This is what Bitcoiners actually believe
Following are dozens of quotes, mostly dredged from reddit and Bitcointalk.
- Sure, but it beats verifying all the transactions by hand like they did in the old days of quaint paper money, hahaha those poor bastards with their ”cash registers” and shillings and whatnot.
- I love this. People who try to make points like this against bitcoin don’t seem to realize how infantile cash and banking systems are in comparison.
- this is governments going OMG/WTF bitcoin is real–it’s a strong currency in the midst of our little currency war. All currencies are competing to devalue, simultaneously. BTC isn’t. This is like prohibition; as soon as inflation picks up, the masses will come.
- Using Xbox or PS3 to mine coins? Anybody tried this before? I know their GPU’s aren’t top of the line, but for people like me who don’t game much they could be going to much better use.
- I don’t think we are near the peak either. It’s fascinating to watch bitcoin grow, evolve and get its financial tentacles all over things.
- No government would want BTC. Why would they want BTC when they can print their own money as much as they want out of thin air?
- actually by the time BTC becomes the world currency, $80,000,000/BTC could be a tiny fraction of the worlds wealth. These $$ are printable with no limit.
- When I barter with my Bitcoin, I’m exchanging fair value for fair value.
- is there a site/service where a person could buy a Bitcoin Certificate of Deposit for x Bitcoins with y% interest over z months?
- wow I thought someone had paid a hooker in bitcoin….
- Let’s hear your ideas for plots and situations for a hollywood movie that are only relevant and made possible by Bitcoin.
- Every time you buy something online, ask if they accept bitcoin. If enough people do this, surely the businesses will start taking the hint.
- This is the best scam so far. That’s truly brilliant in its simplicity.
- I will be starting a company in the coming months that will be doing business with people throughout my city, particularly in the hoods. I see this as a great opportunity to get bitcoins into the hands (or computers/cell phones) of those that need them most.
- Can you direct deposit money directly to MtGox?
- I don’t know anyone else who uses them. I have a lot of friends who are vaguely interested, but when I start explaining how one obtains bitcoins, their eyes glaze over. The benefits of bitcoin over fiat currency are just not tangible enough for them to justify keeping a separate bitcoin wallet
- That new fangled Bitcoin magazine site looks great on my Android tablet.
- I think Bitcoin is a great match for making transactions online for a variety of reasons, and would love to explore how it could improve the reddit community. If you have any thoughts, advice, or ideas (e.g. tipping redditors, or perhaps betting on which stories will make the front page), I’d love to hear them!
- I don’t always read economic analysis. But when I do, I prefer to read it in magazines about computer networking.
- buy cars with bitcoin this is huge
- Writing is spelled wrong in the navigation. I will proofread the rest of your site for one bitcoin.
- Whats keeping prices down? 1st the triangel that has formed since the 17th of July, in which final stage we are (jump up or down immanent)
- Super. A few more hacks and controversies, and the price might get back down to 2 dollars again so I can buy in. 😉
- Me and a person or two I know up in Fargo ND would be happy to order some guns for BTC.
- Do you realize, if you put $1000 in Facebook IPO and $1000 in Bitcoin on the same day, Facebook investment would be worth $550, while your Bitcoin investment would be $1780.
- Modern day deposit insurance is a moral hazard that only exists because the ability to print fiat from nothing exists.
- When a EMP from a nuke fries all the computers and magnetic media, all the bitcoins will be wiped out along with the currency of choice(If Bitcoins get adopted).
- there is about 5 billion ounces of gold above ground according to Wikipedia’s article on ‘gold’. And yes, that would translate to about 238 ounces of gold for every whole bitcoin.
- I would emphasize that bitcoin is a strong currency provided by an honest banking system. Strong currency because it cannot be inflated away. And its banking system only does accounting, and no gambling means it will never need a bailout. What is it backed by: The laws of supply and demand, and the laws of mathematics.
- Bitcoin will evolve and in 17 years nation states will all crumble as they are unable to justify their own existence any longer. The bizarre global civilization that will arise out of this will operate well with Bitcoin and only after the freedoms and benefits of a bitcoin based money society are fully realized will there ever be critical mass enough to take it to that whole nother level and do the pure mutual credit thing.
- If you consider just the US money supply alone, M2, which consists of currency and bank deposits, is approximately 10 trillion dollars. If Bitcoin were to replace Federal Reserve notes, one Bitcoin would be equivalent to $330,000.
