[fat0wl]

this is common linkbait tactic now. They take the current high trading value of BTC & multiply by the number of BTC involved to get some crazy-high-looking USD price. It's not money in hand, the reality of getting that money out of BTC can be pricey.

[pistle]

Which is why bitcoin is secure and liquid - great as a utility currency.

So you're saying the transaction costs of converting from bitcoin to any useful currency is really high and that we should see the unattractiveness of money-servicing costs as a security-assurance since script-kiddie criminals don't like seeing any portion of their free "money" siphoned away by the money-changers in the temple.

[fat0wl]

heh they DO hate that ;)

my point was simpler tho which is just that the real numbers being applied to these amounts rely on ecosystem stability and the market cap (a term a trader helpfully pointed me to in order to understand their favorite stat, which these "multiply by exchange rate" figures are an extension of) really doesn't represent the real world value of assets in Bitcoin since the value declines as money is pulled out of the system.

It seems to be anyone's guess as to whether or not it has real value or is a pyramid scheme. There's no way to tell without a mass cashout. Then we'd see how many BTC can get sold off before one starts to incur heavy losses. I think if some of the big players cashed out (early adopters with an inordinate amount of essentially self-printed wealth) the system would destabilize and finally flop. It's why they instead drive the price up & try to trickle units out one by one.

[VMG]

Why would early adopter cash out instead of keeping their savings in a deflationary currency that is gaining value? They didn't in the April crash.

[fat0wl]

eh cuz its just too good to be true. why not sneak out a few $700 now and then just in case tomorrow its worthless? keep enough for a large fortune but just take like 100 coins out every year. that would be what now, $70k/year? Just for selling off something that 2 years ago was worthless and in 2 years may be worthless? At a certain point you gotta just take the money & run.

[simias]

Which makes me wonder: now that bitcoin seems to be gaining traction in china and elsewhere, how deep is the market?

How many BTC can you convert in dollars before you crash the market?

[aviraldg]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if someone tries to convert stolen BTC into USD, it'll show up as a public transaction? (hence making it useless to steal BTC)

[punjabisingh]

If they made a transaction with the exact amount stolen, maybe we could say it is the same wallet as the one stolen, but it could also be a false positive.

I would think the thieves are smart enough to make multiple transactions to move this money, in which case they won't get caught at all.

[M4v3R]

Yes and no. While all transactions are public, you can use a "mixing service" that will mix your Bitcoins with other people's Bitcoins, effectively covering their origin.

[ars_technician]

That's the point of the market-depth charts.

You can see the cumulative bids for the price as it moves down so you can pretty easily see what kind of loss you would take if you needed to sell a few thousand coins and it's not currently that bad.

For example, you could unload 1295 BTC without pushing the price below 760, and that's if you just dumped it all at once. http://bitcoinity.org/markets