What do you think about BitCoin?
Scam. Sounds like an army of geeks with inflated ideas of self importance wanting their own currency. I bet Silicon Valley luuuves it.
Digital currency is a valid concept and might be significant to commerce in the future. Whether or not BitCoin itself will be the dominant digital currency remains to be seen.
Short BitCoin, long DogeCoin. It’s already being endorsed internationally
Scam. Not regulated or backed by any government or financial regulator. I’m sure some crafty speculators are corning the market like none other and making a mint. Could you imagine if the coins in your pocket fluctuated in value like these bitcoins?
Let’s not forget they are a black market dream currency. No trail when you want to order drugs/hitmen/hookers all from the privacy of your PC.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a scam, but I think it’s not well enough understood to become anything significant in the forseeable future. Very few people honestly understand where bitcoins come from or how you get them.
Two Las Vegas hotels said Tuesday they will begin accepting bitcoin, the unregulated, digital currency, as payment, becoming the first Las Vegas casino properties to accept the popular currency for nongaming purchases.
The two properties, co-owned by Derek Stevens, are the D Las Vegas Casino Hotel, which opened in 2012, and the Golden Gate Hotel & Casino.
“I’m proud that the D and Golden Gate will be the first casino properties to accept bitcoin,” Stevens said in a statement. “We’re located in the growing high-tech sector of downtown Las Vegas, and like all things downtown, we’re quickly adaptive to new technology.”
Las Vegas’ downtown district has seen a rebirth in recent years as younger residents flock to work and live in the urban core. Online retailer Zappos.com has driven much of that change. Zappos’ chief executive, Tony Hsieh, has invested heavily in the downtown area, helping fund tech start-ups and small businesses.
Stevens said the two hotel properties will accept bitcoin at five locations: the hotels’ front desks, a gift shop and at two restaurants. Bitcoin will not be accepted for gaming purposes.
Purchases will be processed through BitPay. Bitcoin on Tuesday was trading at $940.12 on the Mt. Gox online exchange.
The two casinos join a growing list of merchants and institutions who are accepting bitcoin as payment. Car dealerships, universities and online merchants have announced in recent months they will accept bitcoin.
We’ve already had a couple threads on it. It’ll take CvM or Greenie to find them since everyone else is just as perplexed by our search function as I am.
There are probably three people on AF (that regularly post anyway) that actually understand how btc works. Everyone else, like Palantir, doesn’t have a single clue has to how or why a crypto-currency may make sense given today’s geopolitical landscape.
i don’t get it, i don’t think it will ever be the future.
The value is based on novelty. fair enough, these coins can appreciate, but it’s like art, it’s not meant to be practical.
The whole “using one currency worldwide” is BS. we already have that, it’s called credit card?
like as if the future people are going to carry around bitcoins and pay for a luxury purse in paris or a sports car in italy.
i don’t get it, i don’t think it will ever be the future.
The value is based on novelty. fair enough, these coins can appreciate, but it’s like art, it’s not meant to be practical.
The whole “using one currency worldwide” is BS. we already have that, it’s called credit card?
like as if the future people are going to carry around bitcoins and pay for a luxury purse in paris or a sports car in italy.
But the concept of a cross border currency is not just a novelty. The whole EuroZone restructured its economy to take down national currency boundaries. Or imagine that you live in Argentina, your currency is crap, and you want an alternative medium of exchange for cross border transactions. The policy and regulatory questions are unresolved issues in a digital currency. However, these are specific problems that might be solved in the future. I encourage people to not focus on characteristics like algorithmic mining, which are unique to BitCoin. Instead, think about the potential of a true international currency, and the implications if someone could figure out how to implement this.
That’s a different, albeit important, topic. International currency can’t work, at least not until we meet aliens and become one united federation a la Star Trek (I’m actually being serious). Look at what a disaster the EU has been in terms of having a single monetary policy trying to jive with several individual fiscal policies. It just doesn’t work. Or, rather, it’s amazingly inefficient.
The problems with BitCoin aren’t in the potential problems of implementation of an international currency, which may or may not happen, but exactly the stuff you’re demanding that we ignore - the algorithmic mining, the fact that it’s not backed by any state entity, doesn’t represent any physical object (like gold, a potential currency, would).
Countries will agree to an international currency when it suits their strategic interests, and with bitcoin, given the above problems, legitimizing it as an international currency would be total stupidity for any country to pursue. It is not an economic question, but a political one.
^ Most currencies aren’t backed by anything these days either. The greenback in your pocket has no intrinsic value, other than what someone will exchange for it, much like a Bitcoin.
The greenback in my pocked is backed by the US Government (a state entity). I didn’t say it has to be backed by a physical commodity. I said backed by a state or a commodity.
Well… the “failure” of the EZ is kind of relative. We do not know what the European economy would have been like post crisis if they never adopted the single currency. I agree that their system is inefficient. However, is it more inefficient than what they had before that? It’s hard to say.
The other thing is that the EZ’s problems could be related to cultural differences, the overall setting of 18 different countries with independent fiscal policy, or simply the scale of the currency. Another international currency does not need to share these characteristics. It does not need to have rules that allow veto by a tiny member like Slovakia. It also does not need to be implemented to the scale that it determines the wellbeing of nations. The problems of one international currency is not proof that another, significantly different, currency cannot succeed.
How is it backed the US government? They don’t guarntee it’s ability to be transfered into anything. It’s really just nonsense talk. It doesn’t represent a claim on any assets or anything.
FWIW - BTC backers do not want it to become some sort of internationally recognized currency. That was never the goal.
Edit: Recognized by governments that is. Internationally recognized as a medium for transactions across borders is something else entirely.
I never said it’s a claim on assets, however it is issued by the US government, and considered legal tender according to law. Usage of this currency to settle transaction is very clearly backed by law. Bitcoin is not.