I'm a dumbass just getting interested in this and have no

>>2462190
Whoops, "but probably dumb questions"

Already failed

Bump, nothing at all?...

>>2462190
>How does any cryptocurrency gain traction?
Low transaction fees, global reach, inflation is predictable, no single entity controls your wealth.
>What actually gives it value?
What gives a dollar dollar bill yall value? A consensus between participates in the currency system that the unit is worth something. (and see above advantages of the currency itself.
>So why do companies use bitcoin?
See above
>How do they get their revenue if bitcoin isn't a standard?
Through payment providers like BitPay who exchange the Bitcoin into the currency of their choosing at the time of payment.
>Sure it's widely used, maybe millions of people use it but what causes the value to go up?
There's a limited amount of the currency and that's intentional, new cryptocurrency is printed at a predictable rate as a result of "mining" or verifying transactions on the network.
Because there is a limited amount and people want to use it to take advantages of the above advantages the price will go up when there is more demand then supply etc. (basic economics 101)
>Sure it's widely used, maybe millions of people use it but what causes the value to go up?
You've lost me

>>2463051
>Everyone wants to sell high and buy low, so the value of these coins would generally go down over time would it not?
You've lost me

>>2463075

>Everyone wants to sell high and buy low, so the value of these coins would generally go down over time would it not?

What everyone wants, they can't all precisely accomplish as it was a calculated movement. It's pretty commonly known from the fiat stocks that all the "noise" dips in the system esteem from people wrongly anticipating their 'buy low, sell high' schemes and getting ahead of themselves. Psychological instability leads to economical instability if you will. In the case of bitcoin there is the added complexity layer that wealth creation is at the same tied to the working software, but also tied to mining tycoons actually carving out the transactions of the algorithm. So to (at least partially) answer the question, it goes up over time because people panic sell and allow others to hoard currency taking the price up.

Proof of Stake (PoS) systems supposedly fix the mining tycoon thing by having an algorithm instead delegate a new block in a pseudorandom manner (i.e out of the whole pool of currency holders, one is randomly chosen to receive the next block, with increasing probability to receive it if you have a higher stake, which means more of the PoS coin). In this way, a PoS currency like ARK would be good in that everyone would eventually win, proportionally to their starting capital, and it would not require wasting away at electricity just to solve cryptography puzzles. The buyer/seller panic would still remain though, and it will remain until it is all done automagically by competing AI's (which is something I personally work on).

>>2463051
>>2463075
Sorry I'm pretty confused on the aspect as you can tell

What I meant with that is how do people start with Bitcoin

It was created/mined by some guy - value coming from nothing
How is that possible? Who looks at something and sees "We can use this to trade on the internet when it has no inherent value but we trust others to see it the same way therefore giving it value"

How was it worth anything in the first place? The entire aspect confuses me, it was basically "mined" (out of nowhere, but it somehow has value)

It's just like the dollar bill, in which people reached a consensus to trade labor for this currency that has value to purchase goods, as a medium between labor > goods/rewards

Shit I don't know

tl;dr since I'm rambling: If everyone who invests in Bitcoin attempts wants and attempts to buy it when the price is low, then sell when the price is high, who the fuck actually buys it when it's high? It's volatile currency and incredibly unstable, unlike money which is regulated and you never see such massive fluctuations within a short period

Just not reliable since you have to jump through hoops to even cash it in as well and I can't understand how companies that accept Bitcoin make any profit off of virtual currency...who do they sell THEIR bitcoin stock to?

>>2463211
Thank you, this clarified that part very well for me

I just can't believe that it's driven so much by people panicking, if nobody panicked and we weren't emotional beings and everyone held an iron grip on their coins would the price then steadily drop?

Disregard, this had all the answers I was looking for

http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/100314/why-do-bitcoins-have-value.asp

>>2463217
>It was created/mined by some guy - value coming from nothing
Governments print more paper money (value coming from nothing)
>How was it worth anything in the first place?
It wasn't worth anything until someone attempted to buy something with it.
>The value of the first bitcoin transactions were negotiated by individuals on the bitcointalk forums with one notable transaction of 10,000 BTC used to indirectly purchase two pizzas delivered by Papa John's.
Once you kickstart a currency system it kind of just goes.

although this is a bit of a shilling video, I'll post it because you seem to know zero about blockchains

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSP-taqLWPQ

the tl;dr is, or one aspect of it, is that you can store gigantic datasets on the web without anybody being to able to access it except you - and you can't lose the data (you can at most lose your password to it) because everybody has it.

With bitcoin, unlike any other monetary system, "everybody has all the bitcoin" but no single entity keeps track and nobody can fake the data

>>2462190

>How does any cryptocurrency gain traction?

>Low transaction fees, global reach, inflation is predictable, no single entity controls your wealth.

to add to this, bitcoin fees are ridiculous right now, but its still faster than a bank transfer despite being slow. As more people buy and trade with it, it will gain more traction

What actually gives it value?

Trust, just like your money now.

>I'm basically thinking in the same way any currency does...labor produces value, value which is paid for in currency

GDP

>Then people use that currency to buy bitcoins/any other e-coin to trade for goods (but as far as I know, never any actual cash value)

Cash has no value either, it did until the gold standard got rid of it. With USD, its useful because of the petrodollar. Now there is a petrolyuan and they use it to trade gold which is worth something rather than nothin as the USD is.

>So why do companies use bitcoin? How do they get their revenue if bitcoin isn't a standard?

Maybe they are buy and hodl, it goes up. They use it with other companies that accept it or sell it to an exchange.

>Sure it's widely used, maybe millions of people use it but what causes the value to go up?

Speculation. People who buy it aren't trying to use it, they're trying to buy it to sell it for more money later.

>Everyone wants to sell high and buy low, so the value of these coins would generally go down over time would it not? But these things spike up or sometimes have steady improvement

wut no, the opposite. How are you gonna sell high and cause it to crash?