The whole thing is a big joke - If there wasn't such a ridiculous barrier to entry from USD -> BTC (short of wire transfer, which is not an every day transaction for most people), you'd see a much more robust market. There is money aching to get into BTC, but still sitting waiting to go into LR or Dwolla or some equivalent nonsense.
Trust me, this is the beginning not the end.
I fully agree with this. Look around and you will see the e-currency market is already a growing bussines (LR, Dwolla, c-gold etc.)
Now Bitcoin is entering the stage. But especially for europeans it is not ease to buy bitcoins. There are still number of barriers. For an bank transfer from TH to my european bank TH will charge me with 45 USD
Thats to much. MtGox was a got alternative. But i need to use LR to get money to my MrGox account. If such barriers will fall bitcoin will raise much more than in the passed. Because it opens up this market wide open to all non-Americans too. And this is a bigger market than just the US only.
Is there really no suitable market for Europe to trade in? The issue, as you may know, is the rather curious [to me, at least] fact that international trade is fraught with dragons. I recently had to cancel an ebay sale because I accidentally listed it as biddable by international buyers- a girl from Bulgaria instantly snapped up the item but unfortunately I couldn't go through with it because the
only irrevocable [safe] method of payment is a bank transfer. In the US we at least have Dwolla to serve this purpose, and thank goodness for that. I'm sure it's just a matter of time before a number of good international trading venues pop up; there's obviously a good bit of coin to be made from it.
Speaking of which, it will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow. I might expect to see a dip right away as it will take buyers a few hours to get funds from dwolla into their accounts.. And given how silly the btc trading market can be this could result in an exaggerated caused by morons who decide to sell because they see the dip and think the sky is falling. Unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to get funds into the market in time to make any buys during the possible dip....
It's all fine, though. My primarily interest lies in what goods and services I can buy using btc. USD is the
last thing I'm interested in buying anytime soon.
