Virtual currencies recovering!

[OutHouse]

Rofl. Thanks for the reminder. You and the other trolls were convinced food prices were going to skyrocket because corn crops were dying in the drought. Here we are a year later and food costs pretty much the exact same as it did back then. Epic fail.

Chiropteran 1
Trolls 0

post receipts to support your claim.

 

[Chiropteran]

post receipts to support your claim.

Nonsense. If you want to dispute my claim, post proof that it is wrong. Specific example: Chicken Burrito from Chipotle, $6.45, same price as last year at this time.

The claims in that thread were that food prices would TRIPLE, so it should be pretty obvious if food prices actually tripled. They did not.

 

[jaedaliu]

Nonsense. If you want to dispute my claim, post proof that it is wrong. Specific example: Chicken Burrito from Chipotle, $6.45, same price as last year at this time.

The claims in that thread were that food prices would TRIPLE, so it should be pretty obvious if food prices actually tripled. They did not.

This is the wrong thread for food costs, but contrary to common sense, your Chicken Burrito is not a food cost. A restaurant meal's food costs are just a small part of what you pay.

 

[SSSnail]

A while back, when I was in Japan, I visited some Pachinko parlors. Basically, they are ”legal” gambling houses, where there are ”slot machines”, and you put real money in, and you win ball bearings. Yup, ball bearings.

So after a few hours, and if you win, you end up with a few trays of ball bearings. Then you go cash out. Well, you don't exactly cash out, you take the ball bearings to a ”cashier”, who will exchange your ball bearings to colorful boxes. These boxes varied in colors and sizes, depend on how many trays of ball bearings you were carrying.

Then, you leave the Pachinko facility. Immediately outside, someone will direct you to a small office near the establishment. There, you can sell the colorful boxes back to someone that will buy them for real money.

I'm not surprised that ball bearings and colorful boxes have gone digital, I should have thought of that.

I should also have invested in ball bearings, and colorful boxes.

 

[xeemzor]

A while back, when I was in Japan, I visited some Pachinko parlors. Basically, they are ”legal” gambling houses, where there are ”slot machines”, and you put real money in, and you win ball bearings. Yup, ball bearings.

So after a few hours, and if you win, you end up with a few trays of ball bearings. Then you go cash out. Well, you don't exactly cash out, you take the ball bearings to a ”cashier”, who will exchange your ball bearings to colorful boxes. These boxes varied in colors and sizes, depend on how many trays of ball bearings you were carrying.

Then, you leave the Pachinko facility. Immediately outside, someone will direct you to a small office near the establishment. There, you can sell the colorful boxes back to someone that will buy them for real money.

I'm not surprised that ball bearings and colorful boxes have gone digital, I should have thought of that.

I should also have invested in ball bearings, and colorful boxes.

Would it be possible to find those boxes online, buy them, and try to sell them back in the small office? Or would that be too obvious?

 

[Rakehellion]

Would it be possible to find those boxes online, buy them, and try to sell them back in the small office? Or would that be too obvious?

I'd imagine they were custom designed for the business. You can't just buy poker chips on ebay and cash them out at a casino.

 

[FelixDeCat]

As soon as I open a Mt. Gox account, it goes from $50 to $88.

 

[PottedMeat]

Would it be possible to find those boxes online, buy them, and try to sell them back in the small office? Or would that be too obvious?

i'd imagine you'd get your ass beat (at the very least) by the local mafia if they suspected anything

 

[Chiropteran]

As soon as I open a Mt. Gox account, it goes from $50 to $88.

It's fallen to just above $50 twice since the crash, but each time there has been a big bounce. I think $50 is the psychological buy-in price for a LOT of people.

 

[ultimatebob]

Apparently Steve Forbes also thinks that Bitcoin isn't really money because it's too volatile:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2013/04/16/bitcoin-whatever-it-is-its-not-money/

 

[baydude]

Lol at the Winklevosses

 

[Doppel]

Apparently Steve Forbes also thinks that Bitcoin isn't really money because it's too volatile:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2013/04/16/bitcoin-whatever-it-is-its-not-money/

ha! Does he even know anything about money or economics? Why should I listen to him before the wisdom of reddit bitcoin forum?

 

[xeemzor]

Relevanta AMA on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ch7wb/starting_with_almost_nothing_i_made_almost_500000/

Sad to see people lose so much. Always do your due diligence before you invest in anything!

