Digital gold with a highly volatile value (though admittedly on a strongly upward trend). Actually explaining how it works would honestly take me way too long, and I don't even understand it all. Wish I had gone in with my buddy and fronted the money for the mini server farm he wanted to start four years ago, though. He wound up mining a couple hundred of them when they were valued really low. He bought a house for cash earlier this year, and I'm stuck with a mortgage like a sucker.

--- End quote ---
They just hit a new high yesterday, too.

I remember a story in the bbc news a few years ago about a guy who accidentally threw away an old hard drive that had his bitcoin on it. It was worh millions, if I remember correctly. He was in the trash dump every day, digging through the rotting garbage looking for it.

My husband wanted to invest in bitcoin some years back but never did. :(

Kindler:

--- Quote from: Ananda on December 07, 2017, 03:20:09 AM ---They just hit a new high yesterday, too.

I remember a story in the bbc news a few years ago about a guy who accidentally threw away an old hard drive that had his bitcoin on it. It was worh millions, if I remember correctly. He was in the trash dump every day, digging through the rotting garbage looking for it.

My husband wanted to invest in bitcoin some years back but never did. :(

--- End quote ---

Had I any Bitcoins, I would've cashed out at 10K. Probably earlier.

You guys remember all of that talk about unregulated speculation driving prices up a few years ago, setting up an enormous bubble? That's literally what's happening with Bitcoin right now. People aren't buying into Bitcoin because they want it as a currency; they're doing it because they view it as a commodity. So long as people keep expecting it to grow, it will; the moment the first major holder dumps their wallet, there's going to be a good ol' fashioned market panic. I wouldn't buy in now if someone paid me.

It's not even really good as a currency; transactions take a long time (a full transfer takes over an hour). There are other cryptocurrencies that function much better, with less volatility; I think one of them will become the standard eventually. Ignore the fact that a thousand dollar investment in 2012 would have netted me upwards of five million today. I'm not bitter. Not at all. (I'm totally bitter and I want Bitcoin to fail as a result so I'm proven right).

Rasins:
LOL ... I just thought it was digital currency.

If I'd known about it earlier, I'd still not have bought any.  I'm poor.  LOL

Ananda:

--- Quote from: Kindler on December 11, 2017, 07:23:45 PM ---Had I any Bitcoins, I would've cashed out at 10K. Probably earlier.

You guys remember all of that talk about unregulated speculation driving prices up a few years ago, setting up an enormous bubble? That's literally what's happening with Bitcoin right now. People aren't buying into Bitcoin because they want it as a currency; they're doing it because they view it as a commodity. So long as people keep expecting it to grow, it will; the moment the first major holder dumps their wallet, there's going to be a good ol' fashioned market panic. I wouldn't buy in now if someone paid me.

It's not even really good as a currency; transactions take a long time (a full transfer takes over an hour). There are other cryptocurrencies that function much better, with less volatility; I think one of them will become the standard eventually. Ignore the fact that a thousand dollar investment in 2012 would have netted me upwards of five million today. I'm not bitter. Not at all. (I'm totally bitter and I want Bitcoin to fail as a result so I'm proven right).

--- End quote ---
Yeah, it’s a commodity. When my husband was talking about buying some, I got curious as to what people actually bought with it. The short answer was almost nothing. The longer answer was a lakehouse, a boat, a ski chalet, et cetera (once you sold off your investment when the price went up).

Kindler:

--- Quote from: Rasins on December 12, 2017, 12:22:27 AM ---LOL ... I just thought it was digital currency.

If I'd known about it earlier, I'd still not have bought any.  I'm poor.  LOL

--- End quote ---

But to hear people talking about it, you could have made yourself rich overnight and retired to your own private island!


--- Quote from: Ananda on December 12, 2017, 04:12:34 AM ---Yeah, it’s a commodity. When my husband was talking about buying some, I got curious as to what people actually bought with it. The short answer was almost nothing. The longer answer was a lakehouse, a boat, a ski chalet, et cetera (once you sold off your investment when the price went up).

--- End quote ---

Yeah, that's about right. There are a lot of attractions to cryptocurrencies in general. There's a firm, finite supply of them (I think there can ever only be somewhere around 20 million BitCoins unless they mess with the blockchain formulae), and transactions can be conducted relatively anonymously. Mostly, I think they're going to be used as hedges against inflation eventually, the way people convert to British pounds or Euro, or gold. Some hedge funds are actually trading BitCoin futures now, which is kind of brave new worldish.

It's also literally impossible to regulate, which is why China simply banned it. It circumvents the international banking system, too, so it's making a lot of people uncomfortable. Cryptos are here to stay for those reasons alone, but nobody is going to take them seriously, with mainstream use as a currency, unless and until the volatility subsides and they stabilize. Hell, Steam was accepting BitCoin up until last week, and they cited volatility as the reason. My first thought was that some people were parking BitCoin using Steam purchases, then refunding the purchases later after there was a price change.

It's also hard to have appropriately scaled prices when there's a thirty percent change overnight.

Anyway, cryptos are weird, people are using them solely to enrich themselves or to conduct shady business at the moment, and I don't have a fifty acre plot of woodland to myself with a tiny cabin and a fishing stream, dang it.

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