why is price of bitcoin rising these last few days ?

[bracek]

I am glad to see that, but

when you go here :
http://bitcoinstats.org/count.html

doesn't look it should be rising at all

mining difficulty is rising, but not that much...

do traders have some inside info or what ?
only thing that I can use to explain this is that people are less afraid

[1713961099]

1713961099

[worldinacoin]

Hard for anyone to answer this question.   The volume of bitcoins is small about 8 million, being such a small niche market, it is not difficult for speculators to manipulate the prices.

[NamelessOne]

People are also realizing it isn't dead and are holding their coins for higher prices.

[Sannyasi]

People are buying bitcoins.... this is the only way price can rise =/

[Revalin]

It's for the same reason that it started falling: sentiment changed.  IMO there hasn't been a change in fundamentals.  It's all psychological.

Someone with a good bit of money drew a line in the sand at $2.00, and successfully fought off all attempts to push lower.  Having achieved that, the wider market seems to have taken that as a sign that we've reached bottom.  The bottom was artificial, but hey, he convinced them, so now everyone's buying again.

[istar]

People realized that Bitcoins are not dead, plus there is a strong support for Bitcoins at $2-3.

Insider info.
http://keepyourassets.net/2011/12/23/1551/

[RodeoX]

Because bitcoin is a brilliant idea who's time has come. The more people who are expose to it, the more demand will rise.

[Vandroiy]

It's a strange notion to use words like "should" and "artificial" on a market controlled by a fairly diverse set of humans.

We have people in here who might move the price just because they feel the Euro is reaching critical instability. We may have people who made wild assumptions about Christmas or New Year's, for money spending or tax reactions respectively. There are miners, who might have sold with the intention of buying back later when the bust happened.

The Bitcoin goods market is small and plays little role for price right now. And the model of every user running a full node all the time is known to be outdated anyways. I couldn't really tell just what the graph of unique IPs measures, well, other than unique IPs running a Bitcoin Node.

Insider info.
http://keepyourassets.net/2011/12/23/1551/

YES! Multisig! YYEEEEESSSSSS! Thank you very much for informing me, I missed out on the news. That feature may be essential for a project I'm working on. Hopefully it will find its way into the lightweight clients ASAP.

That feature is useful for much more than just securing against theft.

[worldinacoin]

I think that the momentum is strong, hope that bitcoin will be able to be a good substitute to Paypal as a form of payment in the time ahead.  I do not know how long, but I do believe that bitcoin can play a part in transactions especially over the Internet at far cheaper rates than any of the current payment providers.

[Cluster2k]

The more people buy bitcoins the higher the price goes, causing more people to be interested and buy even more.  It's how the bubble was built, and it works in the exact opposite way when people see the price heading down.

It's heading up now, so more people are buying.  It'll reach a certain point again (anyone's guess) and repeat.  We'll see all sorts of reasons and justifications given, 'this time it's different' rationalisations and quite well formed arguments, but the bubble and busts go back to basic human psychology and greed at their core.  Enjoy the rally while it lasts.  It looks rather juicy and there are easy profits to be made.

Many people think I'm a bitcoin bear, but I'm not.  I'm actually long bitcoins 

[runeks]

Confidence is building. That is, IMO, why the price is rising. I assume this is exactly how it will continue to go (over the long run), if the Bitcoin protocol (or any widely used implementation of it) stays uncompromised. Trust is building slowly, as trust can only do.

I think that the momentum is strong, hope that bitcoin will be able to be a good substitute to Paypal as a form of payment in the time ahead.  I do not know how long, but I do believe that bitcoin can play a part in transactions especially over the Internet at far cheaper rates than any of the current payment providers.

In my opinion you are missing the point. Bitcoin is a currency, there is no reason a currency should replace PayPal. If Bitcoin becomes popular, why wouldn't PayPal just allow payments in bitcoins? There is no opposition between PayPal and bitcoin (the currency). Bitcoin can, in some situations, be used as a substitute for PayPal (because bitcoins are inherently easily transferable over the internet). But PayPal provides a valuable service by protecting users via chargebacks. That service will still be valued no matter how popular Bitcoin becomes.

You are right that Bitcoin certainly has the power to disturb PayPal's virtual monopoly on easy online payments. But if PayPal plays its cards right, it need not be replaced by Bitcoin, because it still has something users value (chargebacks).

[cypherdoc]

Confidence is building. That is, IMO, why the price is rising. I assume this is exactly how it will continue to go (over the long run), if the Bitcoin protocol (or any widely used implementation of it) stays uncompromised. Trust is building slowly, as trust can only do.

I think that the momentum is strong, hope that bitcoin will be able to be a good substitute to Paypal as a form of payment in the time ahead.  I do not know how long, but I do believe that bitcoin can play a part in transactions especially over the Internet at far cheaper rates than any of the current payment providers.

