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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 03/04/2013 21:18, Gordon wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:1365020281.18022.YahooMailNeo@web121204.mail.ne1.yahoo.com"
type="cite">
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new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt">
<div><span><br>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Does anyone here have
experience mining or trading in Bitcoins or any of its </span>cousins<span
style="font-size: 12pt;">? These digital currency markets
have gone parabolic. It's phenomenal:</span><br>
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<br>
Well, the word you were looking for was likely hyperbolic or
exponential. Squinting on the log-scale I would say hyperbolic.<br>
<br>
In a sense nobody has experience with Bitcoins, they are too new.
But if you plot the all-time plot you will also see the peak 2 years
ago, which looks fairly similar: accelerating price as the hype
builds up, then a peak as it crashes. That ought to instill a
healthy dose of caution. <br>
<br>
From an economical perspective, we should expect high volatility -
it is a small currency with a value driven more by speculation than
actual usage. And as plenty of bitcoin institutions are discovering,
establishing security and reputations can be tough. <br>
<br>
From a theoretical perspective I feel torn. Bitcoin is a
crypto-libertarian dream, a currency free from government control
where you can invent new financial instruments with an afternoon of
web-programming. This is what we were talking about back in the 90s!
Yay! At last! But... while I think SilkRoad is very neat and that
people should be allowed to buy drugs, it shows that bitcoin might
make it *too easy* to run black market activity. It seems perfect
for hiring people to rough others up, or even assassination markets
- and it might allow buyers to avoid the currently tricky step of
contacting unsavory characters. From our experience with viruses and
exploits, the scary explosion happens when an economic driver
appears and starts to feed a bad business. <br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University </pre>
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