Quote from: ribuck on February 11, 2011, 03:25:18 PM

Quote from: casascius on February 11, 2011, 02:11:02 PM

It looks like we crossed parity just by someone making what looked like a $30k buy all at once. Then somebody sold off a few, being past parity vanished just as quickly as it started.

Don't sweat the individual trades or the short-term moves. Look at the all-time chart and see that there's strong underlying interest in Bitcoin.

With all due respect, this is coming from someone who makes no secret of generating and holding Bitcoins as a major investment:

Quote from: ribuck on February 10, 2011, 12:42:35 PM

I have three Bitcoin wallets, of approximately equal size.

One wallet will sit untouched until I retire in a few years, then I'll sell the coins over time to provide some retirement income. Obviously I'm hoping that the value of this wallet will grow considerably.

Another wallet is for members of my family. I will give it to them when Bitcoin is easy enough (and safe enough) for non-technical people to use.

I agree that there is strong underlying interest. Is the interest in Bitcoin in a concept, or the present block chain and distribution of coins as we know it? How well placed is that interest if the value of one's coins can implode anytime an "investor" wants to cash out?

Compare to a Federal Reserve that somehow has a magic constraint and verifiably can't ever print money past a pre-defined limit. That would be good for the USA right? But then imagine this same Fed makes less than 2% of the currency accessible to the public, and those who created the Fed collectively save 98% for a rainy day. If there is USD $14 billion out there, and tomorrow there is 1.5 or 2 or 4 or 50 times that, will it make any difference if the fed says, "We didn't just print this yesterday - we've just been saving it this whole time".

Don't get me wrong - I bought a small chunk of coins too, and I will be highly enthusiastic if I can sell them for 1.5x or 2x or 4x or 50x what I paid for them, though I doubt I'll be able to retire on them.