back to article Bitcoin blasts past $1,000 AGAIN after Zynga accepts cryptocurrency

How better to pay for virtual real estate than with virtual money? The price of Bitcoins has risen beyond the thousand-dollar mark again after games-maker Zynga announced it would trial the e-currency for in-game purchases. At the time of writing, a Bitcoin was worth $1,062.30 on the Mt.Gox online exchange, one of the major …

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  1. David Webb

    Fluctuations

    It seems to me that the price of Btc fluctuates too wildly. If Zynga set their prices at 0.01Btc when the value is $1,000 but then it fluctuates again to $750, the price is out of whack, or, if they set the prices when Btc were $500each but then another wild swing puts it up to $1,000 then people are losing out, money wise.

    With non-virtual currency, £1 is £1 and $1 is $1, you may go to sleep with £1 = $1.50 but you wouldn't then wake up to find £1 = $15.00, it really needs to be much more stable, else people would buy the coins when they are cheap, then sell when they are high, not use them when they are cheap, a waiting game?

    1. S4qFBxkFFg

      Re: Fluctuations

      Maybe this "BitPay" organisation accounts for that - they'll post prices in dollars and keep adjusting the actual amount of bitcoins/dollar more or less constantly.

      1. Visual Echo

        Re: Fluctuations

        @ S4qFBxkFFg

        Yes, BitPay will pay in dollars, euros, or British pounds, and 5 other currencies.

    2. vmistery

      Re: Fluctuations

      Currency no matter what it is fluctuates in value, just not the extreme bitcoin is currently. Its a young currency and I am sure in 10 years time if it hasn't died a death (if people deem it a fad) then it will be far more stable. Personally I am yet to be convinced by Crypto currency, but I am open to the concept once there is a genuinely convincing reason to use it over my lovely £.

    3. John G Imrie

      Re: Fluctuations

      With non-virtual currency, £1 is £1 and $1 is $1, you may go to sleep with £1 = $1.50 but you wouldn't then wake up to find £1 = $15.00, it really needs to be much more stable, else people would buy the coins when they are cheap, then sell when they are high, not use them when they are cheap, a waiting game?

      Welcome to the wonderful world of Banking. :-)

  2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

    Why use Bitcoin to play online games?

    Surely Bitcoin is already an online trading game - with the added option to make, or lose, reasonable amounts of cash. Hardly seems worth involving Zynga really...

  3. Jamie Jones Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Really?

    I can just imagine the excitement raging amongst teenage girls when they discovered they could use their bitcoins to buy 'crops' for their 'farms' (!)

    Seriously, though, whilst I can see bitcoin benefitting from more 'official' endorsement, I can't see it as anything other than a PR exercise for Zynga!

  4. h4rm0ny

    So someone at Zynga wanted to offload their Bitcoins?

    1. Rukario
      Coat

      Zynga Zynga

      Bit Bit

  5. g e

    $1242 BTCUSD high according to TradingView

    At end of Nov

    https://www.tradingview.com/x/5hhqSLEp/

  6. cyclical

    'Backed by maths' - not really, backed by a large network of nerds running custom hardware and graphics cards consuming (and wasting) vast amounts of electricity, validated by a 13Gb blockchain you have to download before dealing with bitcoins, exchanged by unregulated, mostly unqualified and definitely insecure online exchanges, easily stolen or lost, massively volatile, unscaleable and with a price propped up primarily between people with large amounts of sunk costs, and speculators.

    (most of those points are arguable to a certain extent, but noone can argue against volatility and the massive amount of exchanges that have closed or had their bitcoins 'stolen')

    1. John G Imrie

      Currency

      'Backed by Banks' - not really, backed by a large network of of traders running custom software and high speed networks consuming (and wasting) vast amounts of electricity, validated by an un-elected group of 'Bankers' more interested in their bonus than the currency; exchanged by unregulated, mostly unqualified and definitely insecure 'Shops', easily stolen or lost, unscaleable and with a price propped up primarily between people with large amounts of sunk costs, and governments.

      Though I'll grant you the Volatility bit. In a 'real' currency if you got the kind of price changes we see with BitCoin it would be heading in only one direction due to hyper inflation.

  7. Blofeld's Cat
    Coat

    Good news everyone...

    I've just heard that the Emperor is going to pay for his new clothes in Bitcoins.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    What's that in

    Facebook shares?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Gimmick

    Zynga accepting them, the Bitcoin ATM, The coffee shop in Timbuktu that accepts them, the butcher in Beirut that will sell you some questionable meat for bitcoin, the Internet cafe in the Arctic Circle that deals exclusively in them and Dickie Branson offering to catapult you up to space, but not quite space in his latest harebrained scheme - These are all nothing but gimmicks ran by the circus master himself Max Kaiser who seems to do nothing on twitter, but plug bitcoin.

    The fact is 99% of people either mine or buy bitcoins and then they hoard them and hope the price rises enough that they can sell them for another currency to someone else who thinks they are buying them at the right time who will then hoard them waiting for the next big peak before repeating the process.

