Quote from: evoorhees on July 21, 2011, 04:24:09 PM
Received an email today from Dwolla, with them announcing they've passed $1m in daily transactions. They've got a nice infographic chart showing their growth since December. Now, of course, it is strikingly similar to the growth of interest in Bitcoin (starts jumping fast in May, right as Bitcoin started getting traction).
However, they're not mentioning Bitcoin AT ALL in either their email or graphic. It's understandable of course, but I found it amusing. Am I wrong in speculating that a significant part of their growth is due directly to Bitcoin? My guess is that they have a love/hate relationship with Bitcoin, as it's bringing them massive business, but is also likely to make them obsolete before they ever truly succeed.
Thoughts?
That's why it's funny when people freak out over BTC prices. There are a ton of people buying and using bitcoins. These people aren't trying to make money off BTC, they aren't mining, they aren't "investing", they're using it for what it is, a currency. BTC has a strong future because of the people using it as a currency, not because of the miners, traders, investors. Those people are trying to make money off BTC. As long as people use it to exchange goods and services, which clearly it looks like they are, BTC is golden.
The price of BTC doesn't matter. $5 or $20 it really has no effect. People sell based on usd/euro etc... No one locks in prices at a set BTC. If you sell a $20 item for 1 BTC or 4 BTC it really doesn't change anything. The person buys the bitcoins, sends them, the seller cashes them out. At $5 and at $20 it's the same process. It's always been discussed that 50-80% of miners leaving wouldn't really change a thing. Day traders, investors, people playing the exchanges don't matter. All those people could fuck off right now and people would still be buying BTC, using BTC, and sellers selling the BTC.
Which is why there's no collapse. The people powering BTC, the people using BTC, don't give two shits about how much it's currently worth on the exchanges. There's APIs now that auto convert USD to current market value BTC. Does the API, buying, seller really care if it's $5 or $20? The API just converts it to the USD value and sells the item.
If anything BTC hitting $5 would get rid of the short term for profit miners who are drama queens every time the price fluctuates because they're in a panic to get their money back from their investment. It also gets rid of the people treating BTC like gold bullion.
BTC was never created to be a collectible. It's a virtual currency. Letting people can exchange goods and services. So Jimbo in Poland doesn't need a bank, visa, mastercard, or paypal to sell his homemade bellybutton lint sculptures. He can accept BTC from every corner of the planet. People seem to think that having people profit off of the investing, trading, mining is the core of BTC. It's not. People using BTC as a currency is the core of BTC, will always be the core of BTC, and those people don't give two shits what the current market value is.
They login, buy btc, spend them, get their shit. Whether it's $5 or $50 doesn't change anything. If all the people holding BTC like it's gold bullion cashed out, the people who are using the currency would still be using it the next day, the next week, the next month.
