But BTCBuy was not exchanging directly for fiat they were doing gift cards in fiat denominations. If I can't even get a gift card with btc why should I mine. I don't want drugs off of SR so I guess I'm left with just trading with scammers in the Marketplace section of this forum, right?
This is something I have been assessing. A quick number crunch shows what a tiny percentage of the total BTC transactions for a day are related to SR. I want to understand where all this BTC is going -- 560k in the last 24hours. A fraction of that is SR related. Where is all this BTC going? It can't all be speculators.
1 - It absolutely could be speculators, the amount of money in this market is a tiny tiny fraction of the value sloshing around in the world looking for someplace safe from devaluation or confiscation to hide. Right now it's hard to buy bitcoins, but it's alot easier than it was last year and next year it'll probably be easier than it is now, or illegal.
2 - Satoshi's dice is a major source of BTC traffic, are you remembering to factor that in?