Buying bitcoins

Oh it appears Bitcoin died, again, for the 89th time.

Seriously though, I read through Mike's post and I think he's overreacting, and is underestimating Bitcoin's antifragility. Mike was the first guy to really make a hard push at raising the blocksize, he fell out with most of the other core developers over this, and eventually released the first competing bitcoin implementation with a higher block size (Bitcoin XT). XT had almost no uptake (due to lack of interest? or the attacks he mentions? probably a bit of both).

Mike effectively left bitcoin already a few months ago when he took a job at R3CEV. He probably still hoped XT would gather some momentum as the block size issue became more critical. What has happened instead is that some other devs, with support of what seems like most of the major mining entities have released another competing bitcoin implementation with bigger blocks - bitcoin classic. I expect that the frustration that classic is making more headway than XT did at least partly fueled his public rage-quit article.

Mike contributed a hell of a lot to bitcoin over the years, and I hope some day he comes back to it, but a tweet I saw put it nicely - "Bitcoin is a consensus system, it has failed only when there is consensus that it has failed." Fred Wilson also wrote a great response. But enough about Mike....

If you read back from the very start of this thread years ago, you'll find questions that bitcoin has had to answer, usually by running into the problems head on. Such as:
- What will happen when the countries regulate bitcoin and make it illegal?
- Mt Gox. has 90% of bitcoin trading, it's a central point of failure, what happens if it fails?
- What happens when the blockchain grows and is too big to fit on a phone or PC, how can you run a wallet?
- What happens when mining can no longer be done by amateurs at home, and is purely the realm of professionals?
- What happens when the hype dies down and the price crashes?

All of the above have been cited as ways bitcoin would fail. Each time bitcoin has overcome one of these it becomes more robust. This is the antifragility in action.

I think of the recent civil war block size debate as at least four more distinct questions that bitcoin is facing rather than one single issue:
1) What happens if people in charge of bitcoin forums and/or core developers attack bitcoin with propaganda, or censorship.
2) What happen if the core developers fail to maintain bitcoin, be it due to bribes, coercion or incompetence?
3) What happens when blocks get full and bitcoin runs out of capacity, can bitcoin scale?
4) What happens if bitcoin splits into two incompatible forks?

The blocksize debate and concerns in Mike's article can mostly be reduced to those 4 questions I think. Here are my thoughts in relation to each one:

1) thermos (aka theymos) has sole control over the bitcoin reddit and bitcointalk.org, which until now have been the leading two US bitcoin forums. He considers any competitor to bitcoin core to be an attack on bitcoin and has actively been censoring mention and discussion of them. Well, he's trying to censor communication in the age of the internet, good luck with that. The solution to this is easy, many users including myself, have left his forums for new uncensored competitors /r/btc and bitco.in.

2) We get competing implementions, there are now Bitcoin XT, bitcoin Classic and Bitcoin unlimited. I think it's clear by now that stakeholders have had a bit of analysis paralysis up until now. Everyone has failed to reach consensus on an increased blocksize so the default action has been to do nothing and stick with bitcoin core. I already detailed the 4 ways this can play out in my earlier post 717

3) This is a more specific case of 2). We'll get the answer to both of these questions together.

4) I expect in this case it resolves very quickly. One fork will gain consensus, and the other will quickly be abandoned. Any of the new implementations such as bitcoin classic typically only trigger a fork when a supermajority (75%) of miners have indicated they are willing to go along with it, there is also typically a grace period then for everyone (merchants, nodes, exchanges) to upgrade and be compatible with the new fork. This will mean that a minority, if anyone at all, are left on the old fork, due to either being stubborn or inactive, and that frankly is their problem. Bitcoin will be what the economic majority want it to be, if you disagree you are no longer part of Bitcoin.

I know most posters here are in favor of btc,but what do you gain from it ?

since investment into them is like playing roulette prices move not because of economical factors rather then someone buying bulk or more likely selling bulk amounts.

