Bitcoin??

Anything the our government doesn't like interests me.

Leaked FBI report on BitCoin

Legal Grey Area? Alrighty then!

 

Under sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies, dollars are hard to come by in Iran. The rial fell from 20,160 against the greenback on the street market in August to 36,500 rials to the dollar in October. It’s settled, for now, around 27,000. The central bank’s fixed official rate is 12,260. Yet there’s one currency in Iran that has kept its value and can be used to purchase goods from abroad:
BitCoin Time.

 

@melbo Well, I won't say this is a necropost but holy wah!


Problem with (as i see it) LiteCoin (and other AltCoins) is that it's ability to be used in commerce is limited. Not widely accepted even among early adopting merchants.

For me, it's about usability, being able to 'Trade' it for goods and services. More and more places (online and brick/mortar) are taking BTC. There are a number of services out there that allow merchants to accept BitCoin and turn some or all of the proceeds from the transaction into cash that then gets deposited into the merchants bank account and the nonconverted stuff as BTC into their wallet that they can spend/horde/speculate with. Mostly, use in commerce now it done by geeky types.

The other groups that are playing in this virtual currency playland are the speculators that jump in and out making a few bucks along the way. The horders that get their hands on a bunch of coins and will wait until they are worth 1MM a piece.
Finally the miners that keep the network going, make a few coins, sell them for cash to recoup their investment in hardware and buy larger more efficient equipment.

Watching AltCoins for probably the past 2 years (and dabbling with them). The larger AltCoins (LTC, PPC, NMC, NVC and others) move in pretty much the same value flucuation as BTC. If BTC is at 723 USD one LTC has been worth 0.03x BTC. When BTC was at 1200, LTC was at 0.03x BTC. When BTC was at 20, LTC was at 0.041 BTC. Pretty much the same for the others.

I guess the actual question was, is LTC a good buy at 25ish.

The answer is, Depends on if the individual thinks BTC is undervalued at 725USD.

If BTC doesn't make it widespread into the general global market place, It'll drop like a rock and go back to been geek geld.
Thus taking all the rest with them. IMHO.

To me, it's the world easiest Hawala and boy do banks and governments hate that, which immediately makes me like it. And as opposed to Fiat currency, Ben can't print more to fund wars, Congress can't pledge BTC aid to prop up some banana republic strong man. Yep, I kind of like it.

 

Oh so the US Government could pay for it's, erm, off the books stuff with something better than a swiss bank account or truck loads of dollars?

Nah, they'll just confiscate them. They already possess/confiscated 175K (out of 12.1MM) of them ($125MM USD). They'd only need about 9.5B USD more to buy the rest of the existing coins. But, the US is actually not the biggest player in BTC. China is. Eventhough they've blocked peeps from getting yuan in and out of exchanges on the mainland, it's still continuing.
Germany is another power house of BitCoin activity.

But, more coins are going to be mined (<9MM left) but the last coin won't be mined until sometime in the next century.

But if they attempted to buy all the coins, it's going to cost a lot to get them, supply and demand. If people know that Uncle Sam is out to buy all of them, people will just hold on to them and watch the price appreciate day by day. Probably a loosing battle in the end.

25 new bitcoins are mined (at current time) every 8 minutes and 42 seconds. So, even if they bought every last one right now, in a few more minutes there will be more. Wonder how valuable they will be

And bit coins are divisible down to 0.00000001 BTC and can be spent/sent as such. That's a lot of pieces of 8 (decimal places). Imagine them paying 1USD per 0.00000001 BTC, that would be 100MM per BitCoin or 2.5B every 8 or so minutes.

Yep, I'm not sure Ben can print the money that fast.

 

Here is some words of advice. If you are spending money on the lottery, put it in BitCoin instead. A lottery ticket has limited value up until the drawing. If you don't have the winning numbers on that day, no one is going to give you anything for a losing ticket. With Bitcoin, it might be worth less or more than what you paid for it on any given day. And it could be worthless! Huzzah!

Note, This is not investment advice, just my personal opinion. Actually, depending on future regulations and laws that may be passed, holding BitCoin could even become criminal, just like High Capacity Magazines!!

 

Did some one say Beer?

 

Like the posts. Keep it coming!

 

What backing does a bit coin have that the dollar does not. I think the answer is nothing they are both valued on faith, and we have seen where that is causing the dollar to go.

 

Ah, but BitCoin is backed by math!

I've said all along, BitCoin is not for everyone. Actually, I don't think anyone should get into BitCoin if they think it's a get rich, retirement, investment vehicle.

But it's sure better than a lottery ticket. YMMV.

 

So is quantitative easing

 

LOL, OK, so they are both backed by something then.