"Bitcoins," Internet nerd libertarian monopoly money, crashes, no one surprised

[The Mikado]

Some of you may be aware of Bitcoins, a Ponzi scheme pyramid MLM scam alternate currency developed by Internet libertarian Satoshi Nakamoto.  People would "mine" bitcoins by having computers with high-powered video cards solve complex equations, then use them as "currency," supposedly.  In reality, Bitcoins found a nice niche market in money laundering and drug sales, as a drug site named Silk Road used the "anonymity" of Bitcoins to mail drugs right to the P. O. Box of your choice.  A wave of media attention drew speculation to the Bitcoin market, which promptly yo-yoed from $10 USD-1BTC to $37 USD-1BTC...and right back down again, within a week.  This hilarious instability and crash can be chronicled on the ongoing thread:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3413928&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1

Over on Something Awful, where the goons have been analyzing the rise and fall of this tremendously stupid project for the past several weeks.

[Lief 🗽]

wait so I can't buy drugs anonymously online anymore?

[King]

This was all the fault of Bilderberg and the Fed.

[Insula Dei]

Mikado, you fool, rather than alerting all of us to the current low price of Bitcoins, you should have sold everything you posess to invest it in the money our future robo-rulers will use.

[King]

Mikado, you fool, rather than alerting all of us to the current low price of Bitcoins, you should have sold everything you posess to invest it in the money our future robo-rulers will use.

I wish we knew of this earlier.  Though this bitcoin stuff sucks, I probably could've bought thousands of dollars of illicit drugs for $5 worth of bitcoins.  My chance to be a kingpin has passed me by.

[Free Palestine]

Hey now, bitcoins sound like a cool idea.

[ilikeverin]

The "fun" starts somewhere around page 50... I forget which, exactly, but it starts on June 10th.

[The Mikado]

And...Bitcoin loses 93% of its remaining value today.

[tpfkaw]

Seems that one well-known internet leftist is feeling pretty bad right now.

http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin/

"These past days, I have done a lot of thinking about bitcoin that ended up with me investing all of the money I had saved and all that I can borrow into the currency. Here’s why."

[Lief 🗽]

Well, on the bright side, this should make a pretty interesting article in some economics journal in a few months.

Also I'm not really sure how a currency would have negative value.

[tpfkaw]

https://support.mtgox.com/entries/20208066-huge-bitcoin-sell-off-due-to-a-compromised-account-rollback

[tpfkaw]

http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/19/popular-bitcoin-exchange-mt-gox-hacked-prices-drop-to-pennies/

...

Following the most recent hack, Mt. Gox immediately took down its main site and said it will re-launch the exchange after it “rolls back” prices to the levels Bitcoin had before the incident, which was about $17.50 per Bitcoin. Mt. Gox said service would not resume before 10 p.m. EST Sunday and that the re-opening could be “delayed depending on what is found during the investigation.”

...

Thankfully for Bitcoin owners, the crash appears to have just affected the price of Bitcoin on Mt. Gox, rather than the currency in general. Competing Bitcoin exchange TradeHill currently prices the currency at around $13 per Bitcoin. TradeHill has halted trading “for a few hours” because of the possibilty that members had used the same password for TradeHill and Mt. Gox.

...

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

A libertarian and his money are soon parted.

[Beet]

Bitcoin advertises itself as being a "decentralized" digital currency. Bitcoin deceptively advertises itself as being generated by "anyone" running a "free application." What bullsh-t.

In reality, bitcoin mining requires thousands of dollars in investments in specialized processing centers, and cost-effective mining is only available to those with a large amount of Federal Reserve Notes as well as time and expertise.

In reality, the processing centers are in turn controlled by a few unelected, centralized pool operators who earn money through transactions fees, much like banks. An individual "mining" operating using bitcoin's free software will take decades to even return a single result (50 bitcoins).

In reality, the more successful bitcoin is at replacing legal tender, the more incentive there is for the early mining bosses to hoard their coins. The problem is not the bitcoin concept, it is the design. In the end, the only effective result is to redistribute wealth and power away from institutions that, although centralized, are at least accountable in some way to democratic forces, to private interests wholly unaccountable.

