
Bitcoin Surpasses $4,000, Reaches Another Milestone - sndean
https://www.forbes.com/sites/cbovaird/2017/08/12/bitcoin-surpasses-4000-reaches-another-milestone/#7f6922756a8c
======
do5
This is just speculative but the Bitcoin fork was probably the best thing to
happen to the price of bitcoin.

[http://amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2017/08/07/bitcoin-cash-
bch-h...](http://amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2017/08/07/bitcoin-cash-bch-hard-
fork-blockchain-usd-coinbase/?source=dam)

~~~
solotronics
weird question but why not fork more and people will trade it for BTC. at what
point would it not work anymore?

~~~
erikpukinskis
A fork has to be an idea about what Bitcoin is. This fork worked because some
people saw Bitcoin as a settlement layer for a wider system of credits. Other
people saw Bitcoin as a monolithic currency. The distance between those ideas
caused the split.

Similarly ETH saw Ethereum as a beta prototype, and ETC saw it as a final
contract. Those two ideas were each strong enough to support a community.

But this doesn't work arbitrarily. If I see Bitcoin as a currency primarily
for selling ice cream cones and I fork IceCreamCoin, which responds to the
seasonality of ice cream sales, there's no guarantee other people will see
value in that idea, and mine blocks on my chain, or pay for coins transacted
in those blocks on exchanges.

This is key to understanding cryptocurrency: there is no central reality.
There are as many realities as you want. There are incentives to participate
in some of them, but it's voluntary. You can walk away from whoever you want,
and decide their money doesn't even exist for you, for any reason.

~~~
mikejarema
This is a fantastic philosophical summary of what a cryptocurrency fork
represents. Thank you for sharing.

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Temasik
What's Bitcoin use case besides speculation?

Buying $10 worth of namecheap domain and pay $5 on fees no thanks!

~~~
Laforet
Bypassing financial regulations, extortion, llicit substance trade and many
other forms of small-time illegal activities. If you strip speculative value
and all the technical gloss, what's left is essentially Liberty Reserve 2.0.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Reserve](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Reserve)

P.S. Fees has actually got lower since the worst back in May, but there is no
telling it won't happen again. Paying for anon hosting is not a bad idea but
fewer providers are willing to provide it now - Vultr still accept bitcoin but
require to have credit card on file as well due to abuse.

~~~
ericb
You forgot some:

-Peer to peer remote transactions

-Embed money into a binary, a puzzle, an image, a file

-Non-correlated asset [https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-asset-correlation-2894312](https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-asset-correlation-2894312)

-The only money no one can take away from you, even states. Protection from governments like Greece

-Inflation hedge. Protection from governments like Venezuela.

~~~
aussieguy123
-The only money no one can take away from you, even states. Protection from governments like Greece

except hackers, if they get their hands on your wallet.

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shams93
Can you get an IRA portfolio based on cryptocurrency? It would be nice to be
able to invest in btc with the same kind of tax benefits you get with a
traditional stock based IRA.

~~~
icelancer
Not yet. Winklevoss twins ETF got denied after four years.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/business/dealbook/winkelv...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/business/dealbook/winkelvoss-
brothers-bid-to-create-a-bitcoin-etf-is-rejected.html)

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senatorobama
Is it too late for the average joe Software Engineer to invest in Bitcoin?

~~~
marcell
There is an interesting discussion between Hal Finney and Satoshi in 2009
about the possible value of bitcoin. This is back when it was just a random
software project, and had zero value: [http://diswww.mit.edu/bloom-
picayune/crypto/142207](http://diswww.mit.edu/bloom-picayune/crypto/142207)

    
    
        As an amusing thought experiment, imagine that 
        Bitcoin is successful and becomes the dominant payment
        system in use throughout the world.  Then the total
        value of the currency should be equal to the total 
        value of all the wealth in the world. Current estimates
        of total worldwide household wealth that I have found
        range from $100 trillion to $300 trillion. With
        20 million coins, that gives each coin a value of
        about $10 million.

~~~
beefield
And why, exactly, total value of currency should equal total amount of wealth?
What exactly is the contradiction, arbitrage or other mechanism that sets
total value of currency to total amount of wealth?

~~~
nostrademons
It's not, actually - the total value of all physical $USD (M0) is only about
$3.8T, vs. the figure of $100-300T given for total wealth (which seems low to
me, BTW).

The actual truth is even weirder: if Bitcoin takes over as the world currency,
its value in $USD will be infinite, but the question will be meaningless, as
the dollar will be worthless. Currencies tend to be winner-take-all within a
society; if one takes over, its rivals lose all value, as their only value is
in being a medium of exchange and store of value.

This is perhaps a contributory factor to the Bitcoin's volatility: if you
_actually_ believe it's going to succeed, unambiguously, the rational thing to
do is to move _all_ your wealth to Bitcoin. And similarly, if you believe it's
going to fail, the currency by definition is worthless.

~~~
nimos
There are 164 national currencies in the world. The USD is the defaco world
currency and the USD is not worth infinite of other currencies and the rest
are certainty not worthless.

I think the US government tolerates crypocurrencies because realistically they
are far more damaging to countries like Venezula and China who have much more
restrictive economies and in those countries the flexibility of bitcoin is a
huge advantage.

How many aircraft carries does bitcoin have? 0. Which (in my opinion) happens
to be the exact same chance of bitcoin usurping the USD as a global currency
short of some fundamental change in world power.

~~~
nostrademons
The thought experiment explicitly implies BitCoin usurping the $USD as a
global currency, and presumably all other ones as well. I'd agree with your
assessment of which countries/currencies are realistically much more likely to
suffer, but thought I'd engage with the thought experiment on its original
premise.

On the aircraft carrier issue - the killer app (literally) for
cryptocurrencies is autonomous weapon systems. Imagine if you could deposit
$Xm Bitcoins into an address and have access to a fleet of 100,000 drones on
10,000 speedboats. At that point, we're really in uncharted territory, though.

------
andy_ppp
I sold mine a few days ago around $3100 which is slightly annoying. I did buy
most of them at about $500 though. At this price there is definitely going to
a be a sell off and I'll get in again then.

~~~
andirk
Why did you sell it? If you needed the cash that makes sense, but else if
you've believed in it for a couple years, then why now?

~~~
andy_ppp
I was tired and thought it had reached a maximum for a while. I was very
wrong.

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frik
The same news got posted on HN 1h ago, got flagged after 36 up votes:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15001403](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15001403)

------
granaldo
Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin combined at almost $4500 now.

[https://www.coingecko.com/en/price_charts/bitcoin-
cash/usd](https://www.coingecko.com/en/price_charts/bitcoin-cash/usd)
[https://www.coingecko.com/en/price_charts/bitcoin/usd](https://www.coingecko.com/en/price_charts/bitcoin/usd)

Split ended up bringing the potential forward for both camps and able to move
on

