Bitcoin sell-off

[hairykrishna]

Oakey said:

Whilst the price of Bitcoins continues to vary wildly on a daily basis, how is anyone actually meant to use them for anything? A retailer would have to continually change their product prices to reflect the current value of the BTC.

The only 'retailer' that does any volume of sales is Silk Road, which is basically eBay fixed price auctions for drugs. The sellers on there set their prices in USD and the bitcoin price is adjusted in real time via a feed from the biggest bitcoin exchange. The site also hedges the coins held in seller accounts, if required, so that the balance effectively stays fixed. I suppose others could do the same.

Edited by hairykrishna on Friday 12th April 17:30

[DonnyMac]

hairykrishna said:

The site also hedges the coins held in seller accounts, if required

HK if you get a mo, can you explain this in more detail, thanks.

[DonnyMac]

Esseesse said:

DonnyMac said:

There's money to be made - today's low £42, today's high £110 - grrr... What price to buy in at?

Just buy some anywhere in that range, it's significantly less than yesterday.

And then see where you are in a year or 2. It's no more expensive than going out for dinner with OH, and much more interesting, for much longer.

I was thinking about throwing £10k+ at them as a punt, I'd prefer to buy after a serious crash, then sit on them for a couple years.

As much as I like to enjoy good grub, it's a touch more than I've spent on a meal before

[hairykrishna]

DonnyMac said:

HK if you get a mo, can you explain this in more detail, thanks.

Sadly I don't really know the details of how they do it - they're fairly non-transparent as a site, understandably! They just offer a 'hedge' service to sellers where the value of coins kept in their account is fixed at the value they were worth when they were paid in.

I think £10k in bitcoins would be a fairly hefty gamble at the moment. Quite a lot of the value at the moment, to me, seems to be driven by the amount of media attention they've got recently.

[DonnyMac]

hairykrishna said:

DonnyMac said:

HK if you get a mo, can you explain this in more detail, thanks.

Sadly I don't really know the details of how they do it - they're fairly non-transparent as a site, understandably! They just offer a 'hedge' service to sellers where the value of coins kept in their account is fixed at the value they were worth when they were paid in.

I think £10k in bitcoins would be a fairly hefty gamble at the moment. Quite a lot of the value at the moment, to me, seems to be driven by the amount of media attention they've got recently.

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I'd agree to a certain extent; when I investigated them a year or so back I was really intrigued by the idea, very smart.

But much like a start up, it's often a toss of a (bit)coin whether it would take off or not; I'd say it has and that now with the currency becoming more well known I think the only way is up once those who've just found out about them are both less jittery and take the plunge.

I'd say there's plenty of positive and negative movement to come, but have this feeling (backed my nothing more than a hunch) that they'll stabilise and grow steadily forevermore thereafter.

£10k is a risk, hence wanting to get in at a hefty crash, but, never put in more than you're willing to lose and I'm losing 5% year on year in deflation regardless.

If I lost it I'd wince, but would be a story; a better story would be, look at this new mansion, yeah I gambled with some BitCoin 5 years back...

I'll continue dreaming, thanks again.

[FourWheelDrift]

Bitcoin privacy problem - http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/06/bit...

[jammy_basturd]

Anyone else part of the Ripple giveaway a week or two ago?

[Esseesse]

FourWheelDrift said:

Bitcoin privacy problem - http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/06/bit...

Wouldn't a retailer just need a few wallets for different things to avoid this?

[hairykrishna]

Esseesse said:

Wouldn't a retailer just need a few wallets for different things to avoid this?

It's trivially easy to obscure who's moving the coins around. It's just a fairly ropey Wired article - it says "If Foodler isn't careful, Bitcoin could give competitors a way to spy on its business." then goes on to explain that Foodler is already mixing and dividing it's coins to frustrate anyone trying to work out their cashflow.

[The Vambo]

Watch the price plummet, i wonder how much was being held and now lost in all the accounts?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24373759#TWEE...

[jogon]

I lost £70 the fkers! Price seems to be going back up now after the initial shock, plenty of sites still running.

[anonymous-user]

Silk Road has proved it's possible, the next one will be better.


Would have been a good time to grab some they'll definitely go back up.

[Art0ir]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Wasn't there a member on here from the IOM that got caught buying from them? He posted up the day before his court appearance never to be heard from again?

[anonymous-user]

Art0ir said:

Wasn't there a member on here from the IOM that got caught buying from them? He posted up the day before his court appearance never to be heard from again?

Must have missed that, was it recent? You might be busting someone's witness protection wide open

[Art0ir]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Wasn't there a member on here from the IOM that got caught buying from them? He posted up the day before his court appearance never to be heard from again?

[130R]

Reading an article on BBC news about how the FBI tracked the Silk Road admin down - basically they just searched the internet for the first username that started promoting the site and found another post from that same username asking about Bitcoin, in which he told people to contact him via email ... and his gmail address was also his real name. Wow that is some real Sherlock Holmes stuff

Yes I know they tracked him via the IP address obtained from Google rather than the name of the email really

[CommanderJameson]

Here's a good article about the end of Silk Road:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/feds-si...

[Digga]

CommanderJameson said:

Here's a good article about the end of Silk Road:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/feds-si...

Batst crazy isn't it?

[hairykrishna]

So it turns out DPR was a fking idiot and he was still managing to collect $25k a day in commission. I bet people are taking notice and the next Silk Road will be a lot less amateurish.

[Digga]

hairykrishna said:

So it turns out DPR was a fking idiot and he was still managing to collect $25k a day in commission. I bet people are taking notice and the next Silk Road will be a lot less amateurish.

All of which, IMHO, goes to prove - the contracts and all that - that allowing a black market to exist for these goods provides criminals with the means to commit or commission other crimes.