You're spot on about the herd instinct stuff. It is the same as what Mencius said about the common people - they're satisfied once they have satisfied their hunger. The ordinary people do not care much to find out about  anything not directly related to their baser animal needs or security.

Bitcoin is only for the enlightened at this moment. Bitcoin cannot be understood without some knowledge about how the internals of the internet works. It also cannot be understood without some basic economic sense about how  monetary systems works, how the gold standard may or may not work. When I phoned up my nephew, a matured grown up programmer/sofware developer with a good degree in computer science, and asked if he was using an android phone (as I wanted to buy a little bitcoin for my multiBit), he started laughing heartily at the other end - What! You buy bitcoin when it has collapsed! You tell me what you want to do. It is the stupidest idea... I myself was laughing as I had read up on how bitcoin works after all the news about how a mountain in Tokyo collapsed - Mt.Gox!    

When people start to talk about "intrinsic" values or that bitcoin is a scam, you know there is no way to educate them about bitcoin. So it is better (sometimes) to just keep quite rather then to argue and drained ourselves tired emotionally. Are you goig to give them a lecture on fractional reserve banking over a beer? Most people who now cannot live without their ipads/iphones do not know a bit about the bits within a byte. The gadgets are invented and then made easy for them to use - but these thing like Facebook is still mainly an addiction - non-stop chatting. But the future of bitcoin is the "real" global  money, not currency! Currency means the current multi-currency fiat money system. Money is the unit of measure of price, real price, in order that the a true free market can work. True money itself cannot have a price! This is the true future of a good cryto-currency - it could be Bitcoin or its incarnations.    

As for the price outlook of bitcoin in the future, it will still have volatility for some time - just mere common sense as there will always be some speculations to take profit. But there is a critical difference between bitcoin and stocks. Stocks is equity of a company and it may go to zero like Mt.Gox. Bitcoin can never go to zero! So the mechanics for bitcoin and shares are very different. Don't try to use candlesticks, Elliot Waves theory or tea leaves TA on bitcoin - if they don't may you rich with stocks, less likely would they make you rich here unless the sticks and candle are pre-programmed always to point only upwards!

Bitcoin, in general, can only rise in price! The simple reason is that there are only a few ready bears willing to leave on the slightest bad news. When Mt. Gox went bankrupt, there was not a whimper in the price movement. I expect the current breed of people who bought into bitcoin are not those going in with a stop loss strategy; likely the majority of holders are many many with "small" amounts. Also, some go in as Bitcoin is their belief and ideology; try asking them to sell bitcoin and be a bitcoin apostate - they will rather perform Seppuku than sell! So if bitcoin were to go to "zero", the private keys just got forgotten in their hard disk - which means the price movement is only upside mobile. My guess about the recent spike to 1000 USD/BTC is that it should be from the Chinese (a completely unsubstantiated guess of mine). I only hear of bitcoin only 2 weeks ago thanks to Mark Kapeles. So the Chinese were late. I believe many Chinese put their money in bitcoin rather than earn 3% interest rate in an inflationary world. So that gave bitcoin a sudden price spike which was killed by the Chinese government. The average Chinese may all be waiting; it would add volatility - but it still may be an upward potential.

I wanted to buy a fraction of a bitcoin just to fill my multibit wallets, but all the people around me are using just apple smartphones. The btc atm requires the android application bitcoin-wallet to scan a QR code, pay some SGD dollar bills and the bitcoins would go to our smartphones wallet.  I'll get some later, not in a hurry.

http://www.zdnet.com/sg/singapore-backtracks-unveils-new-bitcoin-regulations-7000027292/

I am not saying the Singapore government announced a sales tax on bitcoin transactions. It would be known only when the regulations are officially announced. I am Singaporean, but I am not sure if GST applies to bitcoins as the news never mention anything.

Although all governments officially proclaim bitcoin is not a currency or money, everyone with a little economic sense knows that bitcoin satisfies all the characteristic of 'real' money, not 'virtual'. It would create a rather embarrassing situation if any government classifies bitcoin as currency. Then people would bring out their heirloom of 200 years from their great-great grandmothers and ask if these cowrie shells too, now, again could be money.
 
