I would get in with as much money as possible.

An institution which uses such a boneheaded strategy (pushing around the price = buy high, sell low) deserves to be fleeced for every cent.

Among other things, a market is a straw-poll on the valuation of a good, where your vote is weighted on the capital with which you're willing and able to back it up.

You've described one scenario, in which people with confidence in BTC and people without confidence begin with equal amounts of money. In such a scenario, over time the smarter ones would make money on the market, and their votes would thus become stronger. However, the implicit assumption that the participants' gains in this market outweigh any other capital they might possess... that's far from an ironclad assumption. Many of the people involved in BTC trading are getting much of their capital from elsewhere.

Then again, even if it was true, I think your endgames are dramatically overstating the impact of market fluctuations. If people were playing around with bitcoins back when they were worth a couple cents apiece, why would those people ever abandon the project? If bearish investors pull out, someone else was holding the BTC, so why does the "smart bull" scenario have a bonus on "people use their BTC for something"?

The future of Bitcoin will be decided by the quality of the infrastructure, not ticker games.

So in your view, only really really big money has the capability to create an exchange which is sufficiently robust for Bitcoin to grow?

Is this the only infrastructure improvement you think is necessary, or can you name others?

Right now, BTC has eight decimal places. If that gets expanded within the next couple decades, mining will continue to generate coins for much longer than the "early-mid 22nd century" cutoff in the current algorithm. Granted, it'd still asymptotically approach 21 million coins. Just that instead of the block reward going to zero, it'll go to a small number that'd round to zero.

If you're asking for no asymptote - for endless growth - well, there's a lot of folks who would never have signed on if BTC wasn't provably scarce the way it is.

What kind of infrastructure would you like to see before you'd be willing to believe that Bitcoin is ready to grow?

Get over yourself.

Nope!

There's no earthly way of knowing Which direction we are going. There's no knowing where we're rowing Or which way the river's flowing. Is it raining? Is it snowing? Is a hurricane a blowing? Not a speck of light is showing so the danger must be growing. Are the fires of hell a glowing? Is the grisly reaper mowing? Yes! The danger must be growing For the rowers keep on rowing. And they're certainly not showing any signs that they are slowing!

Oh, wait. Did you just mean through the website?

In that case, a captcha would be fine, although I'm not sure what point it would serve.

I thought Ashley meant that even API trades would have to fill a captcha out.

That's definitely an idea! It's an idea that'd make me leave, but maybe other people will like it?

It's good to have people who can keep their heads during huge gains. I appreciate you!

Now that the wind has finally changed, I think I may as well repeat my question from before: proudhon, what on earth was going on with you calling the top over and over? Have you figured out what you were misinterpreting?

$13.



It's the same distance from $260 as $2 was from $33. It's the same distance above $5 as $2 was above 75¢.

It's also the price we had back in September-November - the most recent multi-month stable period.

Breaking through the $10-$13 range would require monumental bearish momentum.

Realized gains are about 3 grand in FRNs, plus a few BTC, compared to the last time we were at this pricepoint.

If you want to include unrealized gains, I'm up about 12 grand since I bought in during the long stable period at $5.

Everyone who's hitting these issues, what does your history look like? Is there any indication as to when your money vanishes?

I love the smell of volatility in the evening.



Smells like... profit.

Because switching horses is a pain, especially if your dead horse is lying on top of you.

People got access to their dry powder again, and the price recovered to the $120s range - where it was when Gox called a market closure and began this balderdash.

I feel pretty good.

I don't think it'll be that bad.

Then again, I'm already getting timeouts on their API.

It went down.

Everything else is spin and salad dressing.

Warning: below post is a pipe dream, which I'm sharing just to make a rhetorical point.
  
The US federal government has a $15T+ debt. They could just print $15T+ and pay it all off, but that'd hyperinflate the dollar and tank the economy.

But if there was another currency poised to take over in a hyperinflation scenario? Maybe you could do it without messing up the economy.

Imagine it! Bitcoin is getting popular. Rising against the dollar, more and more folks using it, there's some companies where you can get your salary in BTC, some stores where you can use it to buy bread.

At that time, the government quietly prints a bunch of USD and buys enough BTC with it to last a couple years. Money enters the economy. Huge inflation out of nowhere. US dollar loses confidence and inflation becomes hyperinflation. People run for BTC, and before long nobody wants to hold dollars any longer than necessary. All of a sudden, $15T+ doesn't sound that difficult to pay off, right? And the government changes the rules, makes BTC legal tender, and sends its creditors BTC to pay off the USD-denominated pittance they're owed.

A scheme like that takes deep pockets.

Deep pockets are only starting to enter this game.