Quote from: harik on June 26, 2011, 08:16:47 PM

Quote from: CurbsideProphet on June 24, 2011, 07:19:13 PM

The Mickey Mouse exchanges we have in operation right now are just not going to cut it. The first group to make a legitimate exchange will not only greatly increase Bitcoins chances of survival but likely make a nice profit as well.

I've yet to see anything AT ALL in the entire bitcoin ecosystem that isn't rank-amateur.

I tend to agree.

That's not the real problem, though. The real problem is that almost nobody is actually using Bitcoins as a currency. The speculators are playing a zero-sum game, and there's little motivation for anyone to use Bitcoins in a payment system. In fact, the volatility from speculation is a dis-incentive for merchants to accept Bitcoins.

If real-world merchants were to accept Bitcoins, they'd need volatility protection. This could be done via options, but that would probably make the speculation problem worse. A module for a shopping cart program which allowed quoting prices in Bitcoins, based on the current exchange prices plus a risk factor computed from volatility, could work. Bitcoin prices would be a little higher than other prices, and if and when the volatility came down, the spread would narrow. This would result in merchant pressure for market stability.

If there was some killer thing you could buy with Bitcoins, this might be worth doing. So far, there's nothing for sale for Bitcoins that anybody really wants badly. (Except maybe on Silk Road).