looking at mtgox trade data there was one particular trade for exactly 100k coins that brought prices down to .20, and I'm betting that same amount will broken in multiple asks, which will, in the end, serve as a buffer against huge price increases. These radical changes are probably just the market adapting to all new comers than finally feel comfortable enough to put $ in mtgox, knowing they'll be able to cash out the profits.

Exactly. I find it very hard to believe that speculation **STABILIZES** prices.

I remember a case in my country when speculation caused our currency to jump by about 20% in matter of 48 hours. This is not what i would call "stable".
Perhaps only SMALL speculations sptabilize currency, but big ones surely can even damage large markets.

You went batshit crazy for two thread and accuse us of all sort of stuff that we didn't endorse.
that goes both ways I believe but I don't mind ... btw if you endorse intentional speculation for the sole purpose of profit then I'm still calling you a scumbag LOL

I did not accuse you of that, you confessed it

I believe that kind of speculation is wrong, morally wrong, just like sweatshops are in my view and I'm not going to endorse it. On the contrary I'm going to speak out against it as I would against owners or practitioners of sweatshops ... and I would also call them scumbags

OK ... is liberalism compatible with sweatshops then? Toxic waste? ponzi schemes? If not, why not?

I think we are not understanding each other in one pretty obscure point, I'll try to explain once I know you answer so i can see if I'm right ...

Yeah, I'm sure you enjoy seeing millions of men, women and children die of starvation all the time because some investment banker is taking his next big business into fruition. But I'm considered "immoral" for calling that banker scum ... and I'm supposed to be the one with values upside down?
 
So let's worship speculation and get offended by people calling scam a scam so we can ignore reality, sleep well at night and make some awesome profit without our conscience being moved.

I'm sad that I actually live in a world with moralities like yours

I'm sorry, I know my words are strong ... I understand that most people do not realize what they are doing. Can you call a child taking someone else's apple a scumbag because he "stole it"? I do not think so ... but it is expected that the child grows up and as a grown up is going to be held liable for the same action. It's time to grow up

It's the intention that counts, from the outside it is very hard if not impossible to distinguish speculation and genuine demand. Of course if you buy bitcoins to do some business with them and in the meantime it rises you're not speculator nor scumbag.

What gives bitcoin its value right now? What is backing it? There are not enough real useful services (meaning other than "let me try this" type of things which are driven by pure enthusiasm for the novelty of bitcoin - which is going to go away soon) so most of the apparent "value" is a bubble created by exactly the type of speculators hoping to make a profit. This is not real value ... it's virtual, it doesn't exist ... in the real world nobody values bitcoins for the sake of being bitcoins. It baffles my mind how anybody can see this as something good, why would it be good? For what? because it makes pretty charts? This type of economy is just a giant ponzi scheme snowballing and snowballing until there is enough suckers to believe it will go further up ... when the world runs out of suckers people start selling off unleashing a raging inferno of sell-offs where those who sell off first are at the top of the pyramid making huge profits while the base is going to loose big time ... in the end no real value or wealth was ever created, the money just changed hands (was redistributed) from the suckers to those at the top. there is not value in that ... pretty charts showing rising numbers are not wealth. It's fraud and a scam ... the only real value is physical economy and services that people desire *other than* monetary gain. Selling "investment funds" for the sake of making more money from money is not a service anybody would desire if they wouldn't want more money from it ... the same goes for gambling, casinos etc. - NOBODY would participate if there wasn't a prospect for making more money out of just money. This is the scam ... that *can't be done*, it's zero sum game. You can NOT make money from money this way or create real wealth ... you can just take it from somebody else - and that is just wrong and YES IT IS IMMORAL too!

If somebody does this, he *is* a scumbag whether he realizes it or not. And not because I'm calling him that ... a robber is not a scumbag because I call him one, he is a scumbag because he robs people. If you want to remedy the situation you need to go to the root cause ... simply, do not do it! And inform everybody else why it is a bad thing to do. The big guns on Wall Street *are* scumbags and a lot of people are suffering because of them ... a lot of people will suffer if you're going to do this with bitcoin too. It's a matter of personal responsibility and yes also of morality ... do you want true production and creative people to suffer because of your thirst for money/profit?

I can't believe people are brainwashed enough to actually say this ... the speculators are buying rice for *the sole purpose* of selling it at higher price so net effect is that the rice is more expansive than it would be if the market was untampered with (not manipulated) with a cut going to the speculator. The speculator *does nothing else* than take the cut. There is no value added, he just steals the money counting on the fact that regular people do not have the time or desire to watch for such a thing (because they are honest and actually producing real goods rather than feeding off of someone else's work). Then he can up the game and convince some gullible people to become "investors" and actually buy the stuff he is hoping to sell at higher price ... the increased demand in turn makes the prices rise even more, he repeats this until he can find enough suckers to buy the crud he is selling. Then he goes out of the market being an insider and knowing that he is going to sell it which is going to crash the price. By this time however the crud he created changed so many hands that nobody really knows where it came from so he is safe. Then he sells and makes huge profit because of the bubble he created (or with his insider friends), the suckers loose big time ... oh, investment got wrong, nobody knows why, the invisible hand of market decided ... oh sure, save that crap for another suckers not me. Net effect = few people made huge profits doing nothing else than moving some numbers around, a much larger pool of suckers who "invested" got robbed and in the meantime million people died of hunger in poor countries because of the artificially inflated price of food while the bubble was forming. Yeah and i the meantime few rice farmers made some more money because few of the breadcrumbs from this scam has fallen their way ... but they probably "invested" it in another bubble which is going to implode next year. Final result, everybody looses except speculator who didn't do anything useful in the first place!

Scum of the Earth! If I wouldn't be that of a big believer in freedom and personal responsibility I would lock these people up the the worst prison until they rot! Instead I'm trying to educate people about this so the market speaks and people just REFUSE to participate in this and realize what a scam it is ... but I'm being lambasted by religious number and graph worshipers who just don't give a damn about the effects on the actual real world it has. Oh but our graphs are going up, that can't be wrong ... give me a break.

you do this kind of thing, you're a leech on human society feeding of off others and I despise you!

Will BitCoin be first adopted by the underground, black markets, criminals, money launderers, etc.?  After all, the only people who will bother with the complexity (besides us crypto-nerds) are those who can profit from it.  I think this will be a good thing, as it will help the currency to be established.

The one thing I'm most worried about is that someone (or some company) will develop some kind of proprietary hashing hardware and monopolize all new currency creation (like DeBeers with diamonds).  This might be solved by a break in the chain to change the hash function to something more resistant to specialized hardware.

You are saying that as if that would be a bad thing. Speculation is bad use of bitcoin (or any other currency), screw all the speculators! Make real services instead!