Additionally, even bitcoin FAQ's admit that the currency is vulnerable to a deflationary spiral.

[they don't love you like i love you]

Deja vu, huh

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

RIP DW Perry's campaign warchest.

[DINGO Joe]

Saw an ad on tv today for a commemorative "bitcoin" to celebrate the revolutionary new digital currency.  It a physical 24 kt goldplated coin put out by the Franklin mint.  This is genius.  Buy some for your kids today, you'll be glad you did.

[BundouYMB]

If you want to read something really depressing, read this WaPo article about young libertarians duping old farmers into putting their retirement savings into bitcoin: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/bitcoin-is-my-potential-pension-what-is-driving-people-in-kentucky-to-join-the-craze/2018/02/03/aaaea3be-05dc-11e8-b48c-b07fea957bd5_story.html?utm_term=.7626e334f652

For all intents and purposes bitcoin is a pyramid scheme, so at least these people will probably go to jail at some point.

[DINGO Joe]

If you want to read something really depressing, read this WaPo article about young libertarians duping old farmers into putting their retirement savings into bitcoin: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/bitcoin-is-my-potential-pension-what-is-driving-people-in-kentucky-to-join-the-craze/2018/02/03/aaaea3be-05dc-11e8-b48c-b07fea957bd5_story.html?utm_term=.7626e334f652

For all intents and purposes bitcoin is a pyramid scheme, so at least these people will probably go to jail at some point.

Maybe the farmers can make it back by planting tulip bulbs.

[mvd10]

The technology behind the bitcoin is interesting, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't justify the current price of the bitcoin. Blockchain is a huge hype, adding blockchain to your companies' name does the same as adding .com to your companies name in the late 90s/early 00s (and we know how that ended). Meanwhile it also doesn't function as a proper currency. Virtually zero correlation between bitcoin-USD exchange rate and USD-insert any currency exchange rate according to some NBER paper. The same NBER paper from 2014 also outlined a bunch of other problems with the bitcoin that haven't been solved yet. And Paul Krugman beautifully explained how an economy with a bitcoin as main currency inevitably leads to deflation (which is a really bad thing). I'm sorry libertarians, but bitcoin won't conquer the world.

[CatoMinor]

If you want to read something really depressing, read this WaPo article about young libertarians duping old farmers into putting their retirement savings into bitcoin: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/bitcoin-is-my-potential-pension-what-is-driving-people-in-kentucky-to-join-the-craze/2018/02/03/aaaea3be-05dc-11e8-b48c-b07fea957bd5_story.html?utm_term=.7626e334f652

For all intents and purposes bitcoin is a pyramid scheme, so at least these people will probably go to jail at some point.

I saw nowhere in the article libertarians or farmers.

[Joe Republic]

Seems that one well-known internet leftist is feeling pretty bad right now.

http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin/

"These past days, I have done a lot of thinking about bitcoin that ended up with me investing all of the money I had saved and all that I can borrow into the currency. Here’s why."

When that article was posted ten years ago, 1 Bitcoin was worth $8.30.  He doesn't specify how much his total life savings were, but let's say it was $20,000.  Assuming he never bought or sold any more, his savings would now (at this particular moment) be worth around $120 million.

Deja vu, huh

When you posted this, Bitcoin had just come crashing back down from a peak of just over $19,000 in December 2017, to $8,000.

Three years later, it's now worth $50,000.

[Vosem]

And...Bitcoin loses 93% of its remaining value today.

Today Bitcoin is worth almost exactly 50 million times what it was worth when you made this post, though it is quite a ways off from recent highs.

A libertarian and his money are soon parted.

hahahaha

[Omega21]

No risk, no reward.

Don't invest, stay poor!

This topic aged like fine wine.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

This thread rules because it could have plausibly been posted at around 6 or 7 distinct times in the past decade. In another 6-18 months, it will be bumped again and the title will apply again.