Its not generating any value-closest example would be some game cards/comics that some people pay insane money because it was original thus small market exists for enthusiasts who see value in it,yet for someone else its just piece of paper-dont mistake that with fiat currency where $ is $ anywhere you go.

then massive fluctuations-due to no regulations,and also unreliable storage and system that is more complex and time consuming then using anything else.

Since i see to fail where people using btc fall into which category.
surely anyone in trading wouldn't invest in it-since there is no economical factor behind it like stocks have based on real life performance of any company due to their results in market,where they generate results based on actual performances in fiscal year on sales,and generating profit or loss due to results.

then diversifying it doesn't make any sense either-if one was to walk into bank and say had 10k to invest and was offered to invest into some fund that would either generate 90% profit or loss in years time,one wouldn't need much brains to figure out risk/vs reward ratio,and imagine being told you are investing into something that is purely based on creating from nothing and has no backup just others who are in same scheme.

and third option is DW where someone selling x stuff wants to remain unknown thus people using it to cover up themselves,and even that if attention is gained could be traced down,as SR example and many following showed.

Its like some claim they want freedom and independence from banks,yet whole thing is manipulated more then any currency and changes that appear can wipe out any value in days time,not to mention how btc was originally manipulated to create its value and it took several attempts before hype was created.

scamalert wrote: »

I know most posters here are in favor of btc,but what do you gain from it ?

since investment into them is like playing roulette prices move not because of economical factors rather then someone buying bulk or more likely selling bulk amounts.

Its not generating any value-closest example would be some game cards/comics that some people pay insane money because it was original thus small market exists for enthusiasts who see value in it,yet for someone else its just piece of paper-dont mistake that with fiat currency where $ is $ anywhere you go.

then massive fluctuations-due to no regulations,and also unreliable storage and system that is more complex and time consuming then using anything else.

Since i see to fail where people using btc fall into which category.
surely anyone in trading wouldn't invest in it-since there is no economical factor behind it like stocks have based on real life performance of any company due to their results in market,where they generate results based on actual performances in fiscal year on sales,and generating profit or loss due to results.

then diversifying it doesn't make any sense either-if one was to walk into bank and say had 10k to invest and was offered to invest into some fund that would either generate 90% profit or loss in years time,one wouldn't need much brains to figure out risk/vs reward ratio,and imagine being told you are investing into something that is purely based on creating from nothing and has no backup just others who are in same scheme.

and third option is DW where someone selling x stuff wants to remain unknown thus people using it to cover up themselves,and even that if attention is gained could be traced down,as SR example and many following showed.

Its like some claim they want freedom and independence from banks,yet whole thing is manipulated more then any currency and changes that appear can wipe out any value in days time,not to mention how btc was originally manipulated to create its value and it took several attempts before hype was created.

If you can't see the value of any two people on this planet being able to electronically transfer money between them in a secure way, for peanuts, with no single bank/company/government telling them they can't then the value of bitcoin certainly will be lost to you. The only way this can happen is if what's being transferred intrinsically has value.

I'm not sure you've ever used SEPA, but the idea that the entire European banking sector came together and this is what a modern electronic payment system looks like is a bad joke - in fact it's such a bad joke, so unfit for purpose that conspiracy theorists should be having a field day.

what cave do you live in that any bank doesnt allow you to transfer cash to anyone who owns an account to anyone or anywhere ?

And the same bank that doesnt allow you to transfer cash yet allows you to cash out from your btc.

Thats the part i dont get it,is it an issue paying 1.5-5% on your transfer for 300e using pp,or cc ,or would you feel more secure making transaction one way of few grand without knowing who it goes to,just because you want to skimp on hundred or so to do it ?

I get idea some people want to have some account separate from main bank to do online shopping/gambling thus many services provide it for little to none.
Otherwise no bank gives crap where you spend your cash until you pay taxes as per terms and conditions you sign-thus in return you get some security and safety,that your funds wont vanish into thin air because some server goes down,or sent money and it went missing without a trace.

positron

alb, perhaps another question for you. The 'bankcoin' thing that was mentioned with R3 etc - is that real?

