Quote from: theowalpott on April 07, 2013, 03:16:23 PM

Quote from: BitcoinAshley on April 07, 2013, 02:43:34 PM

The assumption of a bubble is generally based on Paul Krugman's neo-keynesian fantasy world where people don't spend deflationary currencies. But people do - when their need for something in the immediate present surpasses the potential future value of the currency they will spend, and this is why we see record numbers of merchants signing up with bitpay. They're not signing up based on speculation, they're signing up because regular customers are emailing them and requesting that they accept bitcoins.

We don't need to pop the bitcoin bubble, we need to pop the fantasy bubble in these peoples' heads that convince them that bitcoin is a fad based on neo-keynesian "spend spend spend" bullshit. Bitcoin (or at least cryptocurrencies in general) are here to stay. And yes, it can be both a deflationary store of value and a currency. Perhaps it doesn't encourage unsustainable levels of consumption like the USD - the dollar is like a hot potato. I get rid of USD as quick as I can, either into deflationary alternatives or goods/services that I can't yet buy with deflationary decentralized currencies.

To play devil's advocate, how many of these are genuine requests because people want to spend bitcoin? How many are those with a vested interest trying to sustain the price growth with no real interest in actually spending their bitcoins?

That'd be falling into the very same fallacy Ashley was just talking about. If the bitcoin price rises and there are plentiful bitcoin stores, people will spend their bitcoin. I'd consider buying a nice new laptop from Bitcoinstore right now if international shipping were practical and I could get a good system for less than, say, 2 BTC.