Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on July 02, 2013, 02:55:08 AM

Quote from: clout on July 02, 2013, 02:50:49 AM

Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on July 02, 2013, 02:40:35 AM

Quote from: clout on July 02, 2013, 02:38:58 AM

While I do agree that an ETF will help with hedging investments in bitcoin, it doesn't make the price more stable which is necessary for widespread adoption and a subsequent increase in the value. People on wallstreet are not going to invest in bitcoin just because it is packaged as an ETF. For them it would be tantamount to investing in penny stocks since the ETF itself doesnt bulster the underlying value of bitcoin and there is no metric for how bitcoin should be valued.

What? There is no metric for how any commodity should be valued. What is the metric for the correct price of gold?

Yeah no shit, but its bitcoin. Not gold. Gold is valued by a historical and global consensus. If you go anywhere in the world they will know and accept gold. The same can't be said about bitcoin. There's no reason to invest in bitcoin over gold for a normal investor. For bitcoin to gain the same notoriety that gold has, it has to be used by people first; in the way that gold was primarily used as medium of exchange and not solely a store of value as it is today. To package bitcoin as an ETF is premature because it misses the necessary steps for bitcoin adoption and development. People need to interact with bitcoin in person first not through a trading mechanism.

Well I would argue that Bitcoin is accepted more place than gold. Let me know where I can buy a domain name with Gold. Still since you are clinging to the value as a medium of exchange which has nothing to do with proper price (your claim) lets use copper instead.

What is the metric for the proper price of copper. Is copper properly priced right now according to your magical pricing metric. If not then how/why are there copper financial instruments. Without knowing what the proper price is nobody would buy it, hence there is absolutely no volume on any copper instruments. Er wait yes there is.

i dont think you understand how commodities are traded. copper is completely different than gold and bitcoin. gold isnt like most comodities because it doesnt really have an industrial use, only 10% of it is used in such a way. the price of gold is based on historical prices of gold in the context of the global econonomy. the historical price trends are used to predict future prices of gold, from which the current price is derived. there are mechanisms to valuing gold. you essentially value gold based on how you believe other people will perceive the importance of gold compared to other investments.

copper on the other hand is valued by its current and future industrial usage. its pretty easy to evaluate that.

bitcoin is like gold, in so far as it is a safe haven when other stores of value loose their value. this is why the price went up with the cyprus crisis, which is comparable to the price of gold going on a steady upward trend after the global economic crisis of 2008. the problem with valuing bitcoin is that you dont know how people are going to perceive its future value nor do you even know if they will adopt it as a currency.

bitcoin is not the same as commodities.

also bitcoin is not accepted more places than gold, thats a completely fallacious statement