Through decentralized cryptography, Bitcoin eliminates the need for banking intermediaries, significantly lowering transaction costs, and could liberate poverty-stricken economies around the globe by providing access to capital to the one-third of humanity that is excluded from the financial world.
In the longterm for Bitcoin, Gox needed to go away.
You look at Bitcoin, and it is an entirely new currency, completely decentralized, anonymous; transactions occur incredibly fast for free, all designed by the free market.
Filecoin is a token with fundamental value. Filecoin is like Bitcoin, but miners amass hard drives instead of hashing computers.
People have been scared off Bitcoin by the fact that you needed to put your money in an unregulated overseas platform that has been cut off by banks and scrutinized by the Fed. We are looking to remove the pain points and create a way to invest that is faster and more secure.
If the U.S. government tries to restrict or clamp down, that just means there will be many more bitcoin businesses in Hong Kong and Singapore, and all those Americans will miss out on all the opportunities.
The main event isn't bitcoin. It's using the blockchain to disrupt other industries and Wall Street.
Bitcoin will make a dent in society when more normal transactions occur that would have occurred with dollars or credit card.
Bitcoin will hit thousands of dollars per coin, because it's worth at least that much, or it's worth zero.
That's a term that I really like - 'permissionless innovation' - because anybody who has an idea and has a solution can tap into or can leverage the Bitcoin blockchain.
Bitcoin is mostly about anonymous transactions, and I don't think over time that's a good way to go. I'm a huge believe in digital currency... but doing it on an anonymous basis I think that leads to some abuses, so I'm not involved in Bitcoin.
There is no more reason to believe that Bitcoin will stand the test of time than that governments will protect the value of government-created money, although Bitcoin is newer, and we always look at babies with hope.
How high can bitcoin go? The real question is how low can the dollar go?
Bitcoin's value is the same: It will remain as long as it is the most efficient mechanism for transferring ownership.
A lot of people say that I took the first shot for Bitcoin. The first person to walk through the door always gets shot, and then everyone else can come through.
If there is one positive takeaway from the collapse of Mt.Gox, it is the willingness of a new generation of Bitcoin companies to work together to ensure the future of Bitcoin and the security of customer funds.
Within my social circle, there is a large group of people who will take bitcoin as legal tender; like, you can go to them and settle debts in Bitcoin, and they will happily take it.
The big exchanges that hold customer deposits are a big target for hackers, and unfortunately, most bitcoin exchanges store user funds.
Virtual currency, where it's called a bitcoin vs. a U.S. dollar, that's going to be stopped. No government will ever support a virtual currency that goes around borders and doesn't have the same controls. It's not going to happen.
To be a more efficient, faster, and cheaper way to send money around the world, you have to be able to get in and out of Bitcoin. You need to have a liquid exchange on either end of the corridor.
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer, decentralized form of money, as durable as the Internet itself. Remember, the Internet - or DARPA, as it was originally called - was created as a fail-safe, global network with no 'single point of failure.' If one part goes down, data takes another route, and nothing is lost.
The bitcoin protocol is about mining bitcoin, not pricing bitcoin. There is nothing in the protocol about establishing a market price for bitcoin; you need a market for that, but what if all the exchange markets are shut down?
If bitcoin is more expensive or slower than traditional financial systems, people aren't going to use it.
Tokenization applies to scarce assets. Today, the most appropriate thing to tokenize is something that's purely digital. Bitcoin and ethereum are the canonical.
Daniel Masters is a master of the commodities markets with over 30 years experience. His bitcoin strategy is based on the parallels he sees from the oil industry in 1999 to the current state of bitcoin.
A new product, technology, or innovation - such as Bitcoin - has the potential to give rise both to frauds and high-risk investment opportunities. Potential investors can be easily enticed with the promise of high returns in a new investment space and also may be less skeptical when assessing something novel, new, and cutting-edge.
When the Bitcoin white paper emerged in 2008, it was completely revolutionary. The amount of concepts that had to come together in just the right way - computer science, cryptography, and economic incentives - was astonishing.
Bitcoin's success will guarantee Bitcoin's success.
The Internet will continue to be valuable so long as it is the most efficient mechanism for transferring data. Bitcoin's value is the same: It will remain as long as it is the most efficient mechanism for transferring ownership.
The ledger, the distributed database - it's called a Blockchain - is held in the cloud by all the parties involved. It can't be broken by any of them. It's cryptographically too strong. You would have to compromise the entire network to take over Bitcoin.
For Bitcoin, if it becomes a thing, it will become an enormous thing. It will be world-changing. But if it's nothing, it's nothing. There is no in between.
What bitcoin does better than the current financial system is it's a better stored value globally. There are a lot of countries that really don't trust their banks or their currency, and bitcoin is an alternative.
I think examples of free market transactions between peaceful people using Bitcoin and the Internet, I think it's a wonderful thing. It's going to make the world a better place.
When you take a look at how the IRS treats foreign currency, bitcoin doesn't have the same taxation regime. Foreign currency gains and losses generally are taxed as ordinary income.
If you're investing in a company in the Bitcoin economy, you have to compare the valuation of the company to the valuation of the entire economy.
Bitcoin may herald the dawning of a new age in currency. It holds superior traits as a form of 'good money.' As a tangible form of asset (its core tangibility being its mathematical basis), it could become an incredibly important building block for the 21st century's global economy.