Let me donate bitcoins to support mediaportal (general Bitcoin discussion) (2 Viewers)

[vuego]

It could fall significantly in value and wipe out personal wealth due to movements in 'real life' currency markets, so it is not responsible to encourage it's use as a form of currency.

Three months ago it would have been very irresponsible to encourage Cypriots to keep their wealth in EUR at the bank. The money you thought you had wasn't really yours.
I'm not trying to be controversial. It's just true.

But I will always advise caution.

I'm fairly sure we can all agree to this.

 

[foxbenw]

I'll ignore the immature mimicry, but some fair points from others.

A currency fullfills three major principles: 1. It is a store of value - meaning not that it's value isn't allowed to change in comparision to other objects (like other currencies, food, shoes, etc.), but instead that it doesn't suffer from decay (so ice cream would not fit in here). 2. It works as an ultimate, standardized acounting unit allowing to tell a Price in comparision to the currency. Otherwise you would have a price pairing for any two things you would like to trade which would make trading pretty hard. 3. It is the ulitmate exchange medium - no need to have in stock what your trade Partner wants, he just accepts money.

Both bitcoins and dollar bills have an intrinsic value of (almost) zero. If nobody wants them, it's just a bit of paper or an arrangement of some bits. However, both bitcoin and dollars are a currency, because people accept them in exchange for other things. They both store value: you've to invest a certain amount of something to get them (whether that's computing power, labour or another currency doesn't matter), and you can exchange them back for something else (sure, you can exchange Bitcoins less divers products than dollars, but you can exchange them, and that's the imprtant part). Both may be twice or half as much worth tomorrow as they are today.

Overall, there's not much more to say here, as there seems to be a general desire for bitcoins to be encouraged. If they ever form a valid replacement for normal money I will be proven wrong. However, in the meantime, like many things in finance, the definition of a currency is open for discussion. Taking the comments above together, as I think they are essentially the same, I of course agree that bitcoins are a form of exchange. That is not really controversial. They can also be argued to be a store of value, from the perspective that they do not decay. But, I would hope to add to that part of MrCrab's professor's definition of a currency above by pointing out that in order for a currency to be my currency, it also needs to be a store of value relative to my own future liabilities. For most people that means 'my government's/country's currency'. Oxan says that the value of the dollar could halve tomorrow. True, from the perspective of a GBP or EUR investor. But not true from the perspective of a US citizen. I know that has implications in terms of inflation and trade, but we are not talking about the merits of fiat money here. If that concept is accepted, then there is no-one today from who's perspective the value of bitcoins does not change when their 'price' changes, and there cannot be in today's economic world. So what I have really being describing is probably a more what makes a currency a valid or good currency, rather than just 'a currency'. If you like, I will agree that bitcoins are a currency because it's just semantics and doesn't impact my argument. But they will never be enough peoples' base currency (if anyone's) to be successful as a currency. And because of that they cannot ever be guaranteed to be stable enough to form a store of value relative to anyone's liabilities (unless there's a BTC mortgage provider on that list from earlier, of course ).
It's an interesting topic, in many ways. I still don't think we should be encouraging their use though. There'll be a press article some day about someone who put all their money in BTC and lost everything when their computer crashed or something and their wallet got wiped.

As a more philosophical point, I think a virtual currency can probably work, but it will take time to take hold, and at present would need to be denominated in a 'proper' currency to become a feasible long term store of value. eg if I could buy GBP denominated bitcoins. That gets a whole lot more complicated when you start to work out the exchange rates and availability and all that stuff I imagine. I haven't thought about it beyond that. However I am pretty sure that the marginal supply of a virtual currency probably needs to be determined by something other than how fast your computer is! It should probably take into account how much it is needed by participants somehow, meaning both how much someone expects to be able to generate with it for the 'greater good', or simply some kind of charitable aspect. Ultimately it should be a more efficient way of distributing capital to those who need it and those who want it. Currently we call them banks and governments, but for some reason we don't seem to trust them as much as we used to.

 

[findftp]

I'll ignore the immature mimicry, but some fair points from others.

It was a not meant sarcastic, I was hoping for an educated discussion about bitcoins vs currency.
Since your job is fund manager you at least should know something about currencies or money in general.
I don't have a profession or education in financial topics and my english is also not good enough so I figured to sit on the sideline since there were other people debating more or less my opinion.

The rest of your last post proves me right, you know way more than the average person. I should have added some emoticons to my post.

Currently we call them banks and governments, but for some reason we don't seem to trust them as much as we used to.

I think the last sentence hits the nail (dutch expression)
I think this is one of the main reasons why people run to alternative storage of value.

Just take the gold smack down of april 12nd.
The *mathematical probability* of that event was 1 out of 4776 years.
If we include april 15th in this math, it expands to less than 1 out of 7 billion years.

This is just one of many facts for me that proves banks are not to trust and I have to look for alternatives.


edit:
re-reading my previous post

Since the userprofile of @foxbenw tells me his occupation is 'fund manager' this is going to be an interesting discussion. I'm watching from the sideline for a while

I should have written 'your' instead of 'his' I guess.

 

[foxbenw]

Then I apologise. The Cyprus thing is a fair enough point, although unrelated to bitcoin in particular. If you live in a country where the government goes bankrupt, you have many other problems apart from 'what is a currency'. I agree with you, the last point is why bitcoins can have a chance in today's environment. I just feel they are not the right answer for a virtual currency, and governments are not ready to lose that control yet either, so with any sign that they are beginning to take off properly, they will take measures. Cross border tax, money laundering, too many issues to mention. Thanks for clarifying.

ps we also say 'hit the nail on the head'
pps hey, wait a minute. It wasn't you! You never said anything sarcastic and it wasn't your post I was referring to. Now I've gone and made a bigger deal of it.

 

[findftp]

Sorry for bumping this thread, but it is time for my yearly donation to mediaportal again.
I wondered if the same bitcoin address is still valid for donation.
I could not find it at the donation page.

 

[vuego]

Wikimedia does also accept Bitcoin now.

@high what do you think about adding a Coinwidget to our donation page?

 

[high]

I wondered if the same bitcoin address is still valid for donation.
I could not find it at the donation page.

hi, former one is still valid but just added two widgets on the donation page for Bitcoins.

 

[vuego]

Thanks, high!
I see you opted for Coinbase instead of Coinwidget. It seems to only allow exactly $20 in Bitcoin. Is there any way to just let people donate whatever amount they wish?

 

[high]

yepp sure, some more values added

 

[findftp]

yepp sure, some more values added

Nice, but can't you just place the initial bitcoin address on the page?
Does coinbase take a percentage of the donation?
If you just show a QR code with the bitcoin address (go to blockchain.info) people can decide for them self how much bitcoin they want to transfer.
You know, I just want to forget about dollars or euro's so donating $10 worth of bitcoin doesn't really make sense for me.
I donate in terms of 0,01 or 0,1 or 0,05 bitcoins which translates to strange decimal FIAT values, but that's just the point! I denominate in bitcoin.

edit: Indead, coinwidget let me do exactly what I want.