You're making a bold assumption that bitcoin wins in the long run.

I'll play devil's advocate here.

Imagine a scenario in which someone holds 10,000 or 100,000 bitcoins.  Let's say, an early adopter, who mined them all.  For the sake of argument, let's say bitcoin somehow magically reaches a value of 1,000USD per bitcoin.

You'll never convince the devil that such a person is better off keeping their "wealth" in bitcoin.  Playing by the rules of fiat currency is much more advantageous to this imaginary person.  To use basketball parlance, fiat currency is winner's outs.  When you score, you get the ball back to score again.  And when you have a shit load of cash, the rules are such that you AUTOMATICALLY make more money playing by fiat rules.  No risk involved.  Pretty genius, eh?  Go ahead, try to convince the devil it's a better move to keep the bitcoins.  Aside from TOTAL collapse of the fiat world (the devil knows this would have happened in 2009 if it ever was going to happen, and it didn't), there's much less risk in cashing out, because some other large stakeholder of BTC can cash out at a moments notice instead of you, screwing you out of millions or hundreds of millions in profit.

Truth be told, the devil knows the real issue is scale.  An individual needs a lot less than 100,000, or even 10,000, coins to control the market, cash out and drive the market into a downward spiral.  Cashing out slowly at first, then dumping the remainder at a particularly advantageous time to induce panic and intentionally tank the market.  The perfect time to execute this would be right after the majority of fiat on the exchanges buys in to pump the price (the devil selling on the way up at a rate that keeps resistance low enough for the upward trend to continue), as we saw play out last week.  There wouldn't be enough fiat on the exchanges (i.e. liquidity) to stop the downward trend.  The bitcoin seller gets a multimillion dollar payday, and can buy their coins back at 1/10 or 1/100th the cost at the same time.  And before you say that's not how it works, keep this in mind: we just saw this exact scenario play out, at a much smaller valuation, meaning there was a lot less money at stake than @ 1,000 per BTC.

The devil knows volatility rises as bitcoin exchange rate increases.  The chance of total collapse of the bitcoin economy increases the higher the per-BTC price goes.  There's way too much money at stake for that to not be the case.

The real value of bitcoin is determined by the amount of fiat sitting on the exchanges at any given point in time.  And moving fiat onto exchanges takes several orders of magnitude longer than selling large quantities of BTC.

We saw round two of this great transfer of wealth play out last week.  There will be many more, and the devil knows bitcoin is never more than a means to an end; big paydays for the whales.  There are too many whales in the ocean for BTC to ever reach a valuation "true believers" on this forum are predicting.

The only solution to this problem is making transfer into exchanges easier and faster.  And with unregulated exchanges, there's a snowball's chance in hell of enough fiat sitting at the ready to support large per-bitcoin values.

TL;DR - The real value of bitcoin is determined by the amount of fiat sitting on the exchanges at any given point in time.  And moving fiat onto exchanges takes several orders of magnitude longer than selling large quantities of BTC.  People aren't going to put millions or tens of millions of dollars on unregulated exchanges to support high per-bitcoin valuations.  Periods of stable and/or rising per-bitcoin prices are just the snake coiling up to strike, nothing more.

Caveat Emptor.

Even at $70 per BTC, there are still an incredible number of coins out there that are looking at a 10x - 20x gain on paper, or more.  If the market continues it's downward trend, expect to see some of the remaining coins that were purchased for $4 - $8 start to come out of the system, which in turn exerts even more downward pressure on the market.

I personally think long term bitcoin is a force to reckon with.  Bitcoin's time will come, it's just not here yet.  As transactional velocity, BTC business ventures, and overall infrastructure build out picks up steam over the next 12 - 18 months, the real benefit of bitcoin will be realized.  Namely that it's a cheaper, easier, more efficient way to conduct online commerce, exchange funds between individuals, etc.

For those that are currently holding a lot of paper profit and are interested in divesting some of your coin, I might suggest spending some of it instead of exchanging it out.  Build yourself a new gaming rig at bitcoinstore, for example.  Do what you can to keep the bitcoin ecosystem growing and thriving.  Long term, spending bitcoin on goods and services will do more to your bottom line than exchanging it out for fiat.

That's funny, I PM'd you hours ago and got no response.

At this point I think it's safe to say that our 3.99% BitInstant fee has been increased to a 100% fee for many of the people posting in this thread?    

Yesterday, this thread stood at 127 pages and is now at 145, 146?  BitInstant not meeting their obligations to the customers that wired them money is clearly building momentum, not subsiding.

If this was only a technical glitch and you had the monetary resources to meet your obligations you would have done so by now.

For now I'll continue to monitor the block chain in hopes of hearing the magical beep that indicates MY money heading to MY wallet.  The sound of BitInstant getting its shit together and holding up their end of the bargain.

Ursay, it's been 50 hours.

Is there any indication of when my issue is going to be looked at by support staff?

It's been over 24 hours since a "support ticket" was created for my issue and I have yet to receive any emails from BitInstant support.

I'd like to request that my issue gets escalated to someone who has authorization to send my money that's sitting in your coffers to my bitcoin address, per my order.

BitInstant transactions are supposed to happen "within an hour".  Well, it's now been 50x longer than an hour, and I can't even get a peep out of support.

This is bad business.  Enough with the excuses.

