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This post might seem to lead far, but I try to explain the best I can, why I think this time is as good as any for buying Bitcoins 
And sorry if the post looks bulky - I'm no native speaker...
I've been watching (and mining) bitcoins since early 2011. And all I can say about the time to buy or sell them is the same I could say about other stuff that is traded at exchanges: you never _know_ when it is the right point of time to buy or sell, because you can never know what happens next and how the market will reflect to news or other changes.
From my point of view bitcoins (and all other cryptocoins) are not yet in the state of currency and have a speculative risk. But one day they might be and that is why people are interested in having them. It is a bit like taking part in a raffle; you spend money for some tickets and hope that will be something worth in the future.
Bitcoins have a great potential for achieving this.
Mtgox is - despite all the troubles that have been and will be - a quite reliable exchange. An exchange is necessary as long as the can't be traded for something else but for money.
Bitcoins have started being mined on CPUs. CPU are quite universal. Even if you have had no computer and had bought one just for CPU mining of Bitcoins it wouldn't have been worthless after the GPU miners came to market and pushed the CPU miners out because they have been more efficient than the CPU miners.
Haveing advanced to GPU mining people had to have a proper graphic card for GPU mining. Less universal than a CPU but still useful for playing games.
The next advance was FPGAs. Quite specialized and not really universal though programmable for some thing.
The last evolutionary step is on its way with ASICS pushing into the market. With ASICS you can do nothing but things they have been made for, e.g. mining Bitcoins (and eventually other crptocoins that use the same algorithms). With each evolutionary step there was an increase of hashing power or at least a significant increase of energy efficiency for mining the Bitcoins. And the more you ascended in the hardware evolution of mining the more you had to put at risk - as the one who developed hardware and as the one who tended to buy specialized hardware. And over time the hashing power grew and grew...
What you can read from the things that happened in the past is, that Bitcoins have become more and more important and people started investing money in mining Bitcoins more efficiently (in terms of the amount per time and the needed energy per Bitcoin). And as the difficulty to mine new Bitcoins increased and people obtained less Bitcoins per hashrate, the need for buying Bitcoins was rising. And this might continue with the lots of ASIC miners pushing in the Bitcoin network. The difficulty will rise and so might the price that is payed at exchanges. But I do not expect that to be in a direct correlation. It has rarely been a direct correlation in the past. But in the end the rising difficulty combined with the broader perception of Bitcoins might be a reason for rising prices in the future. The number of Bitcoins available (at the moment and in total) is limited. If more people are interested in buying them than people in selling them, the price per Bitcoin must rise according to machinery of the market.
I don't want to encourage you to buy Bitcoins saying is is a safe deal and they will rise for sure, etc. There are threats to the Bitcoin network and not only chances. But I wanted to explain why I see a chance for them to rise. If you spend only money you can afford to lose, money you can put to jeopardy, then it seems to be no bad idea to buy them before even more ASIC miners are in the newtork. Geared to long-term profitability it might not be bad to have some Bitcoins in the pocket.
thanks for informative post. it'll help me as well as many other to take further steps.And sorry if the post looks bulky - I'm no native speaker...
I've been watching (and mining) bitcoins since early 2011. And all I can say about the time to buy or sell them is the same I could say about other stuff that is traded at exchanges: you never _know_ when it is the right point of time to buy or sell, because you can never know what happens next and how the market will reflect to news or other changes.
From my point of view bitcoins (and all other cryptocoins) are not yet in the state of currency and have a speculative risk. But one day they might be and that is why people are interested in having them. It is a bit like taking part in a raffle; you spend money for some tickets and hope that will be something worth in the future.
Bitcoins have a great potential for achieving this.
Mtgox is - despite all the troubles that have been and will be - a quite reliable exchange. An exchange is necessary as long as the can't be traded for something else but for money.
Bitcoins have started being mined on CPUs. CPU are quite universal. Even if you have had no computer and had bought one just for CPU mining of Bitcoins it wouldn't have been worthless after the GPU miners came to market and pushed the CPU miners out because they have been more efficient than the CPU miners.
Haveing advanced to GPU mining people had to have a proper graphic card for GPU mining. Less universal than a CPU but still useful for playing games.
The next advance was FPGAs. Quite specialized and not really universal though programmable for some thing.
The last evolutionary step is on its way with ASICS pushing into the market. With ASICS you can do nothing but things they have been made for, e.g. mining Bitcoins (and eventually other crptocoins that use the same algorithms). With each evolutionary step there was an increase of hashing power or at least a significant increase of energy efficiency for mining the Bitcoins. And the more you ascended in the hardware evolution of mining the more you had to put at risk - as the one who developed hardware and as the one who tended to buy specialized hardware. And over time the hashing power grew and grew...
What you can read from the things that happened in the past is, that Bitcoins have become more and more important and people started investing money in mining Bitcoins more efficiently (in terms of the amount per time and the needed energy per Bitcoin). And as the difficulty to mine new Bitcoins increased and people obtained less Bitcoins per hashrate, the need for buying Bitcoins was rising. And this might continue with the lots of ASIC miners pushing in the Bitcoin network. The difficulty will rise and so might the price that is payed at exchanges. But I do not expect that to be in a direct correlation. It has rarely been a direct correlation in the past. But in the end the rising difficulty combined with the broader perception of Bitcoins might be a reason for rising prices in the future. The number of Bitcoins available (at the moment and in total) is limited. If more people are interested in buying them than people in selling them, the price per Bitcoin must rise according to machinery of the market.
I don't want to encourage you to buy Bitcoins saying is is a safe deal and they will rise for sure, etc. There are threats to the Bitcoin network and not only chances. But I wanted to explain why I see a chance for them to rise. If you spend only money you can afford to lose, money you can put to jeopardy, then it seems to be no bad idea to buy them before even more ASIC miners are in the newtork. Geared to long-term profitability it might not be bad to have some Bitcoins in the pocket.