It sounded like banks are looking into create / adopt some sort of blockchain / distributed ledger type setup to handle perhaps as a intra-bank, as well as consumer payment network? If so, that could be great for bitcoin by popularising the technology and acceptance.

From what I understand about r3cev they're trying to work with banks to develop something private using blockchain technology that lets the banks interact more efficiently. From what one of their guys said recently they seem to be still at an early stage. I also heard they have 42 banks participating.

Since bitcoin launched there has always been the question about whether companies, banks or even countries would release 'their own' competitor to bitcoin. People suggested that since such a blockchain would have 'backing' and could be foreced on a user base it would be better and replace bitcoin.

One issue with this is that if a blockchain 'belongs' to someone it is no longer a cryptocurrency. While it still may be useful, it will almost certainly not have many of the features which make bitcoin and crytpocurrency in general appealing - decentralisation, permissionless innovation, permissionless global access, fair distribution.

Systems launched like this have problems bitcoin don't have, if they're not open source, people need to trust the issuer. The issuer can have all sorts of legal risks and costs if they are liable for KYC/AML diligence etc.

There have already been a couple of projects like ripple and stellar which don't seem to have had much impact on bitcoin.

My general thought on this is that if blockchains and cryptocurrency work and are useful, there will be a successful, global, open source public blockchain like bitcoin. As you said, such projects do help to legitimise bitcoin and familiarise people with it, much like people being forced to use private email at work was a precursor to adoption of public email in their personal lives.

Mullicker

alb wrote: »

Oh it appears Bitcoin died, again, for the 89th time.

Seriously though, I read through Mike's post and I think he's overreacting, and is underestimating Bitcoin's antifragility.

I would describe it as more of an attack on bitcoins usability as a consequence of bitcoins governance, not so much a hey bitcoin is fragile.

If you read back from the very start of this thread years ago, you'll find questions that bitcoin has had to answer, usually by running into the problems head on. Such as:
- What will happen when the countries regulate bitcoin and make it illegal?
- Mt Gox. has 90% of bitcoin trading, it's a central point of failure, what happens if it fails?
- What happens when the blockchain grows and is too big to fit on a phone or PC, how can you run a wallet?
- What happens when mining can no longer be done by amateurs at home, and is purely the realm of professionals?
- What happens when the hype dies down and the price crashes?

Regulation is still a scary thing for bitcoin holders. The recent BIS paper listed possible regulations to combat the use of bitcoin, a factor in me selling last week. Besides just because past questions are answered doesn't mean current questions will and the questions raised by Mike were the following:

"would you care about a payments network that:
•Couldn’t move your existing money
•Had wildly unpredictable fees that were high and rising fast
•Allowed buyers to take back payments they’d made after walking out of shops, by simply pressing a button (if you aren’t aware of this “feature” that’s because Bitcoin was only just changed to allow it)
•Is suffering large backlogs and flaky payments
•… which is controlled by China
•… and in which the companies and people building it were in open civil war?"

The idea and what bitcoin stands for will ultimately make it imo, not necessarily bitcoin itself. When you see how easily Dash handled a blocksize increase it makes bitcoin look like a slow moving dinosaur.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwCZHIP_gmI

Fair point about the regulation, it's not set in stone, but it's also less likely to get the outright global bans any time soon that that people were fearing a few years ago. The general attitude so far has been to warn people that they're dealing with a risky unregulated system, and regulate the fiat-crypto on/off-ramps similar to conventional financial services. All very reasonable.

It wouldn't surprise me if bitcoin didn't really rub governments the wrong way until (if?) closed loop bitcoin economies become more common, and at that point it gets harder to enforce too.

