I've been saying "long slow slide" for months. That happened. Now we're seeing the endgame, which looks like the endgame for most penny stocks. The volume is low, around $50,000 per day. Some of that is 'bots running the same money back and forth; the actual volume out of the market is smaller. The price moves around whenever anybody makes a sizable transaction. I'm not expecting a big drop, just random noise with a long-term downtrend.
Bitcoin is now useless as a currency, because liquidating the day's receipts for one reasonably sized store would crash the market.
As much as it pains me to admit it, that
is a very good point.
Someone trying to snatch enough BTC to transact a couple of Krugerrands would impact the market, and possibly significantly so unless one were using Mt. Gox. This is pretty lame, and some months ago I would not have thought it would be so so my estimates of a floor (and liquidity) have been way off. Oh well.
The end is coming not with a bang, but with a whimper.
I think one would be fool to either rule this out
or to take it as a given.