Sorry to the optimists, but you're still going to have to wait for the bottom.  Bitcoin is going to at least halve before any rebound.  Once volume gets back to pre-Gawker levels, I'm going to call a bottom.

This would encourage more liquidity than their current percentage-based models in my opinion.  Thoughts?

This is why I have liquidated my position in Bitcoins.  There is very little upside going forward.  No forward moves of late have any traction whatsoever and demand continues to lag.  Way too little upside for such a risky proposition so my advice is to move into dollars.  Only a significant change in the economy could alter this forecast.

Hope you're having a great 4th.  Long live the Dollar!!!

Let's say money had an expiration date.  You had to spend it by a certain date or it would become worthless.  This would sorta be a built-in stimulus.  What do you think the effects of this would be?

Contact me if you are interested in math tutoring (just about any subject) in exchange for bitcoins.  We could exchange an online session if you are not local.

USD/BTC exchange rate poised to escalate rapidly in the coming days.  Excellent buying opportunity at the moment.  Huge demand post Gox re-open bodes well for investors.  Mining expected to become more difficult through upswing.  Be prudent with capital expenditures.

Is there anything that would make you lose faith?

It might be tough this year as I don't think Ron Paul is running.  President Obama and other high profile candidates probably don't want the political risk of accepting bitcoins, but if one candidate could do it it would be a publicity boon to the coin.  They are so desperate for money when they campaign that they might just go for it.

Male owned vs. female owned?

Min/Max values need to re-scale when you go to a different timeframe.  Otherwise the graphs are useless.

Does anyone have historical difficulty number and can someone explain what a difficulty number means?

PM me if you are in the market for a bridge.

After any unusual drop or rise in value, a circuit breaker must be implemented.  Some may say this is not free market.  I disagree.  It is only a pause in the action to allow the exchange to overview security and verify the legitimacy of what is going on.

If its not Mt Gox it will be someone else.  A currency that just requires hacking into a computer to steal is never going to last.  Bitcoin must be traceable if it wishes to survive.  This is not on Mt Gox.  They are just the first victim.

The 2 biggest problems with bitcoin right now, affecting its growth, are security (which is being addressed) and difficulty of use.  Most people do not want to download a client.  It is a hassle.  Bitcoin.org should let people get an address, send/receive payments.  Get them to register with an e-mail address.  Build a list and start marketing bitcoin like you would a business.  For bitcoin to be successful, it needs to be easy.  Not everyone will participate in the p2p, but they need to be involved in the bitcoin economy.  I will let IT people chime in with the technical requirements for this.

I have been getting excited about bitcoin, but now I'm not so sure about it.  Think about if bitcoin is successful.  If many merchants decide to accept bitcoin.  What will happen?  Well....the big banks will still be the big banks and hold the most bitcoin.  Sure, a few early adopters will get rich much like the founders of Google and other companies got rich, but the rest of us?  Not so much.  We'll just be paying more with bitcoins and less with dollars.  Our lives might be a bit easier since payments are easier, but as we've seen lately we still need banks and we'll still get gouged with fees.  We'll just be getting taken advantage in terms of bitcoins rather than dollars. 

Now, onto the Fed situation.  Yes, bitcoin is deregulated.  I know many think this is a chief benefit of bitcoin, but nobody really knows.  Opponents of bitcoin would argue that deregulation is going to make the currency very volatile and as most people are risk-averse, this means most people would rather not live in terms of bitcoins.  Maybe bitcoins will be stable.  Who knows? 

My point is the main change that would result from wide adoption of bitcoin is the unknown.  Our lives won't get much better.  We'll just be in for a surprise.  Now I like reading a good thriller as much as anyone else so this isn't the worst thing in the world, but it certainly isn't the utopia some people make it out to be.