In recent news, I got back into the Bitcoin stuff that I mentioned before (remember when I was talking about buying video cards?). Anyways, back in January/February bitcoins were worth $1 each. They hit $31 recently. It’s pretty volatile though. Too bad I didn’t invest in it back then, I knew it was gonna take off.
To put it simply, bitcoin is a crypto-currency. It uses encryption & massive amounts of hashes to make it work. What’s more, it’s completely decentralized, based on peer-to-peer connections. Thankfully science of cryptography & technology has made this possible. It’s radically different from fiat currency. There is actually a cost to creating new bitcoins (like using the video cards to do lots of hashing to mine new bitcoin).
There’s a lot of potential in this because it is cheaper and more effective for online transactions than anything, even Paypal. It is also great for micro-payments, which is something that people have been trying to get going for the internet, but never managed to get it off the ground.
So there’s lots of upcoming demand for bitcoins and there will be a growth in bitcoins as more services appear around bitcoins. Some rails friends from my IRC channel and I have been looking at doing a real service around that, could be some potential there.
I was messing around with bitcoin trading, trading between USD/CAD & bitcoin, having some fun.. not taking it too seriously. Made $240 in a few days which isn’t too shabby, covers 1 month of rent – that is.. if I can keep ahead of the other traders eh!
Anyways you’ll probably see bitcoins in the news a lot over the next few months, it’s been popping up lately.. There was even a report on CBC radio.
so why do you think bitcoins are volatile? shouldn’t it make sense for them to be stable and so that if someone is trading work for work that the value should be equal at all times…all things being equal such as production.
Well it’s mostly volatile because it’s brand new, speculators and newcomers are jumping on it, driving the prices up.
I imagine it will be much more stable once there’s a lot more people in it and a greater volume of trading.
Probably will be much more stable in a year.
wouldn’t it be nice if the bitcoin was based upon some reasonably stable universal unit of energy…say the KW-hr (vis a vis B.Fuller) or the GJ, unlike the random neural firings of greed poxed trader opportunists…for a change.