Lots of turbulence in the Bitcoin world lately. I really like the concept of bitcoin, but I really don't understand the dynamics enough to know if it is going to make it, and if so in what capacity it will be used.

It has already been a very useful tool for me in a couple of situations, I really hope it sticks around.

Lately? There's been turbulence since it hit $1.

haha yeah. I should have said since I've been following it lately.

But right now we have a block halving coming up and a debate on how to fix the "fullblocalypse".

You need to separate in your mind the Bitcoin online community and the Bitcoin economy. The two do overlap, but are quite distinct.

The Bitcoin online community is mostly made up of rich Silicon Valley geeks, batshit crazy Randian AnCaps, regular old anti-establishment folk, and various other highly opinionated bozos with radically conflicting views. Put these together, you BET that they will envision an impeding apocalypse at any moment in time.

As for Bitcoin, it's a highly volatile speculative instrument, and at the same time an okay-ish trustless payment system (the best we have currently though).

No, it will not collapse. Nor will it go to a bazillion dollars per Bitcoin. Generally, if you like to speculate, feel free to speculate with Bitcoin. Otherwise use it as a payment system for whatever, it's more than usable now.

BTW, you should look into Ethereum, it's slowly emerging as Bitcoin's natural successor, but with much greater capabilities. If Bitcoin is a distributed central bank, Ethereum is a distributed state, capable of running self-enforcing intelligent contracts.

For the most part I figured as much. Most of those guys are shouting one extreme or another.



I have been hearing a lot about Ethereum lately. Frankly I am not technically knowledgeable enough to really know with out someone telling me what coin is better and for what reasons. The only reason I have been hesitant to look at anything else is because I see that Bitcoin is by far leading in mainstream acceptance, and the UI needed to bring it to the masses.

Sometimes even developments that are technically better don't beat out their inferior counterparts because of things like marketing and hype.

the analogy of the internet in the mid 90's is a fair comparison to the current perception of bitcoin.

the internet back then elicited uncertainty, doubt, wonder, and everything in between.

I agree that analogy is true for crypto currency in general, but I don't think it necessarily has to be Bitcoin.

I used it to pay a musician overseas a license fee for a track I used in a film. Loved the peer to peer transaction with no bank fees. I also use it to make donations to places like EROWID and I remember a nexus project from last year? Anyway I keep a small bit just like a savings account that goes UP and DOWN. Buy low and spend when it rises.

So wheres the best place for me to trade some BTC for ETH? Also do you know a good wallet generator so that I can generate an offline wallet?