Quote from: mateo on December 23, 2013, 11:15:35 AM

Quote from: Lethn on December 23, 2013, 08:45:51 AM

You do realise this has been repeated constantly on the Bitcointalk forums since Bitcoin was trading for $50 right? Perhaps even earlier because I wasn't around before then, speculators will always be a part of economies and that's just a fact of life, blaming them for volatility isn't going to change anything, more and more people now are accepting Bitcoin for their businesses or as payments so eventually what will happen is the volume will spread out and then the price should start to settle down.

Now that isn't to say there won't be jumps or price spikes in the future or that the currency won't continue to rise and make paper money look like the devalued, hyperinflated mess that it is or there won't be a crash or two but that's just how economies work. You see, this is happening precisely because Bitcoin is unregulated or rather self-regulating, there's a mathematical limit to everything, how many can be traded how many can be created out of thin air and the prices are simply honestly reflecting that, you don't have a central bank here desperately trying to keep it at a fixed rate by pumping it any time it falls or selling off the moment it rises.

Global economics was a fixed game before, now it isn't so it's better to just get used to it rather than witch hunting speculators.

p.s. If you don't like how Bitcoin works I don't understand why people don't just go out and make their own coin if they know better, welcome to the wonderful world of open source Tongue

Except that no other kind of money swings 50-200% a day and at this volatility why would merchants even bother with such a "currency"? And if regular people don't use it as a currency, then the only use of Bitcoin remains in it's anonimity (drugs, tax evasion) and volatility (speculators) - both niche markets, meaning it will NEVER grow to the point where the price might become stable on the size alone.

As far as I know the issue of volatility is negated by merchants using payment providers like coinbase and bitpay. Also it's worth pointing out that even if only a small % of customers pay with bitcoin a merchant is still saving money by not paying more expensive credit card fee's on those same transactions and the cost of accepting bitcoin is 0 once you have a phone with an app already set up so there isn't any loss in accepting bitcoin even if only a few people use it.

Anyways the issue of volatility should smooth out in coming years more , any small market is going to be victim to huge swings.