Quote from: MickeyT2008 on May 20, 2013, 03:59:18 PM

Quote from: thoughtfan on May 20, 2013, 03:25:07 PM

Quote from: Frozenlock on May 20, 2013, 02:55:55 PM

Quote from: Its About Sharing on May 20, 2013, 09:19:01 AM

Now, if it jumps up $100 or $200 in a day, your going to be there sitting in cash. Moral...

Don't try to time a Black Swan.

And if it drops 100$ in a day?

Even if you have a world changing invention, markets can remain blind to it for years.
Worse: the invention could simply be discarded and forgotten.

For example, the Greeks invented the steam engine, but we had to wait for thousands
of years before any of its potential was really used.
"Guys! Hold to it! It's world changing invention!" - A guy, 2000 years too soon.

I really wish Bitcoin will go up, but you guys remember me too much of how I was in 2009.
"How can it go down? It's the most important invention since fire!"
The market didn't care.

The more I see scareless permabulls like you, the more I fear for Bitcoin. Undecided

What if it drops $1000 in a day? - oh but wait, it can't!, and though I really do get what crumbcake was getting at invoking Pascal's Wager it is a fact only one side has a limit to its movement in a day.

Again, in principle I see your parallel with inventions lying un-built and unused for millennia yet it takes some stretch of the imagination to put Bitcoin in this category. I see it as closer to the steam train having been built and refined and tested and is now pulling a long mixed consist of goods and savers and speculators. We may well have hit a bit of a hill that is a struggle for the engine at this stage of its development but there's a lot of momentum behind it and I doubt this will be its nemesis. But even if it did fail to make the crest of the hill (or the next) its unmaking is by now impossible. Whether it's Bitcoin or something else the cat is well and truly out of the bag. There'll be no languishing for millenia for the idea and technology of stateless decentralised money.

And my last query is regarding fear of permabulls. OK, I get it was at least partially in jest but my question is how can someone who, based on a decent understanding of the concept and its implications, is as convinced as Its About Sharing is be a threat to Bitcoin? There's a hard core of believers in this technology who would ride the price down to one cent if that's what happened - providing the technology still does as it ought our net worth loss might smart but the hope in the idea would not be smothered. Holders like that are surely very healthy for Bitcoin.

There is a danger that those looking for an excuse to believe Bitcoin is a get-rich-quick scheme will feed from such positive writings and we probably should be wary of their affect on the market as they alternate between buying without understanding what they're getting into and disillusioned selling when in disbelief they see price can go down too! But that's not the fault of the permabulls.

For bitcoin to really go up it needs normal people to regularly see things offered for sale in BTC, such as when they're shopping on Amazon or their local supermarket website, or even in the supermarket itself. It also needs to be as easy to buy things with as normal money, or at least as easy as paying with a debit card. Bitcoin conferences may be a good thing but the existence of bitcoins isn't news to those who attend them, even now if you stop people in the street and ask what they know of bitcoins most will say they've never heard of them. If the average Joe had £20 worth of bitcoins that'd be a huge increase in the amount of fiat invested in BTC.

I'm not even thinking so large. I just see it in the short term as a competitor to pay pal, western union and credit cards. But that alone is a huge industry. If you are a store and can increase your monthly profits by 3% or so, you do and don't think twice (barring security and other valid concerns).

Pay Bal is huge and it's not in the supermarket. That is years and years away for BTC imo, but who knows.

I think it is so early in BTC's history that we really don't know what we are dealing with here.