I found that explanation very helpful too.

Question. If someone has lots of mBTC "1000 pennies" and manages to send them all as 10 BTC (perhaps with fees). Then presumably the 10 BTC are now at one address with the multiple-outputs problem gone away.

The world fiat monetary base (M0) which is cash and cash equivalents is in the region of $10 trillion.
Think of cash as payments which are the end-point extinguishing a transaction. (If you pay on credit card then you just open up a new transaction, a debt, as the purchase is made, so credit money is not M0).

If Bitcoin grew to supersede nearly all fiat (which is feasible given its huge inherent advantages), and this takes place when about 15 million BTC have been created,
 then the maximum price for a bitcoin would be in the region of $700,000 each in 2013 dollars.

Considering that a currency war is hotting up then there may be a lot of printing in the next few years, so perhaps $1 million per BTC is a round number to keep in mind.

This is not considering the impact of the FRB system likely disappearing, and a huge percentage of the $1000 trillion world derivatives markets, which would have a hard time existing in a stable monetary base system. The benefits are, according to Austrian economics, very little in the way of booms and busts.

I believe a significant amount of speculation is recognition that there is a possibility this may all happen.

If someone is in touch with them perhaps they can point out that one of the first Bitcoin transactions was 10,000 BTC to buy a pizza.
Four years later and the same amount would buy the average US house!

Perhaps they can also point out that in 1996 few people had a cell-phone. Four years later every man and his dog had one.

Also that in 2001 Wikipedia was just starting. After four years it was rivaling the 200 year old Britannia, and has now long surpassed it.

This is what happens when disruptive technology hits the road. They need to reconsider their view about Bitcoin and get ahead of the curve.

I'm a bitcoin-bull like you, but one must not lose perspective. Anyone who bought gold at the 1980 peak has only just got their money back, in inflation adjusted terms, 32 years later! Maybe gold has languished for the reason that bitcoin has so much potential. Gold is useless for remote payments - which is a massive part of the modern world economy.

I don't understand that. 

Prompting Wikipedia to take bitcoin helps them as well as the btc community.
Many people do not donate to WP because of the hassles of converting to USD. That is why US citizens make the majority of donations to WP even though they are a minority of its user-base.

It is good to know that you still have a healthy holding.
I only found out about bitcoin in Dec 2012. It was Christmas eve and I was looking for a card and saw a mag with a bitcoin on the cover. Didn't even buy it, just made a mental note to research it. Fortunately I was able to load up in early Jan.

There will come a time (which might already be here) where early adopters who got in at a low average price, will never improve on that average price. Like those who bought Apple shares at $20. So the only continuing options are to just sit back and enjoy the ride, or to increase one's holding during significant dips.

That seems crazy. Is there a reason?

Stephen, that's a very interesting spreadsheet.

It can be extended further by adding a new column which is:  log10 (difficulty / mtgox price)
Plot this on a line graph and it can be seen that there is a steady increase in profitability of mining over time. Despite the increasing difficulty the BTC price more than makes up for it. This is very good for the future of bitcoin.

Graet's anecdotal evidence is supportive.

+1000

Fill in the blank...

Email                   is to    Snail mail
World Wide Web   is to    Bricks and Mortar shops
Bitcoin                 is to    ..............

I can't understand anyone who follows this forum and does not have at least 10% of their spare/investment money in a bitcoin holding.
If it blows up, unfortunate, sad. If it succeeds it will kill most of the world's fiat. Hello long and happy retirement.

This massive balance sheet is not itself a problem so much as a billboard showing what a disastrous state the financial system is in.
Most of that money has been spent buying financial toxic waste i.e. debts owed to banks (and pretend banks - Golden Sacks) by borrowers which should be defaulting, to cleanse the system. It is only debt defaults that eliminate credit-based money and reduces the risk of systemic failure or eventual hyperinflation.

Does anyone on the forum know anyone in the committee that runs Wikipedia?

If so, maybe they could ask that bitcoin be accepted for donations...

The Bitcoin price is stair-casing up, which is a strong bullish trend. The bears are also getting exhausted trying to pick the top for selling.

