Relax, bitcoin is running just fine.  Maybe $200 to $240 is the natural price range for the next few years.  Few people have a problem with that, except fly by night speculators who want the price to double every few weeks.

Every opposition party is full of hubris and bluster, attacking the current government as being completely incompetent while promising that only they can bring salvation and lead the country to a better tomorrow.  Then the opposition becomes the ruling party and they discover talk is cheap.  Cycle repeats.

Well, confiscating 'excess funds' from local governments by the central bank sounds a little bit like desperation to me.  What's next?  Telling private citizens to move their 'excess cash' to the central bank too?  Sooner or later they'll run out of funds to temporarily requisition and send to Germany and France.

Building the Euro system without also planning for what happens when a country would run foul of the rules was a terrible mistake.  It was a system built without enough foresight.  It's like fission nuclear reactor engineers.  Great design and engineering, but no one thought about how a melted down reactor core could be cleaned up.  Contained, yes, but not actually removed and made safe.  Everyone just assumed it wouldn't ever happen.

The one thing I'm confident about is that governments will do everything in their power to kick any contagion down the road to the next government or generation of taxpayers.  We have been on the 'real soon now' brink with Greece for almost four years now.  It's like waiting for the Japanese economy to wilt under massive government deficit spending.  Everyone knows it's coming, we have been waiting for a decade or more, but will continue to wait...

Unfortunately bitcoin doesn't solve the problem of who controls the money. 

There's no central issuing authority so I'm not talking about the traditional form of currency control, but the control that comes from the fact that anyone adopting bitcoin today probably has to buy it from an existing bitcoin holder.  Creating your own is barely economical for people in China with access to some of the world's cheapest and most polluting energy sources.  It's no longer a currency that anyone with some knowledge and a little bit of cash can have a go at generating and not lose value overall in the process.

I believe the bitcoin price mania that occurred in mid/late 2013 was stifled by the simple fact that people began to look at one bitcoin and wonder why it should be worth more than the other traditional and ancient form of currency, one troy ounce of gold.  I know we can shift decimal places, use mBTC and declare the above statement doesn't matter, but it's impossible to hide from the maths.

Greece will not actually default.  There's too much to lose for German, French, Austrian, and other banks for that to happen.  What may occur instead is a 'haircut' or 'easing' or some other weak weasel word so that credit default swaps are not triggered.  It won't be a default but a 'financial restructuring', or a 'temporary fiscal moderation'. 

The rest of Europe is happy to keep helping Greece pay its debt by driving Greece further into debt.  If it wasn't so insane it would be funny.

Another day, another scammer trying desperately to run a scam.  The major problem with bitcoin is that it's a scammer's delight.  A honey pot for fraud.  If the OP actually wants to increase the value of bitcoins then how about starting a business that provides real value?

The exchange rate is so boring because we don't have MtGox's fake trades pushing the price up. 

Boring is good

If a commodity/currency is rising rapidly in price against another popular benchmark (like the US dollar) then holders of that commodity/currency would be utterly stupid to spend or sell.  Just wait until it doubles in price, again!

'Exciting' price movements are only good for speculators.  Everyone just trying to conduct business in bitcoins stays away.

A country that has crippling problems paying back debts despite years of depression is going to sink money into an internet commodity?  I don't know which crowd would be larger in front of Greece's parliament: the lynch mob or the people coming to see a fantastic clown show.

My prediction is sometime before 28 February both sides will... kick the can down the road and agree to continue talking with a new deadline.  When that deadline looms they'll agree on a new deadline.

Germany and France can't let Greece go.  If they do then Portugal and Spain will come knocking asking for a better deal, and Ireland will be keen to follow with Italy looking on intently. 

Greece will not quit the Euro by 28 February.

People keep repeating the mantra "don't keep your bitcoins anywhere but in your own wallet".  It's almost blaming the victim for being so careless about who they trust.  How do these people expect bitcoin commerce to work if businesses are always meant to be fearful of someone taking down an exchange?  How many businesses function in a world where Mastercard, Visa, PayPal, etc could at any moment lose all customer funds?

How is an exchange like bitfinex meant to be funded if no one is ever to keep bitcoins on there to fund leveraged positions and earn interest? 

I hope the speculation (let's face it, it wasn't an investment) pays off for the OP so that he at least gets his money back.  Otherwise it's like Jack trading a valuable cow for a bunch of beans.  Except in this story the beans are sterile and there's no magic sky giant with loads of gold.

I would bet no actual bitcoins have been lost or made their way into criminal hands.  What we're looking at here is a good old fashioned pyramid scheme that attracted suckers because they slapped bitcoin on the box.

It does harm the reputation of bitcoin as more people will now associate "bitcoin" with "scam" and it may attract unwelcome Chinese government regulation, but no, this is not a Gox event.  Yes, there are plenty of scams involving yuan, dollars, euros etc.  The problem bitcoin has is the brand is so strongly associated with such problems.

+99 for Nichijou reference

The days of mining are over.  Nobody does it any more.

There is no shortage of stupid people on this planet.  More are joining their ranks every day.

When someone points out a scam is a ponzi in the investment forum, the usual reply is "yes I know it's a scam, but I will get out before it collapses and make money!"  Makes me want to roll up in a ball and cry.  The stupidity, it hurts so much.

What we really need to know is who will be the next MtGox/Willy/Markus.  Clearly that was responsible for the mega $1200 2013 bubble, with speculators piling in to follow the momentum.  I bet Elliot Waves can't predict when we'll next see alleged fraud by an exchange.

Past a certain point every one of life's needs and wants are fulfilled.  That's when people start going silly buying their fifth Ferrari, competing with friends on who can get the biggest diamond, and how many villas they have that never get used.

The one thing they can't buy is more life.  Not even Steve Jobs, with billions of dollars to spend on the finest doctors and medicines on the planet, could live to a ripe old age of 60.

We've seen this before, but on a smaller scale in 2011.  Bitcoin's value collapsed and miners pulled out.  Difficulty took longer to adjust than usual but the network stayed up and bitcoin didn't collapse.  I expect any similar wind down in 2015 to be no different.  Bitcoin's network is safe even if the price falls to US$50.

Where are the millionaires?  Some have already been burnt by bitcoin, while others who are aware of bitcoin are sitting on the sidelines waiting to see what will happen.

I do know a millionaire and his opinion of bitcoin is pretty low simply because his son was burnt by a BFL purchase gone bad.  While bitcoin itself is fine it does seem to attract more than its fair share of scammers and thieves.  It's funny how people who get scammed using USD$ or Euros don't blame the currency for the scam, yet that's what often happens with bitcoin. 

It's an easy, safe bet.  No will win.  Problem is, do you trust the site to survive until 2016 and actually pay out?  I've placed winning bets on another site before and was lucky to get paid out before, months later, the site did what bitcoin sites do best: disappear with everyone's money.