- I’m scared because I believe I’m beginning to witness the collapse of the current dominant currency (USD), and the rise of a new one (Bitcoin).
- Bitcoin, the poor Americans offshore tax haven.
- Court upholding a Bitcoin contract could definitely affect demand, enhancing confidence in Bitcoin businesses.
- For a nanosecond, Bitcoin market capitalization was 9.65 quadrillion, 138 times world GDP!
- I’m perfectly happy exchanging bitcoins with individuals and spending my bitcoins to friends and coworkers when they buy my lunch with their shiat currency. If we all do this, eventually one of those friends will be a smart CEO (or small business owner) that wants his business to support it. Bitcoin is all about Network Effect.
- The price can only go up. Anyone buying into the market has to cash out at a higher price to make money and anyone with coins won’t want to push the price down. So unless someone comes along with many many coins and just wants to dump them on the market to devalue their own worth there are no factors currently to push the price down.
- PON-Z: the world’s first honest ponzi scheme. Using bitcoin.
- If you own Apple share, sell them and use the money to buy bitcoins.
- Lol, know any hookers that take BTC?
- I look at Bitcoin as not a currency, per se, but rather as a store of value.
- Fraud IS acceptable in bitcoin.
- Can somebody ask this Japanese giant robot manufacturer to accept Bitcoin donations?
- Bitcoin is the only object in the known universe with a known, verifiable, guaranteed, fixed supply.
- It is not a bubble, it’s an inverted correction from last year’s crash.
- If he pulls this off… it will be a Ponzi scheme that didn’t hurt its investors, probably the first. Probably will deserve a paragraph in the wikipedia article on Ponzi schemes.
- Bitcoinica is stealing from themselves to valuate the Bitcoin. Once people start hearing that Bitcoins are being stolen the perceived value of Bitcoin increases as people start to realize that Bitcoin is something worth stealing.
- guess i’m going to wait a week before buying more bitcoin.. shit’s gonna drop like a rollercoaster.
- I love the bitcoin community; every time the price goes up they cheer about how much more their investment’s worth, and every time it goes down again they cheer about how they can buy cheap bitcoins again. That kind of optimism is just heartwarming in today’s cynical world
- Is this the first Bitcoin bank bailout?
- My wife will be so happy when I show her all the bitcoins we will have. I invested all our money without telling her. When I first mentioned the trust fund, she said it was a ponzi and that if I ever sent pirate a bitcoin she would dissolve me in an Alkali Bath. Glad I will be proving her wrong.
- I actually see bitcoin as a commodity, fundamentally, with some currency-like properties. It exists in nature, just waiting to be found (mathematical keypairs) by anyone willing to put in the work, just like gold or oil.
- This guy has balls to rob a digital currency that can be used for assassinations from tech savvy people who know how to find him.
- How could reddit omit bitcoin as a payment option for their new fundraising?
- bitcoin will become the primary international reserve and trade currency. value of each bitcoin will be ~10oz gold each. additional decimal places will be added to support future microtransactions. the institution of central banking will become impotent to manipulate humanity any longer. nation states will fall. infrastructure and law and order will be financed by voluntary donation.
- Looks like total garbage. I’m curious to learn more.
- When the too-big-to-fail popcorns start popping, sudden price spikes, never to return. Remember that traders in TBTF banks have i) lots of their own cash; ii) they are watching bitcoin and they will jump in at some point; and iii) they’ll probably be scared of clawbacks.
- It’s not good for the bitcoin economy if a large fraction of the entire currency is held by thieves…
- Come to think of it, Bitcoin is actually the ideal money for ransom payments.
- Bitcoin is the new ‘small unmarked bills’ – except you don’t have to take the risk of physically picking up a dufflebag / briefcase.
- These thefts and scams are a symptom of Bitcoin’s success.
- At the end of the month I’ll be starting a new job that’ll pay me more than I need at the present so I’ll be saving most of the money. I am also thinking of exchanging a portion of the wage for Bitcoins every month.
- you should hold 15% gold, 25% silver and 60% bitcoins, all the way.
- I am planning to hold the bitcoin I own now for 5-10 years. They are part of my retirement plan!
- Bitcoin is already to the point where backing it with gold is meaningless. It has value. It has usefullness. It has unique properties, which are valuable.
- Bernanke bucks won’t be worth a confederate dollar in a few years.
