Just curious... stopped paying attention for a week, and now all of a sudden we're at 8 bucks.
The markets are down across the board. Most likely people are trying to get to less risky investments and don't see the difference between a bitcoin and a buck.
I just checked #bitcoin-market, and I still see a big difference between a bitcoin and a buck. About $6.50 difference in fact.
We should be celebrating still, as we not only are still in the act of breaking the dollar parity barrier but also various other currency's units parity barriers. Which national currencies are worth more than 1 bitcoin per 1 of their main unit currently?
I do agree though that trying to compare with and exchange with fiat is a horrible mess, we should continue equipping as many nations as possible with their own national blockchain-based currency even if there is little to no chance of their government actually thanking us for doing so. At least it will let the speculators speculate between umpteen "national currencies" without having to deal with the crap the fiat system seemingly makes anyone go through who they suspect might be trying to move out of fiat... (oh you are moving out? well don't forget we will be happy to charge that back at any moment for you, thereby screwing those who like you apparently are interested in a non fiat currency...)
-MarkM-
What I meant is that the same people who are investing money in stocks are investing in bitcoin, so a contraction in the stock market leads to a contraction in bitcoin. Up until this point bitcoin has been controlled by traders - hence the focus on API's and exchanges, etc. Bitcoin needs to be focused on a good and service based economy.