Silk Road forums
Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: aynaun on August 05, 2011, 10:35 pm
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So, I kind of had this idea in my head that bitcoin would not be affected by the world economy. Boy was I wrong. Or maybe it's just a coincidence that they are so low at the same time as the stock market taking a big hit.
There are so many goodies on SR right now, but I can't afford any of them. Up until now I've "mined" all my coins. That isn't going so great anymore either. Fuck. I might have to actually buy some coins with cash.
Anyway, no real point to this message, just a rant.
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I actually looked into mining but they have changed things so much and so much work goes into it that I dont see that its worth it. If I had 20k to spend on some mean graphic cards/computers, it might be...
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Yeah, I wish I would have started mining whenever bitcoins were first starting out ::) would be rich
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It was my understanding that bitcoin has never been known for stability! But as I'm new to the currency I couldn't confirm that statement.
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I wonder if the btc will make a steady decline. With mybitcoin issues, the mt gox problem. other sites that have been hacked, etc. Not a lot of faith in the btc system. Also, everyone that has purchased the btc in the past month lost about 1/2 the value or so. So it will put a bad taste in those peoples mouths, they may never try it again.
I was thinking that it might be a good investment to actually put some money into btc. In the past, it has always bounced back or gone up a few btc after a tumble. But, i feel this time may be different. Anyone with a brain realizes that the sr has a lot to do with the btc price. Why would anyone go out of their way to buy a very unstable currency to purchase everyday things?
While I think that there will always be a use for the btc, i dont think, however, that it will sustain even an 8 dollar/bitcoin.. It might slide to pre gawker prices, which I think were below 5 bucks per. and thats were the btc will likely be for a considerable time.
Im just thinking outloud. What do you guys think? do you think we have seen the last of 15/btc day? I think so. granted it may make a spike to that level, but i think it will over around 2-3 btc to the dollar or even worse.
If sr (heaven forbid) ceased to exist, I bet the btc would be worth pennies. Im betting that the btc will stablize around the 10 dollar mark.. Which wout be great... I just want some stability. this jumping up and down is getting ridiculous. Whatever it does. I just want it to stop jumping...lol
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chronicpain your post just made we want to sell all my bitcoins.
Im with you on the stability thing. I just want it to stay the same. I was hoping for it to stay at $14 then $12 then $11 then $10. I think at this point we will all be happy if it stabilizes at anything.
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This could be due to the Mybitcoin.com theft. If the amount stolen from their servers was big enough
unloading them could drive the price down considerably.
IMO—it's an opportunity to buy.
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This large price fluctuation is a real pain and has potentially cost me money. Hopefully the when the scale of the mybitcoin loss becomes clear things will calm down. Unless, of course, most of their holdings were stolen and are going to be dumped at some point.
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I think CP has a very good handle on the issues. When SR was featured on Gawker the number of BTC holders/users *worldwide* jumped from about 10,000 to over 40,000 in the subsequent 4 weeks. Now that so many of the integral organizations in the BTC community have been hacked (Mt. Gox) or worse, turned out to be scams (MyBitcoin, a number of tumblers) it is going to take a fairly prolonged period of "no significant events", in internet terms that would likely be about six months, to have it stabilize at some new level. Unfortunately, there are still a significant number of persons out in the BTC universe who hold a large number of BTC that they mined back in the 0.01-0.05 value days. If any of them decides the day of the USD10.00 BTC are over forever then they might decide to dump their stocks as well.
Despite the fact that a total of over 6 million BTC have been mined, only a small fraction of those are in active circulation, which is why a 25,000 BTC theft, someone dumping a stash of 15,000 BTC or the disappearance of the 17,000 MyBitcoin BTCs can cause such major fluctuations in the currency's value.
I personally believe that if there get to be 50,000 fairly active users of BTC around the world, whether all on SR or any number of other sites, that is enough to support a pretty vigorous BTC online economy.
The problem now is that ongoing instability of the BTC, especially all in one direction (down) destabilizes the basic operation of SR. Only the option of the BTC hedging feature even allows it to operate in a stable fashion today.
I'm with some of the above posters: I just would like to see it stabilize at WHATEVER value. Then the marketplace could just go about its core business of providing goodies for consenting adults around the world.
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according to mybitcoin site, they are in receivership, so it looks like people will get their bitcoins back. But, when they do get them back will there be a mass sell off because people are going to say, fuck this? and bag btc altogether?
When people from mybitcoin start getting their coins back is when you will see a huge slide. Yes, I think its a good time to buy, but I wont buy big amounts til people start getting their coins back and i see what the market is like then. it will probably a month or longer before that happens..
