Good review and great to see BFL shipping something, even if it is a prerelease version to a very few select users.  What we're all looking forward to is BFL shipping an ASIC to people who ordered last year and aren't related to any blog or special interest group.

"When the bet is won"?  You mean, IF the bet is won.  There are very few sure bets in life.  Probably around 3 or 4 at the most.

I'm 50/50 on whether this is new buyers popping up and shoving money into the market or just a dead cat bounce after the bubble inevitably popped.  If it's the former than it's time to cautiously buy, if it's the latter it's a very good idea to sit out a few months and let others get burned.

Well, in the past few days we've seen people very eager to spend their bitcoins on MtGox 

Bitcoin does have one huge Black Swan that no one seems to address: the hundreds of thousands of early bitcoins that have never moved.  Are they lost?  Is someone holding them and looking to dump in the future?  Who knows?  Even the most strident anti bankster Libertarian must be tempted to cash out and set up themselves and their family and friends for life.

Those who are long bitcoin on this forum are going to advise you (and anyone else) to keep it.

This forum was full of people shouting about the price heading to $1k and how it was time to buy.  They were either talking up the price of their much cheaper bitcoins or had actually bought at that price and wanted to see it continue higher.  Many people including myself pointed out the absurdity of the exponential price growth yet many justifications were developed by those that didn't see the bubble for what it was.    Cyprus, Chinese speculators, a blogging website accepting bitcoins, etc.  None of that mattered and still doesn't.

It's not different this time.

I'm looking to buy back in, but I don't see the value yet.  We've got a way to go before the bubble has fully deflated and the get-rich-quick crowd has completely given up. 

I give it another two to three months.  Look back at 2011.

Looks like BFL is finally getting close to shipping something.  At least the Jalapenos will start shipping as they can put a larger power supply on the thing and it's good to go.  I wonder how many they plan to ship.  The early units will be inferior in terms of energy usage but at least users will see something after BFL missed October 2012 to February 2013 shipping dates.

I've got a Jalapeno on order since September 2012.  The product was promised to be shipping in October, then November, then February, and now in April we still have no dates and BFL is having a lot of problems with power consumption.  Not good news for a USB based product. 

BFL has preorders since June 2012 to build, and they haven't built a fully working, ready to ship Jalapeno yet (as far as has been publically announced).  You may be waiting many months for your order to ship, and difficulty is likely to be dozens, if not hundreds of times higher than it is today.

God may want you to mine bitcoins, but God knows you'll never make a profit on it after the cost of hardware and electricity is factored in.

Could these customers have tried to sign up when the price was rocketing upwards of 30% every day hoping to catch the wave, but now that it's passed them they won't want to inject money once verified?  Signing up is free.

Economy / Speculation / Re: Just woke up and BTC is OVER $134!!??    on: April 03, 2013, 09:47:14 AM

"We hit the irrational exhuberence stage.  Good time to cash in profits and wait for a lower price."

I was a bit early on my call, but still, it's only 10 days ago when I stated we hit the irrational exhuberance stage.  People had another six days to ride the wave and cash out.

The main problem here is we still have people who saw the exponential growth in price and the inevitable bursting of the bubble claim it's all someone else's fault.  It's MtGox.  It's the manipulators.  It's (insert person/entity here). 

How about looking at the basic facts that you can't expect anything to rise so far, so fast, without real world consequences.  There is no "it's different this time."  People time and time again fail to learn from history.  That's why there's someone at the other end of the trade waiting to make money from them.

Let's spare a thought for those new users who read the get-rich-quick popular media stories over the past few weeks and decided to get in on the action.  Many would have bought at $200+.  They've seen their investment lose over 50% within days.  Are these people likely to become fans of bitcoin or enemies?  Are they going to appreciate the technical innovation that sits behind bitcoin or just tell their friends it's one huge scam?

Bitcoin isn't useful to business if it gyrates by double digit percentages per day.  How does one price a product in bitcoins that costs US$50 wholesale to buy last week and sell today?  Better put a very healthy margin on it or you could lose money.

Hopefully some speculators got burned and won't be returning any time soon.

It was amusing to watch people on this forum speculating how soon we would reach $300, and whether $1k was just weeks away.  A bubble bursting or a mere correction, this is actually healthy.  Do we want bitcoin to be seen by the general public as nothing more than a get-rich-quick scheme?  That's what it looked like over the past several weeks.

People are naturally blaming malicious hackers and MtGox for the crash, but that's kind of like blaming the 2007 US housing bubble pop on anyone but people doing stupid things, or the dotcom bubble bursting because those stupid people that stopped bidding pets.com up and up.  A prudent trader takes into account the risk of black swans, the risk of people panicking.  Yes, there's even a risk that MtGox could be shut out of the international banking system at any moment if the USA puts enough pressure on Japan over money laundering.  US online poker players remember Black Friday.  Pop, and it was all gone.

I've had orders in at the $50 range for the last few days, even when the price was $200+.  I expect those orders to be filled.

Some other exchanges have seen a price as low as $57 today.

I put some orders in at $50 or so a few days ago, I expect them to get filled.  History tells us that all bubbles pop.  There are various reasons but all bubbles pop, always.

What's probably happening is MtGox is implementing and testing order spam protection.  They need other exchanges to play along otherwise there could be wild (wilder than we've seen) selling action.  The main exchange is temporarily going down so they need people not to panic.  It's not tin hat foil time.

Selling action followed by a stampede to the exit is called hacking.

Cheap is somewhere in the $20 range.  Remember the crash of 2011.