Quote from: Pandasama on April 15, 2013, 04:52:12 PM

Quote from: brinebold on April 15, 2013, 04:44:03 PM

Quote from: Pandasama on April 15, 2013, 04:20:41 PM

I agree...I was just referring to the naked speculative greed. I appreciate that it is vital Bitcoin be seen by merchants as a way of making money for livelihood.

Under the logic that speculation from traders hurts a currency, FOREX must have ground the dollar and yen to dust by now. Speculators might cause some volatility but not having them also causes a massive amount of inconvenience and logistical problems.

Bitcoin would not be nearly as useful right now if it were not able to be exchanged to and from national fiat currencies. These speculative markets providing liquidity are really what makes bitcoin worth having until it reaches a critical mass where it's accepted nearly universally (probably not in our grandchildrens' lifetime). I'd argue that these speculators are probably the biggest boon to bitcoin's development since the original algorithms.

Think about it without your idealism and you'll realize that if you could only trade bitcoins directly for goods and services that could then only trade them to other people directly, there would be far fewer people taking bitcoins right now. The ability to cash them out and buy a plane ticket or a cup of coffee from your convenient merchants is key to early acceptance.

Not arguing with this...agree mostly.

But speculators are also the bane of this currency. The volatility that will inevitably result will play right into the hands of those who want to kill this concept.

I would like to see it grow slowly at a sustainable rate and gain credibility over time.

Boring??

Not boring, just not possible. Bootstrapping a currency that has no tangible value would be absurdly difficult to the point of impossibility. Without speculators providing liquidity to and from existing currencies, any currency without an issuing authority assuring some kind of commodity backing or a government coercing accceptance is more or less worthless.

Nobody takes it because it's not valuable and nobody values it because nobody takes it.