Quote from: DiThi on April 24, 2013, 07:45:57 PM

Take the 24-hour weighted average. Or 3-day weighted average. Is what regular people should use. Also, this volatility won't remain forever. Merchants don't like volatility, even when converting to USD, so at least they believe it's temporal.

Why would I do this if I purchased BTC at $166 a couple of hours ago and made a purchase at $146 a few minutes ago for 13.5% in total fees (12% more BTC or USD, however you want to look at it, 0.5% spread to be generous, and 1% to BitPay).

Quote from: DiThi on April 24, 2013, 07:45:57 PM

I do use fiat, but as I said earlier, there were several potential purchases that I didn't do at all because of lack of merchant support. Having a bitcoin option makes me more prone to spend money.

This is the chicken and egg problem. Your statements are like critizing creating e-commerce 10-15 years ago: the public was too small, but we needed those early merchants to keep the ball rolling, get more people used to do online transactions, hence geting more merchants doing e-commerce... etc.

No, it's nothing like e-commerce. We're talking about massive and constant currency fluctuations that Nobel Laureates are saying is the biggest threat to the currency (but perhaps you have a better grasp of economics than they do?). E-commerce had adoption issues but there was nothing inherent to e-commerce that imperiled its usefulness (nor was anyone calling into question its usefulness). Slow adoption and security were issues but it quickly caught on and never looked back.

It's not a chicken and egg problem. All things equal, if the current companies that have adopted BitPay had never issued press releases, we would not have bubbled to this extent and those businesses would still easily be able to transact business. Over-exuberance is not required to make Bitcoin useful. It does need to appreciate, but not at this rate and not due to press releases of little substance. The higher this goes, the more hoarding will become an issue.

The more volatile it is, the more limited its use will be because only investors will be willing to purchase it and subsequently use it for transactions. It would be nice if we had a much broader potential transactional market than Bitcoin speculators.

I'm not trolling, regardless what any of you think. I am actually offended at the people that want nothing more than to keep this pumped into the stratosphere because it will only slow adoption by consumers, which is more important than merchants because merchants are really just accepting USD through BitPay. It's the consumers that have to assume the massive foreign currency exchange risk, not merchants.

I am a libertarian who loves the concept, is tech savvy (not a programmer but very familiar with Linux, etc), and is primarily involved in the finance industry. I only say this because people may be getting the wrong idea as I am usually making negative postings. I am invested in Bitcoin in various ways and want to see it succeed. Irrational exuberance will not aid this success.