Bitcoin's stagnant price around $5 is terrible news for investors, but great for people who want to use it as a currency.  Imagine being a merchant selling products in bitcoins, and seeing bitcoins' value swing 20% on a daily basis.  Few merchants would tolerate such violent swings that could put them at a profit or loss on a daily basis.  Such swings were common during some trading days of the past few months.

A stagnant price gives merchants certainty.  If bitcoins remain valued at $5 until at least the end of the year that would be the best thing for bitcoin's future. 

If the USA prints more money then my money will be worth more.  Not everyone on this forum lives in the USA.

Two months ago bitcoins were worth over $10.  Four months ago they spiked to $30.  You do know bitcoins are worth $5 today, right?  I missed the part where any major stock market has fallen over 50% in the last couple of months.


How many bitcoins have you really bought?  Making statements along the lines of the public realising that bitcoins are a true safe haven currency is laughable.  Not even a super bitcoin bull would believe that.

Not every traditional film company suffered with the growing popularity of digital cameras.  Fuji did pretty well to reinvent itself and sell digital cameras.  The early Kodak digital cameras were not even made by Kodak: they were outsourced Chinon designs.

Flooz, Beanz and E-gold.

The thing about looking at graphs and trying to predict the future is you can only do it after its happened, by which time it's too late to trade.  Using the example graph, the US dollar is like the least ugly girl still available at the school formal.  She's the best choice of a bad bunch.  The other currency rocketing up in value right now is the Japanese Yen, a currency issued by the most indebted first world government in the world (GDP ratio wise) with a rapidly aging population and one which would be instantly bankrupt if they didn't rely on their own citizens to buy out the debt and pay very low interest rates.

Bitcoin could well be forming a 'bottom'.  People have said 'it can't go much lower!' for the past few months but I agree that much below $5 would be getting a bit silly.  The question is, is there anything to push us up to $10, $20 and beyond?  There are moves to make payment for goods via bitcoin enabled mobile phones available, but the idea is one converts the bitcoins to dollars as soon as possible.  Merchants aren't currency traders and generally don't want to take on the risk.  I have yet to see an honest idea that truly signals bitcoins are poised to head much higher.

It's someone sitting at McDonald's sucking down Quarter Pounders like they're going out of style.  Their bottom is forming quite nicely  

Someone (or some persons) have repeatedly tried to start a rally by initiating a buying frenzy.  No news about new innovative bitcoin products that people want to use, no major retailers taking up bitcoins, nothing to support the rally.  The smart money sees through the hype and knows when to take advantage of the situation.  If I'm wrong then all the low Asks will be pulled much higher and stay there the next time someone decides to get frisky with their trading.  

Nobody likes to admit they lost money, or they participated in loser trades.  When's the last time you had a friend run up to you and say 'guess what! I lost $1000 at the casino last night!' 

A lot of people got burned up the way up to $30 if they didn't quickly sell on the way down.  The 'buy and hold' crowd are deep in the red.  Few people possessed bitcoins of any value prior to the spike as they weren't popular before early 2011.

I attack any spike with sells simply because the spikes do not last.  I'm sure others do the same.  If you know the price isn't going to hold but you can make a tidy profit, you take what you can.

Bitcoin is too big to fail!  lol lol 

The 'rally' let me sell off some bitcoins at a nice profit when some silly sausage decided to spike the price to $5.35.  Well done, sir 

People make a big deal of the Dow Jones index falling below 10,000 (it will do so again shortly) but not 10,100 points.  People like to watch the odometer in their car tick over to 100,000km but don't give a toss about 99,912.  We like nice whole numbers that look pretty, even if they have no real significance.  I personally like to place my trades at $5.072912 or something just to make it random.

Investors need to man up and dump their fortunes into bitcoins.  Like, right now, when I have plenty of Asks on MtGox.  What happens to their fortunes after that doesn't concern me in the slightest 

The Dotcom bubble recovered?  When did that happen?  I recall the vast majority of dotcoms either racing towards IPOs with dubious business plans and subsequently crashing, or not getting to the sacred IPO and burning up all their capital.

The dotcom bubble was replaced by another bubble created by ultra cheap debt: the housing bubble.  But the dotcom bubble itself burst and never recovered, save for a few online businesses that were successful even before the bubble.

The Chinese love to gamble.  In casinos, on the share market.  Bitcoin offers them a great chance to have a play.  If more mainland Chinese are taking notice of bitcoin this could be great for the price.  At least it will lead to some wild price swings.

The Mayans predicted you would say that

The Mayan calendar affects me just as much as Jupiter traversing 'near' the moon means I'll have a bad day tomorrow.  I had a conspiracy minded friend once who swore that in 1999 the world would end because the planets would line up and cause 'powerful forces' to destroy Earth.  He didn't seem to remember that prediction a few years later.  Funny that.

Maybe the Mayans just got bored with writing a calendar hundreds of years into the future and decided to stop.  The calendar on my wall finishes at 31 December 2011.  I guess that's the end of the world as there's nothing after that.

BOOM.  Someone just fired more than 3000 bitcoins into the Bid 'wall' of $4.80, and it comes crashing down.  Rather interesting to see.

There's a steady supply of suckers, but unfortunately they need to come furnished with a large supply of cash too.  A poor sucker isn't much good to us.