Whew, long thread but best discussion I've read on btc anywhere. The main thing I'm trying to guess at is: How long until multiple copycats of btc, such as litecoin, are created and to what degree will that erode the value of btc? I'm not even talking about a moderate improvement, which there is room for. In the absence of all other factors, I'm not sure how that would play out. It's doubtful that replica cryptocurrencies would be adopted to the point where they were all driven to zero value. However at the same time, litecoin now proves that there will be a bleed off of value to replicas. The interesting thing about this scenario is that it is so unusual I don't see any good historical models.
They are already here. The 3rd most popular with the highest market cap is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PPCoin It uses a proof of stake instead of proof of work. I think venture capital money is already working on making even newer virtual money. So the cat is out of the bag... LTC will be traded on Mt.Gox from next week. You can still mine it with CPU power, so once ASIC mining will be all the rage for BTC, lots of fan might switch to LTC. The effect on BTC? Nobody knows for sure, but the first mover's advantage is going to erode a lot. I think the field will even out after a few months/years....I would be surprised if ANY of the virtual money is worth more than single digits 2-3 years from now...
Once of the main purposes of money is as a store of value. Anything that fluctuates >50% in a few days clearly fails at this. Ergo, bitcoin and other virtual currencies are DOA. Even gold is too volatile for this purpose in most periods (the exception being high inflation or default scenarios when fiat currency and government bills become an even more volatile and worse store of value than gold). Bitcoin is a speculative mania just like dotcoms, housing, and tulips. Today's Isaac Newtons are no more immune to being rank noobs in markets as he was in the South Sea Bubble.
Trading strategy from Reddit: "Hello guys, for the past few weeks I have been a bitcoin day trader. I work behind a computer at home, so staring at the charts all day has proven a fast way to pass time. I keep it on the micro-scale only selling off and buying small amounts (.5btc>) at a time, however I do it daily. Here is my strategy. I use the trading site CampBX (roughly 0.5% of the market in volume). I keep two real-time charts of mt gox (79% voulume), and CampBx(0.5% V). I wait until mtgox gets moderately lower than campBX, then sell. CamBX adjusts to mt gox, and when the two prices get relatively close to each other, I buy. The idea is to use mtgox as a predictor to the CampBX market."
But seriously: "The idea is to use mtgox as a predictor to the CampBX market" He is only playing CampBX....
Finally somebody is doing arbitrage. The formerly 10+ bucks differences between the exchanges went down to $1-2. Welcome to the real market.... (or the volatility got low, we shall see) http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/currency/USD.html
Zimbabwe officially approves BitCoins as official national currency http://www.bitcoinrumors.com/2013/0...roves-bitcoins-as-official-national-currency/
It is clear to me that Bitcoins are living on borrowed time, in part because of their role in the Silk Road online black market. Check out this story:- http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/21/...ys-fail-whale-not-feds-brought-down-notorious "Users of (Silk Road) rely on Bitcoins, the semi-anonymous ecurrency, in order to buy and sell the thousands of items on offer; itâs been estimated that the marketplace accounts for a majority of all commercial transactions done in Bitcoin." If the DEA is investigating Silk Road you can sure that they are investigating Bitcoins too... What will be amusing is how all these nerds who have mined bitcoins for the past couple of years throw their toys out of the pram when it does get shut down.
This is where you miss the point. BTC is not being built by "hobbyists"... It's being built by an obsessive, highly educated Cult of 50,000 to 100,000 people... Go back to the 20th century and study the power of Mass Cults. This Cult has driven BTC from $50 million to $1 billion in 2 years... The idea that these people are just gonna quit... Because some Govt passes some regulations.... Is to completely misunderstand the Bitcoin phenomenon. All the tech glitches are entirely normal... It's the equivalent of a stagecoach robbery... I'll bet more gold gets stolen every month than BTC. Bitcoin easily goes another 100 times to $100 billion... Even that is a drop in the bucket, just one month of Fed printing.