21,000,000:1.  I should be able to buy all potential bitcoins with a single bitcoin deposit.

Relatedly, this is the coolest bitcoin infographic I've seen:

I intended to buy today, but I ended up getting a bunch of work and didn't have time to deposit my money.  I'm hoping to complete the bitinstant transaction tomorrow.  I had around 180 bitcoins in bitcoinica, and though I'm hoping they find their way back to me, I'm going to replace them in the meantime.

<looks at bollinger width>

It's a start, but, yes, I agree that we need something more than merely their word.

Probably a good time to buy on Gox, then.

Ok little article.  Little late to the party and the author appears not to have done the deepest research - "Bitcoin was designed and created by an anonymous Japanese computer science student..." and "[Bitcoin] has a ledger that deducts from one account to another, following the transaction trails or “nodes,” but these nodes are completely anonymous".  But, hey, it's something.

I bought back.  It wasn't under $5, and it was a little while ago.  Also, I don't have a single coin in any of the exchanges as of this morning. 

Still don't think we're going to the moon, or even out of earth's atmosphere, and moving my coins out of exchanges is for security more than anything else.

You rang?..

I think things are moving in this direction.

Thanks, Stephen.

+1 for Armory.

Isn't that the same guy who use to post bitcoin TA reports on YouTube?  I think he even posted his own live commentary on the MtGox flashcrash as it happened.

Yeah, It's difficult for me to pinpoint exactly how I feel about this complaint.  On the one hand, I understand it, and I think it's a real puzzler how large institutional investors will ever get involved given that there is no floor under bitcoin, as you put it.  But, at the same time, I want to respond by saying, yes, that's right, there is no floor, no ultimate support...other than the support of those using bitcoin.

Now, is that enough to satisfy institutional investors?  I really can't say.  Probably not.  But the sense I'm getting about this project now is that there's a good chance that, by and by, the strength of the support of bitcoins users will be sufficient to satisfy the demands of such investors.  I suspect it will take a while for this trust to emerge, but I think there's a decent enough chance that it does emerge in a very organic way.  And like biological grown, once a certain base has been achieved, growth beyond that can happen surprisingly quickly.  So, there's a part of me that's resistant to even trying to prop bitcoin up in the way you describe, and instead I'm hopeful that the project sort of organizes and shapes itself out of chaos.  But, maybe that's far too idealistic a thought, which, I think, is something you're wanting to address.

I agree.  I'm sure I'm over-projecting my own experiences onto the community, but it often seems like we're all sort of learning and changing together as a group and it's exciting to watch and be a part of.  For example, it seems like in the beginning we were all amazed at how we could be our own bank, then we all sort of got lazy and wanted the convenience of a central authority.  I think there was also some fear of the whole thing coming undone and so keeping a lot on an exchange could give you the chance to get some cash out on the way to the bottom.  Now, hack after hack, it's sinking in that a large part of bitcoins' inherent value is that individuals can secure it themselves - and secure it really, really well; while at the same time it can be fairly easy to bring some of your own secure storage and make, for example, an international purchase.  Very cool!  That the price has been relatively stable has, I think, helped nudge us away from depending on central authorities as a hedge against failure.  Again, I'm probably describing myself more than the community as a whole, but I've got this feeling that I'm not alone...

Sure there's a reason to assume that - to make it seem like demand is really high.

Maybe I should have said "operating costs"..?  What I've suggested in the past, and what I'm suggesting here now, is that FPGAs and ASIC miners will push GPU miners out leaving only miners whose operating costs are low.  To cover their day to day operating costs they'll compete with each other to sell what they produce, and if demand doesn't pick up, they're competition to pay their day to day costs will push the price down.

Of course, you could look at it the other way round.  Because the costs of entering the market as a miner will be higher, they'll all eat their day to day costs to an extent, and save most of what they produce on the speculation that at some future date the price will be much higher and they can use a portion of their saved production to pay off all the remaining initial investment.  If enough of them do this, supply could dry up enough that even current demand pushes the price up.

Yes, the bitcoinica incident has re-awakened that sentiment in me.  It's something that all the trading and shorting and all that had drowned out.  It feels really good to be storing bitcoins myself again, and has helped re-ignite the original excitement I felt about this project.

I guess I should have added that in addition to saving and using bitcoins, I'm also accumulating more.  Though, like you, I regret not doing this more over the past few months.  For a while I was accumulating some from buying back after sells I had made since the $7.2x top, but I hadn't put much new money in until a few weeks ago and I plan to buy some more in the coming days.  I definitely feel better now that my bitcoins are out of the exchanges and in offline and physically backed up wallets.  I was stung a little from this bitcoinica debacle, but thankfully I had enough good judgement to not put very much in there, though it'd be nice to get it back.

Thank pirate for the stability.