 

[Doppel]

Relevanta AMA on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ch7wb/starting_with_almost_nothing_i_made_almost_500000/

Sad to see people lose so much. Always do your due diligence before you invest in anything!

Good read but is it true? I ask because go over to btc-e right now and over a period of a few min you'll see a inch of idiots saying that they lose a lot of money and their wife is pissed. It has become some silly meme for people so it is possible this guy has just expanded it.

 

[MaxPayne63]

Sad to see people lose so much. Always do your due diligence before you invest in anything!

Why waste your time learning about an investment when you have the assurance people on the internet that it is the way of the future? The fact that they stand to gain from it is just proof that they're honest - they're putting their money where their mouth is.

 

[Juddog]

Relevanta AMA on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ch7wb/starting_with_almost_nothing_i_made_almost_500000/

Sad to see people lose so much. Always do your due diligence before you invest in anything!

That guys' problem was more one of gambling than one of investing; he basically made $500,000 investing, then gambled it all away. Seriously - what kind of idiot wastes hundreds of thousands of dollars on roulette?

 

[Chiropteran]

Relevanta AMA on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ch7wb/starting_with_almost_nothing_i_made_almost_500000/

Sad to see people lose so much. Always do your due diligence before you invest in anything!

If gambling with bitcoin means that virtual currency are a failure, what does gambling with USD mean?

 

[randomrogue]

If gambling with bitcoin means that virtual currency are a failure, what does gambling with USD mean?

How do you gamble with the dollar?

I'm not sure you even understand what's going on around here. Virtual currencies sound great if you're some kind of backwoods bunker builder apocalyptic anti tax nut but in practice you need a currency that is accepted internationally and that's liquid. I wouldn't invest in virtual currencies for the same reason I wouldn't invest in the Russian Ruble or the Chinese RMB. They're at best useful on a very local scale and at worst garbage. The dollar on the other hand is useful globally.

Your magic currency is not stable. It's not useful. It's garbage.

 

[Rakehellion]

If gambling with bitcoin means that virtual currency are a failure

All investment in Bitcoin is gambling.

 

[Rakehellion]

From Steve Forbes:

The basic reason: it has no fixed value. It trades like a stock or commodity. In recent days it has been crashing after a spectacular rise in terms of dollars. Such volatility makes it useless as a means to do transactions. Money has only one purpose–it makes doing transactions, that is buying and selling products and services and securities, infinitely easier than barter. All the other purposes of money flow from this basic function.

Money is most optimal when it is fixed in value just as commerce is facilitated when we have fixed weights and measures. When you buy a pound of hamburger you expect to get 16 ounces of meat. An hour has 60 minutes. A mile has 5280 feet. These measurements don’t “float.”

 

[Juddog]

All investment in Bitcoin is gambling.

Chiropteran was referring specifically to the article that was linked; the story is that the guy made $500,000 from buying / selling bitcoins, but then when Mt. Gox was offline for 24 hours, he gambled using a virtual roulette game and kept betting over and over on red, and lost all of his money that he had made. In this sense, "gambling" is a literal term.

 

[randomrogue]

Bitcoin is like the Zimbabwe Dollar was. Inflation was so terrible that at one point what you could buy a refrigerator for in the morning bought you a loaf of bread that evening. Now of course it would theoretically work the other way but as we've clearly seen it's crashing and completely unstable.

 

[Phoenix86]

How do you gamble with the dollar?

Go to a casino?

It's pretty clear BTC is a commodity with traits of a currency, but in the end it's decidedly a commodity.

 

[M0oG0oGaiPan]

that guy could have cashed out or could have just made enough to break even but he took it too far. bankroll management is an important skill for gamblers and roulette is a negative ev game. not sure why he would even continue playing that as a math major. sometimes you go on tilt and make poor decisions.

i invested my money in billy ripken FF/Rick Face baseball cards
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Ripken

 

[Juddog]

that guy could have cashed out or could have just made enough to break even but he took it too far. bankroll management is an important skill for gamblers and roulette is a negative ev game. not sure why he would even continue playing that as a math major. sometimes you go on tilt and make poor decisions.

i invested my money in billy ripken FF/Rick Face baseball cards
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Ripken

It's the classic mental disease that gamblers go through. When you look at some of the bigger stakes gamblers, the $500k he lost is a drop in the bucket. There is a mental "rush" that people go through when they win big.