Gold 2.0 NOT Tulip Mania: How Big Is The Cryptocurrency Opportunity?

Market Oracle, UK ^ | 5 December, 2013 | DK_Matai

[Errant]

Make no mistake, the Bitcoin opportunity is creating a fast evolving trillion dollar new market in cryptocurrency eCommerce and more importantly mCommerce or mobile-Commerce. The future of cryptocurrencies is being secured right now with the launch of many new apps to enable digital cash, electronic payments and secure eWallets using cryptocurrencies via smart phones and other digital devices such as secure pens, sophisticated crypto-watches and customised memory sticks. Cryptocurrency adoption is growing very fast, in a similar exponential curve to the adoption of the world wide web in the years following 1995 or even the spread of electric power exactly a hundred years before that.

[Errant]

I rate this article a good one with shared insight on what may or may not (too early to tell) prove a historic change in how the world does business. One item I disagree strongly with the author about, is his suggestion that crypto-currency transfers are anonymous. With the right tools, transfers might eventually be traced all the way back to the creation of the actual crypto-unit used.

[Usagi_yo]

You do not want a currency that can swing +- 500% over a week, costs commission to obtain and cost even more commission to sell and is only good as long as nobody figures out how to cheat it.

[Errant]

Except for the +- 500% in a week, you could be talking about FRNs, or any other fiat currency. And except for the huge increase in value (not a bad thing in my book), its ability to recover from downturns is pretty amazing.

Mt. Gox: Last:$1,130.00000

[gaijin]

In before the reflexive “bit torrent is a scam” drooling idiot who says nothing else.

[indthkr]

currency bump for later.....

[Billthedrill]

With the right tools, transfers might eventually be traced all the way back to the creation of the actual crypto-unit used.

The idea behind that is to make it more expensive to decrypt than the reward would yield. That tends to be a moving target.

In answer to the title question: the opportunity is great but very risky, but so are junk bonds or the wilder regions of the stock market. Caveat emptor.

[GeronL]

bitcoin might not be “it” but I think a secure online monetary system is very possible

[GeronL]

BUMP

I totally agree

[JediJones]

If a bitcoin’s worth a grand, how do you use it to buy somethinig worth $100?

Can these electronic apps allow you to buy something electronically with precious metal holdings instead of needing to use a crypto-currency?

[GeronL]

good question why just botcoin? why not apps that let you use many different kinds of currency, even gold and silver?

[Errant]

It's the same crowd who've said the steamboat was just a folly, man would never fly, and computers would never be useful. ;)

We can only survive now through technological innovation. Technology in the hands of individuals may allow us one day to even slow down the intrusion of tyrannical governments or other monopolistic entities into our daily lives and help to make all people truly free, as our founders and the Almighty intended.

[JediJones]

I’d invest in the apps that could do that before investing in Bitcoin itself.

[Errant]

bitcoin might not be “it” True, but it is the first "it" of its kind... ;)

You gotta start someplace.

[GeronL]

Yep.

I had an idea for an online currency once. In my plan there was a 1 to 1 correlation with the US dollar, AT FIRST. The idea was to not depreciate the online currency while the US dollar would become less and less valuable.

Too bad I didn’t have the means to do it, but it definitely would not have been as flashy as bitcoin.

[GeronL]

A lot will be learned from bitulips

[Errant]

A Bitcoin can be subdivided into 0.0000001 units (eight decimals IIRC).

[Mad Dawgg]

The words “Internet” and “anonymous” should never be used together in the same sentence unless the phrase “Not a snowball's chance in hell is the” precedes them. ;-)

[Errant]

There are no limits on how many tulips can be raised, given land and sunlight or even hydroponics. The creators of Bitcoin limited the total number able to be mined to about 22M.

[Errant]

Exactly ;)

[refermech]

And couldn’t this new system make the dollar worthless?(more worthless)