Bitcoin adoption

[Joaz Banbeck]

I think that it was 'Harvard graduating seniors who had never been in the southern hemisphere'.

[hyperpape]

It's also worth remembering that people have pretty good instincts about physical objects, so the parts of physics that they're likely to come into contact with in their lives don't seem strange to them, and the parts that they wouldn't, don't.

Joaz, perhaps we all just have very different lives. I happen to have inside information that you have an airplane and a conveyor belt in your back-yard, but most of us are less fortunate.

Edit: silly 'are'/'our' mistake.

[hyperpape]

Necroing an old topic, but today I finally a long piece by Scott Sumner that's relevant to the question of why you want some inflation. His piece is actually about Nominal GDP Growth targeting, but since Nominal GDP Growth is Real GDP Growth + inflation, there is plenty about inflation in there. It's long, but worth the read.

[Kaya.gs]

Just as amention, they made a whole episode about bitcoin on the series "The Good Wife". Cant tell which episode.

Its like a US Treasury law-suit against Bitcoin.

[daniel_the_smith]

Necroing an old topic, but today I finally a long piece by Scott Sumner that's relevant to the question of why you want some inflation. His piece is actually about Nominal GDP Growth targeting, but since Nominal GDP Growth is Real GDP Growth + inflation, there is plenty about inflation in there. It's long, but worth the read.

Finally got around to reading this, it's very interesting.

His idea about basically using prediction markets to do the actual adjusting seems like the first step in setting up some sort of btc-like currency with decentralized automated supply increases. However, it sounds like it still requires an organization to calculate the NGDP and settle contracts after the fact.

[SpongeBob]

Just read that hackers have obtained tax information on presidential candidate Romney and demand 1 million dollar in Bitcoin from interested buyers (potentially Hustler founder Larry Flynt).

[Bill Spight]

To quote myself:

There is no inflation with bitcoin. In that sense, bitcoin is good money, by comparison with every form of government money today. By Gresham's law, other money should drive bitcoin out of circulation. But if it is driven out of circulation, since there is no guarantee that anyone will accept bitcoin, it can lose its value almost overnight. In that sense it is bad money.

I just ran across this: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012 ... udy-finds/

It seems like only 22% of bitcoins are in circulation. (Gresham's Law). And last year bitcoins lost 90% of their value. (Lack of backing).

[daniel_the_smith]

The 90 percent drop was a brief spike. Btc traded at 1/6th of its max for quite some time and is currently at 1/3 of its all time high. I'm not saying you're wrong (I have no idea), but you shouldn't use that figure.

My guess is that at this point btc is driven by speculation (example: the spike and crash) much more than currency effects, though I expect those to dominate in the long run.