If bitcoin continues to get more popular and the blocksize is not raised all of Hearn's questions you posed will be answered, and I'll quote again the possible outcomes I considered:

1) bitcoin core developers implement a sufficient scaling solution which everyone is happy to run
2) bitcoin core developers do not implement a scaling solution, someone else does instead. The blockchain forks, one of the forks wins. This is a messy outcome, but everyone will almost certainly migrate to the winning fork very quickly.
3) bitcoin core developers do not implement a scaling solution. None is needed because additional layers on top of bitcoin (lightning network, sidechains, payment channels etc) provide sufficient scaling in due time.
4) bitcoin core developers do not implement a scaling solution and there is no fork or successful additional layers. Bitcoin fails to scale, another cryptocurrency willing to scale overtakes bitcoin as the leading cryptocurrency. I suspect the threat of this is enough to prevent it from happening.

It's easier for Dash or any other small time coin to be more agile, but they also have not faced the kinds of issues bitcoin does as they are not so popular. I'm not going to care about an alt-coin until I see one at least 10 times bigger than any of them are now.

Mullicker

I won't really care about any cryptocurrency until it is widely accepted, easy to use and offers some privacy. Bitcoin is the best overall but not good enough for me.

It was more like a speculative commodity than a currency for the time I had it. When I look back at my recent online purchases it has been all travel related and none of the accommodation or airline sites I used accepted bitcoin. And where I did use bitcoin as a currency I had to wait 15 minutes before I had a confirmation, so it would actually be a dis-improvement over how quickly things happen when I pay online with Visa.

Now I understand many people use bitcoin for different reasons and it may do a better job than existing solutions in some areas but it was not the case for me.

Tornando9

I love bitcoin and have been around the bitcoin trading scene for years. I used to trade altcoins on cryptsy and bittrex.
I had great fun doing so but the altcoin market retty much died 2 years ago. There seems to be some increase in volume again but might not last long.

In the meantime i have been trading forex pairs and commodities on https://1broker.com/m/r.php?i=2705

The great thing about trading here is that the profits are paid in bitcoin so its quite unique.

Bitcoin is the future and is here to stay.

yeah bitcoin are here to stay until darkweb comes up with better solution,and given new implementations to obtain them,given you leave as much track using bitcoin as any prepaid card,then hassle with fees that miners make,transaction time,cashing out-its useless.

btc might not be governed by law,but given that majority is made and maintained by Chinese and servers that store them,that can go puff without any traces or consequences is a joke to believe its some future crypto currency.

Like this story that ive read:basically person managed to get enough btc without as buying any,found out hosting provider that accepted btc as payment and didn't ask any personal info,then create website on dw and paid advertising fees with btc to provide service of hacking someones emails,phones etc for a cost-thing is person who done did never bothered to provide any such services only collect payments-and said what they gonna do hire another service to hack me

or complain to someone that they intended to pay for illegal services

think its called hackers for hire.

Tornando9

There is already Darkcoin or Dash as it's now known which has a feature called darksend which is untraceable. It's two years old now and old tech. Also to make bitcoin anon all you need to do is send it through a tor node.

You can opt out of miner fees for btc but your confirmation time on a tx will be a long wait.
I can cash out in a matter of minutes with coinbase directly to my bank account.

I have never had my bitcoin wallet hacked or lost coins on a server. But last week my credit card got skimmed for the third time. The winklevoss twins have launched a super secure regulated exchange called gemini and VC money of around $1bn has flooded into bitcoin in the last few months.

Pretty sure Hackers take cash too.

Still dont see any single advantage to using btc only cons,and most likely to use for some twisted reasons to go trough all the anonymity hassle.

buying btc from anywhere you pay on top like 20-30$ and lose money instantly on that purchase,if you were to cash out again.

paying transfer fees on top,because some Chinese factory has monopoly.

most inconvenient to calculate its worth,not to mention huge fluctuations in price daily.

capped amount,and profits those who mine it large scale

payments go one way and no backwards security.

while even most basic prepaid card will provide chip security and if dots wont connect investigation will be launched to trace if card was used by someone else or stolen,even more CC cards would notify you first second if purchase was made in couple hundred euros just to confirm it,specially if money are going out of country,but according to tin foil heads its too expensive to send money using prepaid or other card since its like 3% charge that you'll incur for such inconvenience and banks dont allow to send money abroad stories.

