Post
Topic
Board Speculation
Re: Bitcoin Volatility trends are mostly down since 2010.
by
piramida
on 09/01/2014, 19:01:54 UTC
Since trading began in 2010, the trend for BTC volatility appears to be downward: http://www.coinometrics.com/bitcoin/bvix.

This is strong evidence that as adoption increases, bitcoin will become less volatile.

Yep, surprising that most people (well, journalists anyway) ignore that obvious fact; I guess that is because they look at absolute numbers, "oh look bitcoin crashed $300" while it's actually a 20% move. Another metric which is somewhat related is how much value, in percents, is lost from local maximum to the following local minimum, it progressed like this: 93% (end of 2011) -> 80% (apr 2013) -> 64% (dec 2013, assuming it is over) so extrapolating (I know, I know, but three points is already something) -> 50% somewhere in 2014, and stability should arrive in 2017, which I also think would be around the year of worldwide adoption (unless it crashes to zero, then not).

Yet another reason that we need mBTC as a default.  Nobody would bat an eye at a 30 cent crash.

Since there is no governing body, default is whatever majority uses. So the only way to have it, is to use it. I however withhold because I think mBTC notation is cumbersome, generally bad for mass comprehension, and would result in even harder transition to the next floating point (to uBTC). When something better comes up, I'll start using that.

I still think we need to come up with a good name for 100 satoshis, set this as a base unit, and start using this unit forever together with satoshis. At the moment, 1$ buys you about 1000 of these units, which makes prices more or less manageable already.