We gonna talk about BitCoin?

Henning said:
Explain? You mean eventually you'll be able to buy a house for .001 bitcoin that someone had to pay 1 bitcoin for?
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yep, it could go either way, but bitcoins are traded in fractions.

It's not really correct to call it a fiat currency.
 
JimNtexas said:
yep, it could go either way, but bitcoins are traded in fractions.

It's not really correct to call it a fiat currency.
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???

Please explain. If I'm paid $10 per hour isn't that a 'fraction' of $100 per hour? And what bearing does that have on it's 'fiat currency' status? BitCoin, like the US Dollar, are not tied to anything. That makes them BOTH a fiat currency. Please explain why I am wrong.

Honestly, I'd like to know.
 
Captain said:
???

Please explain. If I'm paid $10 per hour isn't that a 'fraction' of $100 per hour? And what bearing does that have on it's 'fiat currency' status? BitCoin, like the US Dollar, are not tied to anything. That makes them BOTH a fiat currency. Please explain why I am wrong.

Honestly, I'd like to know.
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Unlike fiat currencies such as the U.S. dollar or tulips, there is a limited supply of bitcoins. Nobody can just print up more of them.

The price of bitcoins is tied to something at least as real as a dollar bill, but there is a finite limit to the total number of bitcoins.

The U.S. dollar is not tied to anything, and the supply of dollars is constantly increased, thus guaranteeing that the dollar bill in your wallet must depreciate in buying power over the years.

Bitcoins might or might not depreciate, but at least you don't have to worry about someone 'easing' them by printing more.
 
JimNtexas said:
Unlike fiat currencies such as the U.S. dollar or tulips, there is a limited supply of bitcoins. Nobody can just print up more of them.

The price of bitcoins is tied to something at least as real as a dollar bill, but there is a finite limit to the total number of bitcoins.

The U.S. dollar is not tied to anything, and the supply of dollars is constantly increased, thus guaranteeing that the dollar bill in your wallet must depreciate in buying power over the years.

Bitcoins might or might not depreciate, but at least you don't have to worry about someone 'easing' them by printing more.
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I still don't understand how the Bitcoin is viable for economic expansion.
 
Henning said:
I still don't understand how the Bitcoin is viable for economic expansion.
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Who said anything about 'economic expansion'? For all I know they may cause the streams to cross and result in human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria! :yikes:

I just wanted to point out that one of the selling points for Bitcoins is that the supply of them is limited to a finite maximum.

Dollar bills, on the other hand, are available in unlimited supply.

Bitcoins are also more difficult for big brother to monitor than transactions involving checks or credit cards.

On the downside, bitcoins seem to behave like a commodity. For example, Uncle Sam just seized a big bag of them. If Uncle decides to dump them on the market all at once the value of each coin is sure to decrease.
 
JimNtexas said:
Who said anything about 'economic expansion'? For all I know they may cause the streams to cross and result in human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria! :yikes:

I just wanted to point out that one of the selling points for Bitcoins is that the supply of them is limited to a finite maximum.

Dollar bills, on the other hand, are available in unlimited supply.

Bitcoins are also more difficult for big brother to monitor than transactions involving checks or credit cards.

On the downside, bitcoins seem to behave like a commodity. For example, Uncle Sam just seized a big bag of them. If Uncle decides to dump them on the market all at once the value of each coin is sure to decrease.
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How are they difficult for Big Brother to track? The go through the Internet don't they? The NSA filters the whole thing.
 
Henning said:
How are they difficult for Big Brother to track? The go through the Internet don't they? The NSA filters the whole thing.
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It's pretty easy to monitoring banking transactions, and even cash transactions over $10K.

It's a little harder to pull one transaction out of the zillions of internet connections that occur every second, and harder to still to identify the humans at each end.


Also, if we had a President to whom the law was more than a minor inconvenience nothing collected by the NSA could be used in a criminal investigation. That's another thread.
 
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JimNtexas said:
It's pretty easy to monitoring banking transactions, and even cash transactions over $10K.

It's a little harder to pull one transaction out of the zillions of internet connections that occur every second, and harder to still to identify the humans at each end.


