Good points.

I'm hopeful that Keiser will help build a bridge between the precious metals camp and the Bitcoin camp. There is no need for antagonism between the two - precious metals and Bitcoin complement each other beautifully, each filling the weaknesses of the other.

Some people say that gold tends to be the best form of money.
Others say that gold is the ONLY real form of money.

The former group will be much more open to Bitcoin - as the new market entrant doesn't preclude their strongly-held beliefs. The latter group might never give Bitcoin a chance, unfortunately.  Interestingly, those who understand WHY gold is a great form of money should be able to figure out the allure of Bitcoin. The specific properties to each make them both excellent money - one sitting in your vault in the physical world, the other sitting in your computer in the digital world.

And in both cases, far better and more moral than paper certificates inscribed with the fiat stamp of government and backed by the threat of violence.

That was pretty funny =)  Yeah we'll see what happens when people realize bubbles can occur in two directions...

Nagle - clearly you know what you're talking about. So, why are you not shorting tens of thousands of bitcoins? My goodness if it falls to zero you'll be rich!

So why not?

One of the many wonderful advantages of a distributed payment system. Every time something like that happens, the fundamental value of Bitcoin rises.

enmaku - well said and nicely presented.

You're not the only one =)  I'm not going anywhere. The spot price isn't much of a concern for me, though it always sucks to have my bitcoinica margin liquidated 

What are you talking about?  Bitcoin works beautifully. The core client software is a drag with the block downloads, etc., but normal common users shouldn't be messing with that anyway. With an instawallet account and some btc, the payment system works better than anything else on earth. I just got paid from a guy in Australia. Zero fees. Zero problems. Instant transfer.

Bitcoin has problems of adoption, reputation, and trust... but as a technical system it is remarkable, smooth, and elegant.

My miners are BTCGuild are running fine right now

It's back up.

Buy and sell orders are still occurring, nothing looks fishy on that side.

Here is a fun list of things that also died along with Bitcoin...

http://technologizer.com/2010/08/18/the-tragic-death-of-practically-everything/

Yeah Steve I think you are correct.

Think of it like this with a commodity currency - when the price falls, money is "cheap" and goods are "expensive." It means buy money and don't buy goods... aka save instead of spend.  When the price rises, money is "expensive" and goods are "cheap."  So, go out and spend more on goods. You can see both are self-corrective phenomenons (this is also why the "deflation death spiral" is a fallacy).

The dynamic gets very clear when you consider money as only one of many available commodities. Buy things when they're cheap, sell them when they're expensive. Works for money the same as any other good in an economy where the money supply is not centrally-planned.

Crypto X Change, which launches in a week or so, is doing precisely this.

Touche... that was a good joke =)

Ponder on those two statements for a while, Rarity. Many of the 9/11 hijackers were motivated by the fact that US military forces had blown up their family members.

Why is it okay for you to go abroad killing innocent people to avenge your family, but it is not okay for a Muslim to do the same?

3,000 innocent Americans were killed in the 9/11 attack. Tens of thousands of innocent Muslims have been killed in retribution.

Perhaps you'll realize some day that murdering a civilian is never okay, regardless of the skin color of the murderer.

I mentioned only one quick reference to politics in that post... the rest was economic reasoning (which you're welcome to refute). Further, I'm not "injecting" anything into any software. My comments derive from what Bitcoin is, but Bitcoin isn't derived from my comments.

The manner in which you phrase that indicates you believe price stability comes from "effective central control."  On the contrary, "price stability" is a natural occurrence in any market that is left alone to mature.

It is true that a currency (and those using it) benefit from price stability. But if such stability is "crafted" or "managed" to occur, then it is counter-productive and will likely lead to ruin.

Bitcoin - left alone - will find price stability. Any attempt to force it is hubris and will cause market distortions.

The terrorists who blew up the Twin Towers are at fault for their actions. The US Government which has been occupying, invading, and interfering in the Middle East for decades prior to 2001 is at fault for its actions.

You seem to think this conflict started ten years ago... the fact is that bin Laden attacked the US specifically because he opposed US actions in the Middle East. Read bin Laden's letter which was released shortly after the attack. Or do you only read the information the US officially puts out?

It is the US Government's policy which led to the attacks in 2001. The lesson we learned was, interfere even further in the Middle East, and waste trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives in the process.

And you, Rarity, want to steal my money to pay for that. Pretty uncivil of you.

Bitcoin is already competing with Paypal. Work that I used to do in return for payment via Paypal is now done for Bitcoin. Similarly, I tend to pay colleagues in Bitcoin now instead of Paypal.

Is it widespread yet? No, but give it time.

Usually hypocrisy is more effectively veiled.

Passions run high on the forum, because it's dealing with something quite remarkable. I too wish people would be more civil and professional, but most people on the forum are valuable contributors.