Yup, still feeling bearish.

[evolve]

Almost doubling in value in less than 2 days isn't exactly inspiring confidence in me right now either.

How about being the same value it was 3 days ago? What a silly comment.

Did you forget the < $20 to $266 run up that caused the first part of the crash?...You know, when it was growing exponentially and at an insane rate? Do you really not see how following the same pattern would lead to disaster? Really?

[DrG]

I would love to see BTC $100 by the end of the year. I don't want to see it at $250 next Monday and $53 next Wednesday and $180 the week after.

Who is going to use it as a currency then?  It would basically a tool for traders to milk money from noobies.

I'm sure many here would love to see the volatility.  I personally would be happy if it stayed still for 7 months.

[mp420]

Bitcoin is not really useful for anything (except perhaps small time drug trade). It's a neat technological proof of concept but it sucks, and it's always going to suck, as a medium of e-commerce.

Also, actual bitcoin adoption hasn't gone up at the same pace as the price. We'd be consistently hitting the soft block size limit by now if it had.

Don't let the hype on the forums fool you. We'll see lower prices yet.

[dave111223]

Bitcoin is not really useful for anything (except perhaps small time drug trade). It's a neat technological proof of concept but it sucks, and it's always going to suck, as a medium of e-commerce.

Ahh said like someone having obviously very little eCommerce experience.

Which payment processor are you comparing Bitcoin to when you say "it sucks" (Paypal?? 2Checkout?? Authorize.net??)?

I'll tell you what "Sucks":
- Getting thousands of dollars frozen in your account for weeks/months for doing nothing wrong; and basically bringing your business to halt
- Getting fraudulent chargebacks months after shipping products, losing all the money + chargeback fees + transaction fees; even when you played by all the rules (trackable shipping etc..)
- Getting a chargeback on money you have already refunded (that's my favorite), and you lost double the payment amount for a couple of months.
- Getting charged 2.5-5% per transactions
- Getting bullshit exchange rates that are 2-3% less than the true exchange rate
- Spending time signing up for accounts, getting "verified" etc...etc...
- Having customers says "My credit card won't work, the address doesn't match, the ip didn't match blah blah blah"

Can you name one payment processor that doesn't suffer from these issues...oh wait...i can... Bitcoin.

[ManBearPig]

Bitcoin is not really useful for anything (except perhaps small time drug trade). It's a neat technological proof of concept but it sucks, and it's always going to suck, as a medium of e-commerce.

Ahh said like someone having obviously very little eCommerce experience.
...
Can you name one payment processor that doesn't suffer from these issues...oh wait...i can... Bitcoin.

Hear hear!

After nightmare experiences with PayPal, Moneybookers and my own bank wanting to charge me a fortune (with Draconian conditions attached) to set-up a merchant account alongside my business bank account, I can vouch for all of the above.

Someone doesn't know what they're talking about here.

[bitcon]

once more and more businesses start accepting bitcoin as form of payment we'll see more stability and less bubbles/crashes.

[Frozenlock]

Bitcoin is not really useful for anything (except perhaps small time drug trade). It's a neat technological proof of concept but it sucks, and it's always going to suck, as a medium of e-commerce.

I have something here that might change your mind:

https://bips.me/pricing

[mp420]

Transactions will be free or cheap only if Bitcoin stays a very small niche currency. Either it will not be widely adopted or it will be more expensive than most other payment processing options.

Also, zero trust irreversable payments may be neat when trading between individuals, but companies need trust regardless of whether they use bitcoins. And payments NEED to be reversed sometimes. Banks and other financial intermediaries are absolutely necessary.

I'm actually involved in e-commerce, thank you very much.

[rpietila]

Transactions will be free or cheap only if Bitcoin stays a very small niche currency. Either it will not be widely adopted or it will be more expensive than most other payment processing options.

Also, zero trust irreversable payments may be neat when trading between individuals, but companies need trust regardless of whether they use bitcoins. And payments NEED to be reversed sometimes. Banks and other financial intermediaries are absolutely necessary.

I'm actually involved in e-commerce, thank you very much.

I also do some commerce, and I am salivating because of bitcoin. So you don't need to use it, I will

[rhinospray]

Thanks for those last bullish posts guys, I needed to get some reassurance of were we are in the bubble chart.

So we are still in the denial phase? Way to go. It has to feel like taking money from little boys for the big hands.

[dave111223]

Transactions will be free or cheap only if Bitcoin stays a very small niche currency. Either it will not be widely adopted or it will be more expensive than most other payment processing options.

This assumption only works if A) The block size limit is never increased AND B) No 3rd party companies layer themselves on top of bitcoin and start processing transactions in batches.

Also, zero trust irreversable payments may be neat when trading between individuals, but companies need trust regardless of whether they use bitcoins. And payments NEED to be reversed sometimes.

Would you like to elaborate on this?

If a company accepts Bitcoins they don't need to trust the customer at all.  Hell, if you send me bitcoins i'll ship your stuff to the north pole if you ask me to.

Customers need to trust companies when sending Bitcoins and this can only be earned through feedback and good service over a period of time.  Which is IMHO the way in should be.

It's very easy to figure out if a company is "trusted" (a quick internet search on when they were started, do they have existing customers, have they ripped people off etc...)
It's very difficult to figure out if a customer is "trusted" (a quick internet search will uncover almost nothing, especially if they are using fake details etc...)