- It’s based on math and rationality, not whim and arbitrary decisions.
- we all know that the mining of gold, silver, diamonds etc, has and will continue to couse a lot of misery for the people whose lands have been colonised/ invaded for these minerals. Plus the exploitation of miners, slave wages they are payed…just need to look at what’s happening in South Africa at the moment. So could we say that Bitcoin doesn’t have the taint of blood on its hands?
- faith in central banking and nationalism is a religion, and bitcoin strikes at the root of both
- everyone will have to have their keys encrypted and stenographied into a photo of their cat
- With no service level agreement, … you could say Bitcoin delivers 100% and be correct.
- Wife challenged me to explain Bitcoin while we’re having sex later tonight.
- Bitcoin is transmitted nerd to nerd its how we change world
- Why is it ok to say ‘Bitcoin is a haven for anonymous criminals’ when there is trillions of dollars of crime going unpunished with dollars?
- Anyone buying bitcoin below 5000 dollars will eventually be seen as an ‘early adopter’.
- Bitcoins are much sweeter than any candy so this will be my second year giving away bitcoins for halloween.
- Wonder how many coins were destroyed by the hurricane Sandy.
David Wendt
January 24, 2013 @ 11:32 am
ITT: Idiots that don’t know how math, computer science, economics, disaster recovery, business continuity, sociology, hyperinflation, pillow talk, Ponzi schemes, electrical engineering, prostitution, holiday ceremonies, investment, stock markets, game consoles, entrepreneurship, faith, religion, bank deposits, guns, or Bitcoin works, telling the world that Bitcoin is the future of all economic transactions ever.
It’s sad too. I kinda like the idea of anonymous electronic commerce, and Bitcoin does have some good functionality, but the idiots running the community are going to ensure that anybody that knows how anything works will stay as far away from the libertarian shithole that Bitcoin has become.
ithinkerer
January 25, 2013 @ 8:55 am
“Bitcoin does have some good functionality”
— Exactly what might that good functionality be? It looks like the author of this website will disagree with you, it’s all just butt money to him. So why do you think it’s good?
David Wendt
January 25, 2013 @ 1:33 pm
The way that electronic commerce works means that a small number of extremely powerful intermediary banking corporations control the world’s payment systems. There’s no requirement that these payment intermediaries treat merchants neutrally, and they don’t – leading to absolutely stupid situations where I can use a credit card to donate to the KKK but not to Wikileaks.
Or in other terms, there’s no real equivalent to cash on the Internet. There’s things that come close, like PayPal, but they have their own problems, like having the worst policies on the planet. At one point I thought Bitcoin could fill this role, but I realized it can’t, because everyone wants it to be “ultimate unprintable Ron Paul Fun Bux”. Or, well, “butt money”.
For the record, I don’t see Bitcoin ever gaining popularity again. The main problem is that Bitcoin is a separate currency. Most people who are going to be buying or selling with Bitcoins are still going to be doing 99% of their transactions in local currencies, which means Bitcoins are only as valuable as the currency exchanges will buy them for. Someone who sells, say, hosting services in exchange for Bitcoins is going to be hard pressed to find someone willing to sell them server hardware for Bitcoins, an ISP willing to let them buy transit for Bitcoins, or support staff willing to work for them in exchange for Bitcoins.
In fact, the labor issue is a particular sticking point. If someone tried to pay workers in Bitcoins, they would likely fall foul of anti-scrip laws. 150 years ago it was common practice for certain industries to pay their poorest workers in currency only redeemable in company-owned stores which intentionally priced goods at extreme markups with the intent of keeping workers impoverished. This practice was known as “scrip”, and it’s illegal in a large number of countries because it’s the most literal form of “wage slavery”.
All of this is scratching the surface of the issue, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of what currency and hyperinflation is. Often times in austrolibertarian circles, existing, institutionally backed currencies are described as “fiat” money, because it’s created by fiat. This is to somehow contrast it with the “gold standard”, which is “backed” and “can’t be printed”. The fundamental misconception is the idea that currencies are selected for their resistance to inflation; the faulty evidence given to support this is that gold used to be a widespread currency in pre-industrial times.
