zlacker

>>colone+(OP)
It is interesting to watch the effect of the Russian ruble collapse on Bitcoin markets... It is causing an influx of Bitcoin buyers on Russian exchanges: over the last 14 days, BTC is up +11% from 19000 RUB to 21000 RUB with most of the uptick happening in the last 24 hours (https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/btce/btcrur) despite being down -13% from 380 to 330 USD on American markets (https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitstamp/btcusd). There is an opportunity for arbitrage! The ruble is collapsing so fast that even buying at 21000 RUB is a steal (worth 310 USD as of Dec 16 21:00 UTC). And the collapse will likely continue in the next few days and weeks, so the arbitrage opportunity will grow bigger.

Edit: @potench preev.com is an inaccurate indicator of the BTC/RUB rate because it is basing its calculation "based on the USD Bitcoin price" per its footnote, so of course it will never show a big deviation from the BTC/USD rate. For the true rate you need to look at the real-time bid/ask spread on a BTC/RUB exchange such as btc-e.com which is why I linked to https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/btce/btcrur or you can also look at https://btc-e.com/exchange/btc_rur: bid/ask is 20855/21099 RUB as of 22:09 UTC, so the arbitrage opportunity is approximately 2000 RUB.

>>mrb+vd
From a 10k foot view, you know things are bad when BTC is your stable currency of choice.

>>IgorPa+Xf
Honestly, coming myself from a currency that had huge devaluations, the fluctuations of bitcoins' value are relatively minor in comparison.

>>jordig+0h
$1200 to $350 is minor?

If people think such a scenario can't easily happen again, then they're wrong about that. A small number of major bitcoin holders mostly determine the price.

>>sillys+8j
$1200 to $350 and almost certainly back to $1200 at some point. Compare that with a government issuing a new currency and rendering the previous one invalid.

>>staunc+gl
Why is the price guaranteed to increase forever (or at least until it reaches 1200)?

>>kansfa+ws
Eventually when no one will accept fiat currencies anymore it will be worth infinite [pick your fiat currency]

>>jasoni+sy
I hope that's a joke, because it doesn't seem like a very reasonable expectation.

>>vector+8C
It seems utterly reasonable to me. What could be more reasonable than wanting your medium of exchange to be out of the control of incompetent, corruptible governments? What could be more reasonable than wanting your medium of exchange to be based upon open-source, community-edited code, that anyone can review, contribute to, and build on top of? What could be more reasonable than wanting your medium of exchange to be available to anyone, anywhere, anytime, regardless of political orientation, without asking anyone's permission?

Sorry but fiat currencies possess no advantages other than incumbent localised network effects. The world needs a true global currency and Bitcoin is it.

>>jasoni+8G
Until somebody invents a quantum computer with a sufficiently large number of Qbits. Then they can completely destroy the blockchain.

Alternatively, wait a few hundred years until you need several hundred terabytes to store the blockchain, which is required for transactions. That's going to be a problem.

Or you could switch to Bitcoin before realizing that currencies which deflate in value are a terrible idea.

(For the record, I support cryptocurrency. I just think Bitcoin has too many issues to be viable long-term. Nice proof of concept, but it needs to be refined).

>>tonysu+AG
>Until somebody invents a quantum computer with a sufficiently large number of Qbits. Then they can completely destroy the blockchain.

That wont be developed overnight, by the time it is a possibility people will be working on solutions. a quantum computer would impact a lot more than bitcoin, all cryptography would become useless.

>Alternatively, wait a few hundred years until you need several hundred terabytes to store the blockchain, which is required for transactions. That's going to be a problem.

With the cost of storage rapidly reducing then that probably wont be an issue in a few hundred years.

>Or you could switch to Bitcoin before realizing that currencies which deflate in value are a terrible idea.

Currencies that inflate have had their share of problems and we certainly have not found a way to solve those problems or the issue of inflation/hyper-inflation. Any problems with delfationary currencies (which you do not detail) are merely hypothetical as no real deflationary currency has existed before.

>>celtic+wN
Deflationary currencies reward saving over spending. Aka, you can just sit on your money and it increases in value.

That's really bad for an economy.

My ideal cryptocurrency would constantly "leak" money, trying to maintain a 0.1% or so inflation rate a year, to prevent this problem.

>>tonysu+h11
Instead of leaking money, why not just let the total number of coins keep increasing exponentially indefinitely?