How the economy could be stimulated?

[knight]

There are many things i don't understand about the bitcoin economy.

Is it good that there are so many services accepting bitcoin? There should be more support from the community, for example people encouraging each other to trade, to use the services? Or we should let the market decide, and only the best to win?

Is it ok with you that a service should die because nobody is interested (yet) about it? I saw some threads on art, and as far as I can see, people in here are not interested in buying drawings. So, the guy that sells drawings now, will stop drawing for bitcoins (in the optimistic case).

[kiba]

People are absolutely buying my arts. There may be one or two download each day, earning me between .10 and .20 BTC.

It's a pittance, but I earn zero BTC for my programming activity and mining make me only about .20 BTC each week.

[Cryptoman]

It will take time to build the Bitcoin economy.  One of the best ways is for sites that already have a proven business model to start accepting Bitcoins.  Exchange with national currencies is not terribly easy, so that will slow down adoption outside of Bitcoin fanatic circles.  Anyone putting up a site or otherwise offering a product/service has to understand that business may be slow to develop.

[kiba]

Sell services that the initial community like. These good and services are self sustaining. Eventually, the owners of these bitcoin business may decide to invest in a few risky venture that reach slightly less tech-savy users. These less savy users open up new businesses that are also self-sustaining in that reach that particular demography..and so on.

[Cryptoman]

My point is, how to keep a business running until the fat, ignorant lady hears about bitcoin? (sorry for putting it this way)

Choose a business that doesn't need to burn money on a daily basis.  Many of us here are already paying for web hosting for other purposes.  It's not like you have to obtain a business license and pay rent for a physical storefront and file quarterly reports with the government (you can if that floats your boat).  Set up your site to send you an SMS when there is an order so you can forget about it until someone places an order.  And, like kiba said, select products and services that appeal to ubergeeks.

[Sjalq]

Personally I see the same value in BTC as I do in gold. It has all the qualities of a store of value and a currency.

So personally I'm willing to take a small portion of my income and buy Bitcoins as a speculative investment. I base this on the soundish economics that there is a coming multi-national currency/debt default and a bit of blind trust and belief in the idea of BTC.

This stimulates the economy in that businesses are encouraged to trade in BTC because they can always cash out to a BTC exchange who then sells their BTC to me for real money.

Also if a steady rise in the BTC price is observed as speculators like me go long, this will encourage businesses that BTC is a save method of payment which is increasing in "real world" value and not decreasing.