Lol, good point. I didn't even notice it was for 2014.

Poll has already failed because lots of people are voting for the price 10 days from now.

What do they have to gain by doing that? If they simply wanted to buy cheap coins, then they can just do it without even making a public announcement. If they wanted to buy cheap and sell high to make a profit, then, well... Why does a major financial institution care about making a few million dollars? That's pocket change to them.

Maybe coins getting transferred out of exchanges?

If I had anything in a Chinese exchange I'd be pulling it out right now. What if they disappear overnight?

The price is going up.

Zimbabwe's dollar crashed (inflated) by 2.4575342e20% in one day.

I suspect that many of them are already rich outside BTC, and so don't really care about making a few million extra here and there.

If it goes anywhere near the price before this rally then it will confirm my suspicions that BTC traders are morons.

China may have played a big role in this rally, but they definitely weren't the only factor. Have people already forgotten all the good news that came out of Western countries over the past month or two?

Maybe this accurately represents the current level of Choo.

Lol. I don't know anything about USA, but here in Australia the only people who will say that are people with a vested interest in pushing real estate (ie. you). Anyone who is impartial will tell you that renting is more financially advantageous to buying.

There are benefits to buying, like not having to deal with rental inspections, being allowed to renovate, etc. But money is not one of them.

The difference in cost between buying and renting an equivalent property is generally about 2x. So to buy a $400pw rental would cost you about $800pw in mortgage and other things. If you decided to rent and put the extra savings away, you'd have saved over $600,000 over the life of a mortgage. That's if you DIDN'T invest the savings and just stuck the money under your mattress (I'm well aware of inflation - this is why in reality you would invest it). You can buy a house outright with that and not even need a mortgage.

People who think real estate prices are going to keep going up are delusional. Even more so than some of the bulls on here. See:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Melbourne_House_prices_from_1965_to_1912.jpg

So even if you do have cash to buy a house outright, it's still perhaps smart to rent for now and wait for the prices to continue falling.

Nobody cares.

Next the TA people will be reading tarot cards.

Oh, the six of swords! I see a grave future ahead of Bitcoin. Bitcoin investors will have relationship trouble in the coming weeks.

No way. The network (exchanges, etc) are nowhere near mature enough to support a $100 billion+ economy.

Even now they all self destruct whenever there's even a moderate amount of trading going on.

So even if people wanted to put an extra $90 billion in (and I'm sceptical that they will so soon), it can't happen just yet.

I am 12 and what is this.

The good thing about living in Australia is that we're the first to start a new week, and so I can buy before everyone else.

The bad thing is that I never know whether or not there will be a rally, so I'm too reluctant to buy until it's too late.

So, uh, why is Gox $100 higher than all the other exchanges all of a sudden? I really don't understand.

So much for the crash. We're almost back where we started already.

Well that wall at $900 didn't last long. Someone bought 1270 coins in one order.

You're completely right. I work in IT and I've been using the Internet since before it even had graphics (I used to dial up to a BBS and use Lynx through a remote Unix shell), so I've seen first hand how the Internet changed. I remember when I was in school, people would make fun of you if you liked, or even just used, computers. And I'm only 27 so I don't think I'm THAT old.

It's just my personal opinion that Bitcoin in its current state will never be used by average people to buy things in shops. Perhaps somebody will build a system over the top (like the banks I mentioned in my first post) that becomes widely used. You could reasonably argue that people don't even use cash anymore - it's all debit/credit cards now. So even though you still pay dollars, or whatever your local currency is, you're isolated from how it works. The currency behind your debit card could be dollars, or Bitcoin, or carrots. It would appear the same to you as the user.

Satoshi, I know who you are. If you don't send BTC10,000 to me in the next 48 hours I will reveal your identity to the world.

Send payment to 1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GNn4xqX

I can buy a shop and accept turnips as payment for my products, but that doesn't make turnips a currency.

There are not "many major stores" accepting Bitcoin as payment. There is an extremely small number of shops accepting it, many of whom did it just to get free advertising. It's ridiculous seeing a post on Reddit with 1000 upvotes which says "my mum's home business which sells figurines of cats made out of mouldy pasta and recycled string now accepts Bitcoin!" Who fucking cares, seriously? Who upvotes something like that?

I can only think of one place in my entire country (Australia) which accepts Bitcoin, and it's a pub in another state. So it means nothing to me.

Go look at the wallets for any of these shops. I bet most of them have had a negligible number of sales paid with Bitcoin. I believe the Baidu wallet only received donations from Westerners.

If I owned a shop I would accept Bitcoin, but ONLY because I know they're going to go up in value. So the money from someone who buys a $5 sandwich today may be worth $50 next year.