[axaxs]

6 months, not sure. Probably less than 100. Bitcoin is certainly interesting, but there's absolutely nothing backing it. Doesn't seem much different to me than pokemon/baseball cards/pet rocks. Once the novelty wears off, or one of the big players cashes out, we'll see it crash.

[acchow]

None of (pokemon/baseball cards/pet rocks) have all of (fungible, non-produceable/counterfeitable). I see bitcoin as quite different from these, at a fundamental level.

Bitcoin is closer to gold. After all, gold's intrinsic value is negligible in the face of its market price since:

"[gold] gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.” - Warren Buffet.

[dwaltrip]

You really see no difference between bitcoin and baseball cards? The lack of vision embodied by such statements is quite tiresome.

[axaxs]

Guess we'll see, not afraid to admit when I'm wrong :)

[acchow]

How will we see? It's obvious that Bitcoins are very different from baseball cards. Even if it's value falls to 0, that doesn't prove they're "basically the same".

[evan_]

True, baseball cards sometimes come with gum.

[GigabyteCoin]

You can't make as many Bitcoins as you can pokemon/baseball cards/pet rocks. That's one thing backing it. There will only ever be 21 million bitcoins in existence. Ever.

[axaxs]

I see your point, but from my perspective it means little. There will only in history be x number of hairs on my head, but that doesn't make them worth anything.

[mcantelon]

You hairs lack the ability to be transfered quickly and globally and it wouldn't be hard to find hair of a similar color one could substitute for it.

[acchow]

Your hair can be easily counterfeited (it is prohibitively expensive to invalidate a fake). Your hair cannot be used as currency; bitcoin can.

[tedsanders]

The supply of first edition Charizards (a pokemon card) is also fixed. Any future printings will be a later edition. By your logic, is there a reason we shouldn't use first edition Charizards as currency, since the supply is fixed? (Counterfeiting is the only good argument I see.)

[GigabyteCoin]

Counterfeiting is a good argument, and also instantaneous transfer anywhere in the world at any time without any extra security necessary.

[yapcguy]

Not really true.

We could fork the software and call it something else. Maybe change the hashing algorithm and the hard limit on the maximum number of coins, like Litecoin did. Trivial to do. There is no intrinsic difference between a Bitcoin or a Litecoin except they are used on different networks and have a different name.

By contrast, precious metals have inherent properties determined by nature. Gold is inert, it has never been recreated by man synthetically, which is what makes it so precious.

[GigabyteCoin]

That's already happened. The bitcoin software has been forked thousands of times and there are hundreds of alt coins out there currently.

[zik]

The nothing backing bitcoin is exactly the same nothing backing every currency in the world today. Hooray for fiat currencies.

[derrida]

A big player could manipulate the price by buying their own bitcoin through an exchange.

[akinity]

A small player could manipulate volume by buying their own bitcoins and selling their own bitcoins. There's no reason why you couldn't shuffle your own bitcoins around forever...

[frinxor]

you should short it obviously - it'd be free money for you!