People should be required to place a monetary bet whenever they make a bold claim in public. I think we would see less comments like this one.

For all we know, the comment might be proven right next week/month/year. It's just right now that it's plainly wrong.

How much is your monetary bet then?

Which brings us to an interesting question... how long does something have to go before we consider it a success even if it fails later? When something comes along to defeat Facebook, are we going to call Facebook a failure? Was Myspace a failure?[1] The fact that Bitcoin has ran this long, given some huge payouts and legit(albeit small) businesses accept it as payment, I'm almost ready to call bitcoin a success even if it fails 6 months from now.

1. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/aug/13/observerre... Myspace listed among the top 15 most influential sites.

And if/when it fails, Bitcoin can reasonably claim to have shown that distributed computer-based currencies are feasible and people will use them. Even if a successor comes along and solves Bitcoin's problems, you could justifiably say that it only succeeded because of Bitcoin.

Telegraph... colossal fail. But note that the first wire transfers in 1871 were done on western union's telegraph system. Yours is an interesting question. The tulip mania bubble people like to reference was less than a year long, so BTC is already beating that.

The claim, as claimed, is wrong. Plenty of people have faith in it.

In a sense, knowing about Bitcoin in those early days and not buying any at all was a monetary bet. A very costly one.

That's exactly what I did earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6754061

I actually expect I'd have lost the bet if they'd taken it, due to my way too generous terms but that's not the point.

The point was to try to illustrate that "oh it'll crash" is a nonsense prediction.

Be concrete, and put your money where your mouth is, or realise that you haven't actually thought it through.

You know, of all the problems that this community has, I don't think "the echo chamber is far too dampened" is one of them.

They did presumably bet by not buying. At the time, even just a small purchase of Bitcoin then would be worth a million dollars today.

I think we would see fewer comments that technologies like Bitcoin (or cold fusion, or for that matter Google) would be successful if monetary bets depended on them. Or a lot more broke futurologists :)

It's an idea for a startup.

Then the meta-bets, will said start-up fail? If you bet "yes" and you're right, there won't be anyone around to facilitate the payout ;)

Isn't everything?

The commentator did place a monetary bet, by not buying or mining BitCoins.

There's faith among fans of the currency. Others are interested, but that's a long way from faith.

Exactly.

I was a bit taken aback that the tone of this submission was, "See! Bitcoing worked!"

Uh, no one outside of a few small circles has any idea what it is. And any currency as volatile as Bitcoin is broken.

That's like saying populations or startup stocks are broken. Do you think Facebook had a very smooth, progressive, and always upward growth? The stabilization comes at the end of the S curve.

And Bitcoin isn't just a currency, it's a lot of things. One of them is a store of wealth, like gold, and it's doing wonders in that role.

Ahh, someone on HN who understands stores of exchange-value. Refreshing.

Just one of the many, many ways bitcoin is better than gold as a store of exchange-value: embedded security. No armored trucks, no vaults.

And look at China. BTC's recent rise is partially attributable to the fact it's a so-far-legal method of moving ¥ out of the country. And their government looks to be in support. The reason it's illegal to exchange yuan for foreign currency is so it doesn't leave the system and lose value. With BTC, the yuan is received by the buyer as something of value, instead of something to be "disposed of," thereby not diluting its value.

Ie. BTC can move currencies without making them lose exchange-value. That's not a small deal.

What do you mean doesn't leave the system ? If I were to exchange yuan for USD at a currency exchange/bank, they would keep the yuan and give me USD. The yuan wouldn't get destroyed and lose value or leave the system. It would be either a) handed back to another guy who wants to buy yuans for USD or b) used for the profit/operations of the currency exchange.

BTC may for the time being move currencies without any perceptible loss in exchange value but the exchange value of BTC will go up per yuan with greater demand. The yuan will devalue against BTC but maybe this isn't a big problem because BTC isn't a major world currency .. yet ?

Yup you said it- it's not a major currency yet, so it's not "competition." ¥ -> BTC != ¥ -> $|€|£ etc. No manipulation of a central bank can effect BTC's value. Not only does yuan get "kept in the system" through govt-regulatable Chinese exchanges, it's not pegged to other nation's currencies, which China hates.

Remember Romney's line about "going after China for their illegal currency manipulations?" Heh.

Can you clarify your point of bitcoin as a method to move ¥ out of the country? I don't quite understand it. Either way the thing that got move out of China would be bitcoin or USD, the Yuan never actually got moved out of the country. How is it different that it's bitcoin, instead of USD that is sent out?

I found this link as a source to help explain (it's good), I'm on the move:

http://www.coindesk.com/china-leading-global-rise-bitcoin/

I dunno, armoured trucks and vaults are pretty hard to get into.

one critical bug in the main bitcoin client and the value will become zero (or close to it).

whilst I like the idea of bitcoin, I'm not betting my retirement on being able to draw out my BTC balance in 40 years

Thank you, but I can't afford an armoured truck. Instead, I can use its cryptographic equivalent for free.