Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Sunday May 07 2017, @05:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the everybody-like-bubbles-until-they-pop dept.

Something odd is going on in finance this week. One unit of BitCoin briefly exceeded the value of a troy ounce of gold before it fell back. However, this occurred during Ethereum rallying to its current peak above US$100. Perhaps this is like comparing apples, oranges, and dog-biscuits but — as of this week — we now have a situation where Ethereum is well above the US$1 credibility threshold of most alternative digital currencies and, to a simpleton, BitCoin was more valuable than gold.

What changed? Nothing obvious. Banks have teams of shirking resume builders working on trendy projects and they've been working on digital currencies for years. Likewise, tranches of investments funds have been going into technology for decades. However, after puffing and bursting a housing bubble and educational bubble, is this the next place to jub other people's money? Is it Charles Stross' Accelerando coming to life? I don't know but I'll be very concerned if there is a financial wobble within the next month.

(External hyperlinks via Vinay Gupta, an Ethereum contributor, Ethereum evangelist and all-around great guy who helps the homeless.)


[Ed Note: Asking what is Ethereum? Me too. Additional information on the above topic can be found at the IB Times]

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by lx on Monday May 08 2017, @07:36AM (4 children)

    by lx (1915) on Monday May 08 2017, @07:36AM (#506231)

    I don't know. It seems like the mining fee for a swift and successful transaction is getting larger and larger.
    Pay through the nose to a banker in a suit or to a guy in his sweatpants running a botnet?

    Decisions decisions...

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 08 2017, @08:38AM (3 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Monday May 08 2017, @08:38AM (#506248) Journal

    Didn't think of that. Regardless the sweatpants is more deterministic. Nor can anyone really try to start the fiat currency printing shop in BTC.

    Another possibility is to have another currency backed by BTC. Then fees can be lowered.

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday May 08 2017, @12:50PM (1 child)

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday May 08 2017, @12:50PM (#506321) Journal

      Another possibility is to have another currency backed by BTC.

      You mean, sort of a digital Bretton-Woods? [wikipedia.org]

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 1) by tftp on Tuesday May 09 2017, @02:54AM

      by tftp (806) on Tuesday May 09 2017, @02:54AM (#506718) Homepage

      Regardless the sweatpants is more deterministic.

      There is a more important factor at play. Bank fees are flat, $40 or so, no matter how much you send. BTC fees are proportional to the sum that you send. If you send very little, then BTC is cheaper. If you send a good amount, the bank is cheaper. Add the necessary insurance (free with a wire transfer and necessary with a large transfer,) and per calculations that I did a year ago or so the break-even line was somewhere around $7K to $10K. The bank is also simpler - you do not need to buy and sell temporary tokens (that is yet another risk and loss, as the spread between buy and sell is not exactly zero.) Let's focus on this aspect, as I just happened to find the numbers [coinbase.com]:

      We charge a 1% fee when you buy or sell bitcoin using a fiat currency like dollars, euros, GBP, etc. Thanks for using Coinbase!

      You lose 2% on just buying BTC, sending it for free, and selling it back on the other end for exactly what you bought it for (ha!) If the 2% is $40, the 100% is $40*50 = $2,000. Well, that's pretty bad already. You'd be better off using the bank for transfers above this figure. If you are sending $10K through the bank you pay only $40, and that is only 0.4%. Bitcoin players charge far more for their services. This also explains why BTC does not interest businesses: even outside of the issues of trust, it's just awfully expensive.