Quote from: xavier on June 14, 2011, 10:44:11 PM

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Spot on. I only think they will (try to) move in sooner. The most likely scenario is that news stories will keep coming, then probably in august/september when everyone goes back to work/school etc. Bitcoin will become hotter, the (illegal) businesses jumping on the bandwagon after the Silk Road publicity will come online and gov will have the excuse to accelerate things. Maybe 3 more months until exchange domain seizures start.

Exchange rate should be slightly increasing until then, probably with big ups and downs as people cash out, but I doubt it will hit $100 by the end of the month as some speculators predict, let alone $10k, ever. There is still some room to trade and make money, if you know when to cash out. Ironically the price has been stable for a few days now as probably many people are sitting on the fence, waiting to see what others will do. BTC however is still way overvalued compared to actual economy size, and only approaches speculative value if there will be more mainstream coverage to push prices up above $30-40, and I don't mean fringe libertation Youtube operators, or niche economy magazines.

Once the seizures happen price will bottom out below USD parity and stay there with some speculative zigzags that underscore the volatility.

All of this means no mainstream acceptance and Bitcoin will sink into oblivion, perhaps only saved by black market use. Ironically this will guarantee a lot more utility and stability, but sadly not for law abiding citizens, let alone any kind of antidote against the Fed. The idea might survive and resurface in a different implementation, hopefully without the bubble.

I don't know if all accounts trading with exchanges will be frozen though, maybe only some larger ones to serve as 'money laundering' scapegoats.

Of course the above is not financial advise, I'm not qualified to give it etc.

I'm also curious if its possible to have distributed exchanges, perhaps involving webs of trust (at some point there has to be some kind of way to transfer fiat currencies in and out, I very much doubt a suppressed market can sustain itself without exchange).