But, right now, its sliding downward. but if the btc ever hits near the 1 dollar mark, you bet your last btc that ill be buying then.
BTW, what was the bitcoin pre gawker? I remember when I first got here the btc was like 5 bucks then it went up from there til the mt. gox problem.
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Longterm, If bitcoin does not fail completely than it is drastically under valued. Simple calculations about how many people are or will be interested and how big economies are will give a number at least $50 to $100 USD
(Population) * (% who will use bitcoin) * (amount they will spend) / (total available bitcoin) = Value
Use the most conservative and worse case scenario numbers you can.
Even if you think they might fail completely just multiply that chance by the Value
(Value) * (Chance of complete failure) = How much you are willing to pay.
Short term bitcoin is very volatile, but he long term prospects are very very good.
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BTW, what was the bitcoin pre gawker? I remember when I first got here the btc was like 5 bucks then it went up from there til the mt. gox problem.
It was around 7$. When I first got on SR it was at 3$.
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i had sold 140 dollars worth of goods last week, even when using the hedging option i got screwed. sales cleared when BTC was at 13$ then it went to 10$, right there i lost over 30 dollars, this didnt bother me much, but now its at 7$, i dont even have enough to get anything i intended on buying.
this is not a complaint so much as a report of my sadness. i hope i can manage to sell some goods at this price so when btc rises i will make my money back :/
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I agree with Kind Bud - in the long term it will recover, but in the short term, there are just too many coins (and still new ones are being mined), not enough real demand (it clearly was inflated by speculation), so could keep going down.
I only hope the hedging will hold...
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Another thing i just realized. I think today or tomorrow is when Mt. Gox takes their prices back up to .6 % fee. instead of thte %.3 that it was since their issues. I wonder if that had anything to do with the sell off? I know its not a lot, but it is double what they were charging..
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My 2 cents... I've been making an effort recently use BTC as my primary currency when making any orders online, whether it be SR or not. Good for buying things like VPN\proxies and what not, also a way to support the bitcoin economy. With that being said, this currency is way too unstable for me to justify any significant investment. I have more faith in gold right now for investing. Even more faith in USD\CAD than btc(Thats not saying much though). To keep my losses at a minimum I keep a balance ready in paxum\dwolla type sites so I can grab coins as needed and start the tumbling processes without waiting for 3 days. Any profit made with bitcoins stays as coins on a usb stick, doesnt seem like anyplace is trustworthy yet. Eventually I hope to be able to keep more funds stored as BTC, Now is NOT that time IMO.
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^ as far as investing goes, gold and the USD are two of the least risky investments. This is still true even though the US economy is in the tank right now.
You could compare investing in BTC similar to investing in junk bonds - high risk.
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I wish I would have purchased all that I could when it was sub 6 bucks per... I would have made a ton of money..My wife didn't let me.. Now its 8 and inching its way up.. I still think its a deal.
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Huuh, wifes are the boss, nobody can do much about it.
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Somebody must of made another big sell off. I dont think it will settle down until all the btcoins that were taken from the mybitcoin scandal are actually sold off. The one thing that has crossed my mind. Is this would be a great excuse for the owner Tom. I was just thinking of all the possible things that could have happened and the most plausible (after their hacking claim) is that they were going to just take all the btc's and run then figured that if that happened. mt. gox/trade hill would take all the btc addresses and make them null and void.
Then he decides to come up with this scheme. Hey, Ill give 70 percent back (it will be interesting to see what percentage is still left) then It will be easy to get rid of the 30 percent. Hey, its still a few hundred thousand dollars.
I'm still not convinced that the owner is not behind the whole scandal..
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Somebody must of made another big sell off.
<snip>
Then he decides to come up with this scheme. Hey, Ill give 70 percent back (it will be interesting to see what percentage is still left) then It will be easy to get rid of the 30 percent. Hey, its still a few hundred thousand dollars.
I'm still not convinced that the owner is not behind the whole scandal..
Quite right CP! It could be he was hacked or it could be an elaborate ruse/scam. With hackers, scammers, and the people who mined BTC in the beginning for almost nothing who periodically dump a big sack of them on the market, this will very likely *not* be the last time the BTC value gets whacked hard.
I've never been part of a brand new emerging currency system before but I'd bet that this happens in every one of them. I know there are tales from 2000 years ago about people counterfeiting copper coins in Egypt to get rich and try to bankrupt the Egyptian treasury.
Hopefully the system learns from each scam or hack and the systems controlling BTC are getting stronger so that these things will not happen in the future. And eventually all the hoarders of super cheap BTC will have monetized theirs so that kind of dumping will be highly infrequent to non-existent.
A stable BTC is good for everyone in the BTC economy. I hope we see it being very stable very soon. :D