    If people were actually using these things to buy and sell stuff legitimately (not including captain Jack Sparrow and Nylon Street) then maybe this would have legs long term, but as it is the drive in price is being driven only by two things. Pure media plugging and speculation and people limiting the amount of bitcoins actually being used seriously by hoarding them.

    1. Visual Echo

      Re: Gimmick

      Look at gyft.com . Gimmick or not, it's money.

    2. MIc

      Re: Gimmick

      I bought a space heater for .91 BTC on BitcoinShop.us a few weeks ago. Didn't seem that gimmicky to me. Perhaps you should read up on stuff before you speak in such absolute and strong terms.

      1. Oninoshiko

        Re: Mic

        At the current trading rates for bitcoin, that's an awful expensive space heater.

        I mean, that's about 1000 USD, most (non industrial) space heaters I see from searching google are less then 200.

        Honestly, you don't present a vary good argument for it being non-gimmicky.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Mic

          > At the current trading rates for bitcoin, that's an awful expensive space heater.

          Erm, what counts is not what the current rates are, but what they were when he a) bought the Bitcoins (if not mined directly) and b) spent them on the purchase in question.

    3. Mark .

      Re: Gimmick

      The pub 5 minutes' walk away from me accepts Bitcoin. Its usage is still low, but hardly to the extreme you claim.

      Some of its more obvious potential uses are replacing the dependence on Paypal for online payments to small traders, avoiding large fees for international transfers, and allowing individuals to transfer money without faffing with cheques (at least in the UK, we can do bank transfers, but in many countries like the US, this isn't an option in most cases).

      1. Spiracle

        Re: Gimmick

        The pub 5 minutes' walk away from me accepts Bitcoin. Its usage is still low, but hardly to the extreme you claim.

        It'll be interesting to see what happens to the blockchain if world+dog start paying for their pint in BitCoins. As has been pointed out earlier it's already tens of GB. It'll be acceptable it there's, say, a 4 hour wait for authentication before the landlord gets his £3 (as long as the BTC price isn't too volatile over that period) but each trivial transaction silting up the system means that it gets less useful for the big stuff. There's a good chance that the day it starts getting useful for everyday commerce is that day that it starts to strangle itself.

        The 'value' in BTC lies entirely in the speed and processing power of the network, speed and power which will have to increase along the upward curve of BitCoin usage for it to succeed.

        1. Mark .

          Re: Gimmick

          The transaction rate limit, and issues to do with the large blockchain size, are covered at https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability .

          "The 'value' in BTC lies entirely in the speed and processing power of the network, speed and power which will have to increase along the upward curve of BitCoin usage for it to succeed."

          Well, I'm not sure that speed and processing power increasing in the future is that far fetched...

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Gimmick

      Hi AC 16:31.

      I just downvoted you because of the extremely condescending tone of your post, and in particular for the "Dickie Branson" mention. Whether you know Sir Richard Branson intimately or, like me, have just heard of his existence through the media, I find that a) every person needs to be treated with respect regardless of who they are, and b) when you are referring in such childish terms to someone who has achieved the success that Sir Richard has in his chosen field of activity, well, do you think it makes you look clever or something? It doesn't.

  10. Crazy Operations Guy

    The real news

    is that Zynga is still operating...

    1. asdf

      Re: The real news

      Yep lol. Whether or not bitcoin is a fad that will die I can guarantee it will outlast Zynga.

  11. Simon Rockman

    It gets really interesting when Zynga accepts it for their online poke. Bitcoin and gambling starts to look like regulators scariest view of libertarianism.

  12. Someone

    Land Banking on Planet Bitcoin

    Oh the irony. The purchasing and holding of bitcoins is like land banking on the virtual planet of Bitcoin. Investments are being made in Bitcoin land in the hope that someone will come along and do something with the land that justifies the current price. While there’s no deception – buyers are not being sold prime Californian real estate, yet receiving Florida swap – the illusion is that there’s a finite amount of cryptocurrency land. It’s virtual, so of course there is not. Gavin Andresen and the small group running the big mining pools could decide that, in the interests of mining stability, they’re going to stop reducing the number of Bitcoin acres given as a block reward on planet Bitcoin. If it were to remain fixed indefinitely, or even go up, plant Bitcoin would become unbounded in size.

    Then, there’s planet Litecoin, planet PPCoin, planet Feathercoin, planet Dogecoin… and, in an effort that even the Magratheans would be proud of, planet Coinye West is under construction. In fact, an unlimited number of planets. And, being virtual planets, there’s no light-years journey to get from one to the other. BitPay unwisely chose the ‘bit’ part of Bitcoin. Coinbase more sensibly chose the ‘coin’ part. Either way, once you’ve invested in the hardware, software and staff to handle bitcoins, the extra cost needed to handle an altcoin is minimal. The cost of handling any number of altcoins is minimal. The only exception would be if these start ups decide that, to ensure they have a say in the future direction of any cryptocurrency, they’re going to need to pour a good chunk of their venture capital into mining hardware.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I prefer SSL data bits as the preferred currency with my bank. Never had a problem with that.

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