Bitcoin shoots past $150 today
bitfloor.com
bitfloor.com
This bubble will burst. It will burst soon and it will burn the people who just jumped in and bought the new mining-specific machines that recently came on the market.
If you'd like to hold BTC for 10-20 years, they may be quite cheap at the moment, as most of them have already been made. If you're looking for returns/stability/growth over the next six months, look out.
As a medium of exchange, the BTC is presently sub-par; it's just too volatile. I can't be certain that, if I exchange USD for BTC in a wallet on my phone, that it will be worth within 1% of what I paid by the time I walk to a store to spend it.
That fact that most have already been computed has little bearing on the future price of BTC. What matters in the future is whether or not people will actually use Bitcoin as a currency (it has no other use); I am still not convinced that it will ever become mainstream. I hear about all sorts of places that accept Bitcoin payments, but I have yet to see anything that matters -- I cannot buy diesel with it, I cannot pay rent with it, I cannot pay utility bills with it, my local supermarket does not take it, and I cannot pay taxes with it. Even for black market transactions (drugs, guns, etc.) Bitcoin is obscure; even with all the sales that happen on Silk Road, you are looking at a tiny fraction of the market for illegal drugs.
Bitcoin is in a very precarious position. Most of the cost of buying in is the result of speculation about its future use, which is fueled by the media coverage it receives on tech news sites. A lot of the hype is based on questionable assumptions about Bitcoin's security and about the lack of authorities in the system. Bitcoin's ability to survive when the hype dies down and the assumptions are challenged is doubtful, at least from where I sit.
Something like BTC, however, just seems convenient. In a thread yesterday, I needed to express the price of tools in a country-independent way. For giggles, I expressed it in BTC instead of USD; afterward, it felt right. A country-invariant store of value has real value on its own. It might not be BTC, but I don't think cryptocurrency is going away.
There really is no country-independent way yo express price, even those with the same currency have different prices for the same basket of goods based on a myriad of conditions. That's what Happy Meals don't cost the same everywhere.
Just over half have been mined at this point:
http://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#How_are_new_bitcoins_created....
In my view, this is the way to look at BTC:
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25zvzl
BTC has only just begun to experience volatility. The natural price is somewhere between $10^7 and $10^-7 (I'd pay $1 to own all the BTC, just for kicks). The future will sort it out.
For as long as coins are still being made, there's direct connection to reality. Someone, somewhere, will have a few integral BTC, and they'll probably want to exchange them for something else of value. After the coins run out, I can't figure out what happens; it might be bad.
If half the computers currently mining decided to move on to do something else tomorrow, bitcoins would continue to be made at the exact same rate.
Aint the whole point of bitcoin is that one doesnt have to use centralised systems like Paypal who love to freeze your accounts, MtGox do the same now, they freeze an account until you "verify" which might take months if ever all while your bitcoins are sitting in their account
It's better for 'ME' to join a tried and tested exchange. -but- It's better for bitcoins as a whole, for me to try one of the newer or lesser used exchanges.
Just why entry level jobs require such high requirements now a days - as a hiring manger, why take the risk on someone knew (even if someone took the risk on you during your youth in better times) - better to just hire someone with 3 years experience...if its a buyers market and supply outstrips demand.
What sort of fools upload hiqh quality passport scans to shady sites online who can uses these to steal your identity with great ease
http://www.thebitcointrader.com/2013/04/the-mtgox-verificati...
Edit: Perhaps a sentient paperclip maximizer with no other way of interacting with the human financial system:
I can remember the HN post of "BitCoin just hit 10$" and I remember to say to my brother... Whooa that stuff really worth something, we should start mining it...
Plus if there is more than 9000 people waiting to buy more than 50.000 dollars of bitcoin, the price is gonna raise again... I might buy some...
The price two days later: $234. Up $84.
Required reading for prognosticators:
I'm Raising My Bitcoin Price Target To $400 http://www.businessinsider.com/im-raising-my-bitcoin-price-t...
At $20 I feel there would be so much renewed demand from such a low price it would never stay there, almost an immediate rebound.
There seems a Sunday-Tuesday surge in prices, perhaps as people who learned they wanted some over the weekend in Asia-Europe-Americas get their funds in and make their purchases. So Tuesday may be a better time - I have a hunch it'll break $200 by then.
Still, as suggested in my downvoted reply to the above 'sell at $50' comment, $500 would be a better time for some profit-taking.
I understand that the ask prices are going up in part because of increased demand, but the constant ratcheting up of asks smells fishy.