Go fork yourself: Bitcoin has split in two – and yes, it's all forked up Bitcoin split into two separate currencies on Tuesday because part of the Bitcoin community isn't happy with recent and planned changes to the code that controls the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin.org last month warned of a potential split if consensus couldn't be reached on efforts to help Bitcoin scale better. Part of the effort, …
Same as any other currency - it's only worth something if people believe in it - the different exchange rates presumably show the level of faith there currently is in the long term outcome for the two variants. If both of them can demonstrate they're viable then the rates should move towards parity but that remains to be seen.
"
I believe in conkers as currency, and I have some really shiny conkers.
"
You and everyone else who believes the same are free to use conkers as money. But they are completely unsuitable for that purpose, because they are not rare enough. Items that are used as money have to be sufficiently rare that you cannot go someplace and pick up as much as you want, but not so rare that there is insufficient for everyone to have a reasonable amount. It should also be very durable and divisible.
Bitcoin satisfies all those criteria. Conkers do not.
Same as any other currency - it's only worth something if people believe in it
A currency like the USD has value because it's effectively backed by the might of the US economy and a government that has a deep interest in it remaining stable. Also it can be used to settle debts and taxes in the US.
Cryptocurrencies on the other hand...
Cryptocurrencies are also backed by an economy, but by and large it seems to be a very unsavoury economy (Ransomeware, drugs deals, etc). That will be tolerated only for a while. What value then has a crypto currency if its use, it's actual exchangability for real things that you actually want, is limited?
I think it was Terry Pratchett in Making Money (no doubt inspired by many similar explorations) who compared the value of a potato to gold. You cannot eat gold...
Given the primary purpose of BitCoin seems to be a money laundering exercise for various criminal organisations, one wonders about the ethics of joining in. Buying BitCoin means some criminal might have turned ill-gotten gains into "legitimate" folding money.
"
Cryptocurrencies on the other hand...
"
Are independent of state control.
Bitcoin is actual money (i.e. something used directly as a medium of exchange). It does not have to be "backed" by anything. Its stability stems from the fact that it is just a token to allow easier exchange of goods and services, and so the value will be as stable as the value of those goods and services. A loaf of bread is likely to hold about the same value to you in 20 years' time as it does today.
It is currency that must be backed with real money, because currency is easy to manufacture and so not inherently scarce (like gold, cowry shells or Bitcoin). Money represents goods and services. Currency represents money. Because governments do not regulate the production of currency but allow far more to be printed than is backed by money, it's value falls. $1000 will buy you far fewer loaves of bread today than it would have bought 100 years ago (by nearly a hundredfold in fact). A gram of gold will however buy you approximately the same amount of bread today as it would 100 years ago (to within 50% or so).
The problem is that like gold or real estate, Bitcoin is subject to hoarding which artificially raises the perceived value as it is perceived to be more scarce whether it is or not. This makes it subject to manipulation by any actor who can afford to buy enough to spike the price. At the same time it is subject to crashes if hoarders find they need to dump their hoard to settle whatever accounts they need to or try to beat the drop precipitated by another hoarder selling off. Certainly Bitcoin has risen far faster than gold and has far outstripped inflation even though there are more Bitcoins now than ever so it is hardly something one would call stable. At the moment it appears more to be in the hands of speculators and potentially various state regulators which only decreases any stability it has.
Certainly government backed currency is also easily manipulated and problems mainly arise when the government itself finds itself in serious debt and prints notes at will leading to massive inflation. The problem facing many central banks is how does one balance the currency value so that rather than merely hoarding the currency people try to strike a balance of saving and spending to entice economic activity. Of course this manipulation is mainly to create enough economic activity to fill the taxman's coffers so the government can spend as much as it would like, which it always does and more, but that's a whole 'nother bucket o' eels and snot.
Exactly right, though not necessarily with a 50/50 ratio. Although in this case it seems post split BTC + BCC has a greater value than BTC before, because presumably people are speculating that BCC is going to appreciate. I dumped it as soon as I could, at 0.097 btc/bcc because lets face it, you're going to have tens of millions of people over the next few days discovering they have free coins and dumping them once they figure out how to export their private keys. Might buy a few once it bottoms out, to go with my eth dash ripple ltc monero and zcash stashes, but for now, it's just free money.
XBT seems to be holding its value while BCH opened around $100-300. So I converted a little XBT to BCH for fun at about $160. Currently sitting at $670. If it doesn't fizzle completely, I see no reason to think it won't appreciate more, so it seems like a good hedge against XBT downside.
The real interesting question for me is about exchanges like Coinbase/GDAX and others who stated that they would not touch BCH. I pulled my XBT from them to a private wallet because of this. But all XBT they hold on behalf of depositors has split anyway. Are they going to ignore the equity they have access to? You decide...
It's not a stock split at all. What's happened is basically the Scotland splits off from the UK and creates a new currency also called the pound scenario. You can call it the pound all you like but it's not a pound - and it has different trade volume, different market cap and different fundamentals. It's a new currency with the same name and they pulled some of the capital from the currency they split from. The difference is one of those splits has a long term prospect of ceasing to exist and all that capital being deleted - and nobody accepts it for payment.
BTC/BCH is now less dependent on blind faith and is now managed by the number of marks infected by ransomware and the proportion of these who decide to buy in, in order to decrypt their data. Another group who have to buy in are arms and illicit substance vendors who want to reduce their risks of becoming collateral damage victims in the violent gang warfare which traditionally has controlled their turf in the absence of recourse to civil law to resolve contractual disputes. So which one of these currencies survives, or whether both survive, will be determined by survival of the fittest ransomware and darknet marketplaces, and how long it takes regulators to disbelieve these systems have legitimate uses before closing down the BTC/BCC for conventional exchanges as accessories to money laundering.
Personally I'm losing confidence in both, because instead of working toward protecting peoples' assets from cryptocurrenty fraud rings, the community would rather engage in a pissing match over the best way to scale Bitcoin.
Joke's on them, there won't be a need to scale if people are scared off by the rising risk of theft.
As soon as any indie pet project like BTC becomes large enough that the majority of its stakeholders decide to switch the focus to profits and world domination, you always know that it's time to head for the exits. It's all downhill from here.
The bankers keep the fraud going now in doubled mode... The whole cryptocurriences stuff is a giant worldwide fraud created by bankers and they sooner or later make it disappear to collect all the money flowing on their controlled systems, few will be able to escape the reaping.
"Are you a Trump supporter, by any chance ?"
trolling, indeed. you apparently have no real grasp on who Trump supporters really are.
Ugh. The 'academic arrogance' of the elitist, socialist types. *groan* They see everyone who disagrees with them as uneducated tin-foil-hat conspiracy types, one foot away from being locked in the loony bin, "feel" instead of think, and assume that people in general will NOT do the right thing when given the responsibility of their choices, and so the population must be 'controlled' by 'the elite' 'for their own good'. because 'the elite' knows best. Always. *groan*
Valuable or not, if oversized- and very obviously heavy- "Bitcoins" were raining down around me, my first instinct would be self-preservation rather than staring gormlessly at my phone.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
