Because they did the same thing last week. Bitcoin sites started acting up, some people got scared, the others bought coins low. I'm hitting myself over the head right now for not selling last night, and having a little extra money lying around in an exchange to buy some at a low price.

If you're worried, I'll buy your coins via PP for ~$100 a piece.

Pump and dump is the main tool of the manipulator in this shallow market. They must be taking time out

Look on the bright side: stable price is good for real business. No merchant is going to adopt bitcoin if the price is flying about.

I don't trust my bitcoins with any third party, learned my lesson with bitcoinica.

lol, if you look at the order book, close to $1 million just went "poof".  That's a successful pump and dump.

Sounds like you got a keeper there 

In the UK at my local butchers I could get 10 chicken breasts for 1BTC... If he accepted them.

我在深圳，可惜错过时间了。

In a way you could say that simply holding cash is a loan you have given to the world.

As for traditional banking loans I don't think Ripple can replace that, those things are based on police kicking you out of your house if you don't pay.
Trusting family and friends is not really foolproof, I have seen many family members rip each other off and its not pretty.

Ripple is extra risky because a chain of people owe each other money; if any one of the people in that chain or net doesn't pay up then the next link may have no money to pay with or may decide not to as well.

Loans, stocks and contracts are based on police and courts. Honestly I think people should rent or fully buy with savings instead of continuing our failing credit-card-economy.

Tell me; why all this debt slavery and personal bankruptcy when you could rent the first years and then buy, effectively ending with the same final price as a loan would have cost you? Lets do away with the old system.

OK, you can complain about the definition of words all you want, but you just look like an idiot if you use a word with a specific meaning in a specific context differently from everybody else talking about that topic.

If the currency floats against the USD, then it is not pegged. If the currency is pegged, then it does not float freely against the USD. Pegged has a very specific meaning, and you are completely missing it.

No, what you are describing is listing a price in bitcoins, not pegging. When people talk about pegging they mean for longer time than just one sale or one day. There are several currencies which are pegged to the US Dollar, with the government of the issuing country guaranteeing that the specified ratio between the currencies is maintained. If the ratio changes from day to day, then it is not pegged.

You can get a price of GBP in USD, but that does not mean the GBP is pegged to the USD.

I don't think you understand what "pegging" means. If bitcoins were pegged to chicken, then one chicken would always be 1 bitcoin (or whatever ratio, but it would remain constant).

What? Clearly bitcoins are not pegged to anything. On the 22nd you could get two chickens per bitcoin, but on the 25th you could get three chickens per bitcoin. That is an amazing 50% gain in three days. The USD price of chickens remained unchanged over those three days.

Long story short, if we really have to come up with something about its backing, then Bitcoin is backed by the common effort of the world-wide community, its incentive to keep the system running, and the passion to build upon its unique features. Unlike money today, Bitcoin is not backed by force, it's backed by love.  

It has been a while since I bought chicken (my wife usually does the grocery shopping), but I think you could get three chickens here for a bitcoin. It helps that bitcoins have been jumping up in price.