Looks convincing. How low do you think we'll go? How much do you think I should deposit to Mt.Gox to profit the most?

I have been waiting for so long to finally buy my first coins, and it is not only me - there are dozens in the same situation that I know, thousands in the city, and millions in the world. We want correction, and we want it now.

LOL.

Hint: set up a poll. You would be surprised

Yes. There has been about 45 B oz silver produced since the dawn of mankind. About half of it is consumed or lost.

There remains less than 1 B oz "identifiable bullion inventories". This figure is down.
There is about 2 B oz in investment products and circulated coins.
There has to be about 5 B oz in jewelry and silverware since it is being produced at a constant rate.
An additional 10-15 B oz of silver exists but hard to say where and in what form.

The last silver spike in 1980 did not see a glut of unidentified silver coming to market. The identified stashes of circulated coins and silverware were quite depleted.

Silver has been in a positive demand since about 2006, meaning that investors are buying more than selling.

The total above ground silver grows only very slowly, about 0.5% a year, less than anything, even the population grows more.

I don't know if the OP has any proof, but I can tell of my experiences as a silver dealer.

Before we start, please explain how much you already understand about money, metals, markets etc. so that I will not waste your time talking about too basics.

http://www.providentmetals.com/bullion/silver/us-slv/90-slv-1.html

Found one myself. At least this one looks like they have the product in stock. The premium with cash discount, excluding shipping and handling fees, etc, is 11.5%.

That's quite a lot more than what we want to pay. Our pricing currently is based on 2% over spot. In the last 10 years there has been opportunities to buy at spot-1%. These have always marked the highs in PM prices. The lows, on the other hand, coincide with high premiums.

A well-kept secret is that during Fall 2008, official graphs tell you that silver price tanked real bad. In fact, physical silver was the only asset that appreciated during the liquidity squeeze.

Hey Folks,

Where has all the junk silver gone   

I am the operator of Silverbank, warehousing $160 000 F/V of our customers metals (90% circulated only). I cannot currently find any bags for sale from our supplier network, they are rather offering to buy them at 1.5% OVER spot, which is extraordinary and has not happened since the great crisis of 2008...

So please post a link if you see this normally-the-most-abundant form of silver for sale in wholesale quantity!

Otherwise the OP might turn reality, that we all are stinking rich in bitcoins, but nothing to buy except dollars.....

+1 It is for posts like THIS that the "donate" links are put on the signatures.

No, I never had the money to buy the entire market cap of either Apple or Google. With Bitcoin, many of us did. Now THAT is a remorse.

When I first heard about bitcoin, I could have bought it, lol. No, seriously, I could have bought maybe 5% of the supply and drive the price up 10000%.

Too bad, somebody else did. I suffer the consequences.

Please guys, you give me creeps. Not even one has yet pointed out that "greed" originally does not mean you want to get ahead with your *own* life!

"Greed" is that you want an unfair, unjust, unlawful, fraudulent, or coerced gain from *others*. So that they are worse off.

Doing or not doing something with your own, can never be greed. Hoarding is not greed. Envying somebody's hoard is greed.

Yeah. Few people even know that there is tax-free silver for EU citizens available in Estonia. It is the cheapest in EU and can be bought for BTC

Hi, I can sell legal tax-free investment silver to European Union citizens. This opportunity is only available in Estonian jurisdiction. If you are searching for the way to purchase PHYSICAL silver, no shares etc. it really pays to check this out. You save 10-20% compared to other countries' prices that have VAT. You will have to take delivery of your silver personally in Estonia or arrange for the shipping yourself.

http://www.silverbank.net

We also sell all other silver products, cheapest in Europe. No minimum or maximum purchases.

Yes, bitcoin accepted

Because you can effortlessly trade BTC/USD, they are really only two sides of the same coin.

Your anticipation of the future exchange rate may affect your propensity to consume vs. save, but the selection of payment method is a totally detached matter. Because you can always adjust your balances in the exchanges.

It is beneficial to separate the functions of value preservation and payment medium in a currency.

If you are comfortable with having about 50% of your net worth in gold, 25% in bitcoin and 25% in USD, this is your portfolio allocation.

When you need to make a transaction, you just pick the currency that is most suitable for that case (often it is USD, but could be BTC if the merchant eg. offers 5% off, hardly ever it's gold).

If the portfolio goes unbalanced, periodically adjust the components by selling and buying in the exchange.

Gresham's Law does not apply. You are free to hoard any currencies in any ratios you wish, and transact however you wish. Furthermore there are exchanges and floating exchange rates.

A miner would do well to base his calculations on profitability solely on BTC value. Many miners confuse their anticipation of BTC/fiat exchange rate appreciation with the profitability of mining.

Let's assume BFL ASIC is not a scam, and it will ship exactly the same time as the block reward is halved. From then on, the next year will see approximately 1.5 MBTC generated. (The figure would be 1.3 MBTC without the lag in difficulty adjustments, which causes more coins to be generated).

Some sources say that in ASIC preorders alone, more than 0.5 MBTC has been spent. This is a lot, considering that:
- the preordered capacity is unlikely to represent more than half of the hashrate, 2-3 months after launch.
- there is the electricity cost, which grows proportionally bigger the bigger the network grows.
- the more BTC price rises, the quicker is the network growth.

If the preorder figure is correct, an investment of 0.5 MBTC needs to be amortized during a period that does not generate more than approximately 0.3 MBTC. Clearly this is not possible, regardless of other factors.

So if you anticipate BTC appreciation, you should buy BTC. The more BTC appreciates, the worse bet mining is, because difficulty increases. If it stayed the same, mining would be proportional to direct holding of BTC. To add insult to injury, it does not even scale the other way round making mining better if the BTC fiat price dropped - in this event the hashrate declines only slowly, making it punitive to sell BTC to cover the cost of electricity. In any event, the ASIC manufacturers would likely lower their prices for existing equipment, and develop more power efficient technology.

TL;DR If you consider mining, forget about BTC price and its future. You need to amortize your BTC investment in 2 months with the BTC you generate by mining, taking into account the ever-increasing difficulty. If this does not pay off, you better purchase BTC and forget mining.