Motley Fool's new Bitcoin Article

[Phinnaeus Gage]

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2011/11/01/following-a-1000000-gain-a-slow-motion-crash.aspx

A good read and in need of quality comments over there.

[deepceleron]

"Following a 1,000,000% Gain" as a headline is still a fault. I suppose if you can document that someone bought 3000 Bitcoins for $.10 early and then someone sold 3000 bitcoins for $100,000 at a peak that could be a fair statement, however, unlike a company IPO, Bitcoin didn't wait for a media marketing hype machine to peak interest before selling it's shares, all you had to do was run the software to get them for free, so in that aspect it had to start near zero valuation.

[Gavin Andresen]

"Following a 1,000,000% Gain" as a headline is still a fault. I suppose if you can document that someone bought 3000 Bitcoins for $.10 early and then someone sold 3000 bitcoins for $100,000 at a peak that could be a fair statement...

One million percent is a 10,000 times rise in price.
The first trades on bitcoinmarket.com were at a price of something like 0.001 US dollars; 10,000 times that would be $10, and lots of bitcoins traded over $10 earlier this year.

So I think the Fool got it right.

[S3052]

Agree with Gavin.

[deepceleron]

"Following a 1,000,000% Gain" as a headline is still a fault. I suppose if you can document that someone bought 3000 Bitcoins for $.10 early and then someone sold 3000 bitcoins for $100,000 at a peak that could be a fair statement...

One million percent is a 10,000 times rise in price.
The first trades on bitcoinmarket.com were at a price of something like 0.001 US dollars; 10,000 times that would be $10, and lots of bitcoins traded over $10 earlier this year.

So I think the Fool got it right.

Derp, math fail on my part.

BTW, now paying 1000 BTC for one-time use of a time machine, only has to go back two years...

[jimbobway]

Gavin is Notradamus:

I predict there will be between one and five Bitcoin bubbles (price will double or more and then crash back down below the starting price) in the next four years.

I am working on a killer application...hopefully I can finish it soon.

[enmaku]

+1 for Gavin's comments. I'm not in Bitcoin for speculative value, I'm init for its fundamentals. The fundamentals haven't changed so I'm still in.

[deepceleron]

BTW, I'm pointing out that it is a fault in the article to emphasize 10000x valuation gains as a headline, even if the article later goes on to quote GA that any particular exchange rate is not so important to Bitcoin adoption. It makes it seem like the subtext is that Bitcoin still should be seen as just a crazy speculation bubble scheme.