Bitcoin has clearly failed

[Timbert33]

bitcoin is not a currency, it is a token where people have an agreed upon understanding that 1btc = something.

  Oh, you.

But yeah, I think speculation on whether it will fail or end up working out is kind of pointless. I think it will stay around for a long time, but if it does go away something will take its place. The only reason I really see a catastrophe happening is if there is a huge security issue. Either way it's a monumental step forward for anonymity and decentralization of currency, and it's awesome. I'm sure it represents an idea that's not going away, at the very least.

[merve10495]

Well I have been trading in Bitcoin

Everytime you trade in Bitcoin the trade has happened.
Thus making it a successful trade.
When it is a successful trade it obviously hasn't failed?

What has failed is your troll attempt.

[ledgerman]

whats happened to bitcoin? should I be worried?

[organofcorti]

whats happened to bitcoin? should I be worried?

Yes. From the date of the OP, it was scheduled to fail almost a year ago.

[muyuu]

1 Bitcoin will always be 1 Bitcoin. That's stable enough for me.

+1

Its not bitcoin thats unstable its fiat.

I only ever buy bitcoin and cash it out for bitcoin services not go back to the steaming pile that is government fiat.

Well now, that's just simply not true.

2 years ago, I could've bought a pizza for 40,000 BTC.  Today, it only costs me a couple.  Please show a comparable comparison of dollar value that shows more volatility.

Simply because there isn't a sizeable BTC economy yet. Nothing to do with volatility.

[Slushpuppy]

If all the wealth were distributed into 21 million BTC they would be worth 80 million a piece. So its peoples own jealousy and others miserliness holding bitcoin back.

[Stephen Gornick]

Fail necro is fail...

 Bitcoin has clearly failed
September 12, 2011, 03:06:11 AM

Just to put things in perspective, here's what the OP might have been looking at exactly ten months ago:



 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60zigDailyzczsg2011-06-09zeg2011-09-10ztgSzm1g10zm2g25

And as a store of value, yes -- bitcoin was failing for most people as at the time, most of those who held bitcoins by that time were underwater versus what they paid for their coins.

Could bitcoin see another drop like that, perhaps losing half its value or more?

It could.  If it happens it probably wouldn't be for the same underlying reason.  

It would have to be something that would cause a huge loss of confidence again, but it probably wouldn't be because of security at a single exchange.  Maybe in the U.S. FinCEN will put out a statement that Bitcoins are the same as "prepaid access" used internationally and that you cannot sell even 1 bitcoin without obtaining the identity of the customer.  Maybe an evil ASIC engineer will be first to come up with a couple dozen Thash/s of capacity and successfully double spend transactions that were previously confirmed six or more confirmations back.  Maybe the last patch Tuesday from Microsoft included a few lines of code which will, at a future date, send the Bitcoin/wallet.dat to the rogue employee's target.

We just don't know what happens in the future.

What we do know:

Bitcoin's security is better today than it was ten months ago.  Bitcoin's ecosystem then was not anywhere near as developed as it is today.

What we can presume:

Bitcoin's security will be better ten months from now than it is today (e.g., functional multisignature transactions).  Bitcoin's ecosystem will be much more developed ten months from now than it is today.

[MoPac]

Above posters are right that the real constraint on bitcoin value growth is the size of the economy: the value of the goods and services that btc can buy.  Maybe we should ask: what are the constraints on the size of that economy? 

Stephen points out those apocalyptic-ish threats: legal crackdown, security vulnerability, infrastructure attack.  But I think it's more reasonable to assume that the limiting factors right now are practical.  There is partly a lack of knowledge on the part of potential merchants.  But the better way to frame this is that there is not a good infrastructure in place for making bitcoin payments at a point of sale, in a more-or-less instantaneous fashion, that most ordinary people can understand and trust without investing hours in "getting it." 

New companies like Dwolla and new payment services from the likes of Apple are getting merchants and customers more used to alternative point of sale payments.  Once bitcoin projects catch up with and integrate with these user interfaces in a meaningful way, the economy will be able to expand pretty quickly.

Another impediment is still going to be volatility or the perception of volatility relative to fiat money.  Hopefully some smart coder is working on a payment system that buys a futures contract at the moment of sale to be redeemed at whatever regular interval the merchant cashes back into fiat.

[sadpandatech]

You know, one good way to raise the value of store in BTC is to start demanding more for your BTC when you use it for purchases... Either that or just keep buying more BTC...

[MoPac]

You know, one good way to raise the value of store in BTC is to start demanding more for your BTC when you use it for purchases... Either that or just keep buying more BTC...

To do that you need to be part of a btc-paying customer base that is big enough to have leverage over a merchant who otherwise doesn't want the hassle of dealing with yet another (complicated) payment system.  It took a long while before you could really demand that a merchant take credit cards, even when that system was quite monolithic.  With all of these alternative payment methods now springing up, it would be pretty easy for a merchant to throw up her hands and say I'm just not going to try to keep up until this sorts itself out into a consensus.