So, any updates on the latest Bitcoin saga?

What is Core and what is Classic?

So, any updates on the latest Bitcoin saga?

What is Core and what is Classic?

Bitcoin Classic has been released this week. https://coin.dance/nodes gives a good overview of the four main node software variants with a description of what each is, and charts that give real time data on what the current market share each has is. If you've any specific questions I can post more later this evening.

I will look at that link, thanks. I find it very hard to follow the saga, and to figure out what's best for the currency.

Bitcoin Classic
The gist of it is that bitcoin classic is based on an exact copy of a recent version of bitcoin core, but with one important change. If miners run bitcoin classic, the blocks they produce have a label on them indicating this. If 75% of the last 1000 mined blocks contain contain this label, nodes and miners running Classic consider it as meaning that the increase of the blocksize from 1MB to 2MB has been approved, and after a 1 month grace period they will consider 2MB blocks valid. In this scenario any nodes still running core will consider those blocks invalid.

Nodes and miners
The bitcoin network is made up of nodes and miners. Nodes connect to other nodes and listen for new transactions, if the transactions are deemed valid they relay them to other nodes. They do the same for any new blocks they receive. Each node typically keeps a history of every block, and every transaction that has ever happened, so that they can verify new transactions and blocks.

Miners are typically also nodes, but with the added behaviour of creating new blocks.

Adoption of Classic
The https://coin.dance/nodes link shows that we now have about 15% of nodes running Classic. However 0 of the last 1000 blocks were mined with Classic, meaning that so far there no miners are running classic, and therefore we're nowhere near the 75% of the last 1000 blocks needed for the 2MB increase to happen.

Politics and what's best for bitcoin
The civil war is continuing, people at all levels disagree on the best path forward. Core wants to implicitly increase block size by the complex new segregated witness feature, which isn't ready yet, but is due in a month or two. Classic wants to just simply double the blocksize with a hard fork now. Either way bitcoin continues on. Classic has only just launched so things are finally getting interesting, but I suspect if it does not have significant uptake within say a month, it may die on the vine, and for better or worse Bitcoin continues on the path Bitcoin Core has set.

Another cryptocurrency, Ethereum is bubbling hard in the meantime. Some speculate it's due to migration to it due to the uncertainty in bitcoin. Maybe it is, maybe it's just another small cap alt-coin bubble, I've seen many like it before. Maybe it's a bit of both.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-price-hits-two-year-high-1465856720

alb wrote: »

Adoption of Classic
The https://coin.dance/nodes link shows that we now have about 15% of nodes running Classic. However 0 of the last 1000 blocks were mined with Classic, meaning that so far there no miners are running classic, and therefore we're nowhere near the 75% of the last 1000 blocks needed for the 2MB increase to happen.

An update since two weeks ago. There are now 1056 Classic nodes running (almost 18% of total nodes). The first Classic blocks were mined, 1.5% of the last 1000 are Classic blocks. Still a long way off the required 75% but it's a start.

Pressured by this support of Classic, some Core developers met with some major Chinese miners and convinced them to stick with Core by assuring them Core would also provide a roadmap to upgrade to 2MB blocks - code available this summer, with hope to only need to deploy it in mid-2017.

Meanwhile, the transaction rate continues to increase, reaching a new daily all time high this week of over 246,000 a couple of days ago. Blocks are frequently full, with a back-log of transactions. We're about to find out whether some bitcoin transactions are really spam or disposable, and what kind of fee market users will tolerate. It's a new chapter for bitcoin.

KomradeBishop 16-01-2016 13:38 wrote: »

When powerful elements within the community, along with those who control the infrastructure, are openly corrupt and are deliberately trying to slam Bitcoin into a technological roadblock - as the above looks a lot like - then it seems like the endgame for the main Bitcoin cryptocurrency is near, and that people unwise enough to invest in Bitcoin, should start dumping them before it all unfolds.

