To properly manipulate bitcoins lower they have to,

- get some selected new forum disinfo agents to spread fud about the end of bitcoins
- dump a huge wad of bitcoins onto a thin volume market preferably in some antisocial time so the price falls,
- wait for the weak hands to sell a bunch of their own coins thus letting price fall further in a waterfall decline
- quietly buy back the bitcoins you sold at a lower price taking care not to let the price rise too much
- new forum members continue spreading fud
- repeat

Its a bit like deciding when to buy a new computer.

If you wait another year you'll get a better technology for a lower price, so if waiting for the best computer to come on the market was the only factor you might never buy one because you'll always be waiting for a better one to come into your price range.

But the other factor is your desire not to wait because you need one now, so even though you could wait
for a better one you decide to buy one now.

 With bitcoins they may gain in value if you leave them (not guaranteed even though it is deflationary) but you might decide now is the time I need to buy a lawnmower or whatever

Since the federal reserve was established 100 years ago, the US dollar has devalued by 98%

Very sexy !!!!

I can plot pitchforks on my charts finally!

Anyone know if you can have a log price scale ?

That seems to me to help ripple but actually have potential negative impact on bitcoins. Imagine a scenario where the amount of 'bitcoin' transactions happening on ripple is bigger than that on the bitcoin network. In effect a large slice of the bitcoin economy has been chopped away and absorbed by a centrally controlled debt based system. If you think ripple will end up becoming open source and decentralized you have more faith than me.   

The best thing about bitcoins are the hard limits, you know the quantity, you know when it has been verified, you can inspect the blockchain, its all out there in the open. And you hold the actual asset. If a large part of the economy has disappeared off to ripple suddenly you dont really know much anymore.  Bitcoin has been opened up to manipulation. Bitcoins throne will have been swiped from under its feet.

Have to say I'm slightly alarmed by the number of people who think ripple will help the bitcoin economy!!!! (At the time of posting 32%) Does fiat money help gold and siver? no. exactly.

Someone please explain to me how it helps bitcoin  

This is my take http://afbitcoins.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/ripples-a-debt-based-centrally-controlled-monetary-system/

cheers, i don't have a bitstamp account but will see if i can create one.

where can you exchange? I have some vastly overvalued XRP i want to swap for bitcoins.

I tend to use the price quoted on MtGox to be a good representation of the entire bitcoin economy. Maybe the day is coming that we need a new way of determining the overall market price. If people are leaving MtGox but stil actively buying and selling bitcoins by other means then thats a very healthy thing.

Its a nice chart, we need a pretty steep and sudden rise to get back to the trendline though which doesnt look like itll happen to me. Enthusiasm has been damped a fair bit by the big price drop.

Awesome!

Very neat app, liking the bigger swings

Quite a sober anaylsis, you probably right that fractional reserve lending with bitcoin is inevitable, but the thought of it makes me want to paint my face blue and run around shouting 'Freeeedom!!!'

Great work! One thing I noticed is the needle doesn't actually move much and stays in the stable region all the time. Could it be calibrated to exaggerate the swing?

For example if you look at the time period during the run up to the all time price peak the needle only moves as far as near the top of stable. similarly if you look at the time period of the steep price drop after that, the needle points to the lower end of stable. If those extremes aren't bullish and bearish then I don't know what is!

But it must be open, the company is called OpenCoin 

Ripples can be shut down but what if the authorities actually embrace it and rather than shut it down promote in the media take control of it, and use it as the basis for a centrally controlled bank controlled debt based monetary system?

I say Ripples will try and eat bitcoins liver but what do you think

The poor sods who are selling their jewelry at 'cash for gold' shops might not be getting quite that high a markup.

I'm hedging my bets, gold, silver and bitcoins. Maybe I should hold some litecoins too? too paranoid for ripples though lol

Ah well, I'd say that if the market was free and allowed to find an honest value, almost any gold jewelry could come back onto the market. Physical gold is in strong hands at todays artificially low prices, much of that won't be coming back any time soon.

So what industrial processes use up 30% of the gold? You got my curiosity there.   

hehe you must have got in your reply just before i deleted it. (because i didn't want to sound like i was laboring the point). But thats cool it was a pretty good post  

Very true about china, but then again, true of almost any state, including in the west.