Many historical empires did use gold as a form of currency. But this ignores the fact that gold itself is a fiat currency. Gold at that point in time was considered valuable because kings and emperors said it was. In fact, there are plenty of other precious metals which were at one point used as currency because political leaders said they were valuable. Ultimately gold became valuable by fiat, because all currencies are fiat currencies. Gold wasn’t used as money because it’s hard to print, it was used as money because people said it was money and merchants went along with this.
Incidentally, yes, Bitcoin could conceivably become a currency if enough merchants decided to transact in Bitcoins. The problem with this is that Bitcoin would be inevitably pushed out by the dollar because two-currency zones are inherently unstable. Part of the idea of currencies as fiat is the idea that standardization provides economic benefits. An economy where the workers are paid in Bitcoins but have to buy services in USD means that exchange markets would be a complete mess, with every payday pushing Bitcoin prices skyward as employers hurriedly bought Bitcoins to pay their employees with, only to fall back down again as those Bitcoins were then hurriedly sold by their employees to buy USD again and continue the cycle anew. The only people who would make money would be the currency exchangers, adding a deadweight loss to the economy by taking their spread each payday. The economy would eventually abandon either Bitcoin or USD because doing so would be more optimal. But they would likely abandon Bitcoin. USD has the fiat of the largest military power on the planet behind it, Bitcoin has a bunch of idiots with overheating video cards.
And in fact, that’s exactly what’s happened to the Bitcoin economy, albeit on a smaller scale. You simply can’t promote a traditional capitalist currency without being a government with guns on your side and a claim to power. (More exotic Mutualist-style labor dollar schemes are different, but the proponents of Bitcoin are the last kind of people to touch something so left-wing.)
ithinkerer
January 31, 2013 @ 9:35 am
It’s true that for now the majority of people still operate with local currencies, but that’s why you have payment processors like BitPay. They take care of the Bitcoin -> Local Currency problem quite efficiently and for a low cost. Even with BitPay, the merit of using Bitcoin is not lost: you can still pay anybody that accepts Bitcoin (even Wikileaks), transfer the money anywhere in the world in less than 1 hour, no chargebacks, etc. As more and more companies start using Bitcoin, e.g. WordPress, then converting Bitcoin to local currency will become less frequent.
Scrip-laws are completely irrelevant here. Correct, the companies paid workers in currency only redeemable in company-owned stores, but Bitcoin is redeemable at any exchange and it can easily be converted for a fair dollar price. If the only qualification for scrip money is where you can spend it, then gold should be considered scrip money because nobody really accepts gold as a form of payment these days. Obviously there are other factors which are considered, not just where you can spend it but can you fairly/easily exchange it.
If we have an economy where workers are paid in Bitcoins, then Bitcoin has become so popular that every employer is paying in them… if every employer is paying in them, then it seems pretty obvious that the employers are getting paid in Bitcoin too. So where is the dollar involved when the employers are accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment and the employees are getting paid in Bitcoin? Therefore, we hardly need to address the question of recurring exchange transactions: firstly, because they wouldn’t be necessary and secondly, because recurring transactions have been happening for a long time and people have already figured out how to avoid the price spikes.
“USD has the fiat of the largest military power on the planet behind it, Bitcoin has a bunch of idiots with overheating video cards.”
— I’d love to see how the largest military power would use their guns against a bunch of idiots with overheating video cards. What are they going to do, send the military to kill every person whose video card is overheating? The implications of of government action to push out Bitcoin are just too damaging to society, it would have such drastic impact that it would amount to self-destruction of the government. It’s even worse than trying to stop torrents or ask Wikipedia, Google, Youtube, etc to police all of the content (you saw how well that worked out when those websites got together and asked every visitor to call their local representative).
“You simply can’t promote a traditional capitalist currency without being a government with guns on your side and a claim to power.”
— We’ll see how it all turns out I guess… I just don’t think that a prosperous government can effectively exist when it’s using its guns to stifle freedom.
seahen
May 2, 2014 @ 3:41 pm
Not all currencies are fiat currencies. I think I saw in a documentary once that ancient Japan had used rice as a currency, with granaries acting as central banks. And how much could you buy in prison with cigarettes if none of the inmates smoked?
Fluxity
January 24, 2013 @ 11:59 am
Those comments…
A List Of What Bitcoiners Actually Believe
January 24, 2013 @ 4:53 pm
[…] is a list of many of the quotes gathered by Buttcoin, which were gathered by Bitcointalk and […]
Trogdorbad
May 1, 2014 @ 8:50 am
I can answer that last one: Not enough.