Bitcoin as potential payment for photography

[Overread]

So Bitcion is basically backed by opensource processors... and thus -- how can it increase or decrease in value if there is nothing of worth tied to it save for processing power (which is only valued by those that use computers personally and the few opensource science projects around the world)

 

[dsterry]

Dsterry, you talk as if it were a publicly traded stock... Like it's going to increase in value or something...

First of all, it's not publicly traded, so most people would say it has no value...

Second, if the only thing it's good for is converting funds to another currency - why use it in the first place?

Whether it will increase in value over time has quite a bit to do with how many people adopt it. The network has a built in schedule that will only ever issue about 21 million bitcoins. Currently about 8.5 million have been issued and they continue to be issued at a rate of 50 every block which is governed by the software to happen every 10 minutes.

On the publicly-traded front, it depends on what you mean. Anyone can buy some and hang onto it or just send it to someone else. You can't do it through a traditional stock broker yet but holding some has some of the properties of holding stock. There are of course no dividends but for tax purposes if you buy some low and sell high you should pay capital gains on it. On the flip side, this stock has a primary purpose of facilitating value transfer.

If it were only useful for currency exchange I wouldn't want any part of it either. I come from a free software background and realize that certain freedoms are coming harder and harder to come by as technology improves. Bitcoin may or may not help preserve some level of financial and personal freedom. If not, it will have been fun while it lasted.

 

[Overread]

Wait so once it hits 21million that's it Sounds like it will die on its own then if it ever became popular enough

 

[dsterry]

So Bitcion is basically backed by opensource processors... and thus -- how can it increase or decrease in value if there is nothing of worth tied to it save for processing power (which is only valued by those that use computers personally and the few opensource science projects around the world)

More correctly, Bitcoin's value is free to change due to supply and demand like many other currencies. You can look at the order book at mtgoxlive.com...what you'll see there are all the folks who want to buy Bitcoin on the left and all the orders to sell on the right. Where they meet inbetween is the current price. Since the market is small a single buy of a few thousand dollars can cause the price to move by a penny or so.

 

[dsterry]

Wait so once it hits 21million that's it Sounds like it will die on its own then if it ever became popular enough

Again, it's not as big of a problem as it might seem on first glance. For normal physical currencies it is impractical to go to less than a penny or to modify the finest precision available.

With Bitcoin, it started out with and still has 8 decimal places so I could send you 0.0000001 btc today which is almost worthless. If Bitcoin becomes popular the price will necessarily need to rise and instead of trading 60 BTC for a photography job it might be just 0.06 but of course each bitcoin would have to be worth $5000 to affect the same amount of GBP transfer.

If later even 0.00000001 BTC becomes more than what would be needed for the smallest purchases the users of the network could agree(gladly I bet) to improve the precision and add more decimal places.

 

[Josh66]

So Bitcion is basically backed by opensource processors... and thus -- how can it increase or decrease in value if there is nothing of worth tied to it save for processing power (which is only valued by those that use computers personally and the few opensource science projects around the world)

More correctly, Bitcoin's value is free to change due to supply and demand like many other currencies. You can look at the order book at mtgoxlive.com...what you'll see there are all the folks who want to buy Bitcoin on the left and all the orders to sell on the right. Where they meet inbetween is the current price. Since the market is small a single buy of a few thousand dollars can cause the price to move by a penny or so.

Supply and demand of what?

If you mean supply and demand of Bitcoin - don't expect demand to be high for a very long time.

I'm not even sure this qualifies as a fad, but if it did I wouldn't expect it to be around long...

I say, try again in 50 years.

 

[dsterry]

Supply and demand of what?

If you mean supply and demand of Bitcoin - don't expect demand to be high for a very long time.

I'm not even sure this qualifies as a fad, but if it did I wouldn't expect it to be around long...

I say, try again in 50 years.

No need to wait 50 years. In fact someone forks the Bitcoin software and attempts to create a new currency with it on a semi-monthly basis. Bitcoin happens to be the oldest of these forks. What's stopping them from overtaking Bitcoin? Well, none has significantly improved upon it. Probably the most viable of these forks is called namecoin which was designed to create an alternative to the current ICANN domain registrar/DNS system.

 

[Josh66]

What's stopping them?

The banks...

They have a huge monopoly in this and they aren't going to give it up easily.

 

[Tony S]

it would be the currency of choice for certain things

lol... that'll be the day when something becomes the currency of choice over cold hard cash. I don;'t even think it would fly in Greece. Ohhh wait, it could take the place of photo credits as payment That's as close a vomit smiley I can find.

 

[Tony S]

Hey.. are they building pyramids again?

 

[dsterry]

Ohhh wait, it could take the place of photo credits as payment

What are these photo credits you speak of?

There is one example I can cite where Bitcoin is in the process of displacing another form of credits. This thread has a pretty good rundown of that situation: https://ogrr.com/viewtopic.php?f=385&t=1451

 

[Tony S]

Photo credit... a well used form of payment where the photographer only gets his name listed with the photo that he took it. It is also useless for putting food on the table.

 

[o hey tyler]

Photo credit... a well used form of payment where the photographer only gets his name listed with the photo that he took it. It is also useless for putting food on the table.

Ain't that the truth. Useless for putting food on the table, just like Bitcoin.

 

[SCraig]

Tell you what ... You hire me to photograph an event for you. I'll pretend to perform the services and you pretend to pay me for it.

Without something of tangible value then any currency is ambiguous and worthless. If there aren't matching tangible funds in some physical location to provide value to this imaginary currency then it has no value other than numbers on a computer screen.

 

[orljustin]

Soooooooooo this is more a bitcon advert right?

No, you read wrong. It's an ad for yet another guy programming his own ground breaking stock photo agency.