16 Jan 2016 1 BTC = €335
16 Jun 2016 1 BTC = €668

So anyone following your advice would have gotten out at the bottom, people who didn't buy in Jan have missed a chance to double their money in 6 months.

Bought a few when they dropped to less than $300. It was a gamble. Wish I'd bought more now!

howamidifferent

Interesting take on the current price rises which was published a year ago...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_IkOf8IFBQ

KomradeBishop

pH wrote: »

16 Jan 2016 1 BTC = €335
16 Jun 2016 1 BTC = €668

So anyone following your advice would have gotten out at the bottom, people who didn't buy in Jan have missed a chance to double their money in 6 months.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-price-hits-two-year-high-1465856720

There is no 'advice' which can predict a volatile flash-increase in the value of Bitcoin - people from 6 months ago, will have had no way to be cognizant that the recent flash increase would happen.

There is no intelligence or shrewd prediction behind deciding to stick with Bitcoin up to today - it's a fairly random/unpredictable event, likely to be followed by a future fall.

You won't be making a similar post noting any future fall in value though, as Bitcoin-mania promoters, tend to cherry-pick what they emphasize/pay-attention to - and focus only on the hype.

Nobody expects the value of Bitcoin to stop being wildly volatile - which is what the current trend is just evidence of - these events don't change the future challenges that Bitcoin still faces, due to its technical structure and how that can potentially be corruptible as mining is further consolidated.

I'm not who you were replying to to, but I've some things to say about this.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

There is no 'advice' which can predict a volatile flash-increase in the value of Bitcoin - people from 6 months ago, will have had no way to be cognizant that the recent flash increase would happen.

There is no intelligence or shrewd prediction behind deciding to stick with Bitcoin up to today - it's a fairly random/unpredictable event, likely to be followed by a future fall.

At the end of post 717 almost 6 months ago I said:

alb wrote: »

It would not surprise me if this year provides a perfect storm of events for bitcoin to bubble up again: Global markets struggling, along with Chinese currency devaluation, the reward halving and a resolution to the scaling issues, but it's bitcoin so who knows

and before that in post 707 in 2015 I said:

alb wrote: »

People were saying that bitcoin had been going down since the gox bubble 2 years ago, but it's not true. The bottom was January this year, and it's been sideways since then. Many who sold on the down trend were just waiting for a clear bottom to buy back in, so when you get any kind of significant upward movement it's easy for a positive feedback loop to start and we get the hockey stick we've seen before.

These weren't predictions with certainty, nor could I know the exact timing, but I do not think it's random either. I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I specified the reasons bitcoin could rise again. I expected another bull market was more likely than more downside and I acted accordingly. Bitcoin has always grown in spikes followed by slow downtrends to higher lows.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

You won't be making a similar post noting any future fall in value though, as Bitcoin-mania promoters, tend to cherry-pick what they emphasize/pay-attention to - and focus only on the hype.

If you held a gun to my head and forced me to predict what happens next I'd say this rises more in the next 2-3 weeks. If it surpasses the previous all time high there will be another media hype cycle and who knows how high it could go. Bitcoin was still difficult to buy in 2013, especially outside of the US and China, now it's fairly accessible globally and way more people have easy access to it.

I think the halving event will probably cause a spike downwards, it would not surprise me if this happens in the week leading up to it as other people who are also predicting it try to sell ahead of it. If this happens it would not surprise me if there is a sharp bounce back up afterwards pushing bitcoin on and upwards in an extended bull market - similar to what happened when the Silk Road got busted.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Nobody expects the value of Bitcoin to stop being wildly volatile - which is what the current trend is just evidence of - these events don't change the future challenges that Bitcoin still faces, due to its technical structure and how that can potentially be corruptible as mining is further consolidated.

I expect Bitcoin to become less volatile as its total value increases. This has been the trend so far and I expect it to continue. It absolutely faces technical challenges - even the blocksize debate has not been resolved at all yet, but ultimately this doesn't matter. Bitcoin currently functions well enough to be used as digital gold - as a speculative asset traded 24/7 globally and that's good enough for now.

