Bitcoin Forum

MT.Gox's selling price is now at 81 cents... it was at 90 cents a few MINUTES ago, at 92~94 cents 2 days ago...

is this a trend that will continue?

Someone sold a lot by itself I don't find concerning, but I don't like the bid to ask ratio only like 5 bids and 25 asks.

Stop pestering us with every damn dramatic drop and rise and give a reason why it's dropping/rising with no proof.

The sell side is starting to move the price down, it pretty much had to happen as fundamentally there are new BTC entering the economy all the time and some of that new money needs to be exchanged to cover the costs of production...the non trader types on the forum have to realise that the exchange rate can be very volatile as there is very little real need and thus demand for BTC.

until Bitcoin stabilises at least a bit, the demand won't grow, nobody wants to deal with a currency that fluctuates 10x more than stocks

Actually 10x fluctuations can look very attractive to traders as there is clearly opportunity for easy money, but from a mining point of view with its fixed costs etc its frustrating, miners in the real world are able to forward sell production and or enter currency hedging arrangements to smooth out the price volatility of the commodity they mine...BTC miners at the moment have no such luxury...and there's another opportunity for someone or a group of people hoarding BTC to set up a futures market so the miners can hedge a little production. 

I saw the drop and bought more. Wish I would have waited a little longer though, and would have saved a bit more.  :D

You mean fairly large fluctuations in BTC/$ prices?  Yes, yes it will.  If you're looking for a stable, boring investment do not buy bitcoins.

I'm still surprised we haven't seen a real price bubble (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_bubble) yet (where my definition of bubble is "doubles in price and then falls all the way back down").  Maybe we're in the middle of one still on its way up...

The truth is we need more speculators. They would add cnsiderable liquidity, and make the price much more stable.

As soon as the price starts to rise to much too quickly they would sell, bringing it down. If the price falls too quickly by too much they buy, bringing it up.

And the price is back up, someone has spotted the bargain and bought, bringing up the price. still a little lower than it's been trading at but thats nothing to worry about. It should creep up over the next few trades.

So this is the result of a single person executing a fairly large( by our standards) trade. This causeda few automated ( or panic) sells.It's a small market and is easily moved. Sadly I wasn't in a position to take advantage of this drop. Im much too risk averse to take advantage of such a big price move.

• The exchange itself changed hands today.
  http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4187.0
• This is the first weekend that CoinCard has been open.
  http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3874.msg55682#msg55682
• Bills for hardware purchases that miners made are just now coming due
• 14,700 BTC was minted in the past 24 hours (294 blocks, per http://bitcoinwatch.com)
  Yet in that same 24 hour period of time, just $11868.22 worth of bitcoin has traded on the exchange.
  In other words, even if every bitcoin sold on the exchange were from mining activity, there still was more produced than was sold.  i.e., the accumulating continues.
• The Technical Analysis from s3052 indicates that there is strong support at the $0.80 price level.
  http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1493.msg58563#msg58563

Personally, I consider Bitcoin's short term fluctuations on the exchanges to be of little significance.  I know that all bitcoins issued as-of today total 5.61 million BTCs.  I know that in January 2012, there will be about 8 million BTCs and that in January 2013 there will be about 10.5 mllion BTCs.  

If bitcoin continues to emerge as the leading digital currency, will the entire currency issued need to be more than $10 million USD worth by January 2013 to support the demand? I can't see how it cannot be.  And if that were to happen, each BTC would then be worth more than it is today.

Only if you hold on to your bitcoins now will you still have them to sell at levels significantly higher than where Bitcoin trades today.

We do need more speculators and liquidity....the problem then maybe that modern speculators tend to be trend following, day traders...they profit by buying into trends and then sell out as soon as that trend reverses or stalls, or sell at a certain percentage loss (usually 3 or 4%) if there entry was wrong...often this actually increases volatility as 1000s of day traders jump in and out of trends at roughly the same time.