In my opinion you are missing the point. Bitcoin is a currency, there is no reason a currency should replace PayPal. If Bitcoin becomes popular, why wouldn't PayPal just allow payments in bitcoins? There is no opposition between PayPal and bitcoin (the currency). Bitcoin can, in some situations, be used as a substitute for PayPal (because bitcoins are inherently easily transferable over the internet). But PayPal provides a valuable service by protecting users via chargebacks. That service will still be valued no matter how popular Bitcoin becomes.

You are right that Bitcoin certainly has the power to disturb PayPal's virtual monopoly on easy online payments. But if PayPal plays its cards right, it need not be replaced by Bitcoin, because it still has something users value (chargebacks).

this is an interesting point.  how would you foresee they do this?

i mean, how can they recover btc's that have already been sent?  isn't that part critical to allowing chargebacks?

[piramida]

I don't see how paypal would be doing chargebacks (unless they'd desire to pay out of their pocket). There needs to be a trusted third party, of course, but chargebacks still seem unlikely, unless the funds are frozen at the escrow (paypal) until the operation is marked as completed by both parties.

[waspoza]

Maybe upcoming double signatures will help on that?

[piramida]

No, the nature of chargeback is that it happens some (long) time after the money changed hands. In bitcoin world, when the seller gets coins there is no way you can have that back. So unless funds are frozen until transaction completes (weeks), I don't see how. And if the money are frozen for weeks, I doubt sellers would be very interested.

Maybe there is some promise in a central trust level verification, something that is used in BTC OTC trading now - if you are an untrusted trader, your limit is low, your transaction limit grows with reputation, and if you run with the money - you lose that trust level, and possibly the central trust authority will repay the stolen coins out of their transaction fee percentage.

[runeks]

this is an interesting point.  how would you foresee they do this?

i mean, how can they recover btc's that have already been sent?  isn't that part critical to allowing chargebacks?

When a seller on PayPal withdraws his balance to his bank account, there is no chargeback either. So as far as I can tell there is no difference between bitcoins and dollars in this regard.
If a seller withdraws the bitcoins from his PayPal account to his private wallet and runs with the money, PayPal takes the loss in case of chargebacks. Just as it does if the same were to happen with dollars, euros or Danish kroner.

The only difference would be the legal complications of bitcoins not being regarded as a currency/property by the legal system, thus limiting PayPal's ability to sue a seller in order to get back what PayPal thinks the seller owes them.

[cypherdoc]

this is an interesting point.  how would you foresee they do this?

i mean, how can they recover btc's that have already been sent?  isn't that part critical to allowing chargebacks?

When a seller on PayPal withdraws his balance to his bank account, there is no chargeback either. So as far as I can tell there is no difference between bitcoins and dollars in this regard.
If a seller withdraws the bitcoins from his PayPal account to his private wallet and runs with the money, PayPal takes the loss in case of chargebacks. Just as it does if the same were to happen with dollars, euros or Danish kroner.

The only difference would be the legal complications of bitcoins not being regarded as a currency/property by the legal system, thus limiting PayPal's ability to sue a seller in order to get back what PayPal thinks the seller owes them.

it really would depend on how much Paypal charges for tx's in btc.  if they try and maintain what they charge now, i don't think it'll survive.  they'd also have to increase their level of KYC on the seller side to limit abuse.

[legitnick]

Tide goes in tide goes out.

[GeniuSxBoY]

People realized that Bitcoins are not dead

This sums it up exactly.


The people who sold $500,000 worth of btc at $2, $3, and $4  now have $500,000 in their pocket.

When they see that btc isn't going to go down below $2,$3, $4, again, they're faced with the following decision:
Either
a) keep my money and leave the bitcoin for a verrrry long time hoping it'll fail again (unlikely)
or
b) reinvest my money on the faith that it's going up and up a lot more. (investing will put $500,000 back on the market driving up prices even more (awesome!)

Next thing you know, $5, $6, and $7 would be a dream.

[runeks]

it really would depend on how much Paypal charges for tx's in btc.  if they try and maintain what they charge now, i don't think it'll survive.  they'd also have to increase their level of KYC on the seller side to limit abuse.

Yes, better KYC procedures would be necessary.
The interesting thing is that when paying in bitcoins, customers have an alternative to PayPal. As far as I can tell, if PayPal were to adopt bitcoins as a currency, users would have no reason to use PayPal if they're paying someone they trust. Why would they pay a 1-2% fee if they know they won't get screwed? They would only need PayPal if they're not sure whether the service or good they're paying for will live up to the seller's description. This causes a larger share of the PayPal payments in bitcoins to be connected with fraud, thus raising the fee PayPal needs to charge in order to cover unrecoverable chargebacks, thus making it even more unattractive to use PayPal unless you might get screwed, which in turn raises the fees again, and so on and so forth until no one wants to use PayPal.

The real solution, IMO, is setting up an OTC insurance site of sorts, where someone who wishes to buy an item or service can buy an insurance in case the item or service doesn't live up to the description. An insurance exchange of sorts, where some people request insurance for a specific purchase, and others can make an offer on insuring this specific purchase.