Also, if we had a President to whom the law was more than a minor inconvenience nothing collected by the NSA could be used in a criminal investigation. That's another thread.
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This issue of collecting information has been around since I was a child, I remember it was an issue under Nixon. J Edgar Hoover was infamous for his files, the McCarthy era had the same issues. This shows the we will NEVER have a Pres or government that thinks the law is but an inconvenience to skirt, or as in the words of one republican president, "If the President does it, it's not illegal". The NSA doesn't have to be involved either, the FBI working out of Ft Mead in a joint agency task force can have access to all the same data. Now it's not illegal for use in an investigation.
 
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JimNtexas said:
It would be harder to do this kind of thing with a Bitcoin account.
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Actually, it would be much easier, they don't even have to deal with you face to face, they can just shut down the website, what are you going to do about it? :dunno: You can just as easily lose everything because there is nothing at all backing a bitcoin.
 
Henning said:
Actually, it would be much easier, they don't even have to deal with you face to face, they can just shut down the website, what are you going to do about it? :dunno: You can just as easily lose everything because there is nothing at all backing a bitcoin.
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Nothing backs the dollar either.

A bit coin is what we computer nerds call an 'atomic object'. It has its own self-contained existence independent of any server. Just like your shares of Fisker and Solyndra stocks.

All the web sites do is facilitate trading them, just like a stock exchange. Kill one website, and a thousand others spring up in its place.

After the Apocalypse we can trade them with usb sticks and our windmill powered tablets.
 
Palmpilot said:
I don't think the U.S. Government's authority to designate the dollar as legal tender is "nothing."
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It is nothing. It's your belief in that statement that makes the dollar something of value. If we all stop believing then it all crashes. BitCoin is exactly the same...belief is what gives it value and without belief it crashes.

Money tied to nothing but belief is the reality. The benefit of a currency NOT able to be manipulated by governments seems self evident to me and many others.
 
Captain said:
It is nothing. It's your belief in that statement that makes the dollar something of value. If we all stop believing then it all crashes. BitCoin is exactly the same...belief is what gives it value and without belief it crashes.

Money tied to nothing but belief is the reality. The benefit of a currency NOT able to be manipulated by governments seems self evident to me and many others.
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The law is not nothing. If you think it is, perhaps you should inform the people who are running our prisons.

Dollars are "legal tender for all debts, public and private." Bitcoins are not. That means that if you offered to pay a debt in bitcoins and the creditor insisted on payment in dollars instead, if the creditor took you to court, the court would not consider your debt to have been paid.
 
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Palmpilot said:
The law is not nothing. If you think it is, perhaps you should inform the people who are running our prisons.

Dollars are "legal tender for all debts, public and private." Bitcoins are not. That means that if you offered to pay a debt in bitcoins and the creditor insisted on payment in dollars instead, if the creditor took you to court, the court would not consider your debt to have been paid.
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The important term there is Debt.

If I don't want to sell you something for cash, i don't have to. But if you are in debt to me, you can pay cash..
 
ja_user said:
The important term there is Debt.

If I don't want to sell you something for cash, i don't have to. But if you are in debt to me, you can pay cash..
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Agreed.
 
Palmpilot said:
The law is not nothing. If you think it is, perhaps you should inform the people who are running our prisons.

Dollars are "legal tender for all debts, public and private." Bitcoins are not. That means that if you offered to pay a debt in bitcoins and the creditor insisted on payment in dollars instead, if the creditor took you to court, the court would not consider your debt to have been paid.
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You're missing the point and you post is not logical.
 
When I was growing up at the car lot a father and son came in with bags and bags of pennies saved over years for the kids 16th b-day. We called the bank, they sent down a van with a change counting/rolling machine in it and the deal was done.
 