I'm very much in 2 minds as to whether liquidity = stability.

+1
This is absolutely true.


The Bitcoin market needs more traders, investors or speculators. Otherwise prices will fall.

Just think about that more than 10,000 bitcoins are generated daily. If miners cash out all or a proportion of it, the Bitcoin economy needs at least the same amount of new fund inflows and bitcoin buying to just keep prices flat (let alone rising).

In the recent weeks, no significant new funds came in, and hence we are in a downtrend that may accelerate unless 0.95$, 1.0$ and 1.1$ will be broken to the upside.

people holding bitcoins should better advertise it versus debating endlessly in this forum about minor things (and adding thousands of posts about issues that are beyond there circle of influence)

This is not meant badly, just to put the "moose on the table".

Actually the reason we're on a downward trend with the USD bitcon price is the balance of trade. For all intents and purposes you can think of bitcoin as the currency of a very tiny country (the official currency of cypherspace?), and as such represents everyting that this cypherspace economy produces and exports.

A falling currency means that we are importing more than we are exporting. Many people including myself have been spending their bitcoins. The recipients have been exchanging these to pay for the products or services they provide.

We need to change this balance of trade, we need to export more than we import( at least for a time). Otherwise the trend will be continually downward.

Long story short we need more bitcoin based businesses. But for the time being we could see bitcoin drop back quite a bit from it's current low.

yes, it is 2-fold need to grow:

1) more people acquiring bitcoins (traders, investors)
2) more bitcoin based businesses

Well, I've been doing my bit.:)

Now I'm considering a stenciling campaign, Banksy style.

Here's one underhanded way it could be done:

1. Get a stencil made which says "We Now Accept Bitcoins" and apply it to every advertising billboard you can find.

2. Customers ask these businesses about how to pay with Bitcoins.

3. Businesses recognize the demand and support Bitcoins.

4. Success!

Heheh, I like it.:)

How exactly have people convinced businesses to accept bitcoins before?

I wasan't talkng about existing business accepting bitcoin, but a business created in the bitcoin economy, and operating primarily in bitcoins.

Man it's frustrating to read your "we need more traders" posts when, and I already tried to explain this here (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4177.0), you actually need more miners and no one will listen.

If you think traders will come in and "invest" large amounts of their dollars, euros and whatever else while a small group is holding the vast majority of the 5.6mio BitCoins just because BitCoins have "good properties" as a currency you are sorely mistaken.

What BitCoins need is to be spread across many people in larger quantities who will eventually come to value them and will convince others who don't that they actually do have value and it's only then when you'll see traders come in and buy some and only after traders come in reputable businesses will think about accepting them.


I mean do you think gold became money because a few kings held the majority of it and offered them to their peasants for their goods and services and the peasants willingly accepted them just because of the properties of gold? Of course not! Many many people found gold around the whole planet and some found more and some found less but all of them started to value it because of it's properties AFTER they found it. And then they started to trade it for other stuff and when it spread it eventually got accepted as money.

I don't care if 50(imaginary number) original people who started BitCoins hold 4mio BitCoins right now. But that's me, someone who understands Austrian economics and the true value of this invention. But try convincing someone who doesn't.  ::) That kind of person will only look at the number of bid vs ask offers and the volume and will only laugh at you.

You should instead be asking: "How exactly have people convinced businesses to accept gold before?" and learn from history.

I'm not a expert in financial dadada, but isn't gold harder to sell? With BTC we can actually use it as currency to buy things, who accepts gold anymore for bread and milk? (I know BTC isn't accepted either, but its getting there)

I doubt BTC will ever replace an actual currency, I like to buy food myself.  :)

If I own gold bars I can go to a local dealer, sell at spot price and buy what ever the hell I want and I can do so ALL OVER THE WORLD. Gold is still money, and the whole world knows it.