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg30zigHourlyztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv

See Jan 25, Feb 2 and Feb 10. Each time the sell-off is weaker and weaker.

The (short-term) end to the stair-case will be a blow-off top, where the price spikes 2 or 3 dollars in a day and retreats. There was a small such top on Jan 25 when it went from $19 to $19.75 very quickly and was kicked back down straightaway. The bears saw it and sold off hard in a bout of profit-taking which had the price back to around $15.80.

From the current price of $24, a top would be signalled by a sudden spike into the high-20s and retreat. In the event of massive profit-taking the price could retrace to $21 as this seems the next strongest support level.

Any thoughts?

Was looking at this on bitcoincharts (http://bitcoincharts.com/charts)

Blocks   220633
Total BTC   10.766M
 
Difficulty   3275465
Estimated   3458370 in 1127 blks
 
Network total   29.435 Thash/s
Blocks/hour   7.53 / 478 s

Is it a record projected difficulty?

Breaking the silver price will blind-side many PM bugs who have, until now, seen only metals as an alternative to collapsing fiat.

IMHO there are potentially several million savers and investors who will suddenly pay attention to bitcoin, learning what it is, and what it's doing. Some will realize that they need a percentage of their portfolio in this new technology. That *some* will be enough to make major waves in the BTC price...

Parity with the silver price will bring a lot of headlines and new attention.
If it gets there it may well retrace but not for long, and not below $20

My theory is that Adam was the last person to sell all his coins after the 2011 crash, and made the low $1.994 print.

Still wants the price to come back to $1 so he can load up and double his money! 

Only products can buy products. The whole point of money is a medium of exchange between products (labor, food, TVs). Money has to be a store of value in order to be used later to buy a product. Currency is a structured form of money as it also needs to be a unit of account.

If the value of bitcoin kept falling it would be as popular as the Zimbabwean dollar, merchants would reject it.

This price rise is good for bitcoin because merchant websites will see it is a strong currency and will be more tempted to accept it for goods. The hoarding/saving/investing is also healthy. The market needs to be trusted. Everyone will spend some of their hoarded bitcoins at some point in the future.

In my example I assumed that the bank could only make one loan  - because otherwise it would breach capital adequacy (reserve lending) limits. Hence the interest rate determines who gets the loan.

Very low official interest rates exist now in the US, Eurozone, UK and Japan. This is because these economies have all hit a wall with the amount of serviceable private sector debt, and now public sector debt. Consumers and households are so tapped out that governments have slashed interest rates as a desperate measure to encourage the multi-decade debt-binge to extend just a bit more, or at least another electoral cycle. They want to prop up asset prices like houses and the share markets to maintain the "wealth effect". These economies are debt addicted because that it the only way to maintain GDP levels and living standards when the manufacturing base has gone out the window, labor is globalized, and too many people are dependent upon entitlements (ostensibly from tax receipts).

Inflation in money supply comes from loans from banks.  In theory lower interest rates cause inflation because it should cause more loans. But the public have lost appetite for loans and want to tighten ship. So the money from lending is not even making up for the (credit) money destroyed by debt defaults. So the gap is filled by quantitative easing, money printing.

This is mixing several issues; the pros and cons of different monetary systems, and where money comes from in fractional reserve lending. Whatever the case (except during extreme hyperinflation) money always limited, so has always has "scarcity" which means it can be used as a store of value to exchange products (the reason it exists).

Just considering an example of a bank with money to lend and just 2 customers. It will only lend to cover costs, risks and make a profit. You want to borrow $1000 and so do I. The bank determines it needs to lend at a minimum of 4% before it makes a profit. Because I will will pay 10% and you only 8% then this (small) market influences the bank's decision, assuming the same duration of the loan and same credit-worthiness of the prospective borrowers, then the bank will want to lend to me as you will pay less for their money.

Central bank manipulation screws this market because the CB may want the official rate at 2% (in order that the government can borrow cheaply). There are many problems arising, but one is that it severely distorts market perception.