I'm not advocating anyone buy now, in fact I sold some and took some profit myself this week. Calling the top on a sharp rise like this is impossible.

Roonbox

nice work alb

Bitcoin is acting as a modern day Gold for market uncertainty.
The upcoming 'halving' event is def providing a bid too.

It's been 5 months since any post here. I'm liking how this thread is documenting the history of bitcoin as it happens so why not have an update. The 16 millionth bitcoin of the eventual 21 million was mined last week. There's no bitcoin hype, there's no tech breakthroughs there's no evidence of any more mainstream adoption or merchant acceptance. Bitcoin is up from $433 at the start of the year to a current price of $740.

My last post in the summer turned out to be very close to a local peak during the rally for the reward halving event.

alb wrote: »

I think the halving event will probably cause a spike downwards, it would not surprise me if this happens in the week leading up to it as other people who are also predicting it try to sell ahead of it.

This kind of happened, but it didn't go down very much.

alb wrote: »

If this happens it would not surprise me if there is a sharp bounce back up afterwards...

This didn't happen.

alb wrote: »

...pushing bitcoin on and upwards in an extended bull market - similar to what happened when the Silk Road got busted.

Bitcoin has stayed in a steady bull market. This is the longest time bitcoin has stayed above 500, above 600 and it also 700 if it can hang on a couple more weeks. Being backed by a brexit-voting country has not helped the pound, being backed by a country banning formerly legal tender notes has not helped the Rupee, being backed by a country devaluing its currency has not helped the Yuan. The dollar is now backed by Trump. Being backed by nothing isn't so bad after all.

Lets talk about threats from other crypto currencies. Ethereum and Monero were the main two competitors that went through hype cycles this year. Both bubbled and crashed and are still hanging around but both combined are well under 10% of Bitcoin's market share, and nothing is even close to catching Bitcoin.

The scaling debate is still not resolved, there has been no hard fork and no block size increase, no competing version of the code has over taken core. However core have recently completed and released the new segwit feature. It needs 95% of miners to signal that they support it over a period of about 2000 blocks to count as consensus before it will take effect, it promises to effectively increase the blocksize by a significant amount. It's early days but it has 28% support so far, it's not clear yet whether it will reach the necessary 95% or not.

Global localbitcoins trading volume just keeps increasing: https://coin.dance/volume/localbitcoins

while btc is interesting for me in some ways,but when you put political events as forces for btc drive it losses any sense,now looked around web for any info on actual btc user numbers so far coming up with stats around 1-10mill at best of regular users,rest is amounts of people who speculate on the likes of forex since some brokers introduced the option,gambling sites and the likes to use btc.

So this explains trading volumes,but if looked at actual users,not people that create btc wallet to test it out,or someone who buys it on forex with 1:500 leverage to try and speculate according to this crypto site:https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1520276.80 you would be hard pressed to get numbers above few mill of actual users -who would use it as currency and not back end to cover themselves just to get it and transfer it back to £$ or whatever currency they actually use.

since reading some comments from people that are in it for years seems,the only use they have for it is holding and selling off when profits are made,and when you have volatility that can go xxx% i doubt there's many that consider it currency,but more like in between exchange or speculation ,thus no actual real world usage since volatility of having it is too much risk,to be considered usable or even safe,for regular people.

makeorbrake

BTC up again these days. The uncertainty in Italy (ref. voting - which potentially could lead to a general election followed by a vote on staying in or leaving the euro) seems to be bumping it up right now.

BTC seems to be a dumping ground for funds to weather various established currency storms. Its frustrating to see that it's not coming through as a main means of payment. Can't understand how this has not been achieved......??

Capt'n Midnight

alb wrote: »

The 16 millionth bitcoin of the eventual 21 million was mined last week.

Even if you can spit bitcoins one of the problems is the finite number of transactions per second. The energy and % costs of transactions also put a finite limit to it's value.

Bitcoin is up from $433 at the start of the year to a current price of $740.

Or if you look at Nov 2013 it's down from $1100.