Sure, I don’t think it will ever be more than a very minor player in the world of finance and it’s unlikely to have any impact on you unless you make an effort to buy some. But you can safely ignore most activities in the financial world that don’t have a direct impact on your personal budget.
How are they anonymous? It sounds like there’s inevitably an electronic trail. Indeed, it seems like there would have to be.
To be fair, this point is true of traditional currency as well. The Fed creates dollars out of nothing.
Yes, however traditional currency is backed by the government and national banks and accepted as a form of legal tender by pretty much everyone.
It just seems utterly bizarre to me that people view bitcoins as somehow more stable than a national currency like the US Dollar or the Euro.
That’s a stone cold investment there.
Not only that, but they’re legally required to be accepted as legal tender. The U.S. government has to take dollars as taxes, and American businesses have to accept dollars as payment. Nobody has to accept bitcoins.
Honestly I was looking into bitcoins to make some quick cash a while back but in the end its just too volatile and risky, wish I could have done it a few years ago and made a little bit of dough and then got out, but I don’t see getting involved in them in my future.
That was on April 11 of this year.
So what do I read today?
“Bitcoin surges to all-time high of $900, then drops below $650 in 30 minutes”
http://www.geekwire.com/2013/bitcoin-surges-alltime-high-800-government-discusses-legitimacy-digital-currency/
Yeah, but their assets are frozen.
And the returns on them are quite chilling.
That’s the main problem I see with bitcoin – It doesn’t look to me as being stable enough in value to be a suitable currency. The way it is behaving it looks more like some kind of “hot” stock that is being subject to speculation.
It makes me distrust bitcoins at a very deep, fundamental level. I don’t know if this will change with time, but for now I definitely want to keep as far away as possible from them.
I think you meant “French” group.
[sub]We don’t have French benefits?[/sub]
You’ve hit the nail on the head. It’s behaving like a hot stock. But hot stocks are usually being supported by something real, like good earnings. The ones that aren’t eventually come crashing back down when the Greater-Fool Scenario finally plays out.
Here’s a realtime map showing bitcoin transactions.
It seems to be a popular currency in China due to political repression there. So I suspect it will continue to be popular in places where people need to make wholly anonymous online transactions. I guess people will just continue to fractionate the currency. If it becomes extremely volatile, you’ll just buy what you need from an exchange fairly close to when you expect to make a transaction.