58
votes
What happens if I buy Bitcoins and the price goes down?
If you bought a bar of gold at $1200 / ounce, then the price of the gold drops to $600 / ounce, you wouldn't actually lose any money at all unless you decided to sell your gold at that time. However, ...
- 1,499
28
votes
What happens if I buy Bitcoins and the price goes down?
If you bought one bitcoin and the price goes down, you still have one bitcoin. If the price goes up...still one bitcoin.
This is just like everything else, including groceries, gasoline, gold, stock ...
- 8,782
26
votes
How to answer to whether Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme?
The Scenario is confused, because it assumes that there is only one side to a trade.
The scenario assumes that the money goes "into the Bitcoin economy" when people buy bitcoins. This is ...
- 69.8k
13
votes
What happens if I buy Bitcoins and the price goes down?
tl;dr- This is called a capital loss. You're said to realize the capital loss if you sell the Bitcoins at the lower price, such that you lost money due to having bought/sold them. However, note ...
- 251
12
votes
Is money that has gone into bitcoin already spent?
As @RedGrittyBrick says, change the word "bitcoin" to "euros" and see if that helps you. All currencies work this way, not just cryptos:
Is money that has gone into euros already ...
- 566
11
votes
What happens if I buy Bitcoins and the price goes down?
The answer is not unique to bitcoin. It would be the same if you're dealing with (non-crypto) foreign currency, stock, a stock derivative or commodity or commodity futures.
When you buy something ...
- 211
10
votes
How to answer to whether Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme?
Bitcoins are no different from any other commodity in this regard. We say that the price of a car is $45,000, but that doesn't guarantee that you can sell one for $45,000 unless you can find someone ...
- 51.3k
9
votes
What happens if I buy Bitcoins and the price goes down?
Yes, you lose a quantity of your money, at the time you gave it away in exchange for the bitcoin you received. Subsequent changes in the exchange rate only vary the hypothetical value of what you ...
7
votes
How to answer to whether Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme?
A Ponzi scheme is characterised as follows (this is according to Wikipedia, rather than for example the US Department of Justice, which would focus more on the criminal culpability in its definition):
...
- 171
4
votes
If cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value, how do they originate?
You seem to have a misunderstanding:
anyone could create an infinite quantity of their own cryptocurrency right now
This is not accurate. The breakthrough that enabled Bitcoin (and other ...
- 8,782
4
votes
Accepted
What Bitcoin exchange is the real bitcoin value?
There is no such thing as a the "real" value.
The value of Bitcoin as denoted in another currency (USD, EUR, etc...) is based on how many people are buying and selling, and in what quantities. On ...
- 8,782
4
votes
Can the dollar value of a transaction be different at different times?
Amounts in a Bitcoin transaction are set in bitcoin. That is, if you want to receive $5, when the current bitcoin price is $234.97/bitcoin, then you might make a request for 0.0212 bitcoin inside the ...
- 645
4
votes
Accepted
Where to find logarithmic graph of Bitcoin over time?
not sure what you mean by logarithmic graph. The time in a logarithmic scale, or the value? On both, there is a "log" button below the graph. And you can export as CSV or JSON:
https://blockchain....
- 5,076
4
votes
Are bitcoins with more confirmations more valuable?
Not really. A 0.2 BTC "bitcoin"† with ten million confirmations has no more value than a 0.2 BTC "bitcoin" with one million confirmations.
The exception might be that a "...
- 23k
3
votes
Get simple BTC value to insert it in excel sheet
Here is the link.
Just insert this into your excel file
=IMPORTXML("http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/","//span[@id='quote_price']")
- 31
3
votes
What value does bitcoin add to the world?
If you see bitcoin as a currency, mining is issuing new bitcoins. It is analogous to a central bank issuing (or printing) new currency.
What product is produced for the world? Mining for coal ...
- 3,469
3
votes
Do you think a wallet could have value
No. The point of mnemonic seeds is to provide a human readable encoding for wallet backups.
To work as intended, they need to be unique and secret. Beyond that, anyone can just pick words from the ...
- 69.8k
3
votes
To be blunt bought bitcoin in 2009 at 25 cents have not touched it
Spending Bitcoins requires the knowledge of the private key corresponding to the address holding the funds. These keys are managed by each user individually. Without the key, the coins are rendered ...
- 69.8k
3
votes
Accepted
Transaction outputs with value 0
Outputs with 0 value are allowed by the protocol. It is a feature that allows for provably unspendable outputs to not have to have any value that then becomes burned. However 0 value outputs are not ...
- 66.4k
3
votes
Accepted
How are crypto prices calculated by an exchange? Example game in a spreadsheet to illustrate
Exchanges don't calculate prices, they report them. They aggregate people who want to sell and people who want to buy and report the prices they are willing to buy and sell for. When one person is ...
- 51.3k
2
votes
Why did Bitcoin first start to gain economic value?
TL;DR: It was not its creator who did that. Bitcoin's economic significance was gained similarly to any other money; but here, it started with pizza...
Let me answer by refuting the most persistently ...
- 121
2
votes
How would Bitcoin's purchasing power be measured after fiat were gone?
It's typical to measure the purchasing power of currencies using something like the Consumer Price Index, so this is probably would be used if Bitcoin were to become a dominant currency.
Basically, ...
- 23k
2
votes
In India how does one accept or give Bitcoin? Do we also get a physical coin for a Bitcoin?
I would go to localbitcoins.com open an account and find a trusted seller with a reputation of 100% and 100plus customers to buy them from a local agent.
Be smart about the price of the agent vrs ...
- 21
2
votes
How to answer to whether Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme?
In addition to everything else already said, there is another false assumption here.
If Bitcoin started today, there would not be any bitcoins yet that you could buy. So the first ten users cannot ...
- 141
2
votes
How to answer to whether Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme?
The next day, the price of a Bitcoin doubles and goes to $200 per coin. Now again hypothetically, let's say ALL 10 of these people want to sell their Bitcoin and cash out. The math now says $2000 will ...
- 121
2
votes
How would Bitcoin's purchasing power be measured after fiat were gone?
There is now a BitcoinPPI (Bitcoin purchasing power index) available:
http://bitcoinppi.com/
It uses the BigMac index published by The Economist and calculates a global weighted index and a local ...
- 121
2
votes
Why is Bitcoin gaining value while so many other cryptocurrencies are not?
There is this classic bootstrapping problem. To make a successful cryptocurrency it needs:
Miners (so that it's secure)
Users (to attract miners, users also want it to be secure)
Value (to attract ...
- 1,133
2
votes
Would free energy cause a market collapse?
Although this question might be "too broad" or "off-topic", I'll give you an answer and it's no.
By removing the cost of electricity, hardware expenditure becomes the ceiling for hashrates. Surely ...
- 5,536
2
votes
Accepted
Who decides the price of bitcoin?
Prices are set by the market, meaning that every individual decides what they will buy/sell their own bitcoin for, and the generally accepted price is an aggregate of all the individual prices.
If a ...
- 1,344
2
votes
What are the additional benefits of having a blockchain behind a web service?
It has a blockchain behind it for one reason only: buzzword compliance.
- 95.9k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible