Bitcoin Forum

Financial Times is reporting:

"Exante predicted that public and media interest would take off when Bitcoins were trading at $100. Managing partner Gatis Eglitis claims they are now getting 20 calls a day from large asset managers looking to invest up to $100m."

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b4be7d8e-9c73-11e2-9a4b-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz2PRJpnZqI

Hope mtgox solves its ddos attacks first.

what did you expect?

I kind of expected this, because I know that even skeptics will come to appreciate how brilliant Bitcoin is when they bother to learn in detail about it.

personally I'm starting to doubt bitcoin abit because it requires someone to pay for Energy forever and in increasing amounts to keep it alive

Is there another currency that doesn't?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones

Also, a currency without  a high level of inflation would do wonders for the enviroment and global warming if accepted globally.

USD doesnt need a permanent inflow of ever increasing Energy to keep it's perceived value alive

Big money finally waking up little by little. Now it is time to buy as fast as possible.

Heading to $150. :)

Yes it does, but that energy is exerted in the form of military spending. "How dare you say our money isn't worth anything! Die!"

lol*

It only needs just a bit more energy than that which would be able to attack it.

My comment has nothing to do with attacking it

I'm saying is that Energy must be input into the Bitcoin system at all times (and in ever-increasing as it grows because people can make a profit mining).

Because of this, someone must pay (Energy, or USD to pay for Energy) this somehow, just to keep Bitcoin blockchain viable

I'm just wondering who's gonna pay for it

Online USD banking doesn't have an Energy sink like Bitcoin does (neither does as any other form of centralized online currency based on whatever)

Good grief.

20 x $5M (nice sounding average?) x 22 (working days in a month) = $2.2 BILLION looking to make its way into the BTC market per MONTH!

$2.2B x 12 = $26.4B

At $90 (ish), we're at a $1B market cap.

Prepare for 1 BTC = $2,376.00 within 12 months.  And this is just with current demand - as the price continues to rise, more and more asset managers with even larger balances will be calling and requesting to invest in BTC.  $2,376 is just the bottom end.  O.O

I don't know about that, those presses are running non-stop, that shit has to be hauled around every day. Banks are converting it to 1s and 0s, then sending that back and forth until they magically have MORE 1s and 0s. Credit card companies are pumping out plastic, mailing them all over, paper transaction records are printed for EVERYONE, every month, and then *those* have to be hauled over the place. The government has to constantly find something to buy to inject money back into the system, be that toxic assets, or funding the "war on terror" which is also a huge waste of resources, etc. etc.

Meanwhile, BTC are created, transferred and maintained all under the same network. As technology advances, the network uses VASTLY less power (relative to work) CPU>GPU>ASIC, and in the future, services emerge which enable users to send bitcoins to each other without a network transaction ever taking place (think of an exchange or payment processor simply changing the balance of two user's accounts, no coins need to move until someone requests payouts).

Thousands of mesh solar mining rigs placed all over the country will become commonplace.

It's always been the time to buy as fast as possible

most USD is created on a bank and is nothing more than a number on a database

now I hope I don't have to explain to you that costs near-zero energy to keepup

BTW Asics are actually going to make the Energy sink of Bitcoin higher, not lower
but keep saying yourself otherwise

also, a payment processor like PayPal for bitcoin defeats the core purpose of bitcoin and will kill it completely

If 150 is broken to the upside, prepare yourselves for a very very wild ride. It is already vertical.

Add up the power for all office buildings of visa, mastercard, swift, the banks, etc. I don't know what this number is but bitcoin has to be tiny compared to that.

Lol, not buying it.  Even if it's true, I hope their response is something like, "Um, no, you definitely do not want to be throwing that kind of money into bitcoin right now."  The project is still not mature enough, IMO.

Please, explain again how banks don't use energy. /Wonka

Well, I think you're wrong on all points. Impressive. I guess my taking the time to explain why is also a total waste of energy.

The hedge funds want to invest, I'm sure, but they need the market cap of bitcoin to be at least 10x what it is now. First, they're not going to want to take more than a 5% stake of the entire net worth of bitcoins. 5% at this point is $75 million or so last I checked. That's reasonable for maybe 1 or 2 hedge funds, but remember, they'd need the liquidity to match. Right now, mtgox does about $20 million in transactions per day. That's way too illiquid for a hedge fund. They like to be able to shift positions really quickly and that's not there right now.

The good news is, there's a natural accelerator once we get to a certain market cap. The bad news is, once they come in, it'll be wilder than it is now.

I guess this is the response of most of them, many are simply too old to understand it if they are not quite tech-oriented.

At least for now.

it is, because you are wrong

I'll believe it when I see it. The logistics would make it extraordinarily difficult.

Any copies of the articles since it is behind the paywall?

Only at current prices.

Google cache is your friend.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Fb4be7d8e-9c73-11e2-9a4b-00144feabdc0.html%23ixzz2PRJpnZqI&rlz=1C1LENN_enUS459US459&aq=f&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Fb4be7d8e-9c73-11e2-9a4b-00144feabdc0.html%23ixzz2PRJpnZqI&aqs=chrome.0.57j58.1284j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Sure the printed paper is energy neutral once printed, however that is so insignificant it shouldn't factor into the assessment. The true energy cost isn't the network, but the economic activity and mal investment that inflation and monetarism require, to sustain growth.

Arguably BTC is fare more sustainable, for an investment of $4500 I can run my mining rigs of 100% renewable solar energy. We can't run today's economy sustainability it needs consumption to constantly accelerate to be sustainable.

Hedge funds get these types of calls day-in, day-out....people looking to enlighten themselves on a new investment. This most certainly does not mean they will be investing (even if they could). Why would a hedge fund chase the price up $10000's (a sure recipe to lose money), which is what would happen if this level of capital was poured into it??? It's impossible.......but it makes for a nice news story. Once they assess the systematic risk, lack of liquidity, lack of transparency (in some aspects), etc. etc., it's highly unlikely that they would decide to chase BTC performance.

Yes. Ironically. When Bitcoin is trading at, say $1000, and it is crazily expensive to load up, then it becomes attractive to huge funds who appreciate the liquidity of the marketplace!

Talk to your kids about extrapolation, before someone else does.

Ever had to move $1 million in printed money?

Me neither.

But it is done daily. In armored trucks. A few men driving huge gas guzzlers all day.

That money then sits in a vault, in a bank with security systems, lights, temperature control, staff, phone systems, computer systems, those workers driving to and from the bank, customers driving to and from the bank, etc...

Or just stay at home, trade BTC online.

Sure, but what I meant was that if you wait any longer train might have already left the station.

yeah new bigger suckers getting on the money train

bitcoin 300$ by april 15?
quite possible

It appears that it is Exante that is dealing with the large loads:

"Exante, a Malta-based asset manager, set up a Bitcoin fund last year that was largely intended as a fun punt. Wealthy investors each put in $1,000 when Bitcoins were trading at $13 on the understanding they could lose the original investment. Exante predicted that public and media interest would take off when Bitcoins were trading at $100. Managing partner Gatis Eglitis claims they are now getting 20 calls a day from large asset managers looking to invest up to $100m."

hope they know what ant hole they are creeping into

Train for freedom is here to stay. Train for storing value is also here to stay.

One train leaves for each digit of the exchange rate tough

Bitcoin as a store of value would make it quite unique - thinking about the consequences we would have a P2P managed violently wealth fund - free market social security for investors.

This could be viable, better than the Canadian CPP investing Billions in Malls in the US during a down turn in the economy.

All it takes is that one big hedge fund manager understand first-mover advantage. After that it will be a wild ride.

If anyone here truly believes that a $100MM inflow into BTC is forthcoming, then you have clearly never been involved in the due diligence process that would precede that type of investment. The liquidity issue is a real problem as is the systematic risk. In theory there are probably several money managers that would consider BTC. But if one scratches the surface, most will quickly see that the logistics would be next to impossible. This market moves erratically at low volumes.....

Hey, I can dream, can't I?   :D


Tradehill dark pools...

What the other money managers will see is that the first-mover makes enormous amount of money. And after that everyone wants to jump to the train and that first mover will make even more money. Just like most of us here.

Makes good sense, owning a big chunk of the total BTC will hamper distribution and hinder growth, the BTC economy needs to grow it's user base before it is a target for big money.

A civilizations capabilities, is according to Kardashev scale, based upon power consumption/production. To reach a lvl 2 civilization we need to pull all the energy from our sun. I doubt Bitcoin is the "expensive" part ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHGFWWOylJM

/energydiscussion

This. From all the stupid arguments against Bitcoin, this is probably the most stupid. Bitcoin is highly economical currency.

Yes, as I've previously discussed on here....Tradehill is trying to address this issue (I'm glad someone is), but this would be difficult to accomplish even with dark pools.

This article ALSO says: "“We are just one scandal away from Bitcoin collapsing entirely.”

Please. It will be $1000 by the 15th.

I'm trying to wrap my head around how someone would think that the USD system doesn't use as much electricity as the bitcoin network..........I mean, HOW DO PEOPLE COME UP WITH THIS?  Do you have to baste your brain in acid first?

I just watched the video above it give a good outlines on where to improve efficiency.
It looks like Paper Money consumes just less than 1% of total GDP energy consumption. (coins obviously more) and HFT's data centers even more.

Bitcoin is less efficient that paper money when:
1) You need to scale the BTC network transactions at its current energy efficiency to that of a big states current transactions to make the claim.
2) You need to assume Moore's law doesn't apply to Bitcoin hashing (Asics won't replace GPU's and Asics won't become more efficient in the future)
3) you have to not account for the future number of transaction per block increasing. (we will always be limited to 250K or whatever it is)
4) you have to amortise your E-waist every year - (my mining rigs only lose fans so my e-waist is a lot less than the example given.)
5) you also need to assume the latent wasted heat is not used by the miners, ( this winter my heating bill was $0 as my rigs kept me warm - I have seen setups where Bitcoin rigs are used to power under flour heating.) so 50% of excess energy is not wasted just repurposed.

ASICs are already working, from at least 3 different manufacturers!
Want to consider the basis for a future generation ASIC which will have extremely low heat loss and low power usage?

Check out Reversible Logic Gates
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5715155&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D5715155

or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing

1-
ASICs are comming, when most mining will be acheived by ASICs and most GPU shutdown, the ammount of energy consumed will be much lower, and as the total mining power will grow, more advanced ASICs will become the norm, so on the long run, I dont think energy is an issue ! 

Also, more an more peoples like me, plan to have a solar/wind powered ASIC farm in the future !

2- On a global point of view, there is no energy crisis at all, there is a common sense crisis..  Solar/wind/thermal and other clean energy represents a lot more capacity than the fossile energy.

We are on a finite planet, and must stop consuming it.. Transition from "burning the planet" to "using radiation from the space" will bring us to the first real civilisation.  Solar, wind, tidal are caused by externals, sun, moon..

Not just Tradehill dark pool, there are many ways to buy offline, actually the "dark" market of bitcoin maybe larger than the "bright" one.

Good luck finding the millions of coins needed for institutional and large hedge fund investments without driving the price to absurd heights.

Facepalm  >:(, Greedy people will KILL Bitcoin adoption rate. Everyone is investing in the currency and no one is investing in adopting the system  >:(.

We needs shops and more development in the Tech..... sigh.....

https://fastcash4bitcoins.com/

This little-known corporation alone has sold 250,000 bitcoins.

But yes, there is no reason the price would not be driven up many-fold. Why should they expect to get them cheap? There are only so many coins, and anyone holding a large percentage of them is a potential market manipulator.

Agreed. 100%. Everyone is so hell-bent on pumping the price (of course, this is the speculation area). The commodity aspect of BTC is a great investment (temporarily) but makes for a horrible currency.

Hence why they would not invest in large numbers. Do you think hedge fund managers are stupid? They typically don't chase performance. They would never indiscriminately start buying Bitcoins into the stratosphere. They already think this is a bubble.....

Sure they may be doing the research now for purchases when a retracement occurs.

Well, it's you who think they're stupid. Mind you, the total amount of fiats now invested into bitcoin is only about 1/10 of what some traders can lose in a single deal. It's only expensive to common folks like you and me.  If bitcoin is a bubble has to ultimately depend on its value, which is not just the total economic activities it's supporting, as many of the people here believe.

Actually, the faster the price rises the more businesses can use those earnings to hire people to develop things further.

I am working on my website myself right now but I am hoping that Bitcoin reaches the point where I can pay freelancers to take over some of the work to make things more robust and more professional.

The higher the price, the more development I can pay for (with the idea that I will get more return).

lophie, the businesses are signing up.  1300 with bitpay last month alone!

http://eon.businesswire.com/news/eon/20130402006123/en/bitcoin/BitPay

FYI I came very close to starting a Bitcoin hedge fund. I put it on hold after the price shot up too fast. I was hoping for gradual returns over 2013 and was aiming it at HNWIs (because I realize that institutions would not invest for several reasons). This parabolic action made me step back.......it's a much different risk/reward ratio at these levels. If it holds here for awhile, I may rethink. It would need to retrace substantially.....

Yes, many many funds are larger than the entire market cap of BTC. That's the problem....I'm not saying it's expensive although this is a relative term. An overpriced piece of bubble gum can be 'expensive'. I'm saying there is not enough liquidity for any serious level of investment. You're acting as if funds would dive in at any price simply because they have the money to lose......No, it doesn't work that way. They must account to investors and have a compelling sales pitch. BTC is a very interesting story, so part of the pitch is there. But one has to think twice before buying into a parabolic move with enormous levels of systematic risk (Mt Gox, DDoS, etc), extremely low levels of liquidity, low transparency, et al.....

I'm bullish BTC; I love the concept. That doesn't mean I would buy hand over fist. Perhaps there are money managers who feel quite differently. I'm not sure BTC can last forever on speculation, but I certainly see the short-term potential for a beautiful bubble. I would rather it gain traction in the marketplace, though.

Thank you.... I forgot that the reason I am not seeing this growth is the fact that I live in a slum Arab country. Guess it is on people like me to spread the coin love to Arabs after all!

That is covered. But still development is really slow. I mean when will we see major breakthoughs like trading across chains and build tools to create customs cryptos. such technologies will facilitate the development of decentralized exchanges and promotes the creation of many block-chain-tech-based software! Now this is how you guarantee Max Keiser estimations of 100k$-1m$ a coin! Don't you agree?

And they've hinted to selling to really only two clients who are buying and holding.

Bitcoin is very useful as a store of value, not just as currency. A store of value which has no central point of failure is very attractive, since if the holding is decentralized enough, no single group can cause a market crash, unlike many other financial instruments. And anyone who has properly done their homework will find it much easier and cheaper to secure, compared with, e.g., gold.

I don't know about hedge-fund managers, but I think bitcoin's bargaining chip value can not be underestimated, most of those in the real world don't want to do away with the government, but can not tolerate it to have its own way with the fiats, with BTC it's just like you have an opposition party to the fiat money, it may never get elected, but is enough of a deterrence that the governments will be forced to think twice before they act, I would be surprised if no one out there is backing bitcoin for this purpose.

And no, I would panic if a single fund suddenly invest 1 billion dollars into bitcoin, but several million dollars here and there, coming from a variety of sources is good, for the fund themselves even if all the money is lost the loss is still tiny, but if it's the opposite the return is significant.

The first step is investing in bitcoins. The second step is investing bitcoin businesses that will make the bitcoins worth more. Bitpay is a great example of this happening.

I have met with plenty of hedge fund managers and other asset managers about bitcoins over the years. A few of my favorites I go out of my way to rub their nose in it by reminding them of how much their investment would be worth if they had put $25k when I first offered them the opportunity. Currently, that figure is around $65m. And I keep giving updates on the state of the network, mining technology, Bitcoin economy, etc.

There is huge money coming into this space of financial innovation. Everyone around the valley knows financial innovation is extremely ripe for making a ton of money. Why do you think Square recently raised another $200m?

There are a ton of Silicon Valley VCs who have bought a ton of bitcoins. With the FinCEN guidance they are now investing or looking to invest in a lot of bitcoin startups and mostly in a very quiet way. I know of at least 5 startups that have received $500k+ funding within the past two months.

Well you need energy to manufacture and transport / carry it.

Precisely. Anyone who knows anything in finance knows the current system is FUBAR. The main issue is there are not enough spaces on the lifeboats so it is like a Mexican standoff. QE was tolerable because one could take advantage of asset bubbles. But now the politicians have completely tipped their hand with the bail-ins like Cyprus.

If just 1% of cash balances currently in offshore tax havens were in bitcoins you are looking at about $28,000 per bitcoin. Gold and bitcoin are both insurance; things you do not need until they are the only thing you need. And keeping 2-4% of one's net worth in insurance is pretty tolerable. And if that is split 3.5% gold and .5% bitcoin .... well, you start to get the picture.

Bitcoin massively changes the rules of the games for all the other assets and what politicians can force on holders of capital. It is the ultimate vote of no-confidence.

Wow. Fascinating insight!


I am sure that $100 was a trigger for a lot of firms to get more involved. Software development by many teams will be underway for all sorts of 3rd-party services (examples above). $100k coins is 10 or even 20 years away, but a vast amount of software will support Bitcoin by then.

Investing in BTC startups and directly into BTC are two very different things. I would love to hear more about VCs investing directly into Bitcoin. That doesn't fit their model (although perhaps they invested a little just to check it out.)

I think it is other way around entirely....VC funds will start by investing in startups well before investing anything substantial directly into Bitcoin.

I do believe the situation is ripe for VC into BTC, albeit still on a very small scale. As far as I know, no institutional money has invested in BTC startups as of yet (but correct if I'm wrong). Only angels, primarily. And nobody is denying that money is flowing into financial innovation overall.

please do not underestimate just how VAST of datacenters and server farms exist within the banking and financial industries within America and the rest of the world. HUGE sums of money are paid to have top level access to downtown manhatten space for the lowest latency stock trading available.

This is true.  Having your trade execute 0.5 ms before a competitor's trade makes all the difference in the world.

With a better technology comes higher hashrate.  Energy consumption stays the same.  You must think on the level of the network as a whole, not from a perspective of a single miner.

You must cost energy to generate coin, that is the vital point of honest money: It must be generated by using energy/labor/value, so that each coin can be generated debt free, the value of each coin has already been paid when the coin is made

And this perfectly match a function telling that the daily coin value tends to be the cap for daily energy cost, if daily energy cost is higher than daily coin value, many miners will stop mining

Fiat money does not require energy to generate, that is the reason it contains no value in principle, it must be backed by a debt to be able to trade other goods/services

If this is true..................... MOTHER OF GOD.

Just sit tight and hold for the longest time.

yes, PP coin, proof of stake based instead of proof of work based

Energy will become cheaper and cheaper though, so I dont think this is a problem :)

Energy is becoming very cheap in terms of Bitcoin.
Interesting that both Oil and Bitcoin peaked at $147.
Now that's 8)

Guys,

I'm reposting my comment from another thread as it is relevant to this thread as well.

If the BTCs never get moved, then they are lost. If they do someday, then it's tax evasion and jail time for you, it's very easy for the authority to set your address on watch, and sends them an alert whenever an activity is detected.

You can always say that someone hacked your account.

That statement is also true for cash. How can you prove that your lost you bag full of dollar bills?

You're thinking too far ahead.

They have to prove you have them first.

Thinking that low volume affects bitcoin negatively is like thinking deflation affects bitcoin negatively.  Bitcoin price could be $100,000 but you can trade satoshis. 1 bitcoin is 1,000,000 satoshis?  It is not the volume of bitcoin traded that is important but the number of people and businesses using bitcoin and also the number of transactions made.

EDIT : forgive the formatting, I meant to reply to agree with Gordonium's statement.

Precisely, I meant that only.

You cannot prove a loss.
You cannot claim insurance.

With stocks you can do one, with art or buildings, you can do the other. This will make many rich people vary of holding wealth in bitcoin.

First, rich people are willing to take some risk. That's not going to be 100%, but it would make sense for someone to put 1-5% in an asset that has a lot of upside potential, despite the potential to get hacked. One million is pocket change for someone with a billion dollars, and is makes a huge impact on the exchange rate.

Second, eventually companies should rise that provide insurance against loss, probably to cover BTC banks with multi-layered, multi-redundency security. But I don't think we've seen anyone who has the reputation outside of Bitcoin to be trusted with that, atm.

Insurance is actually quite simple, the insurance company will only provide insurance for a properly secured address, and demands you to make paper wallets backups and take other precautions beforehand, you can only receive your proceeds if all your precautions fail through force majeure or similar reasons(e.g., paper wallet and cold storage laptop both destroyed in a fire), rather than your own fault.

Good News!  The amount of hashing power (and therefore energy) can drop to 1% of what it is today, and Bitcoin will be fine.  The difficulty adjusts automatically, based on how much hashing power there is.  If the power decreases, difficulty goes down and Bitcoin keeps on trucking.

Bitcoin does not require massive amounts of energy, it's only the market that creates incentives for it.

But low relative volume and hoarding does create a massive barrier to large funds making BTC purchases, which is what were talking about. But, yeah....I do agree that businesses and people transacting with Bitcoin is much more useful than media hype driving speculation.

lol

you got the whole calculation wrong!
it is a couple of low profile, low intellect brokers who can't get the head around it so the keep phoning again and again for more help to understand the miracles of btc and mtgox ...  :D

In fact, much easier to prove stolen bitcoins than with cash. You can easily prove you own the address, all transactions are public, so you can claim with proof exactly the amount stolen. Not possible with most other financial instruments. Even if you lose control (private key) of one address, you can present history of  transactions with your other (controlled) addresses as ownership proof.

If I'm a genuine business accepting bitcoins, paying my taxes and doing due diligence, then my addresses will be public knowledge. I don't understand what you're trying to say.

Imagine an anarcho-capitalist scenario, insurance covers damages and competitive courts act as arbitrers. Even there, I will not be able to genuinely claim I have been hacked as no one can genuinely say that the hackers address is not something I'm controlling with a sock-puppet. In the case of other stores of value, I can.

Completely agree with you. The above comment about "not being able to legally claiming" you lost your btc is as silly as it gets. That's what happens with cash, and bitcoin is cash-like. And BTW: cash is "pseudo-anonymous" too, in case some did not realize this fact ;)

I can't help thinking this Maltese guy Gatis Eglitis is somehow exaggerating the interest he gets. It seems his name is being spread all over the internet, especially following the FT-article. If someone wants to invest in Bitcoin, why buy a fund? Why not just transfer some money into an exchange and buy it yourself. And if you want to invest a $100m and need some help why not get Goldman Sachs to help you instead of some brokerage from Malta set up a few years ago that nobody has heard of before they started selling Bitcoin funds...

Not quite getting the link there, sorry :\

Even he admits to starting it for fun, nothing too serious (with small $1000 subscriptions). He's probably getting a few phone calls simply because it's been in the news lately, but unlikely it they will ever proceed past the preliminaries. The only reason someone would start a fund is because other funds & institutions need a structure in which to invest (most can't invest directly for various reasons). And non-tech savvy individuals might invest simply because the fund offers secure cold storage, they don't want to deal with Gox, and they would at least have some level of recourse.

If a deflationary spiral were to happen, people would survive, eat, and do the essentials, they would stop investing in Oil and resource mining as the demand would drop, the resulting economic slowdown however would be of net benefit to the environment.  

A deflationary currency encourages saving and prevents brainless consumerism, while an inflationary currency encourages the opposite as the currency itself dilutes its value in time.

I have a really hard time believing that.

Take technology. The inflation in CPU power easily outweighs the inflation of the USD, and any phone you could buy today you could buy tomorrow for cheaper. But people buy things today anyhow, because people like things NOW, not in a week from now.

@Kazu

sure that's why an economy will not totally collapse. let's exaggerate the principle to see the environmental benefits :

it is better to go into debt to buy a $300,000 house when we have price inflation in 10 years your house is worth $400,000, you win. (environment suffers more energy and resources went in to building it now.)

with price deflation you would be better off saving now to buy the same house in 10 years for $200,000, you defer consumption the environment is better off.

with a static money supply price deflation is a result of over production and price inflation is a result of under production. deflation slows economic growth, a slowing in the rate of growth is good for the environment.

deferred consumption can be perpetuated in 10 years you may hold out for a $100,000 house equivalent to that of the $300,000 house in an economy with price inflation. this lack of consumption is considered bad in conventional economics.

 ln actually it is the free market investing resources appropriately. with price inflation you may encourage people to build and buy homes they can not afford, they will be repossessed become derelict and ultimately a negative cost on the environment all because they could not predict the future, but using the same greed motive with deflating prices an inability to predict the future does not negatively impact the environment.

I don't think this is an issue. One reason being that highly efficient ASICs will soon be doing all the mining.

Yes.  That, and it is not ever increasing.  Not only will the reward for mining shrink, mining only grows when price grows.

Bump.

It seriously does look that we MAY see quadruple digits before June.

You're severely underestimating what media coverage of breaking the $200 mark is about to do.

especially in so short of a time

And YOU, sir, are severely underestimating the metering power of the MtGox queue!   :D

If you look at the iPhone or the Galaxy S, they're pretty much at fixed prices all the way until a new model comes out, and I suppose so are the iPads etc. Mobile phones are starting to be so powerful and versatile that they don't really need much in the way of new features any more.

Now, people are still going to spend money on a nice phone even if it's not absolutely necessary, but hopefully they will stop to think for a moment if it really makes sense to buy a new phone every year. This can only be a good thing, even if those companies would make less of a profit that way.

The saturation in the phone market is already there. Hardware is dead with perfect Android phones for $125 from China. Only in terms of camera I still see some room for actual progress. I carry a 2010 Android phone and don't feel like I need something newer. I think more people will switch to this approach in the future and really stick to their phone for at least 2-4 years.

Well, as a college student, we tend to go through 2-3 phones a year, mostly because we get drunk and drop them in the keg can.

Never underestimate the power of technology and innovation.

Ok, lets go to wall street and burn all their fuses.
Lets see how well it goes.

Ah, but I have a...feeling Bitcoins are about to become a lot easier for people to purchase.

A feeling, eh?  What does that feeling involve, exactly?