Some US states are even trying to get bills passed that would make it so official again:

from: http://le.utah.gov/~2011/htmdoc/hbillhtm/HB0317S01.htm
           8      General Description:
             9          This bill recognizes gold and silver coins that are issued by the federal government as
             10      legal tender in the state and exempts the exchange of the coins from certain types of
             11      state tax liability.

It already passed the house and is in the senate now, and if they pass it and governor signs it gold and silver coins are officially money in Utah. And that's just one of the 10 or so states that are trying to pass something like that.

You'll never get spot price, and there are very few places that will pay more than 90% of the gold value. It'll probably be closer to 70 or 80%. Same thing if you want to buy, most dealers will take a hefty profit. This is the main reason why I don't buy gold. Your best bet it to find another person to trade with, but then you have to find a way to make sure it's real and as pure as advertised.

lol of course they pay spot if the gold bars or coins you have are pure. It's when you buy from them when you have to pay 3-5% or so more then spot. Have you ever bought or sold any bullion bars or coins? I know I have.

I suppose it's possible to get those prices if you live in London or New York or similar, but it's not anywhere in my country. As I said I haven't bought any gold, but it's not for the lack of trying.

And it's also possible if you live in a small country called Slovenia of which most people haven't even heard of and with a population of just 2mio people one of them being me. I don't doubt your word that you tried but maybe you should have tried harder.

I think the biggest problem with gold was its fluctuation. You can put $20 on the face, because it could be worth $15 or $25. If we switch to gold, the gold need to be pegged to a value higher than its intrinsic value to guarantee face value. This would provide a shoring up of the currency (an absolute minimum value) and allow the face values to remain constant.

And while in theory, the BTC has appeal, the lack of security will prevent it from being a base currency but might allow it to be a excellent secondary currency.

I.E. If my power and/or internet goes out (Hurricane, Earthquake, etc...) BTC will hold no value. Only Physical currency will matter. For this reason, non-physical currency (including Dollars in electronic form) are useless.  Having been in disaster areas, I have seen even the wealthy succumb to lack of access to cash, they had huge amounts of credit and wealth in their bank accounts, but it didn't mean anything because banks couldn't verify and didn't physically have enough cash to give out.

In this area, third world countries have an advantage. They are not reliant on electricity, computers, and the internet.

For this reason, I believe the BTC will be an excellent temporary currency. In and Out type of transactions, which will bode well for the Xchanges.

Slovenia is part of the EU, which exempts many gold coins from value-added tax (1 (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/JOHtml.do?uri=OJ:C:2010:322:SOM:EN:HTML), 2 (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2010:322:0013:0026:EN:PDF)). IIRC, gold is subject to tax in many other jurisdictions. (I don't recall which ones: I'm fortunate enough to live in the EU too!)

Sorry but that's a myth and a complete fabrication by the history taught in government institutionalized schools.

Dollar amount isn't suppose to represent a value but the weight of the coin. Much like 1 troy ounce equals 31.1034768 grams, back in the day when they used gold coins a $25 gold coin was equal to 1 troy ounce gold coin which was equal to 31.1034768 grams gold coin. So when the price of gold fluctuates what actually changes when pricing goods and services is the amount of weight you have to pay in gold for certain goods or services.

It's only when the government took over of issuing and the regulation of how much a dollar amount stated on paper gold receipts actually represents in weight that the paper gold receipts conveniently called dollars and used as money instead of the actually gold coins became separate paper money only backed by gold. Today it's not even that, it's just some name on a paper with a number and the government tells you you have to use it and how much it's suppose to be worth.


In a true free market prices of goods in services would be expressed in the weight of gold and silver coins and fluctuations would cause no problem at all.

Agreed if face amount states weight, like Suisse Gold does with purity. The problem there would be knowing the current value of said weight, in New York or Dubai not that big of a problem. In a Zimbabwe village, there would be a problem. The consistency of value would need to remain a constant for a said period of time.  Without that, there are a multitude of problems. Ie product prices would vary by the second, place shifting of currency (Buy Zimbabwe, Sell New York or vice versa).

