<story><title>A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail</title><url>http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/11/27/a-prediction-bitcoin-is-doomed-to-fail/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brador</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s because Bitcoins are relatively easy to buy and very difficult to cash out into real currency.  Once enough people see how hard it is to liquidate their Bitcoins back to USD the realization will follow.</text></item><item><author>Aqueous</author><text>They are applying old-world money ideas to something that is so new that we don&amp;#x27;t have useful models yet for deciding how it will behave, thinking that they do apply without loss of content. The rules of supply and demand apply, sure, but none of the other common-sense intuitions about how money works.&lt;p&gt;BitCoins don&amp;#x27;t have any resistance to movement, or very little. Physical money does. This means the difference between BitCoins and physical money is perhaps comparable to the difference between massive particles like atoms and massless particles like photons, or to the difference between a classical conductor and a superconductor. Which is only to say that the same rules don&amp;#x27;t apply - new behaviors are observed.&lt;p&gt;We are in a new world and the study of economics is about to take a huge left-turn.</text></item><item><author>cs702</author><text>Bitcoin befuddles experts who analyze it from a narrow perspective, because it is not just a new medium of exchange or a new store of value:  it is also a new kind of point-of-sale payment system (one that doesn&amp;#x27;t require payment processors), a new kind of global financial transfer system (one that doesn&amp;#x27;t require financial institutions), a new kind of time-stamping certification system (one that doesn&amp;#x27;t require notaries or county clerks), a new kind of contract-enforcing mechanism (one that doesn&amp;#x27;t require lawyers), etc.&lt;p&gt;With rising global adoption, many new kinds of applications are likely to be created to take advantage of the Bitcoin network, the design of which even specifies a built-in script for defining and executing new types of transactions involving any arbitrary number of parties.[1]&lt;p&gt;In short, Bitcoin is a &lt;i&gt;technology platform&lt;/i&gt; -- one that is benefiting from network effects.&lt;p&gt;It may fail as &amp;quot;money&amp;quot; (in a narrow sense) and still succeed as a global platform.&lt;p&gt;In fact, Bitcoin is already a success.&lt;p&gt;--&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.bitcoin.it&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Script&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jnbiche</author><text>Wrong.  Have you actually tried to buy a Bitcoin?  If not, ask someone who has.  At the moment, it&amp;#x27;s hard for Bitcoin novices to buy Bitcoins, and much less hard to sell them.&lt;p&gt;Actually, once you&amp;#x27;ve been verified by an exchange (required prior to buying Bitcoins unless you do a private party sale), selling Bitcoins is easy; it&amp;#x27;s getting your USD wired&amp;#x2F;ACHed to your bank account that can be time-consuming.  This is due to the legacy banking system, and not some problem inherent to Bitcoin.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: By the way, it&amp;#x27;s not &amp;quot;very difficult&amp;quot; to sell Bitcoins.  If I want to sell a Bitcoin, I log onto my Bitstamp account, put in a limit order. When the sale is executed, I submit a short, pre-filled form for a wire transfer to my bank.  I then wait a few days and the money is in my bank account, in USD.  Not hard.</text></comment>
<story><title>A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail</title><url>http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/11/27/a-prediction-bitcoin-is-doomed-to-fail/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brador</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s because Bitcoins are relatively easy to buy and very difficult to cash out into real currency.  Once enough people see how hard it is to liquidate their Bitcoins back to USD the realization will follow.</text></item><item><author>Aqueous</author><text>They are applying old-world money ideas to something that is so new that we don&amp;#x27;t have useful models yet for deciding how it will behave, thinking that they do apply without loss of content. The rules of supply and demand apply, sure, but none of the other common-sense intuitions about how money works.&lt;p&gt;BitCoins don&amp;#x27;t have any resistance to movement, or very little. Physical money does. This means the difference between BitCoins and physical money is perhaps comparable to the difference between massive particles like atoms and massless particles like photons, or to the difference between a classical conductor and a superconductor. Which is only to say that the same rules don&amp;#x27;t apply - new behaviors are observed.&lt;p&gt;We are in a new world and the study of economics is about to take a huge left-turn.</text></item><item><author>cs702</author><text>Bitcoin befuddles experts who analyze it from a narrow perspective, because it is not just a new medium of exchange or a new store of value:  it is also a new kind of point-of-sale payment system (one that doesn&amp;#x27;t require payment processors), a new kind of global financial transfer system (one that doesn&amp;#x27;t require financial institutions), a new kind of time-stamping certification system (one that doesn&amp;#x27;t require notaries or county clerks), a new kind of contract-enforcing mechanism (one that doesn&amp;#x27;t require lawyers), etc.&lt;p&gt;With rising global adoption, many new kinds of applications are likely to be created to take advantage of the Bitcoin network, the design of which even specifies a built-in script for defining and executing new types of transactions involving any arbitrary number of parties.[1]&lt;p&gt;In short, Bitcoin is a &lt;i&gt;technology platform&lt;/i&gt; -- one that is benefiting from network effects.&lt;p&gt;It may fail as &amp;quot;money&amp;quot; (in a narrow sense) and still succeed as a global platform.&lt;p&gt;In fact, Bitcoin is already a success.&lt;p&gt;--&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.bitcoin.it&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Script&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jafaku</author><text>News flash: A transaction requires a buyer and a seller. If you bought Bitcoin, someone else sold Bitcoin.</text></comment>