Quote from: Raulo on February 22, 2011, 08:09:24 AM

Quote from: S3052 on February 22, 2011, 07:58:44 AM

As much as we all dream about ever rising bitcoin value,
there is not a single financial or commodity or land or housing market that goes up in a straight line.

So you suggest that eventually everything goes up just not in straight line? And how long must the leg down be to decide that it is no longer going up?

I'm sorry but bitcoin has zero intrinsic value. Just like fiat. The only thing that makes it valuable is the supporting economy of goods and services that can be traded for bitcoin. Growing a bubble is not going to strengthen it. And there is a lot of bubble mentality on this forum. Like this post:
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3713.msg52668#msg52668

If bitcoin continues to go up in value without the bitcoin economy following, it will finally crash. And if the mass market learns that bitcoin is another "beanie babies", it will never become a global medium of exchange. It will remain a toy for geeks.

I could not agree more with you.
I am not saying it will always go up. Only currnetly, the market has been going up in a stair-step pattern and there is not (yet) anny reason to declare a crash or bubble.
As long as the longterm trend is up (trendline, see my chart analysis) the overall bitcoin market is in a strong uptrend.
If this changes, it might crash.
If the uptrend holds, then the underlying reason may be that bitcoin gets more wildly accepted which supports BTC/USD prices.