Bitcoin is an asset, not money. The majority of people who sell things in bitcoin does it with the intent of exchanging it to fiat and that results in bigger costs to the buyer who has a disincentive to transact directly in the "currency".

I think of bitcoin like gold, a novel speculative asset that holds value because people trust in it. It doesn't have the shiny factor gold has but it has the nerdy one instead. It also has some real world usage where the current system fails, the biggest one in my opinion is for international remittances though this is threatened by increasing transaction costs.

It might change which people represent the 1% but if you check the top bitcoin addresses you will see all the money is concentrated at the top as well.

I also disagree that bitcoin is treated hostile, I have found rich people overwhelmingly like the idea of bitcoin, even banks do. I think why people mistakenly think the establishment is hostile against bitcoin is due to the lack of regulation on this new type of currency/asset. That is quickly changing though and both countries and banks are lining up to accept it in a more regulated manner.

There are also a lot of people in the 1% already that have big bitcoin holdings and many more that have diversified at least small portions of their portfolio into it. There is a reason why the notion of an ETF would bring so much money into bitcoin, because even pension funds would be able to invest in it.

I am bullish on the prospects for bitcoin but for different reasons than you, I think it has been accepted by the establishment so that's why I think it will continue to grow.

I think the current pump is a natural reaction to what I mentioned above and the real bubble is yet to come.

I agree with you on silver but not because of more supporters but because it has a much wider industrial use supporting current prices than gold has. I think golds value is almost entirely speculative whereas silver is almost entirely supported even at current prices by its industrial use. I hold some gold but mostly silver also.

Similarly with bitcoin I find it has a speculative value whereas many altcoins have real world uses so I think of the alts like I do silver, they are supported by their real use cases whereas bitcoin is a speculative asset like gold. That's not to say I'm bear on bitcoin or gold just that I believe it has less economics supporting it than many altcoins do.

Thank you for the opportunity to let everyone participate in your bounties, I will try out this game and sign up for the newsletter.

Good luck on the ICO rustbits.

The time of sub 1000$ bitcoin is for the history books and we aren't long past the time to ask if we will ever see sub 2000$ bitcoins but we are still some way away from that. The current growth of bitcoin has been fast but nothing like the speed during parabolic rises of the past and so crashes will be much more limited and never go past 1k$.

Every time I gamble a sum that is actually important to me, I feel like I'm going to lose so I get a hopeless feeling but when I actually win I get a huge rush which makes me feel like the happiest person on earth. I guess the feeling is kind of similar to what you get with extreme sports.

In other words take advantage of the FOMO effect.