Last year I bought a few
BTC (nowhere near enough
) at $5 mainly for it's brilliant utility as a currency in enabling me to buy certain stuff
. As a currency it had great utility when its price was fairly stable during the time it took to transfer money to an exchange, buy the bitcoins and move those to my marketplace account. I knew how much cash I needed to send where as now the price could be wildly different by the time I come to buy the merchandise.
After researching and thinking about it I realised bitcoin was still in the discovery stage for most people and I too was a bit paranoid about things with all the talk of encryption, site hacks and securing your wallet. Rational logic told me that it is way more secure than my bank account though and that made it a definite buy (buy when others are fearful).
Since then greed has taken over and bitcoins have become mostly a speculative vehicle, which because of their volatility possibly reduces their utility value as currency. I'm a bit more wary about spending them because I don't know how much it's actually going to cost me. Irrational I know, but human.
To me we are in a mini bubble which I define as the majority of people buying them doing so not for their utility value but purely in the hope of selling at a higher price. I agree they are going higher ultimately but bubbles occur with only a small number of participants until word spreads to a greater number of people. Given the economy and the fact we are dealing with money means that after the greed phase there is the fear of missing out stage when things really go ballistic.
My first question is to people who have been buying since January. What is the primary emotion that lead you to buy?
My second question is whether the price volatility has affected trade on site that accept bitcoin now that prices can be wildly different by the time.
