Re: Bitcoin, I most strongly agree with the following:

Seriously, with the number of bitcoin articles here, hardly anyone should be able to honestly vote that.

I love the idea of a decentralized, non-controllable, virtually anonymous (and truly anonymous with the use of proper laundries), non-government, non-corporation, currency. I love the idea that I can just send a few coins (or parts or whatever) as a tip to anyone else without an intermediary taking a cut. I love that I can use it for true micropayments, microdonations etc.
I support Bitcoins because, while it's not the best possible option, it's the best existing option.

But, I don't like that early adopters are massively rich. I don't like that the current chain is 2GB and rising (hard to download when your Internet connection is rubbish). And there are a few other minor issues with it.

But ultimately, I think that, as a tool to remove power from governments and corporations, it's a good one. It's a good currency to use to be paid in, and to spend, and to save for a rainy day. But, like any other store of wealth or capital, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Just like you don't put all your savings into stocks or gold, don't put them all into Bitcoins.

Nah, they suck as a medium to store wealth for more than short periods of time. What the OP is missing is that currency is a method of account: A ton of prices are set up with respect to a currency: This is why, say, having oil be priced in dollars and not in Euros was such a big deal a while ago. High demand for currency as a percentage of GDP is telling you that all of the things that are far better stores for wealth than money are just no good (ie, a recession), or that the currency is not really a currency, but a commodity that you are speculating with.

Which is why Bitcoin is not something that really resembles a currency: The supply increases slowly, its value vs anything that you could want to buy with it fluctuates wildly, and most of the inventory is being held by people hoping it will go up, instead of actually being used.

While an electronic coin is theoretically possible, the Bitcoin implementation shares more with a pyramid scheme than with a real currency: Everyone that holds it wants to hype it so that it goes up in price vs actual currencies, but if the usage drops, it's useless, and only the people at the top of the scheme, those that mined very early, get anything that resembles a return.

And I believe that if I offered you 1000 USD or EUR, that you would not tell me to GTFO and to come back when I had some zinc or hog bellies.

Gold is just a shiny metal. Currencies are backed by economies, by work, labour, products, wealth. I think the latter has more intrinsic value than the former.

And in a desert gold a liter of water is worth more then all the gold you have after 3 days.

In fact if I have a big functioning economy, and all you have is a gold mine, then your gold is actually worthless. And you'll be really screwed if my people's culture say, viewed shiny things as senseless opulence.

It's a commodity.

If society collapses completely land has no value, as you can't carry it. Owning land is only possible because society recognizes your right for the specific piece of land. After collapse you own what you can hold and keep others from taking, with any means.

Paypal and Bitcoin are apples and oranges, though, although I get what you're saying. When paypal collects a fee, that goes right into the company coffers, and therefore part of the shareholder value. Bitcoin transaction fees just go to the miner that collected them. The investors get nothing. Instead they get to pay around 12% interest per year to the miners (currently, of course this will drop).

Valuing bitcoin is a tricky business, a lot like valuing gold, but different from that also. The weird thing about bitcoin is that, unlike gold, it's value doesn't change with the amount used. For example, 20,999,999 BTC could be locked away by long term investors, leaving 1 BTC for the entire economic side of bitcoin to run on, and the economy would work just as well as if it had all 21M BTC to work with.

However, in the first scenario, if an investor decided to cash out, it's the economy that must support him. So if he sold 1 BTC, then the entire circulation of bitcoin in the economy would double in size in terms of BTC, which would cause the value of all BTC to drop to half. This is really important in understanding bitcoin in my opinion, because compared to a regular stock, where future events can be baked into the price, the price of Bitcoin cannot similarly be.

Why not?

Because the price of bitcoin must equal the amount being circulated, times the amount of currency in regards to intrinsic worth each of the players in the economy need to conduct business. In other words, consider the example where only 1 BTC was used by the economy and the rest tied up with long term investors. Every time a consumer wanted to buy a TV that normally goes for $1199, they'd have to get that amount in Bitcoin, whatever it might be. Similarly, a business would need it's cash flow for it's purchases, and refunds, etc. So, take that amount as valued in USD, and divide it by the amount of Bitcoin available to the economy, and you get the price that USD/BTC has to be. After all, if it wasn't, then consumers would have to adjust their transitory holdings, businesses would have to adjust the amount used for cash flow until it was.

So, in essence the investors are facing a situation somewhat like the prisoners dilemma. Cash out before everyone else to get most of the profit. But if no one cashes out, or more people cash in than cash out, and the price goes higher, because you squeeze the economy into less and less remaining bitcoin. In a normal system with physical goods, eg. gold, the value of the economy decreases as more investors pile in and start locking gold in vaults, which means less rings for sale, so the effect is tempered. But with bitcoin, this steam valve never get released..

Can you guess what happens here? Both forces diverge, when one is strong the other is weak. Investors buy more and more of BTC, so the price of BTC hits the roof, so some investors cash out, and then it hits the floor, because the bitcoin economy has more BTC to work with, and the price of BTC has to match the total intrinsic value amount needed to run the economy divided by the economy's share of the Bitcoin. (The fact that investors can cash out at anytime cannot be baked into the price). And again, in circles. And the nearly unnoticed people trying to work an economy lose and gain and lose and gain. Until they get sick of it, and shops slowly go belly up or refuse to take BTC, until it dwindles to nothing. And the bubbles one after another start to fade, along with the economy, until nothing is left.

"But as a currency, it is wildly more useful than USD, or whatever."

That is one of the most moronic things I've read about bitcoins. It is hardly usable as a currency. You've found a few specialty shops that will take it for payment. Good for you. I can find an entire COUNTRY of stores that take USD, and plenty of places around the world. Go have a look at Amazon.com, look at what you can buy there, for US Dollars but NOT for Bitcoins.

You seem to be all caught up on the fact that you can "send" Bitcoins directly to someone else. So what? That is a semantic argument. All currencies are just shuffling bits around in computers anyhow. The details really don't matter, what matters is how easily you can use it to pay for things. Bitcoin is very hard, few people accept it and, surprise, surprise, they convert it to real money as soon as they can. US dollars are very easy, they are accepted all over the place.