2 months for me... one to research it thoroughly to find out it wasn't a scam, and another to figure out how to actually obtain some, watching helplessly as the price went from $15 to over $60.

what happened to gold in the last hours ?

I'm not sure why you have such a problem with this. Is it perhaps all the negative connotations with the word 'fix'? Perhaps there is another word that could be used for a periodic agreed trading price.

There will be a whole group of people who want to hold and (very occasionally) buy/sell bitcoin. The ones that don't want to or can't use exchanges directly and don't want to or can't be bothered with storage. They will be happy to pay their 1% for someone to manage all that and even insure it already. Whatever you think of that, it will be a legitimate service.

But that service will not be able to offer in/out, buy/sell to it's customers at what we would call "market". It simply can't work in practice: the price would change between the client's order and it's execution and that would freak out the client. No one needs or can handle the grief of every order being disputed and/or delayed or the liabilities that might follow.

So you have a daily (or twice daily) point where you try and work out a fair price and use that as the bench mark for the queued trades. You can't use a historical price because you would be played, so it has to be the next price point. Similarly, you can't just use a given exchange at a known time because that too would be easily played. So you use a basket of prices including major exchanges and major OTC brokers and make that your price point. You (perhaps mistakenly) call it the "fix".

Is it open to collusion? Obviously. But if done regularly or too brazenly then the client won't play any more and you'll be out of business. On average it'll probably be fair enough because of the tension between those that want a high price and a low price. Clients using this kind of fund don't really expect the last pip of value, they want expose and ease while they get on with the rest of their lives.

The market would handsomely reward your improved system...

Every time I see this thread and then watch BTC tank 10%+ in 2 or 3 days makes me laugh.
I have over 30oz of gold coins and would buy 30 more before I buy 5 BTC.
I question how many people here own 1/10th of that amount of BTC
Gold has been up $15 the last weeks.  And good ol bitcoin, tanking again, no surprises there.
But oh yah, it will be $1500 again by January.  
Thats a good one.
Maybe more like $150 per BTC there you experts.
LOLZ
People here make me

Finally! Mish is mentioning Bitcoin and not pretending it away. Another long slow conversion in progress:

"Capital Flight From China, One Person at a Time, Via ATM and Bitcoin"

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.de/2014/08/capital-flight-from-china-one-person-at.html

Also, nice to see some reality behind the theory that Bitcoin's killer app is avoiding currency controls.

It's been weeks and weeks of selling. When will it finally end?

Everyone is selling and no one wants bitcoin! It isn't just Ethereum, there are also stellar and a bunch of other coins that developers raised via IPO need cashing out!

Bitcoin game over ! Crashing to $400 ! Drop your hope and sell now !
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=737019.0

and here you've been told Bitcoin was volatile. what'd that take, like 12 min from top to bottom?  and during after hours when MOST traders don't have access to markets.  btw, this shit happens ALL THE TIME:

the new silver price fix algo will be implemented on friday. in the past two weeks there have been massive efforts to hold the price below $20. the annual physical silver market, which used to be cutely known as supply and demand is around $22b if I remember correctly. the annual paper market is $1.6T according to the FT. why any commodity needs to be 'fixed' in a free market is yet another reminder of just how pathetic and irrelevant markets are. but I guess they employ a lot of very brainy people who provide useless and irrelevnt charts and stats and who otherwise couldn't find work. if my flight arrives safely in shanghai then I will watch the silver action on Friday with keen interest. I still think silver has one last gasp left in it.