Yes, we saw it in 2008 when gold plummeted while the US dollar rocketed up in value.  Seems silly, but at times of stress you want to be holding cash to pay back cash debts.  It's no good holding shiny pieces of metal when you're leveraged and need dollars.  We're beginning to see this replayed in 2011.

Bitcoin is small enough that it may escape the trap.  It's just a play thing for a few wealthy people to have a bit of fun and speculate with.  The whole market is what, $35M?

No need to go after the exchange (which someone has already done, successfully).  Go after the users keeping wallets on their PCs.  That has been done successfully too (automated trojans).  Bitcoin allows your wallet to be plundered from the other side of the planet.  No need to mug someone on the street.

That problem was solved long ago by thieves.  With debit and credit cards they attack the victim at an ATM, demanding all money must be withdrawn from the accounts or else.  Does the thief need to know the PIN?  Nope.

A mugger steals your phone and notices a wallet with lots of juicy bitcoins on it, but it's password protected.  Damn!  Plan foiled.  Or is it?  Just beat the victim until he or she coughs up the password.

Back above $5 now.  Woohoo!  Good times are back again.  Time to sell off all those recently purchased cheap bitcoins.  Hopefully the price goes down again.  Rinse, repeat, profit.

I didn't ask about 2009. 


A trend is relevant when it contains relevant data.  To most people, data from 2010 isn't relevant as they didn't mine and didn't purchase bitcoins during that time.  There would be relatively few people with large holdings of bitcoins purchased or mined at cents per bitcoin.

You know what they say about statistics and lies.  It's possible to make almost anything look good.  I have yet to see someone quote a share's price on a log graph to show price trends.

Maybe in the USA or Canada, with the cheapest electricity on Earth.

Why does the graph start in August 2010, when hardly anyone was using bitcoins and very few people even knew about them?  Why not start the graph in March or April 2011 when things really got going and bitcoins became popular?  August 2010 is an arbitrary date designed to make the long term trend look great.  Never mind that 80% fall in the middle.

Back to $5.40 - $5.60 range by week's end.  The general trend is still down but it's in no one's interest to see bitcoin crash.  Traders picking off easy profits from the swings don't want to see the price stagnate.  

Things were getting boring on MtGox over the weekend.  Looks like someone decided to spice things up a bit.  I'm not surprised at all we're below $5 now.  Totally predictable.

World stock markets are in turmoil, commodity prices are plummeting, investors are running towards US dollars, dogs and cats are sleeping together.  Some people like to think bitcoin is isolated from the general fiat economy, but that's not the case.  High risk and highly speculative investments are the first to be sold off.  I wouldn't be surprised if we see new 6 month lows for bitcoins this week.

Quite a few countries are already priced out of mining.  This forum tends to have a North American centric opinion of mining costs and many people think everyone gets power at 10c/kWh or less.

With the current price and no affordable FPGA solution available (ROI 1+ years right now) I don't see more miners entering the fray.  The difficulty setting has been falling steadily.  If bitcoin stumbles to $4 and lower and stays there then even more people will wonder whether it's worth mining.  Difficulty decreases again, and so on.  Just because mining costs more than $1 now and forms a support floor beneath bitcoin's current price doesn't mean the same will apply in 6 months time.

And remember, a speculator doesn't care what you paid to mine that bitcoin: they are just there to extract profit.

Bitcoin does all the above whether it's valued at $1 or $100 each.  Nothing changes if bitcoins are worth a lot more or a lot less.  The only thing that should make the price rise is demand from trade.  If people want to spend a million dollars a day using bitcoins but bitcoins are only worth 1c each then that obviously isn't going to work.  The price would naturally go up.  How much commerce is transacted in bitcoins today?  (bitcoin monitor watching doesn't count).  Everything else is speculation.

The problem with only bitcoin boosters and bulls spending time on a bitcoin forum is that it creates groupthink.  Everyone ends up believing bitcoin's value will shoot to the moon and beyond because nobody disagrees.  Why would anyone who disagrees spend time on a bitcoin forum?  Because it promotes a healthy ecosystem of ideas.

I appreciate bitcoin.  I just strongly disagree with the manic value people attribute to it.  Seems plenty of other people agree.  We're 80% off the bubble high.

I can't quite tell whether you're being ironic about your large order, or whether you think $100 is actually a large amount of money.  For a teenager it can be, for anyone else it's a drop in the ocean.

I have never had a charge back like that.  I have only issued 3 in recent history: one through my CC company and two through PayPal.  People bitch and moan about PayPal, but when push came to shove PayPal delivered me my money back from a fraudulent seller.


In my charge backs one party issued all sorts of excuses as to why they couldn't return my money.  Visa cut through the BS.  The two charge backs through PayPal were for fraudulent eBay sellers who suddenly went silent.  Not a peep from them.  Communication problem?  Probably not.  They took the money and ran.


If you have the option for rejecting charge backs then why have charge backs in the first place?  The merchant is always going to reject them.  Why would they approve the customer getting their money back through forced action from the credit card company?  The only thing a merchant should do is present evidence that the goods or services were delivered and then leave it up to the CC company's judgment.  A far from perfect system to be sure, but it usually works.  Merchants are never happy when a charge back arrives for whatever reason, but that's the cost of business.  Bitcoins are asking the customer to carry the risk of fraud.


PayPal managed to return my money after a hacker took over someone's eBay account and sold items they never delivered.  No central authority means the buyer is out of luck with bitcoins.  It's the price one pays for freedom from banks.

They're anticipating we'll be back to 4.6 to 4.8 within the next couple of days.

Bulls will deposit money into bitcoins if they see value.  No value?  No extra money.  Plenty of people are doing their utmost to talk bitcoins up on this forum, but only money truly counts.

I was thinking about bitcoin and the issue of charge backs today.  Merchants would love a system where customers cannot issue a charge back after receiving the goods.  But from my point of view, as the customer, I like having the ability to get my money back.  Recently I dealt with a solar panel installer that refused to play ball after a deposit was placed via CC.  I and other customers of this company have successfully retrieved our money even after the company refused.  That would not be possible with bitcoins. 

Now one could argue that ordinary consumer law still protects me.  But this consumer law is slow and difficult.  Requires working through the courts and is costly.  It's much easier to fire off a letter to Visa and let them do the work for free on my behalf.

Don't worry, now that the gold bubble has burst, investors will be flocking to safe haven assets such as bitcoins.

... I almost typed that without bursting into laughter  

Lol    I see you didn't read too closely.  It started at 0.67BTC and has been going up as blocks are downloaded.  Will soon be in triple digits.

Yeah.  Accidently formatted hard drives.  Dead hard drives.  Stolen laptops.  PCs once used but abandoned.  Reinstalling Windows.  Becoming bored with bitcoins and deleting them (in 2010).  Lots of ways for thousands to have been lost.  I honestly had no idea I had a bunch on this seldom used desktop PC.