Arjun Banker
what is your read on bit coins

10:50am
Jason Joseph
It's very interesting
It has intense potential to destabilize a lot of stuff
Also clearly it's great for black/grey market transactions
But right now it's value is unbelievably volatile so everyone in it is basically dabbling or getting in/out quickly
So you don't carry float
I looked into it a lot a while ago but haven't in a while
The price recently has skyrocketed, although I couldn't tell you why
March 26

3:19pm
Arjun Banker
what does it mean to carry float? The most interesting part to me is that it *is* a scarce resource that gets increasingly more complex to mine, and the transaction cost is far lower than in regular currency where you incur the overhead of an external third party banking system that has to deal with fraud/chargebacks etc. right now the cost per transaction in bitcoin is roughly 0.03 dollars flat, so it stands to reason that the currency price might reach equilibrium at a price that yields a transaction cost < the equiv trans in regular currency

3:22pm
Arjun Banker
also I guess this is an incentive for larger transactions to occur with bitcoins

3:56pm
Jason Joseph
carrying float is just carrying bitcoins cash on hand
which means you are subjected to the volatility of the currency
unless you are playing it like a foreign exchange currency
like you wouldnt want to convert your savings account to bitcoins
as for the transaction cost stuff thats definitely interesting

3:58pm
Arjun Banker
ah right yeah

3:58pm
Jason Joseph
i wonder if they will continue to let the transaction cost scale like that
one of its big selling points is the low transaction friction

3:59pm
Arjun Banker
yup. and seems inherently more trustable than a bank, in that it's full distributed
i think the "accounting" machines (which you pass along the transaction cost in order for them to process your transaction) will probably eventually capture more of the value

4:00pm
Jason Joseph
i think some would argue that point haha but ya it should eventually become very trustable

4:00pm
Arjun Banker
but it will always be less than what you pay in regular currency

4:00pm
Jason Joseph
agreed
if they can figure out a way to keep a more stable price that would be great.
like what if all international transactions had to be denominated in bitcoins haha, that'd be crazy

4:02pm
Arjun Banker
lol
i wonder if the government will ever start to impose a tax
i'm not sure how they could though

4:41pm
Jason Joseph
ya that would be pretty tough
Friday

10:52am
Arjun Banker
http://cs702.wordpress.com/2011/05/29/on-the-potential-adoption-and-price-appreciation-of-bitcoin-in-the-long-run/
Good piece if analysis

11:20am
Jason Joseph
Ooh nice thanks
I'll check it out later boarding right now
Friday

3:43pm
Arjun Banker
oh nice. where you off to? after ruminating a bit more on bitcoins, decided not to speculate, but it'll be interesting to watch. i'm especially interested to see/understand better if competing currencies will evolve using similar principles and what effects they may have.
Monday

4:55pm
Jason Joseph
we were in mammoth all weekend, got snow on saturday night so that was nice.

4:56pm
Jason Joseph
and ya i wouldn't touch bitcoins till we see a bit more of whats going on with this current run. here are some good articles, Ars as always has good stuff.
- http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/03/experts-pour-cold-water-on-claim-that-cyprus-crisis-caused-bitcoin-boom/
- http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/01/bitcoin-based-casino-rakes-in-over-500000-profit-in-six-months/