Two bitcoin guys indicted and arrested for money laundering.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/two-b...ney-laundering-scheme-162424352--finance.html

Am I the only one who finds it ironic that in the charges, the feds have identified bitcoin as a currency, and they are charged with laundering USD through the bitcoin 'exchange'. Perhaps I'm behind the latest info, but I thought the feds position was that bitcoin was not a currency, and that it was except from currency regulation? Maybe that's faulty, but there surely is not currency regulations in effect for bitcoin that I'm aware of.
 
docmirror said:
Two bitcoin guys indicted and arrested for money laundering.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/two-b...ney-laundering-scheme-162424352--finance.html

Am I the only one who finds it ironic that in the charges, the feds have identified bitcoin as a currency, and they are charged with laundering USD through the bitcoin 'exchange'. Perhaps I'm behind the latest info, but I thought the feds position was that bitcoin was not a currency, and that it was except from currency regulation? Maybe that's faulty, but there surely is not currency regulations in effect for bitcoin that I'm aware of.
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Wasn't sure odd the US position, I've read that position from other countries.
 
If you think government currency is "yours", and you can do with it as you please... Try this news from GB on for size...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25861717

I made a large cash withdrawal from a bank here in the States this year. They informed me that they had to report it to DHS. Unlike HSBC in GB, they did not ask my purpose, but there was a specific government form they had to fill out and attach a copy of my driver's license to. They seemed embarrassed to have to do it.

I did it partially as a joke (someone said they'd accept payment for a large ticket item in $100 bills), partially because I wanted to see what that much cash looked like, and partially as a test to see if my bank could even accommodate the request. I had to call in advance to make sure the branch had that much cash on hand, per their website. (This particular branch is big and busy and laughed when I asked. But thanked me for doing so. It wasn't THAT much money. But I was surprised how small it looked compared to the piles of cash seen regularly on TV during drug busts.)

Anyway, point is... even if you think you have money, you might not. HSBC seems to think you can't have access to it quickly, anyway...
 
Having worked at a bank for a while, there are cash reserves that change with the size of the branch and the amount of cash transactions it gets. Bank regulators, and the bank itself don't like to keep much cash on hand because it's not making money anywhere and the feds think it's dangerous. Not from a robbery perspective, but from an audit perspective.

When I worked at Wells Fargo a long time ago, the only thing the bank officer dreaded was the auditor(examiner, like an av DPE sometimes). They always wanted to see the cash balances and cash transfers first, cause that's where the low tech embezzlement happens. A good embezzler will find a way to do it with comm paper or tech, and no cash, like the movie Office Space.
 
Gold found support at 1200, now trading near 1300. I'm guessing that it had little to do with BTC and more to do with US debt raise.
 
I hope it works out. This is how something like this starts to go bad. Some glitch they can't explain, but you can't redeem right now. Like I said, hope they work through it.

Best,

Dave
 
HSBC was slammed very hard by regulators for money laundering and other charges. Don't ask me how banks are supposed to screen for that, but I'm sure there will be a load of requirements to avoid it again. Same with credit cards, after Target and others, I'm getting fraud alerts much more frequently, even for things of which I give advance travel notice.
The government is doing all they can to help us (sarc).

Best,

Dave
 
That fellow's a gold bug, but he's right that a major risk of government intervention depressing the price of bitcoins.

There is still a lot of things you can buy with bitcoins. I said 'you', because I don't own any.

Bitcoins have been really good for the makers of high end computer graphics cards. Maybe they are the ones behind the whole thing!
 
Buy gold stocks, cheaper than gold and will follow the price of gold up as the **** hits the fan.

NovaGold is a good bet
 
Discussed at length. on cnbc business news. Their observation of bit coin was in the end......run for your life! This country is plenty strong due to government intervention in 2008-9. Not to worry unless Wall Street ignores rules set down like they did 10 years ago.
 
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Zhunter said:
Buy gold stocks, cheaper than gold and will follow the price of gold up as the **** hits the fan.

NovaGold is a good bet
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Unless the **** hits the fan by gold tanking….

It has all the signs of a speculative bubble.

It's a decent bet that "gold stocks" will amplify the behavior. I.e., gold itself may lose half its value in a "correction," but that stock will become utterly worthless.
 
Zhunter said:
Buy gold stocks, cheaper than gold and will follow the price of gold up as the **** hits the fan.

NovaGold is a good bet
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Why would one want to buy a piece of paper to substitute for a commodity that one buys because paper is worthless?
 
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