According to the wording on the Microsoft page, this is purely to convert coins to fiat in your account 'at this time' so it's another bitpay thing. Still quite nice to hear about it though. As for it affecting the price (other than sell pressure), guess that depends on whether they opt to put BTC in front of normal users as an obvious option.

Needless to say, this argument can be easily made against bitcoin in favour of existing fiat money institutions. And yet we still believe that a superior technology can rise and overcome, no?

Shame that the turnout is so stingy, but overall I'm pleased to see these issues discussed at all intelligently.

Perhaps start with a small purchase, play around with the coins and get used to the system. As to when you choose to invest more significant money, it's a personal choice. Current prices are on the low side compared to the yearly average and the market is showing some strength at last, but there is still a very fair chance of some painful lower lows before we're definitely 'done' with the bear market.  I would suggest, get some coin but don't go all in, keep some funds in reserve in case of lower prices.

Station.

Any ideas on where this 20,000 UK Bitcoin users number comes from?

Market cap is mostly proportional to price less the extra mined coins (so not terribly different), China seem quite healthy on the exchanges. Sure there's no block reward halving or willy bot (or is there? perhaps on another exchange?), but there are definitely more users and people on the sidelines than before. The giant green candles of the past  day are proof that this market is still capable of some crazy things.

And then to make sure the money's extra safe... promptly tells the press all about where he's hiding his wallets  

Pizza, I buy a lot of pizza with my coins. In keeping with tradition of course.

It's one of those neologisms that is completely unnecessary (since millionaire is independent of currency...) but I kinda like it anyway. Probably because I can claim to be a multi-bitillionaire now..

Agreed. "9. Is it possible that you buy Bitcoin only because other investors buy Bitocin or news supports Bitcoin. " is too complicated (and vague) a question for a binary answer, for example.

Could be worse, you could have been Goxxed...

The similarity is quite well known. Believing that chart (and assuming we were past the low point) is part of what helped keep the price at $600+ so long, you're the first person I've seen post it in a while though 

Who knows, maybe what happened is exactly what they wanted to happen for whatever reason.

Google matched betting. It should be quite trivial to earn back $600.

I love how FT waits until after what could well be the bottom of the downtrend to post this.

The thing is it didn't cause a panic sell. Bearwhale was handily keeping the prices depressed by keeping the sell wall just out of reach for a while ($320 when we were trading ~310) but as soon as they slapped it in at $300 the buy pressure was constant and it was quite clear the price would jump if all coins were bought.

Dude's been putting that sell wall up and down at various prices all day long, LOL. Like a sheepdog.

Mm, yes, I think a lot of us UK based nerds are familiar with this apparent sleeping pattern.

Interesting speculation. I find this compelling as a success scenario because it is so wild, yet not implausible. Everyone is expecting future bubbles to be similar to past bubbles, which would in your scenario result in even die hard hodlers selling far too early, hoping to buy back on the 'predictable' dip after peaking around 5-10x the pre-bubble price. Your scenario sets up a much rougher ride with massive profits available, but set up in such a way that most will be banging their heads in hindsight.