OMG, what is all the hassle about ? It's a normal correction.

It happens and it will happen very often. BTC price will not stabilise until there is great amount of goods & services avaiable for it + much larger number of speculators than now...

We need to think about long-term fundamental rather than getting riled up about the price of bitcoin everytime it does a dramatic rise or a dramatic fall.

I agree that too few services are available in bitcoins to make the Bitcoin concept attractive. Of course, it would be nice if some businesses accepted Bitcoins.

I however think Bitcoin could be even more efficiently advertised and used for donations to non-profit organisations, or open-source projects. It's an easy (and rather anonymous) way to support causes you want to defend. Moreover, it is attractive to me to donate bitcoins, which I haven't really paid for, except for running my graphic card. This way I'm giving money that I would never have had without Bitcoin in the first place.

Such non-profit organizations could benefit from that, and could maybe obtain more donations, while advertising Bitcoin. They wouldn't at least take too much risk, as one would when building a bitcoin-based business.

Example : imagine if Wikileaks had accepted Bitcoins, I'm sure it would have obtained much more donations, especially when Paypal and Visa and Mastercard had blocked all donations.

I haven't heard such an awesome & nifty idea in months...
That is simply genius.

I think it will backfire?

I Can Haz™ a detailed explanation, please ?

Just a feeling.

Well, I think companies might not like this at all.

Well of course they won't like it.
But if somebody/some people act anonymously, they are powerless to stop this.

However i think that as long as anons don't overdose with the stickers (vandalism), the companies won't really care much.

Anon power.

nothing to worry about, keep moving... you just forget that the price jumped from 25c to 100c in 3 months!  That is a market cap growth rate of over %2100 p.a. What happens is that real Bitcoin economy was slightly slower than it, and the price is lagging until the economy reaches that point again.

The long-term prospect is that 1BTC is going to easily clear 10$ by mid September and $20 by November, and $30 by the end of the year!

 ;D ;D

lets see what happens, however I fully expect that soon new funds will come online.  The number of Bitcoin projects in development atm in this community is staggering.

See there are stages, for example when he price was 25c the miners were sitting and waiting, now that the price has moved to around $1 the number of miners has dramatically increased.

The stage before was when MTGox and other trading sites came online.

We are in another phase now, this phase is when web-services based upon Bitcoin are being developed, when these come online, we will see a massive increase of trading value of Bitcoin.

Then, again, the miners will fight over the leftovers.

It will be a wild ride, it is the wild west after all.

Looks like it rising now. I'm curious how long it will take to reach over $2.

I have a feeling that the change of ownership of Mt. Gox might have caused this slight dip in the prices.

I think X cause Y change in bitcoin price.

Yeah I hate it when today's "news" outlets release articles about various prices rising or falling and then they pin on something banal like I don't know unrests in Libya being responsible for rising price of silver...  ::)

It's always just supply vs demand with a tiny bit of the speculative element.

S3052 said there will be a breakout soon and we're in a rally mode.  ;D

While CNBC sometimes has what I consider to be silly reasons for why the market moved today, news can and does move markets.

Haha. Well said. Of course, these are the same people who say the Hunt brothers were the sole reason the price of silver rose back in the 70s.

It's no rocket science this time, just look at the chart:

http://soofman.civ.pl/bitcoin/other_images/btc-chart-08_03_11.png

The latest date that the outbreak can happen at is T_max.

But i would rather say that it will happen much much sooner, like in max 1/3 of the length from last recorded value to T_max (which makes it a month, maximum 2).
It's gaining speed after all, not rising with constant speed.

So far, bitcoin value is very predictable in the long term.

Are you kidding? There is no long term data to speak of. It's perfectly possible for the price to stay at the current level well past a couple of months, or to drop below your artificial rally trendline.

