

“Will Work for Bitcoin” Coder Says Most Using It as Investment Vehicle - citadrianne
http://www.betabeat.com/2011/05/18/will-work-for-bitcoin-coder-says-most-people-just-using-it-as-an-investment-vehicle/

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DennisP
That's the rational thing to do if you expect the value of bitcoins to keep
skyrocketing.

Ultimately, people will want to cash out. If they cash out by trading for
dollars, bitcoin will fail. If they cash out by buying stuff, we'll have a new
currency on our hands.

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adrianwaj
There are no transaction costs with Bitcoin, or close to zero, and that is
great, nor forex. It is also instant, unlike wire transfers.

What must happen with bitcoin now (I think), is people with large stashes of
Bitcoin, or anyone that wants it to see it succeed must give it away to people
who promote it, in the same way PayPal gave $5 to new sign-ons.

One way to do this is by having a site that authenticates against a twitter
account, and then posts a promotional tweet to collect free bitcoin. The tweet
is checked that it stays on a timeline for a length of time. If it does, the
tweeter gets their free coin (and their followers can emulate.) The account is
then nullified, or perhaps another promotional tweet after a set time with
more free coin.

Ways to guage a twitter account's worth: is it verified, its metrics, or
through APIs <http://www.retweetrank.com/view/api>
<http://developer.klout.com/api_gallery>
<http://dev.peerindex.net/docs/profile/show>

Site takes a commission. I just mentioned this to Mt Gox to consider something
like this.

Add: the site can have a leaderboard: who gave the most coin away (# and $ at
the time) and to whom, and how many signups were created as a result (and
subsequent follower-follower signups.) People that reach the top have traded
their coin for merit and can champion the bitcoin reality.

From pyramid to sphere. I have the name bit rific if anyone wants to build it
with me.

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3pt14159
I'd be willing to work at a lesser rate for bitcoins too. The problem is that
the overlap of people that want web/social media crawlers and/or data analysis
and the people that are willing to _spend_ bitcoins to hire them are
effectively nil.

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evgen
I am sure the people investing the the Securities Exchange Company aiming to
get in on the new international reply coupons also thought of it as an
investment vehicle...

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goombastic
Pretty sure governments will muscle in on bitcoin. The way governments work is
by ensuring that they exist to mediate, ostensibly to streamline and maintain
a higher authority in case things go wrong. I wonder how long it will be until
these middle-men want-in on this as well. Governments hate it when
independent, optimal and thinking networks with free nodes emerge. On the
other hand the potential to abuse the system exists as well.

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adrianwaj
I'd be willing to sell shares in my startup for bitcoin. I can then pay
developers with the proceeds to guys like Nick. I can then collect btc
payments to my startup in order to pay back investors. It's a viable system.
Beats having to go to the same old cast of characters for investment.
Customers can become shareholders too. Bitcoin is family.

edit: can be family

~~~
vannevar
Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme. Its value is driven by pure speculation and
nothing more. When the music inevitably stops and everyone rushes for the
exits, any 'family' left holding the bag is going to be well and truly
screwed.

~~~
mey
Same is true of, gold, silver, and all those pieces of paper. Money is only
valuable if you and everyone else believes in it. Conversely I believe in the
US dollar, and not bitcoin, for a myriad of reasons. I think that's the real
difference between a speculator and investor. The investor believes, the
speculator doesn't, and one of them will be right at any given point in time.

~~~
adrianwaj
Rum and tobacco were also currencies and had unarguable, inherent value across
borders, just like bitcoin.

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Tichy
I'd be willing to work for BitCoin, too. But preferrably for smaller projects
atm. I am not sure yet how to best convert BTC to EUR - did some trades on
BitMarket.eu, but it is pretty low volume.

