Money & Banking

It's worth going back to read what Reuters finance journalist Felix Salmon wrote about Bitcoin almost exactly a year ago. The Bitcoin Bubble and the Future of Currency https://medium.com/money-banking/2b5ef79482cb Why bitcoin’s rise is nothing to celebrate http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/04/03/why-bitcoins-rise-is-…

I tend to subscribe to the ideas that Joyent has around their manta product -- it's about "data gravity" and "data velocity". There was an article submitted earlier to hn that didn't get many votes -- and no comments -- but is well worth a read: "Building a Black Swan: Disrupting NetApp, EMC, Amazon’s S3 … maybe all BigData": https://medium.com/money-banking/b8427c23bf0f https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6028334 Also worth skimming is the blog post introducing Manta: "Hello, Manta: Bringing Unix to Big Data": http://www.joyent.com/blog/hello-manta-bringing-unix-to-big-data And, (more closely) related to the "you don't have big data", I found this little post about Manta also interesting: http://building.wanelo.com/post/54110156963/a-cost-effective-approach-… (as an example of how keeping things simple (here: simple log files) can combine to provide the scalability needed to collect "BigData" -- and then the Manta architecture can help with turning that data into information) (No affiliation with Joyent/Manta -- but it does seem like they have a pretty good product concept/idea -- and even if not using Manta or Joyent -- building on their ideas and architecture -- seems like something that might be useful also for smaller installations).

>Oh i have 1BTC now and it is worth $10000. It used to be worth $.001 when i bought a pizza Most likely the guy who got the pizza now thinks "gee, that other guy is now sitting on a BTC treasure that could buy him a house, a car and a lot of nice holidays. I got a pizza". BTC and $ (or €) are competing for value - and as long as the BTC story is intact, it makes more sense to hoard BTC and spend $$. When there is inflation, it makes sense to invest or consume your money, with BTC this does not make sense if you can hold off your purchase for a while. I therefore would not be surprised to see a tremendous spike in the BTC valuation but I have no idea what the distant future would be - it can only be a hard crash or the stifling of the BTC economy. Edit: see also: https://medium.com/money-banking/2b5ef79482cb This is actually a serious problem, if you’re trying to put together a currency, rather than a vehicle for financial speculation. If the currency of a country ever fluctuated as much as bitcoins did, it would never be taken seriously as a medium of exchange: how are you meant to do business in a place where an item costing one unit of currency is worth $10 one day and $20 the next? [...] If millions of people started using bitcoins on a regular basis, the soaring value of bitcoins would actually be disastrous. You’ve heard of hyperinflation: this would be hyperdeflation

there are no real facts in economics, but there are some pretty easy concepts to grasp. here is another explanation: "Inflation is bad, but deflation is worse. The reason is that in a deflationary environment, no one spends money — because whatever you want to buy is sure to become cheaper in a few days or weeks. People hoard their cash, and spend it only begrudgingly, on absolute necessities" from https://medium.com/money-banking/2b5ef79482cb

Here are a few recent articles I found to be relatively accurate and fair (several of which have already appeared on HN): http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/47135650437/are-bitcoins-the-future https://medium.com/money-banking/2b5ef79482cb https://mises.org/daily/6399/The-Moneyness-of-Bitcoins http://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2013/04/03/four-reason-you-shou… http://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2013/04/bitcoins-plunge-protection-team.h…