As long as Bitcoin popularity will grow faster than new Bitcoins are (EDIT: mined), that is highly doubtable.
Do you really believe that Bitcoin market's value will stay for long at 5-6 Milion USD ?

It only takes one medium-sized investor (or thousand of small investors such as geeks) to double the current value. So i think that within max 1-2 months we are going to have a rally.

And within 6-9 months... anything can happen. IMHO even 10 - fold increase is possible.

Alot of people are hoarding their bitcoins, waiting for a huge increase (ie: to 2 $) to sell everything and forget about mining if it isn't profitable anymore or will continue mining if it is. but that big sell off after the rally might mean a major decline

Great, I'll wait till then before I buy more.:)

I meant later on, when the difficulty will be very high and that the BTC will be around 2$ and is still profitable, people might mass sell and it'll fall back to 0.8$ or 1$ and Bitmining won't be profitable anymore and then everyone will mass sell and quit... and bitcoin will die

This is a worst case scenario btw, not exactly what I think will happen :p

What you are saying is a relative and temporary situation.
Bitcoin has a market, which means that it will self-balance itself regularly. The more people use it, the more balanced it will be. The more people use it, the more value bitcoins have.

It's a currency which is deflationary by design. It cannot decrease value in the long term, unless size of its userbase and/or its economy starts to fall.
So unless some serious weakness is discovered (like technical weakness), Bitcoin is doomed to rise forever.

Do you seriously think the only way Bitcoin  usage can decrease is if there's a technical weakness found?

Depends on the weakness.

- If this is a critical design-related weakness, it may even destroy the currency (but i don't think something like this exists, BTC has been on for 2 years and everything looks perfect)
- If this is a serious weakness, it may reverse the expansion for some time.
- Smaller weaknesses will only slow down the expansion.

That's not what I asked. My point is, it's perfectly possible for Bitcoin never to gain sufficient critical mass to remain viable and for the economy to slowly grind to a halt, without any technical flaws at all.

If bitcoin is such a pivotal technology, than some kind of crypto-economy will arise.

As long as merchants keep accepting it, it should be fine. One thing is that Europe and/or Asia need to catch up on the market. The market is highly US centric, people from Europe/Asia are limited with trade in that respect (due to distance/trust and US only shipments).

OK, i re-read your post and i understood what you were asking about.

Yes, i think that technical weakness is the only thing that can stop/slow down Bitcoin in the long term.

Bitcoin is ultimately superior to all existing currencies, so it's completely natural that it will replace them sooner or later. Or perhaps other currencies will be backed in Bitcoin. Of course, there will be clones, but the original one will always rule.

"Utimately superior"? What about being non-physical? Difficult to understand how it works for non-geeks? Prone to attack by any large entity? Non-official (possibility of being delegalized)? That payments aren't and never will be instant (so for instant payments you will need a Paypal-like entity with fees and bullshit)?

Don't get me wrong. I wish Bitcoin success and I think it is a very good project but there is so much bubble mentality going on here that I'm much less optimistic about its future that when I first learned about Bitcoin.

I'm pretty sure that  shareholders of pets.com in the 1990s had similar attitudes to yours that there is no other future than a bright one.

I won't weigh in on the "Ultimately Superior" question, though I think bitcoin has impressive technical merits.  However, regarding the instant thing I think that once mining goes massively commercial it's very likely there will be instant payments.  All that is needed is to assure that a given transaction has reached the clear majority of mining power without a double-spend:  this is easy to build a protocol for once you have a majority of hash power owned by organised, interested parties.

Plus, banking institutions can guarantee these kinds of things within themselves or through an inter-bank protocol, similar to how you currently can make instant payments via MyBitcoin. Maybe not preferable but obvious. This can also fix the "non-physical" and "non-anonymous" problems; if you have a trusted authority, printed currency (though I'd expect credit cards) and untraceable transactions can be made possible.

