

What would I use bitcoin for? - dohko
http://blog.bodhi49.com/2012/08/what-would-i-use-bitcoin-for.html

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shell0x
Has anyone tried to exchange EUR/USD/.. to bitcoins or bitcoins to EUR/USD/..
? I haven't any bitcoins, so I can't test it, but I want to know how well it
works in practice.

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bsphil
That's almost exclusively what people actually use Bitcoins for, outside of
Silk Road stuff. There are so few BTC stores that it's hard to justify the
value of it as a currency.

It's like having a wallet filled with $100 bills at a row of soda machines.

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np422
You should use bitcoins to buy drugs on silk road using tor. The rising
popularity of silk road can be seen in the exchange rates for bitcoins in the
last few months.

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sgornick
Really? SR is the reason why?

Sales volume is estimated at two million dollars a month:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/08/06/black-m...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/08/06/black-
market-drug-site-silk-road-booming-22-million-in-annual-mostly-illegal-sales/)

Let's say it takes a week between when a person buys bitcoin and when those
coins are spent.

That mean about half a million dollars of currency is tied up for these users.
That's about 50K BTC. That's less than one week's production from mining.

This marketplace has almost no impact on the exchange rate directly. What it
might be doing is introducing a number of people to bitcoin. They might then
speculate on the exchange rate (simply by buying more than they plan to use
for purchases, in anticipation of the exchange rate rising), or use bitcoins
for purchases or for person-to-person payments.