I cannot move threads at my will. I did not post to dampen the enthusiasm of bitcoinists if sales tax is a would-be death knell to bitcoin. Everyone would better be prepared for government controls of bitcoin; it would be naive to assume that bitcoin would be allowed to just develop and evolve 'freely' on its own - very unlikely.   

The characteristic of bitcoin is that it has all the prerequisite to be a global money - transfer of values across national borders that are traceable only through the ISP; but it is still far far easier then having the need for people to open a bank account; so it even has the unique feature as a global money of the common people - this is a powerful feature. People who has interest in international finance are not dumb and they would see what the bitcoin community could see. No one could predict how this bitcoin thing would evolved.

Many others besides Warren Buffet predicted many things that come out dot on. Before Lehman Brothers, say just 3 years after the Nasdaq bubble burst when the authorities had to pump up the stock markets (2003), many people already warned about the coming housing bubbles. People too were openly saying the 'strongest' US banks like BoA, and some others heavily invested in derivatives, had  zero net worth. It was proven in 2008 when BoA/Citi's shares drop to a dollar a piece. So there are smart and sharp people around all the time, not just Warren Buffet. We too can list many, many stupid bums around.   

God created the world and also, at this point in time, gives permission for Bitcoin to come into being - according to His image. The image and design just happens not to be compatible to the image of what Warren Buffet think is a huge BTC making opportunity - so he cannot partake of its grace, Opps! So the right thing for him is that he should not get involved; or he could not get involved, at least not at this point in time.

Buffet got it right about the bursting of the Nasdaq tech bubble and so did many, many others. With some hindsight, not rocketscience, Tech companies are just corporations and any corporation building on hope may vanish if reality finally deviate far from the initial hope and wish. Bitcoin is indeed a completely different beast and Buffet's whole "lack of understanding" is correct - at least in my view and opinion. No one person or organization, in general, can control the character of bitcoin or the way it would develop. Open source means it is truly democratic, decided only through the consensus of the internet - and the internet means the whole world nowadays!

Intrinsic values are relative as all of us know and even talking about the intrinsic values of things is extremely boring. Just say, for simplicity, that value, like beauty, is only in the eyes of the beholder or valuer. (Stupid) People can say whatever they like about why something with no "real" existence like 1 bitcoin should never be valued almost equal to half an ounce of gold. Why should it not be? Can anyone answer. Or can anyone give the true valuation of bitcoin as at today. Warren Buffet too don't have an answer. We have to decide for ourselves what the value of bitcoin should be or whether it has a future.

Hello,

The Monetary Authority of Singapore(MAS), the central bank of Singapore, has just announced it would be regulating bitcoin activity treating it as a virtual commodity rather than as a virtual currency. Singapore currently has a 7% GST tax which is a consumption tax. As bitcoin is not a usual commodity, a strict implementation of GST cannot be applied. It is not expected that there will be bitcoin mining in Singapore. As there is no way to tell if a sales is local consumption (for which GST is specifically aimed at) or for export, I think the only reasonable way is a flat transaction tax, a sort of luxury tax or a 'warning' tax so that in the event when speculators got burnt when Bitcoin collapsed (When ?), the people won't complain and appeal to the government to direct the Bitcoin 'institutions' to indemnify them for losses - just as some over 65 people claimed they were stupid and ignorant when they incurred losses buying into Lehman brother's products. So the tax may be the same 7% as a start. 

For industry players, there should be no implementation difficulties. Bitcoin exchanges could just absorb the 7% in their spread. But of course, business would run from regions with higher tax to region with lower sales tax. I doubt there need be any bitcoin havens with no tax. If there is the first country to tax bitcoin transactions, no sane government need ever ban bitcoin. Bitcoin in itself is no evil as simple regulations would ensure that money laundering would be easily controlled as with normal banking transactions. In fact bitcoin will evolved to be a good source of tax revenue if it trades at 650,000 USD/BTC - so why ban it!