It isn't probable that the increased market cap will create stability. It will only attract players with deeper pockets and better knowledge on how to manipulate the market. The problem is that the main attraction towards bitcoin is speculation, so there will always be volatility, that is the outcome of speculative play. Right now we have these "whales" who play with millions of dollars. But in the future, we would have large institution playing the same game but only with billions and also with better ability to understand market manipulation.
Only way to lose this instability is for it to be unattractive for speculative play.

While I agree that stable deflation (1% year) could be done without heavy drawbacks, then it's still not as efficient as with stable inflation. (with bitcoin there is no stability with deflation either). In the modern world, the major powers are in a constant economic battle with each other. If deflation would be more efficient, then you could be sure that they would adopt it just to have an edge over their competition. The world isn't stupid and bitcointalk isn't the community of tortured geniuses, who are the only ones who know how to do it right.
Without trust, bitcoin will just die. Trust is the main thing that makes people put their wealth into bitcoin. Without trust there will be no wealth in bitcoin, and it will be just a fun innovative play money.

Stable inflation didn't cause the financial problems that we see in US. The problem is not in the school of thought, but in lose management principles and corruption. Greenspan was the one who started promoting that everyone should just trust the private sector of finance, without any regulation or supervision. And he was the one who promoted the idea that the private sector of finance should have safety-nets for all the risks it took. These management principles created a careless environment, where certain privileged people could only win even if they lost. And all of course at the expense of everyone else.

It's funny to read some of the posts here, who are anti-Fed and pro-ultra liberal at the same time. The ultra liberal principles allowed all the crooks to leech on everyone else, because there were no rules why they shouldn't do this. This is the same reason that has ruined any trust towards the bitcoin market system. Most of the community were sheep who thought that the free market will take care of everything, just so they could justify their passiveness. But the free market can't handle corruption, and if there isn't enough supervision and regulations then you can be sure that crooks will exploit the free market in their favor.

It's because price stability is THE quality aspect of every currency. Low quality currencies are those of high volatility.
The reason is simple, you can't use low quality currencies to do business. When your company gets billed X amount of bitcoins, but you have a 3 weeks to pay that bill, then it's a lottery if that bill increases in value or decreases. You can't run a business where most of the liquid asset prognosis are based on a lottery.

Currency stability is created by complex calculations, based on the relation of current available resources and money in circulation. This calculation will decide if it's necessary to add or remove money from the circulation, so available resources and circulating money is in constant balance. The better the balance is kept, the higher is the currencies quality and more stable the prices.
Bitcoin has a fixed coin supply, without any consideration given to available resources. Bitcoin can never be a quality currency because it just lacks the necessary complexity to keep the balance. If anyone wants to do business with bitcoin, then it's only possible through services like Bitpay, who offer fiat stability to support bitcoin.
There is a chance that we will see a new open sourced monetary system in the future, that could handle all the necessary complexities to create an real quality transparent currency. I certainly hope we do. But right now, bitcoin seems like a quality currency only to those, who have learned about finance from youtube videos.

Yes, he must be a self-destructive lunatic, because there is no way that the price is going down more then that.
No way I tell you... No way! No..no..no..nonononononono noooooooo!

fonzie brought shame to bears everywhere by buying this early

Flash crashes like these aren't accidents by incompetent whales. Most of the coins will be sold to own buy orders and the main objective is to create a panic inducing show. The resulting panic will allow you to buy up a lot of coins with a cheap price. Outcome: Profit

The price is falling!! ... quick.. someone.. make couple of graphs and draw lines on it... that will stop it!

We'll see.. we'll see.

No, I really don't. I haven't met many people that aren't smarter then me in some subject. People are just different kinds of smart, so it expresses differently.

I think that if someone could effectively market bitcoin in south- and central-America, then we could really get 1BTC 10,000$+. I think that this region would be the biggest and most suitable market yet. What troubles me, is that I see no progress of this development. I think that with proper contacts and funding you could make bitcoin very popular there. I was certain during December that bitcoin will enter south-America in spring, but will of development I have began to loose faith for future potential. Without conquering new ground, bitcoin will just slowly die without any new booms.

I haven't thought about Middle East because I think that using Bitcoin will create confusion on it's suitability with Sharia.
But give me Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina and Colombia and I'll start posting train pics.

I have no beef with btctalk and I think that their ban was justified. It was just an unfortunate outcome of me not responding well to threats.
I'm hardly championing the current market conditions. My tactic is simple, but has proven itself effective - sit in fiat and only jump in, if there is a strong reason to jump in and be ready to jump out when the time is right. This is the nature of this current market - rises are fast but weak and temporal. There needs to be some market development to raise new trust before this bear market is over. You can't just draw a line and expect that everything will be good because last years pattern showed that it was good. Last years patterns are caused by real reasons, not the other way around.
Bitcoin biggest holders (in all probability the exchanges), should unite to create an more trustworthy market system, with constant internal audits and transparency to the public. Only then would smart investors feel safer investing back into crypto. You can't just draw a line and expect that the investors will believe it without reason, only sheep follow these meaningless lines.

