Bitcoin is too volatile and mysterious to be taken seriously. To be accepted by the general public it has to be more stable in it's price fluctuations. This is a good time for a competitor to move in.
It already has a competitor, it's called the US Dollar. Not very volatile at all, but nobody takes the Dollar seriously either. Maybe we should go back to sea shells.
The volatility is exactly what makes it great to trade. There's a million other things to trade out there which barely move if watching paint dry is what you really want.
I think OP was referring to using BTC as a currency i.e. a medium of exchange for goods and services rather than a commodity for trading. In that capacity I'd say he's probably right until the exchange rate stabilizes more.
I think that's bs. Critics echoed the same thing when it bounced to 260. Then bottomed out at 50. The market loves BTC. I'm surprised the FED and Congress haven't done more to shut it down. Makes me think it could be an establishment trojan horse. Either way, the market loves it. If no exploits are made in the architecture, it's here for a long while, imo. The best, best, best part about it is the anonymity. Moving millions around the globe totally outside the banking system. That's invaluable.
Gotcha. Yeah, I agree that it's definitely not at the level yet where it could be considered stable enough to confidently make purchases without worrying about the underlying value.
Bitcoin is a joke, but then again people also traded tulip bulbs and shares of Dot Com stocks in the 90's. The binary option brokers are jumping on the bandwagon and offering binary options on Bitcoin, check this out: http://bitcoinbinary.com :eek:
Baron, I hope you were talking about Bitcoin and not the USD. One difference is that one is a virtual currency used (reportedly) only for criminal activity and the other is a fiat currency only used by legitimate enterprise (like the Fed and the treasury government). I would really like some banking expert to explain the technical difference between virtual and fiat - but I digress. I suspect that, if a country with significant economic resources tied Bitcoin to their fiat currency at an exchange rate and backed it or to any basket of currencies, or to gold, or to any solid store of value that was not able to be inflated away, the USD could be in serious trouble very quickly. Perhaps that hints at who the true creator is and what their purpose is. I am not sure. While I think Bitcoin will fail ultimately - the cat (control of money printing) is out of the bag IMO.