Bitcoins forces the customer to do a minor amount of research into their vendor
Current payment processors force the merchant to do fruitless/impossible research into their customers

Which is more efficient?

[blueberry]

Thanks for those last bullish posts guys, I needed to get some reassurance of were we are in the bubble chart.

So we are still in the denial phase? Way to go. It has to feel like taking money from little boys for the big hands.

Sorry it's the bears that are in denial right now. They still think they will be able to buy at $30. How sad.

[gizmoh]

Yea sure we are going to hit new ATH with thousands of newcomers !

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/stats/timeline

[rpietila]

Yea sure we are going to hit new ATH with thousands of newcomers !

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/stats/timeline

Ah sorry, the date range was just wrong. Your bad 

[rhinospray]

Bitcoins forces the customer to do a minor amount of research into their vendor
Current payment processors force the merchant to do fruitless/impossible research into their customers

Which is more efficient?

The most efficient is to forget research, make the sell as smooth and safe as possible for the customer, and to measure the small fraud rate and account for it t as part of your cost.

[Lieutenant_Bob]

I believe the market has shown real resilience around the 50$ mark. The current price of 92$ has also held some ground already. With several thousand accounts being created @ MtGox, downloads of the main wallet software going up, more balanced media coverage, more businesses accepting BTC it all seems to me that going long is the way. I expect the "Bitcoin has recovered nicely" articles to start any time soon in the mainstream media. Long it is, my opinion.

[rpietila]

I was interviewed today for an article of the runner-up Finnish finance newspaper Taloussanomat. I got to say something like this: "People are interested in Bitcoin for a wide variety of reasons. Some want to fight back the central bank, others evade taxes, and still others to buy illicit drugs anonymously. Without regard as to whether these reasons are good or legit in my opinion, they prop up the exchange rate of Bitcoin, and as an investor I will be among the ones profiting."

[ElectricMucus]

I think the point here is:
The world now knows about bitcoin, pretty much all of it.
But it knows it for what it is: A trading game with scummy figures playing captain of the industry and an attached army of zealots with the attitude of MLM participants.

In short: We're out of suckers.

I agree that we're "out of suckers" as it were but I disagree that the whole world knows about Bitcoin.

Outside of my fellow news/tech junkies, only a couple people I know have heard of it.  Then of course there's also the fact that the majority of the world doesn't have Internet access (source).

For our purposes that's everybody. When the bubble popped my dad told me on the phone he did read about "those bitcoins" and "how huge they have become" in the newspaper.
On that day I saw two teenagers on the street following the bitcoin price on their androids. ("216 Euro!!!")

They all learned what Bitcoin is all about: Buy and sell bitcoins.

[dave111223]

Bitcoins forces the customer to do a minor amount of research into their vendor
Current payment processors force the merchant to do fruitless/impossible research into their customers

Which is more efficient?

The most efficient is to forget research, make the sell as smooth and safe as possible for the customer, and to measure the small fraud rate and account for it t as part of your cost.

Poor child.  We see the results of decades of the Mastercard/Visa duopoly.

So basically customers should be able to throw their money anywhere they want, without a care in the world, to any two-bit scam merchant and the cost of this reckless behavior should be shared to the cost of all legitimate merchants and diligent customers alike?

Also the "small fraud rate" is around 1% of total ecommerce...so basically for every $100 you spend online you are paying an extra $1 cause some douche keys his credit card numbers into Paypal phishing emails, or someone maxes out their credit cards and decides they'll just claim it was stolen.

Also this doesn't not make the process "smoother" because merchant require more info, and institute holding periods to weed out fraudulent customers.  I just bought some software online, had to wait 48hours for the download...do you consider that "smooth", i don't.  Would have preferred to pay with bitcoin and got the software in an hour no questions asked.

[Manticore]

For our purposes that's everybody. When the bubble popped my dad told me on the phone he did read about "those bitcoins" and "how huge they have become" in the newspaper.
On that day I saw two teenagers on the street following the bitcoin price on their androids. ("216 Euro!!!")

They all learned what Bitcoin is all about: Buy and sell bitcoins.

People with any sort of tech literacy have heard about Bitcoins at this stage. I have friends in Argentina that are not the most tech literate and they certainly know about it. Anyone who may actually use it anytime soon knows about it.

It's difficult not to flip-flop when it comes to the valuation. Predicting pricing action has very little to with fundamentals. It's all about the perception of fundamentals and predicting whether or not there will be another wave of speculation based on headlines. If all of the business that now use Bitcoin had quietly adopted, we would not have seen much of a stir in the price.

If a wave of new buyers is coming in, it is because they think there will be a successive wave of buyers based on upcoming news and announcements and they are still getting in relatively early. It has nothing to do with the number of downloads, companies using Bitcoin, widespread adoption, or any new deep level of understanding of Bitcoin. It has everything to do with the fact that there could still be a news release around the corner that can propel this higher vis–à–vis speculators.

I've been surprised by recent pricing action. Everything tells me that this should trade sideways to down over the next few months. But....it's not the new adopters that are setting this market. It's the new speculators, I suppose. And I suppose that regardless of the fundamentals, for the foreseeable future there will be the allure that some big news story might propel this into bubble territory again. We should retest $50 but I'm not sure how soon/if this will happen.