I missed the entire run up. Sucks. The one thing I like about it most is how you can buy 0.0001 of a bitcoin where as with gold or a stock for instance you are often obligated to buy a single unit for a lot more. Bought some yesterday so it will probably thank now.
It's peer to peer, noone can shut it down. Also the US govt can make it illegal for us-based companies to accept it as currency but it will be very difficult to make it illegal to transact bitcoin. It would be the same as making collecting bottle caps or stamps illegal, as there is no copyright infringement cause here. There will be a hard cap of 21mil bitcoins once all are mined, so if bitcoin continues to become popular all transactions will be in fractions as 1 bitcoin will worth a lot of money, of course that's some wishful thinking on my part, but hey it did hit $90 in 6 months! You will be bat**** crazy to buy at this price point in my opinion, this thing is russian roulette right now and i think we are beyond bubble. I unloaded 2/3 of my remaining at around $88, keeping the last 1/3 for long term. Hope you are watching this carefully same as daytrding with the finger on the sell button in case things start to fall, it can happen very fast.
If it's not widely accepted, then it fails as a "medium of exchange", which is one of the primary function of money. Are we still pretending bitcoin is money, or do we move to accept that bitcoin are basically tulips.
So what do you think how much of the value would drop if the government tomorrow bans product sales for bitcoins? Also, can you put a stop loss order in, or every trade has to be manual?
No one can say - also like everything - once it becomes illegal, it becomes more expensive. Hard to say though. I am not sure what Mt Gox is doing right now in relation to resting orders, but there are others that allow these, just search bitcointalk.org forums
I disagree. The original purpose of BTC was being a currency. Now it has became a trading vehicle for making a quick buck, but as a currency, if it becomes illegal (or limited use) it will lose lots of its value. Also, as long as the fascination lasts and the value fluctuates wildly, users can't use it as intended, as a currency. It should have a fairly stable value with low volatility...
I have been in btc for quite a long time, but not from day 1. It is more than a currency to me, but you can call it what you wish. I do not use it as a trade vehicle, but I suppose I do in some sort of way bc all I do is dollar cost average. I believe in its long term value; governments will eventually devalue its currency as much as possible. But, now that fincen has got involved and stated it is basically legitimate as long as you pay tax on it, I doubt this government making bitcoin illegal comes to fruition. How would you suppose they do this anyway? But you are right, this is a risk. What I do not understand is why, if you have lots of money, would you just keep it in USD losing money in the bank? You could easily lose 50% of your value if you put you money into BTC today (true story), but for me, it isn't about the quick gain or loss, more about the future. I think this is the future. We are still in the very early stages of adoption worldwide.