Order receipt
Quote ID    e778fe43-8ed6-4d01-b26e-f280395f260c
Event ID    1f14b79d-b20a-4c96-811f-90c5954a3fed
Fees (inclusive)    3.99%%
Amount you paid    $500.0 USD
Amount you will receive    $480.05 USD
Destination exchange    Bitcoin Address
Destination account    1JMSyCHYx3ae2yTDLVeBxtZYxKXkuyEwid
Order event log
Timestamp    Event ID    Event type
Wed Apr 3 04:05:53 2013   1f14b79d-b20a-4c96-811f-90c5954a3fed   Quote for new transaction
Wed Apr 3 12:46:58 2013   8492a92e-46f8-4c46-9427-23189fc3eec6   New Order
Wed Apr 3 12:45:22 2013   cd6005a2-66b7-497a-beaf-6d8f68a9b8f8   Coinapult Order Loading
Wed Apr 3 12:50:21 2013   29c49933-b158-4dcb-8002-f596410d1e00   MTGox Order Loading

ITS THIEVERY WHEN SOMEONE TAKES YOUR MONEY AND GIVES NOTHING IN RETURN
BITINSTANT SO FAR HAS PROVED TO BE A FRAUD! SCHILL< SCAM< CON ARTISTRY AT ITS BEST. IF I HAD TO DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN I WOULD NOT SEND THESE GUYS ANY MONEY PERIOD!!
DOCUMENT DOCUMENT DOCUMENT EVERYTHING AND USE YOUR NAME! MEANWHILE EVERYONE HERE HAS TO BEG! BE POLITE ! AND KISS ASS TO THESES LYING SCUMBAGS all because they are holding your money!

 ITS FRAUDULENT PLAIN AND SIMPLE!! WHEN SOMEONE TAKES MONEY AVOIDS GIVING IT TO YOU THESE ACTS ARE CRIMINAL!

It's been 50 hours now, and still no word on when this will be resolved.

Ursay, it would be really beneficial if you could provide me with a status update on my ticket.

Either through PM or this thread.  It's been 30 hours since a "support" ticket was created.

I don't think I'm asking too much here.

Quote ID    e778fe43-8ed6-4d01-b26e-f280395f260c

I thought you were going to "prove" it Ursay, by sending my coins?

So what's the hold up?

Me as well.

I agree.  This is easily the worst support experience of my life.

It's really aggravating that there is just NO helpful response from anyone inside the company.  Just a "check your confirmation email for a MTGox code" canned response, and then nothing.

I didn't even receive a confirmation email from bitinstant.  The only email from BitInstant when sending directly to a bitcoin address is AFTER the transaction is broadcast to the network.  The only reason I know this I successfully ordered from them over a week ago.

I didn't order a MTGox code!  It was a transfer to my bitcoin address! Grrr....

Dude, my US dollars have been sitting in BitInstant's coffers for 30 hours now.  Dozens of people in the exact same situation I am in have posted to this thread.  We did BitInstant deposits directly to personal bitcoin addresses (not MTGox) and for some reason they were routed through coinapult and MTGox instead of being sent directly to us.  Our order status has been stuck on "MTGox Order Loading", and the coins haven't shown up.  This is clearly BitInstant's error - our orders shouldn't have any mention of MTGox in them, yet they do.

What are we supposed to think?  BitInstant has our money, as verified by our successful ZipZap confirmation emails, and you haven't delivered.

How does BitInstant not have a forum of their own on their website?  Why doesn't live chat work?  Why do I get sent directly to voicemail when I call your support # listed on your website?  Why don't I get responses to emails i sent to support on your website?

Look at it from our perspective for a moment.  As far as I can tell, the entire BitInstant support department is one overworked person on bitcointalk, and nothing more.  And, through your own admission you've only been with them for 4 days.  You're the frontman for their support team and have no working knowledge of their operation.  The !@#$ is getting deep around here.

So it's been 24 hours thus far and still no reasonable response.

BitInstant's idea of customer support is having a 150+ page thread with one representative?  I've tried to chat with representatives on your website, sent a support email through your website with no response, posted to this thread, and have personally PM'd Ursay.

Enough with the "check your confirmation email for a MTGox code" canned answers.

BitInstant has either been hacked or is grossly incompetent.  Either way they should not be dealing with money

As you can see from my transaction details below, my order had nothing to do with MTGox whatsoever.  The funds were sent to a personal bitcoin-qt address.

Stop blaming MTGox for a mistake that was clearly made by BitInstant.  Stop holding me hostage and forward on my funds.

Order receipt
Quote ID    e778fe43-8ed6-4d01-b26e-f280395f260c
Event ID    1f14b79d-b20a-4c96-811f-90c5954a3fed
Fees (inclusive)    3.99%%
Amount you paid    $500.0 USD
Amount you will receive    $480.05 USD
Destination exchange    Bitcoin Address
Destination account    1JMSyCHYx3ae2yTDLVeBxtZYxKXkuyEwid
Order event log
Timestamp    Event ID    Event type
Wed Apr 3 04:05:53 2013   1f14b79d-b20a-4c96-811f-90c5954a3fed   Quote for new transaction
Wed Apr 3 12:46:58 2013   8492a92e-46f8-4c46-9427-23189fc3eec6   New Order
Wed Apr 3 12:45:22 2013   cd6005a2-66b7-497a-beaf-6d8f68a9b8f8   Coinapult Order Loading
Wed Apr 3 12:50:21 2013   29c49933-b158-4dcb-8002-f596410d1e00   MTGox Order Loading

Ursay, can you please check this transaction?

I paid via ZipZap --> CVS to a personal bitcoin address 12 hours ago and the bitcoins have not been delivered.

Any info you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

QuoteID : e778fe43-8ed6-4d01-b26e-f280395f260c

(it doesn't seem that I can send PMs since I recently registered)