It works for Wall Street banks where there are laws to put in place 'Chinese Walls' to prevent traders trading shares the bank itself is involved in.  If people can get away with that in a regulated environment, then what about bitcoin exchanges where pretty much anything goes?  It's not a risk free trade for the exchange as they could be left with a bunch of bitcoins and have to pay out a mass of orders in dollars, but as mentioned the exchange gets to see everyone's orders first and can act accordingly.

Whoever the large trader is in the current market is doing a brilliant job.  Price is dumped to below $6, then slowly built up to $6.42 with small orders before nice chunky sells like 1374btc are put through and the price falls again.  It's rather interesting to watch.  One thing is for sure, win or lose, MtGox comes out on top.

Stock options usually aren't taxed (check your local tax laws) as they're worthless until the stock's price reaches a certain value for you to cash them in.  Microsoft's scheme wasn't a tax evasion scheme: it was an incentive scheme and a way to pay sub par wages all in one.  If the employees built successful products the share price went up and options could be cashed in.  Likewise Microsoft could promise lots of options while paying lower wages on the bet that the option price would never be reached (unknown to the employee).  Stock options for CEOs and boards serve a different purpose.  They are a strong incentive to raise the share price by any means possible.

Like it or not, there's no way of avoiding the real economy and other currencies when dealing with bitcoins, therefore bitcoins' value versus other currencies will always be very important.  While bitcoins can fluctuate 15%+ on a daily basis no one will seriously use them for commerce unless: the bitcoin price carries a large premium over the dollar price (why use bitcoins then?), or the merchant employs dynamic pricing that changes every few hours or even minutes (and immediately heads over to MtGox to cash out).

That's an easy one to answer: it will never happen because it can't happen.  If the employees at the retailer and manufacturer get paid in bitcoins, how do they pay income tax?  How is sales tax paid on the TV?  Governments will never accept bitcoins as payment just like gold, silver, diamonds etc are not usable as tax payments today.

Now it would be possible to get cute and say the employees don't have any income as they get paid in bitcoins instead of dollars, but try explaining that to a judge when the employee is taken to court for tax evasion (the representing lawyer will demand dollars instead of bitcoins too).

You sir, made my day.

Bought at $7.10 (long standing bid, over a week ago) and rued the fact that price kept falling.  Alas, some kind soul pumped the price up to a $7.50+ spike today and that's where I sold.  $6.90 now.

Will buy again.

People said stability was going to be found at $25, $20, $15, $10, and no way will it ever possibly go below $5.  Why should $1 see a stabilization?  Many people (most?) got into bitcoins to make money.  Burning electricity to make bitcoins was fun.  It's not so fun when it costs more in power, hardware, cooling and depreciation than retrieved in bitcoins.

Why wouldn't you use your own currency (USD$ or whatever country you live in) to buy and sell cars?  Cars are not sold as anonymous or pseudo anonymous goods.

People used those events as an excuse for a rapid drop in bitcoin's value a month ago.  It can't be used twice (we're only talking about tens of thousands of bitcoins, after all).

The log chart is distorted as it includes essentially irrelevant data when bitcoins were worth a few cents each.  While it's valid to include the data (it's factual) it's also irrelevant to bitcoin users today.  So what that the price now is still 1000 times higher than it was a year ago?  It doesn't change the fact that bitcoin's value is down almost 75% from its peak. 

Maybe the Japanese can use log graphs of the Nikkei Index starting from the 1970s to make themselves feel better.  They are still in a bull market today! 

Alright.  I've just seen the reason why bitcoins are crashing:

http://www.kitco.com/

Swiss Franc
-8.65%    09/06-08:28    0.8551    1.1695    

The Swiss are dumping their currency, and in a panic are dumping their bitcoins too.

 

How do they know the bitcoins were stolen?  If they have reports from users and can trace the keychain then it seems like decent enough evidence to freeze the accounts until ownership can be verified.  PayPal freezes accounts for a lot less.

How many allegedly stolen bitcoins are being dumped onto the market right now?  Has the selling finished or are we looking at tens of thousands still waiting to be processed?

Which laws regarding stolen goods and money laundering does MtGox have to follow, and in which jurisdiction?

As others have pointed out, MtGox has selectively released very sensitive market information.  This is unethical at best.  If what MtGox says is true, speculators should be lining up to buy en mass as soon as the sell off finishes.

Looking at MtGox Live, I've never seen asks and bids so lopsided before.  Looking at the number of bids we should have a very firm floor to not go below $6.  Asks have retreated to a fraction of bids.

Interesting times.  Eating popcorn and watching the action.

There's a fine line between education and spruiking.  The few people who know about bitcoins have heard you make money by running your computer (sounds like a complete scam) or that drug users love it (Silk Road).  Preaching about freedom from fiat currencies isn't going to catch on with the vast majority of people, and mentioning you run a program on your computer to make cash sounds laughable regardless of reality.

Bitcoin needs a new sales pitch.

I thought the Mayans predicted it?  It happened a bit earlier than they thought however.

There wouldn't be many people left on this forum.

I would like to offer 100 ClusterCoin for your 5 special rocks 

Let's all put in high bids and push up the price!

Is good, is fun!  Turn large fortune into small fortune.

A few days ago when bitcoin was down down and heading down from $9 I posted on this forum that I had buys at $7.10.  Well, those were filled today and the price kept heading lower.  Lol.  Time will tell whether it was a smart buy (probably not).

Once the bitcoin is in Somalia, how does it get turned into their local currency?  I suspect the number of merchants willing to take bitcoins inside Somalia is somewhere between zero and none.

Maybe they could send it to MtGox (Japan) and then... run into the same problem as every other currency.