Market / BTC issues?

[NO_SLAVE]

First let me say, Love this community and spirit.

been studying bitcoin for about 6 weeks now, and while Im enthusiastic about its speculative future there are some nagging issues which make me question continued long term success.  Ive been in trading of commodities, stocks options and etc for 16 years. I may be making many assumptions here and hope to be corrected with filler facts I may be missing.

The first, the number of BTC in circulation is very low 5.6 million or so, which makes markets very illiquid and extremely volatile.  Even if all 21.6 million were in circulation, and completely fractionalized- (140 years from now?) the volatility would still be hard to deal with and build a stable economy upon. Yes it may go up against the USD 100% in a day, but it can just as easily go down 75% in one day, depending on what the large old holders do.
How many total bitcoins will be in circulation if the BTC is fully fractionalized?

Bots! The biggest issue I see in the US stock markets (besides uncle gorillas intervention) is bots. Its not possible to long term invest in a thing and expect a return if the bots are always churning the commodity. This is why Ive cashed out of many other markets. They are not free , based on human interaction, they are completely gamed by thugs. It seems to me that in such a tiny, volitile market, as the bots are written and start controlling the market more and more, the BTC will be in many ways more unstable than even the most instable US OTC markets. So what anonymous thugs are/will be gaming this tiny market?
MT Gox on their website sanctions the creation of more bots. 

MTGOx and other exchanges.  If uncle gorilla decides to go after BTC, which I will assume he will (HIS fiat is his power), a point attack on a popular exchange like MTGOX will send users, and many other users of BTC scurrying down the mountain. It is feasible, it can happen. Look at the Norfed case as a somewhat similar example. The homeland security laws and new addendums allow big uncle to do anything he pleases outside of constitutional law. Habeus corpus is done.

-The technical challenges ordinary people must currently hurdle to do anything with BTC.  BTC is a programmers currency. Seemingly Not a currency for non programmers. The term currency is used to describe a commodity used in exchange that is currently widely accepted, by a majority.  If the goal is to get the masses to use bitcoin the dumbdown factor must go exponential just as btc in USD is going.

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[evoorhees]

The first, the number of BTC in circulation is very low 5.6 million or so, which makes markets very illiquid and extremely volatile.  Even if all 21.6 million were in circulation, and completely fractionalized- (140 years from now?) the volatility would still be hard to deal with and build a stable economy upon. Yes it may go up against the USD 100% in a day, but it can just as easily go down 75% in one day, depending on what the large old holders do.
How many total bitcoins will be in circulation if the BTC is fully fractionalized?

Don't let the decimal point fool you... it's arbitrary. There are actually (to use your number) 560,000,000,000,000 btc units in circulation now (each btc has eight decimal places).  I think the real number is more like 6.5m btc right now fyi.

It's true the market is extremely volatile right now, but it's because A) we're in a period of wild speculation and adoption and B) not that many actors are involved yet.  Volatility will necessarily smooth as the market cap grows.

[rebuilder]

Either things will work out or they won't. We will see, I don't think there's much you can do to alter the outcome as far as economic policy is concerned. It's a decentralized currency, a lack of control is a core feature.

[rebuilder]

As for your coins, they should be fine, assuming they were sent to your address. The wallet doesn't contain any coins. Wallet.dat is a treasure map, with X's marking the spot where your coins are buried in the block chain, distributed to Bitcoin users across the Internet.

Maybe that analogy just makes things more confusing. It's a difficult art.