Difficulty to understand IMO is not an issue, in fact it seems to me that Bitcoin will be pretty easy to use when it won't be required of the user to understand the internals.

Attacks on the other hand, is what I'm pessimistic about. Not technical attacks to bring down the network (I think they can be circumvented easily as long as there is Internet as we know it), but legal ones.

EDIT: "Legal attacks" came out wrong. What I meant was that Bitcoin is not likely to be adopted by current institutions because it's not suitable to be part of the scheme. This may or may not result in legal attacks or state coercion though. It's a very exciting aspect and I just want to be part of the network when it comes to that.

It could be, like any other currency. Maybe by local initiatives first, and less probable, but still possible, by some countries.
But, who cares ?

- How does it cost ?
- What is your account/bitcoin address ?
=> send

All the other things aren't needed. You know it is secure because the official website says it is and geeks and first users and press say it too, but you are not forced to read the whole wiki pages nor the source code.

Like anything on internet (like paypal and mastercard recently ?).

Yes, there is dumb government everywhere...

If you really need instant payment, on internet, current solution is to use a bank/centralised account for both sender and receiver (just change balance of both users and a real bitcoin transaction is not needed, but still possible to still rely on the secured transaction system of bitcoin)

I explain it with a box with to 2 doors at opposite side and 2 differents keys.
If you put something in the box with the first key, only the second key can get it, and vice-versa.
Everbody can have several boxes.

Now, imagine it's not keys, but pin code or passwords, and 1 of the 2 is known to everbody.
- Everbody can insert things in the box, and only you can retreive them with the second code.
- You can put things in the box, and everbody has your public code to get it and they know it comes from you, brcause they use your public code.

(I was too slow to edit my comment. :) )

It's hard to predict what will happen but to speculate, it could start by going after businesses, especially exchanges, and first by trying to make it difficult for them to go on. I'd start with accounting demands, which would scare off pussies like me for instance, which I'd think is the majority, at least in the countries I do business. Also, money laundering is like child porn, they already have enough laws to make arbitrary demands from anyone they want to harass. For example, AFAIK it's illegal to make transactions larger than 10K EUR outside the banking system.

Having said this, there is a lack of know-how on my side. I asked a couple of bankers and accountants about this and they are clueless about most of the issues I raised, which makes me more pessimistic.

The obvious thing is, that currently dominating institutions don't like off-record transactions; they don't even like paper money. It's forbidden to carry more than a certain amount on yourself while traveling between countries. Bitcoin makes that as easy as it can be, so it's almost inevitable that we will face some kind of battle on the grounds of legality. They could, for instance, declare that all transactions shall be between legally identifiable entities, which would make the Bitcoin protocol illegal by definition. Isn't this already the case in many countries?

Sorry if I sound paranoid, it's possibly because of the ignorance on my side.

Hehe, you should have seen me trying to explain to my wife how blind-signing works. It took 3 days and I still don't know if she got it.  :)

No, but the idea is that you don't have to understand this forum in order to use bitcoins. Almost no one understands pki but they successfully connect to their bank accounts through https. The problem is that the lack of knowledge leads to unpredictable user failures, like the bank user thinking the advertised million-bit encryption mambo jumbo is an all-encompassing fact of security and happily continuing to access his bank account on public computers.

Adding to Gokhan post, a practical way of killing bitcoin in Europe would be to introduce VAT on bitcoin sales, i.e. selling bitcoins for fiat.   VAT on silver effectively killed silver bullion market in Europe.

And anti-money laundering laws are already there and it's just a matter of enforcing them.

Scenario:
Bitcoin goes big-time. Governments realize they're missing out on a lot of tax income due to people not reporting their BTC trades, or at least suspect they are. Also they know it enables people to transfer large amounts of funds across national borders without detection. What does a government do? I wouldn't be surprised if they just banned using Bitcoin altogether, either directly or indirectly.

