If nothing else, watching the up's and down's of Bitcoin is a motivation to think about what life would be like in an economy where currency is volatile.
Big sell off end of the year, but I'm hedging by trying to buy some now. It's a finite commodity of real utility and value. It's recognised as legal by the US government (and it's not anonymous).<p>I will be laughed at but I'm going to suggest this time next year it'll be worth $10000 per bitcoin :-D
A lot of people bearish on Bitcoin's future claim that it cannot last and the fad will be extinguished because it isn't backed by something, like gold, or a government. I would like somebody to explain why gold is inherently valuable, or why government support is necessary. All I've really read on the subject is that "gold is inherently valuable because it's always had value, historically." Could someone elaborate?
It already surpassed $1000 last week, on BTCChina (world's largest Bitcoin exchange): <a href="http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=75" rel="nofollow">http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=75</a>
Something I've been thinking about is if the entirety of currency in the US was represented in bitcoin (bitcoins were the currency rather than dollars), how much would each be worth?<p>So there is about $1.2 trillion in circulation [1]
and the cap for bitcoins is 21,000,000<p>1.2 trillion / 21 million ~= $57,142 per bitcoin<p>Is this right, or am I missing something?<p>[1] - <a href="http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12773.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12773.htm</a>
Looking at the volume/quantity of BTC trades, its pretty clear that this is a demand driven price increase.<p>Given all of the new investors, how many of them will stay and how severely will demand be impacted with the next seriously negative market event?
Pretty sure no human is buying BTC at $1k, this spike has got to be HFT bots arbing across exchanges or making tiny trades, every human is thinking "cool im smart so ill buy when it crashes"
Litecoin is nearing $20 as well, and still relatively easy to mine. In fact, <i>many</i> of the altcoins are skyrocketing in value now that the Chinese exchanges have opened.
Would someone please explain how to interpret this or link me to explanation? The y axes are not labeled, and I am not familiar enough with exchanges to infer. Thanks!