Re: Tulip Trading
@dan1980
Ok, huge post but everything you are saying is based on
"BTC has only two uses: investment and exchange."
So if Bitcoin can be used for investment and exchange then I assume you acknowledge the medium has value. Dollars have values, Pounds have value, gold has value and so does the iron in your example. In every case the influences differ with demand/manufacture/useage and in this Bitcoin is no different but it is very new and traded in tiny tiny volumes compared to even iron so there will be some volatility.
As for goverment control then there is control in place and many people using Bitcoin today do not desire to be outside of goverment control. The simplest control method is to either ban or legislate. Some countries have chosen to ban and some have banned and then leglisated later. So far the leglislation used is based around exchanging back to the local Fiat currency (eg GBP).
There's a good list here :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_bitcoin_by_country
It's not up to date though since it states that in the uk bitcoin is unregulated and a more accurate article is here :
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-regulation-uk/
In short the goverment has ruled that trading GBP for Bitcoin is VAT free and if you are trading then you would be liable for Capital Gains Tax on GBP profits.
As for buying and selling anonymously you won't find many places today they won't ask for a copy of your passport and various other points of ID. Ok can meet someone in the street and trade in person but they still isn't anonymous since the sellers knows who you are and knows the address he deposited your Bitcoin into from which your transactions can be traced.
I've seen many arguments that a currency should have more use than it's sole value but why ? As long as a curreny unit cannot be forged or duplicated and the populace accept it then isn't that enough. There have been decades of science fiction where Credits have been the currency or choice and nobody has questions the economic value of a Credit and if they can be melted down.
Douglas Adams had his take of course...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/gallery/guide/ningi.shtml
Yes an electronic currency does depend on the internet but so does quite allot else and frankly if world wide networks failed then we'd be more worried about keeping the lights on and less about how we're going to pay the electric bill.
Just to conclude you pointed out this :
"Money is a token of value and so it relies on the value that the receiver puts on it."
.... I agree and as of this moment the masses place of value of £274.58280 on Bitcoin. You might disagree but the masses set the value and as the number of users increase the stability of the price will increase too. Influencing a few thousand people is easy, influencing a million or more isn't though as some forex scandals have proved some people still try.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
