Just realized I still had this gift on my Steam account.  Original Portal game, one of my favorites, don't want it to go to waste.  40 mBTC or best offer, PM me.  Can be sent by e-mail.

Hey all,

I've been living under a rock for the past few years (read: grad school) and haven't heard about bitcoin until I stumbled across a random web article a couple of weeks ago.  I was absolutely blown away, both because I've been interested in cryptography for a long time (still get Schneier's monthly newsletters) and because I couldn't believe I'd never heard of it before.

So I immediately went about the convoluted process of setting up Dwolla, verifying accounts, etc., and I'm just about ready to buy a handful of bitcoins and start playing, but lo and behold bitcoins are going for 17 dollars a pop.

Now I can code, and I know the difference between MD5 and SHA2, but I'm most definitely not an investment banker.  I'd love to get started, but I don't want to play the sucker to some speculator running up prices.

For those of you who have been in the market for some time, is this sort of price fluctuation common? My gut instinct is to hold off and wait for this madness to settle, but what if that takes months?  I love the concept and want to participate, but it kinda feels like I've come too late and it's in the hands of some sleazy traders now.  And if I'm discouraged, I can imagine many other people are out there would like to start using bitcoins around town but won't until it comes back down to Earth - and who knows how long that will take.

Basically, do you guys think things are going to settle relatively soon so a newbie could get on board?  If my SO found out I was spending $17 for electronic magic beans (which is about all the explanation her attention span can handle on the topic of cryptography), I would never hear the end of it.