Quote from: xavier on February 26, 2013, 01:22:50 AM

Why? What's wrong with speculation?

Speculation is not wrong - but when a large number of individuals are speculating the way they are now, it leads to bubbles - like the recent '07-'08 crisis. People freak out and sell off and it causes serious instability. The kind of speculation bitcoin is experiencing is not good for the community as a whole.

Bitcoin needs more adoption - but not from speculators. It needs larger scale adoption from more retailers and people who want to accept bitcoin as a method of payment. It needs adoption from individuals who want to use it as a better method of transferring funds overseas. With how unstable things are now, and the upcoming inevitable pullback - it'll only hurt bitcoin's reputation.

Of course these are my views, and I have a bias in the long term success in bitcoin. But the closer this resembles a currency, the better.

So far we are seeing all other fiat currencies outperform bitcoin in terms of stability, (except for a few notable exceptions like the Japanese Yen).

Now, I'm not saying bitcoin hasn't appreciated in value more - but this is not stability.

Putting things into perspective, less than a year ago 2 . . . 2.5 BTC bought 1 oz of silver.

Today, 1 BTC buys more than an oz of silver. This is just phenomenal in one sense, (it's providing one of the best opportunities that have existed in the history in BTC -> to buy silver with your BTC).

That previous example won't stick though. Just my 2 satoshis.