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Last night in a restaurant I overheard the table next to us getting excited about Bitcoin, based on the rumors of friends of friends. At the point when one quizzically said "But you only use it on the Internet? You can't see a broker in person?" we all started recalling that line about when the taxi driver starts giving you stock tips...

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You recalled that line about when the taxi driver starts giving stock tips? Wow, you're so original. No one involved in bitcoin over the last 8 years has heard that one before. What other insights do you have?

You've been violating the guidelines a lot, and we have to ask you to please stop and read them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We ban accounts that keep breaking them. We also ban single-purpose accounts that abuse Hacker News with the advancement of an agenda rather than joining in on seeking to gratify one's intellectual curiosity.

I guess technically I'm one of those people whose been involved in bitcoin over the past 8 years, so the general take is that people who've been interested in bitcoin for a long time generally care about the idea of decentralizing power and allowing truly free exchange more than any particular currency, should recognize that wild speculating on bitcoin can only hurt its effectiveness in achieving these goals (and probably indicates that bitcoin itself isn't the right tool for this in the long run), and should be keeping their head down until the overvaluation passes and we can go back to valuing bitcoin/other cryptocurrencies on their actual merits, rather than because we think we can trick someone in the future into caring about them even more than we do. Thanks for the question!

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