Now, this is going to be hard to enforce, assuming a similar level of Internet freedom we enjoy today. However, if Bitcoin is still small enough, I believe it is entirely possible for governments to contain it through propaganda ops, much like they do with drug prohibition. They can't eradicate it, but they can make the population at large hostile to it.

There's an interesting dynamic here: The odds of government intervention rise as Bitcoin gains in popularity. At the same time, the difficulty in disturbing the Bitcoin economy rises as well. The big unknown is how far Bitcoin can develop before governments start trying to shut it down, probably by going after exchanges.

But bitcoins can be traded either on an exchange, or over the counter. I've used both, and OTC (bitcoin-otc) was far more convenient that exchange trading (MtGox). OTC is far harder to attack, as it's decentralised. A private, possibly encrypted, discussion takes place somewhere online between two parties, one party sends some bitcoins, and the counterparty transfers some money from their account in Singapore to an account in the Caymen Islands.

tl;dr: The State will need to find a better way to bring Bitcoin down :-)

VAT is applicable if you sell goods and services for bitcoin and it will never be a problem for Bitcoin adpotion.  But if bitcoin itself were declared VAT-taxable like silver bullion, you would have to pay VAT on bitcoin exchange. You want to buy 150 BTC for 100 EUR, you will have to pay 100 EUR + VAT from any EU-based VAT-registered entity. Read about the VAT on silver bullion for example here: http://www.silverpetition.com/

Of course bitcoins are non-physical so you have a much better chance of "smuggling" it cross border but it may put off a lot of people just like with the silver bullion market which is very weak in EU.

I never understood the VAT, it didn't make sense. I don't know the cost of forming a company in the UK but in the US it is about $99. It would be way more beneficial to form multiple competing companies under the 55 Thousand in turn over, rather than conform to VAT.

It also seems like the end user carries the biggest burden because the end user is not going to take advantage of Volume discounts like all the businesses that did in front of him.

Bitcoin is the first time in my life I've had monetary value and no government is stealing it from me.

That is all.

+1

It is like the fiat slaves monetary prison door has finally been cracked opened, yet 1 in a 1 million notice it ... and even less choose to wander outside and breathe the free, fresh air.

I expect a quick rise soon, maybe up to 0.92~0.95$ for the selling price, if we're lucky, 1$

+1

Edit:
What you said reminds me of Plato's Allegory of the Cave. The thought is somewhat disconcerting.

+10

Government can even make (http://www.daily.pk/fake-gold-bars-in-bank-of-england-and-fort-knox-14477/)[1] fake (http://viewzone2.com/fakegold.html)[2] gold (http://www.google.com/search?&q=usa+fake+gold)[3], but it cannot mine fake bitcoins.

Bitcoin FTW.

Ouch, doomed to trudge to the tune of the law of numbers? where's the bubbly fun we've become addicted to? Interesting to see if it plays out ...

+1000

It's a miracle, really

Somebody is going to invent a viable cryptocurrency sooner or later. It's just a matter of waiting.

Welcome back.

I say miracle too. :-)

miracle or genius?

A miraculous level of genius?

To help offset the desire to hoarde, why not set up very inexpensive speculator projects, as has been suggested, to create new businesses and or support existing ones, for example a local farmers market, a local garage.
The Bitcoin Community could draw up a list of worthy causes or projects and people could pledge 1BTC per month to a project.
Maybe even set those businesses up with Bitcoin useability.
So by Pledging 12BTCs, per year, you could help fund 12different projects of your choosing.
Draw up a list of 100 or even 1000 worthy causes.

How about Bitcoiners pledging 1BTC per month or even per year for advertising Bitcoin or even setting up suitable small businesses to accept Bitcoin  payments.
For example a local shop, or small business, maybe even a network of garages could be funded to accept Bitcoin and then offer discounts to people who pay using Bitcoin.

Necromuch?