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That huge spike also makes it terrible as a medium of exchange. A currency which suffers speculative bubbles is not a good one.

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We live in a world filled with speculative bubbles. You have speculators to thank for their price discovery efforts. This enables you to pay the "true value" of a given commodity at a given moment in time.

That's a rather circular definition of 'true value', which assumes that we live in the best of all possible worlds where the market is infinitely efficient.

I disagree that speculators have any role in discovery of true value - on the contrary, they mask true value and ensure our markets are inefficient, panicky, and volatile.

I was making a sarcastic remark, echoing the sentiment of all of the "free market" zealots and politicians. Not only are they talking out of both sides of their mouth, their statements are misleading as we see in hindsight.

The only benefit I can see is there is an overall increase in liquidity but the cost of that liquidity is quite high.

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