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>in the past 2 weeks we've seen its value appreciate by 50%, something that just doesn't happen with traditional currencies

You do not see deflation with fiat currencies because the issuers of the currency print more to counteract deflation. Gold however is prone to extended periods of deflation, and that does not prevent gold being useful as a medium of exchange and as a vehicle for investment or savings. (The reason gold stopped being used as a medium of exchange is that paper money is more convenient, not because of its vulnerability to deflation.)

If your reply to this comment is that Bitcoin cannot be compared to gold because gold has "intrinsic" value whereas Bitcoins are just an artificial construction, you do not understand monetary assets.

True, gold has probably not deflated as rapidly as Bitcoin has over the last 2 weeks. That would be because the fraction of the world's savings invested in gold is much higher than the amount invested in Bitcoins. If a greater percentage of the world's savings come to be held as Bitcoin, Bitcoin's price would probably act more like gold does now.

Indeed I agree that a changing price doesn't necessarily mean that the currency is useless as a medium for transporting wealth just that when the exchange rate is volatile it's much more attractive to see BitCoins as a speculative vehicle. That's what drove the bubble last year and could very well be the same thing that's happening now. The growth rates are similar (although starting from a higher base) and that's primarily what I'm worried about.

And don't worry I'm quite familiar with fiat currencies ;)

Yet again I agree with you, the BitCoin economy needs more investment in it in order to counteract the issues that I highlighted. Thankfully that seems to be happening (I believe YC just accepted its first BitCoin based start up) and as time goes on the market should stabilize. I think that's when we'll start to see BitCoin spread outside the high tech sector and I'll gladly count BitCoin among all the other "proper" currencies.

"Now in the past 2 weeks we've seen its value appreciate by 50%"

Wouldn't surprise me if it crashes again after Burning Man.

What do you think burning man has to do with this?

Allegedly people do a lot of drugs at Burning Man, and one of the popular uses for Bitcoins is purchasing drugs without the traceability of a credit card.

I think that you're dramatically overestimating the amount of drugs that people do at burning man.

On top of that: if you're bringing drugs to Black Rock City, you probably do drugs in default world anyway, and have a dealer back there for them.

I'm not estimating anything. I'm just explaining what was most likely meant by the reference to Burning Man.

Exchange rate volatility is harmful to commerce, yes.

There are metrics showing Bitcoin becoming more widely used, but there's not 100% more use in two months.

Maybe it finally registered that the upcoming block reward (to 25 BTC per block) was coming and people bought some up ahead of time.

Hopefully if/as adoption spreads, it will stabilize in value. A larger economy is less prone to manipulation.

It might make for an interesting study though, on how much stability the U.S. Treasury provides vs. an unregulated currency.

>in the past 2 weeks we've seen its value appreciate by 50%, something that just doesn't happen with traditional currencies

It happens with gold, which could be viewed as a traditional currency.

Care to link to any graphs that support this? Gold isn't that volatile, even though it may have swings of $50 up/down every week that's 3%, far below the volatility we're seeing in the current BitCoin market.

I wrote the text of grandparent, realized it was wrong, but hit the "Reply" button was an accident. I agree gold is not as volatile as Bitcoin.

To be pedantic, and to note I'm not an economist, I thought the value of gold or silver was always constant, it was the currencies based on them that inflate or deflate.

"I thought the value of gold or silver was always constant"

Value is relative, so if you only value gold then the value of gold is constant. But if what you value is goods and services, then the price of gold is extremely unstable. You can see it graphed here (CPI being a metric of the price of goods and services):

http://www.usagold.com/amk/gold20080315.gif

Gold used to have a stable price in terms of dollars because the central bank pegged the currency to the price of gold, which I think is the reason people like Ron Paul believe that gold has a "constant" price. now the central bank pegs the currency to CPI so CPI is stable and gold floats freely (in dollar terms). This is preferable if you value CPI price stability more than gold price stability.

Also note that gold and silver often diverge in value relative to one another, so no matter what your perspective, it cannot be the case that gold and silver have stable value. If Somebody hits a rich silver vein then silver drops relative to gold.

Nope. As more gold was mined during gold rushes, the value of gold decreased. As people found more uses for gold and demand outstripped supply, the value increased. And of course the relative value of gold and silver changes over time.

Particularly, the discovery of the New World with all the gold there caused some huge disruptions in the Old World economy.

Makes sense.

> I thought the value of gold or silver was always constant

What is the unit in which value is measured? There is no SI unit for value, and it seems unlikely that it would ever be possible to define one - it would basically require very surprising breakthroughs in psychology.

Hence people do the pragmatic thing and measure value in the currency that is predominantly used in their life. They use USD or EUR or whatever as their unit of value.

And in that sense, the value of gold and silver is clearly not constant, as a sibling comment explains.