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Comment by shubhamjain | Hacker News Reader

When Silkroad went down I expected bitcoin to take quite a slump but what has happened is contrary. I am not implying that anonymous transaction s for illegal use are the only thing bitcoins are good for but its my guess that it forms a major part of the group that actually use bitcoins for buying stuff. I am not sure why would anyone would get troubled in buying bitcoins for purchasing rather than punching a CC number. What is pushing its value, I am not sure but I am really spectical that it has to do with bitcoin's popularity.

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Most of the people of the world can't really have a bank account, let alone be eligible for a credit (card). With Bitcoin you only need internet access.

Most of the people of the world can't really save either. Cash loses value over time, gold is hard to validate and keep safe, and is even banned in lots of places. Bitcoin to the rescue! Now everyone can start saving, and even be rewarded for that.

I could go on all day long, the benefits are endless. Just live in a shitty country for some time and you'll figure it out pretty fast.

Most of the people of the world can't really have a bank account, let alone be eligible for a credit (card). With Bitcoin you only need internet access.

Yeah cause internet access and a modern computer are waaaaay more common than bank accounts or prepaid credit cards....

... Children? I would've loved Bitcoin at age 12.

According to wolfram alpha, there are 1.871 billion children age 15 or younger: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+under+15

Those 1.871 billion children literally determine the future. And all of them can currently use bitcoin for buying anything available via bitcoin. That includes Humble Bundles, for example, not just drugs. Though admittedly they'll still just pirate most videogames rather than buy them. But they won't be able to pirate MMO's, and it's a matter of time before MMOs begin accepting bitcoins.

It is. In fact I have never seen a prepaid credit card. And you can use Bitcoin from your phone, no need for a desktop PC. Yes, third world countries have phones. Will I have to explain this to every American? Besides this affects first world countries too. A lot of people in first world countries can't have a bank account, but there is wifi everywhere, and even the homeless have phones (I never understood why. A marketer told me it's related the reverse pyramid of needs or something like that).

They are, if you define modern cellphones as a "modern computer".

Digging around, I found they're almost equal actually, and cellphone users vastly outnumber bank account holders (cell phone users exceed toilet access !!!).

50% of adults worldwide have an account at a formal financial institution.

60% of adults worldwide have internet access, with 39% having home internet access (the remainder having shared or limited internet access).

80% of adults have cell phone access.

Sources:

http://econ.worldbank.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage

http://www.gallup.com/poll/159815/home-internet-access-remai...

newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/25/more-people-have-cell-phones-than-toilets-u-n-study-shows/

In Russia it's common to have computer and internet, but no credit card.

SilkRoad was important, but most important was its community (dkn255hz262ypmii.onion) that it's still online. You see, the most important things for the anonymous market are the WoT and the PGP pubkeys, and that's not illegal (at least until now). Additionally Black Market Reloaded was already very popular when SR was seized.

I believe that what is pushing Bitcoins value is that many people call it "the credit card of the 21st century" and they are buying bitcoins as shares of the next Visa.

EDIT: as wildgift said, there is no insurance in Bitcoin yet, but I'm sure that if Bitcoin starts being really popular we are going to start seeing online wallets with insurance provided by big corporations. CCs (as a technology) don't include insurance either...

I thought this too, but then, due to my lame password management, my mtgox account got owned and they took out around $250. Oh well. Easy come easy go. But what I learned is that bitcoins really are like cash. You lose it, and you won't get it back.

That's what's different with Visa - there's an element of insurance with a credit card, and that is greater than what you get with a bank's checking account.

The insurance of being able to cancel a check is what you get with a regular checking account, and that's greater safety than what you get with bitcoin.

Of course, there's a price to this insurance, and it's the fees, which are much higher than what you pay for bitcoin transactions.

Bitcoin is still very, very - VeRY - obscure to most of the world. Hardly anyone 'gets it' but every time something to do with Bitcoin appears in the news, a few thousand more people get interested enough in the subject to educate themselves about it, and invest in Bitcoins. This strengthens the currency - for as long as it continues to 'get known about' by the general population, the value will rise. It is still very obscure.

Bitcoin did take a hit, but it recovered fairly quickly.

I think the simple explanation is that Silk Road's takedown increased Bitcoin's media coverage, which is leading to new buyers, which offsets whatever sell-off there might have been.

Bitcoin is antifragile

silkroad 2.0 launched just recently

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