My previous username got banned for disagreements with an certain individual. If you have been an active reader of this forum, then you can probably guess the answer with ease.
With investments, I mostly support the side that has more strength. When bulls have more strength, then I'm bullish, when bears, then bearish. I would so try to say things, that would make bitcoin look good, if I had any reality based support to do this. I'm not the kind of guy who goes bullish with the support of denial and empty hopes. Give me new bitcoin exchanges with decent volume in new geographical locations, and I'm as bullish as can be. But for the previous months, there haven't been a single strong reason, that would give me assurance of bitcoins strenght. And I'm not happy about it, because I would earn a lot more if bitcoin would be rising.
I just don't see that denial and building false hopes are a very effective methods to guide your investments. Sorry.

Well people mostly are smart. I also believe that most of the people here in this forum are smart. Their judgment is often clouded by their emotional attachment to bitcoin though. Religion can even make smart people look stupid, and the same rule mostly applies here.
But the bitcoin religion won't spread very far, because the "unfairness" factor isn't very well hidden. People with even the simplest financial knowledge can see that it's not right, that half of the coins will come out in 5 years and the rest in 120 years. It's easy to judge with common sense, that the system is built for supporting parasites. That is the simple reason why most of the population doesn't want anything to do with Bitcoin.

And of course, Litecoin is no different. It has the same moronic financial rules, but it's history and technology are slightly superior. I think that LTC will be the fun coin for the near future, that will have volatility enough to make it profitable. If you have strong emotional attachment to bitcoin, then you can hodl while the price is slowly dropping, it's everyones personal choice.

Yeah, regular glass beads are not good comparisons, because you don't actually need much resources to build glass beads.
It's more like glass beads with pieces of rocks inside, that have been brought to earth from Mars by a spaceship. Meaning, that it does cost a lot of resources to build one "Mars rock glass bead", all while wasting this energy actually doesn't improve anything, or make any sense in general.

People who can't understand the value of currencies price stability and security, are the ones who learn finance from youtube videos, and who think that schools are evil, because they aren't fun and easy like the youtube videos they prefer. The best "educational" videos are made by guys whose username is something like Bitcoin$$Playa and who can confirm that bitcoin is especially secure because of it's speculative value without an anchor. So, everyone should buy now to become Ze New w0rld l33tz.

I'm out of LTC again and back in fiat, but not out of BTC-E yet, because there is a good chance that there will be another and a stronger rise. Let's see what happens.

eiskalt, it's like with the bitcoin community. Talking about evil banksters and how bitcoin would bring liberty to finance. But, what everyone really wants, is for everyone to pump wealth into their coins, so they would get rich without any work or education. If bitcoin were about freedom, not greed, then the new coin supply wouldn't have been built in a way where half of the coins will come out in 5 years, and the rest for the next 120 years. The design was made like that on purpose, to build a strong starting momentum and attract people with greed. The sad thing is that the growth will slow down together with coin supply, because people aren't this stupid to pump wealth into the hands of the "early adopters". People are smart enough to build alternatives that doesn't have this pack of leeches dragging everyone else down.

Of course you can run your projects sloppily if you follow these steps: a) Find someone who has money, but who doesn't have experience with money b) Get them to "invest" in your "projects" c) Channel the investments to your own personal pocket d) Claim incompetence, that you are really surprised that the project didn't work out, and that you are very sad and you will give your best to try better next time e) Profit

Well, there is a reason why the press also likes you, because you are a funny guy, that is often involved with schemes that are also funny. In Estonia, we have the same type of dude named "Villu Parvet", he is also a self proclaimed businessman, who makes a fool of himself by trying to be someone who he clearly isn't. The press absolutely loves him and all of his newest quests! I think that you should look him up in Estonia, and maybe you could trade different business plans and earn wealth beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.
I think that starting a new thread, just to bash you, is a little over the top. I think it's more dignified to stop in from time to time, just to sting your fragile little ego. Maybe this will inspire some questions among the "investors" who you are fishing for. Maybe it will just make you act less like Douche Baggins... Or maybe not... Either way, it will still be good fun.

Of course they are manipulating the gold market, like most other markets are manipulated by large holders who are artificially restricting supply or simulating demand. What makes a difference with bitcoin, is that these sides are known and their interests are known and trusted. They know that they have to keep their methods refined, so it won't create too big of an outcry. People in finance know this and they trust these manipulators to be stable and subtle enough because they have a known history. With bitcoin, you don't know the players who could turn the game, and that is not knowing one of the most important things that you should know when investing.

I'm going to sleep for today. I hope that you really needed this explanation and you weren't just trolling me with pretending not to understand the difference.

The small gold holder doesn't matter as long as an overview can be made over the biggest holders of the market. For instance, if already 9mil. of bitcoins would be accounted for, then you could let the other 3,5mil slide, and just hope for them to be hoarded up in some legit storage. It would still be a risk, but with a much lower factor. The current evidence, or you could rather say the lack of evidence, about ownership, is the thing that makes buying bitcoin risky to an man with financial experience. Investing smart, means learning as much as you can about the field and knowing all the important factors that could influence the market price. Bitcoin was an high-risk/high-gain investment, but now it has become too bloated for that. All thee the previous risks remain, making it now an high-risk/low-gain investment.

That's what I'm trying to tell here, that there is no point in getting your hopes up with ETF. Please don't start telling me things that particular gold holder anonymity, is comparable the anonymity that is the biggest part of the bitcoin market. It's senseless to ignore the long history, that gold has with human civilization, and the trust that this history brings into the equation.
When dealing with wealth, then it's all about trust. Wealth flows into people or places that can be trusted..