The higher the price goes the more legitimized I feel in this technology.  I will trade my bitcoins for land or for my kids college tuition but I will never sell.

In the last revaluation (in April) the price started in the 30's then shot up.  It hit 266 and stayed there for like an hour before it went down to 60ish.  This time we have started at 130ish and gone to 300+ and stayed there for a day and a half.  Every hour that Bitcoin stays above 300 is a win in my book.  It slowly reprograms humanity's expectations on what a bitcoin is and can be worth.

Difficult to see.  Always in motion is the future.

reminds me of that 10btc giveaway we had a few months ago.

jag2k2

Bitcoin is freedom

To me if there is a computer powerful enough to attack bitcoin then it is powerful enough to attack traditional banking institutions as well.  All monetary systems would be at risk not just bitcoin.

Forgive my ignorance here but how do you know this is one miner.  The right hand column of your link says "unknown blocks" and almost all of them are single recipient IP addresses.  I just assumed this bucket made up the 15% of the network that didn't join a mining pool.

Difficult to see.  Always in motion is the future.

nm

Would you argue then that gold has intrinsic value?  Wheat has intrinsic value which satisfies our natural need for hunger, it isn't very good though as a currency.  I think Gold and Bitcoin have similar values that make them good currencies and currencies satisfy an intrinsic (or natural) need that humanity has to trade things.  If people decided not to use gold as a currency then its value would plummet as well.

I would argue yes Gold has intrinsic value which satisfies humanity's natural or intrinsic need to trade.  Bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency for that matter) satisfies the same need.  Fiat money satisfies that need (albeit poorly).  Silver and Platinum and copper and other metals live side by side with gold because they offer something unique that gold doesn't.  Bitcoin was first and no competing cryptocurrency has offered anything substantially better thus far. 

Those defunct cryptocurrencies had intrinsic value as well.  If you are wondering why bitcoins have more value than other cryptocurrencies well that is a different question.

Every economic transaction in the world takes a resource of some kind and uses energy to make something useful.  Some resources are directly renewable like food and timber and some are renewable through recycling methods which are energy intensive (steel and water, etc).

The economy isn't loosely correlated to energy the economy IS ENERGY.  Economic growth is only possible if you can have energy growth. World oil production hasn't increased since 2005.  So any real economic growth could have only come from technological improvements but those have a diminishing return.  Most economic growth today comes from governments running up huge deficits, pumping money into the system to give the appearance of growth.

But do we really need growth?  Is it healthy at all?  Growth is associated with rising standards of living but it is only "healthy" if the amount of energy/resources your economy consumes is less than the amount that is renewable by our surroundings.  Otherwise when those resources run out the standard of living must go down.  Unfortunately we are way past that point and our population or standard of living (or both) must go down eventually.  Solar/Wind sources just aren't growing fast enough to grow our economy AND replace current energy needs currently supplied by fossil fuels.

What would be healthy would be to grow up to the point of sustainable levels and then STOP GROWING.  What other organism on the planet can grow forever and be considered healthy?

I bought some gold recently and as I held it in my hand I thought to myself "How do I REALLY know this hasn't been counterfeited, or filled with tungsten or something like that?"

Bitcoin cannot be counterfeited.  That has intrinsic value.
Bitcoin can be stored somewhere secure AND somewhere that is convenient to access.  That has intrinsic value.
Bitcoin can be easily divided down to make a smaller transaction.  That has intrinsic value.

One day I hope I can throw away all my gold because bitcoin made it worthless.

You make a valid point however if the currency denomination is impractical for day to day transactions then people can't relate to its value.  People can relate to the price of a cup of coffee, not to the value of a small investment vehicle.

I'm assuming you mean 12.3 cents per mbit.  I think a better way to express the exchange rate would be mbits per dollar.

The current exchange rate on Clark Moody is $123 per BTC.  Well that is $123 per 1000 mbits which is 8.13 mbits per dollar.  Just my 162 ubits.  Haha I crack myself up 

1.  ~10,000 mbits
2.  I think somewhere like 2.5 mbits per dollar
3.  $120 dollars per BTC is about 8 mbits per dollar

Alright lets all practice using the new m-bit denomination.  Answer the following questions to help get yourself in the habit!

1.  How many bitcoins do you have?  (in mbits)
2.  How much do you think bitcoins will be worth at the end of the year (in mbit per dollar)
3.  What is the current exchange rate for bitcoins on Clark Moody?  (use correct denomination!)

Bitcoin is an open room with many clear piggy-banks.  The coins in these piggy banks have a hard upper limit are impossible to counterfeit.  The room is under constant video surveillance but at any time you can put on a mask, go into the room and move coins from your piggy bank to someone else's piggy bank. 

Credit to:
https://medium.com/bitcoins-digital-currency/a9a8c094feaf

But I'll still take the bounty : )

So much ignorance.