So -- is it?
It absolutely is. Most people I know don't have any, and very few people can name merchants that accept them. That said, I do think there is growing interest in using the bitcoin protocol as a means of transaction. But as the article states, this means only holding btc for a very short time. And yet, I still suspect bitcoin has just begun to run its course. It is an apple, and we only have oranges to compare it to.
The fundamental problem with BTC as an investment strategy is that its existence is contrary to central banks. Usage of it is quasi-legal at best. That makes it an extremely risky investment strategy and a target of radical speculation. The graphs illustrate something I've suspected - it's under the influence of the penny stock diversifiers, who are getting some to have some.
Right now it just doesn't make any sense to use as currency. If a vendor wants to sell items in BTC, they need to continually adjust their prices which means increased web development costs, or increased labour costs in store. Also, if the price drops after a sale, its possible that the vendor lost money on that transaction. So, to combat this a lot of the current online vendors have programmed their stores so it auto converts the BTC to their currency as soon as possible after the sale. This is an additional cost, much like the debit/credit transaction cost and one of the arguments supporting BTC is that we're minimizing fees that go to institutions when this is clearly not true. Secondly, because all of these vendors who don't want to lose money are auto converting, they are selling off their BTC instantly, essentially devaluing the price of BTC by contributing to the bid/ask ratio on the sell side.
Any purchases with BTC with vendors that use the auto convert method are deflating the value of the currency. So, as a customer who owns a sizeable amount of BTC. Wouldn't it make sense to not buy anything with it and just keep holding the value increases? Then, it loses it's purpose as a currency and it becomes a commodity, a commodity entirely based on getting more people to invest in BTC to make money because it has no intrinsic value. That said I'm damn jealous of the early adopters. To me personally it just doesn't make sense. I believe we are in a tech 2.0 and social media bubble and Bitcoin will probably be a casualty. That doesn't mean it will disappear though.
Bitcoin is the Apple Newton of currency. We'll look back and hail all that it had going for it all the while browsing for factoids on our iphones. Do I wish I'd gotten in at the bottom? Sure. But I also wish I'd bought Apple stock in 2001 when I was busy hating the fuck out of Apple. My attitude would be the same but I'd be wealthier.
Yes! I'm trying to find something I read that elegantly illustrating this exact point -- I actually thought it was in the article above -- but I can't yet.So, as a customer who owns a sizeable amount of BTC. Wouldn't it make sense to not buy anything with it and just keep holding the value increases? Then, it loses it's purpose as a currency and it becomes a commodity, a commodity entirely based on getting more people to invest in BTC to make money because it has no intrinsic value.
I don't mind GIMP on linux. I imagine the biggest gripe for most new GIMP users was the floating window layout. With the version 2.8 came the single window mode which makes it so much more suitable for the typical user. Have you tried that?
Thanks, I forgot to reply to delta here. Now that you mention it, I do think that the floating window layout was one of my biggest issues with GIMP. I was editing a book with many images, and I remember being frustrated at the organization. Maybe I'll have another go at it.