I think the impact of demand from China is overblown.  The volume in China is driven by day traders because of the 0% commission rate.  I think new U.S. investors with deep pockets are behind most of the recent price increase.

If I were given to conspiracy theories, I would think that the media was scheming to link the price of Bitcoin to made-up Chinese demand, expecting the Chinese government to outlaw Bitcoin, thus creating a big crash.

could someone call China and tell them to stop buying? they are trying to hoard all our bitcoins!  *look*>>


http://fiatleak.com/

Do it.

Litcoin breaks $7!  The whole crypt-currency space is going parabolic.   

My productivity these last few days has been 0... All free time is spent staring at charts.

Do you have a bot that posts words to this effect eevry 3 hours?  Getting really boring!

Say it's half investment/hoarding and a large part currency exchange, purchase on BTC-China, transfer to stamp and withdraw USD. Either way if the Chinese government decide they don't like it then there will be problems. Your right though, we don't know what's being said in the upper echelons of the Chinese government. Is this a convenient tool for them to undermine the dollar? But why apply such strict regulations to the yuan and then let your subject's flaunt those rules?

China isn't America, so if the shit hit's the fan, people will be less Bitcoin-rambo as heads roll when the government say so.

I made this one for you, so we can talk again about the wave we ride on.

http://i.imgur.com/yQn3aGG.png

exactly, thank you

bullshit like not recreating the system we have now?   mmmmmk

you want your transaction in? pay the fee, supply and demand, this is what keeps mining profitable going forward

Currency of the future. My payment of xx:18 still has 0 confirmations at xx:51. Sorry I could not dump you sooner, my coins

every damn time. what happened to good old "lurk moar"? here's your answer: the (highly secure) blockchain is most likely not the ideal medium for micro transfers, and probably not even for small-ish transactions like paying for your coffee. That doesn't mean Bitcoin will fail, it only means there will be ways to perform smaller transaction off the chain.

Guys, you heard it from [Date Registered: November 15, 2013, 01:22:48 PM], show's over. See you at the next Ponzi.

I agree, especially given how freaking smart his math is... here we go, lets take the billions of people that don't have access to clean water, sanitation, fresh food, healthcare or a bank account... ok so should we count them in for 3 transactions... sounds good... next, the thing to do is.. excuse me (*leaves room, shoots face off with shotgun*)

Yea, here I have been buying bitcoins since 2011 thinking it would be the future of money and then this guy appears out of no where and totally blows my mind and makes me realize that it's all over, it will die if it can't facilitate 7 billion people in the next months. Man, how things can change.

The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the
minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions,
and there is a broader cost in the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for non-
reversible services.

I think we're looking at it the wrong way. Maybe bitcoin isn't destined to become a currency, but something else. It's deflationary, has no consumer protection, transfers are irrevocable and no identities are tied to the addresses. How can this ever become a currency?

Bitcoin was never going to be a universal, flattened currency. Never—ever. That is not it's niche in a monetary ecosystem. Bitcoin is a risk distributor, just one part of an emerging monetary ecosystem.

Bitcoin is super silver.

Bitcoin doesn't need to be a currency to be successful. It will in fact be wildly successful even if only functioning as a store of value, the tax havens amounts to trillions. The first phase is speculation and this is where we are now... people believe in bitcoins future potential and that is what drives the price up and the large market cap will make it viable for large fortunes to be stored in bitcoin, eventually it will stabilize at much higher prices. At that point it will work well as a way to settle debt even if we're not able to do as many transactions as other networks I don't think it matters. Micro-transactions can happen off-chain, big money stored safely away from government and bankers.

Bitcoin is a protocol and a technology; it's just a layer, not necessarily the layer that directly touches the end-user. It's the many bitcoin businesses that emerge that will leverage the bitcoin technology directly and provide a consumer friendly service to deliver a wide variety of financial products and services, and compete with each other to solve all problems relating to transaction time, security, etc.

Bitcoin is not gold, it's gold 2.0. The whole point of bitcoin is to have money that are decentralized so that government cannot control it. By increasing the blocksize limit too much you will lose that decentralization as the blockchain becomes hosted at few, centralized servers. We don't want such control point, therefore the limit must be increased in accordance to the technological development. We have plenty of time before we need bitcoin to do anything near the volume of VISA. And it certainly isn't the first goal. Bitcoin is first and foremost gold 2.0, and we can use it as a debt settlement mechanism.

Government currency comes with NO built-in means of transferring ownership. Payment networks operate on top of currencies by moving balances around in their own computers and then to bank account computers. (Do you really own money if it is just someone else's computer record saying you do?) Likewise it is expected that one emerging market is payment processors who handle your Bitcoin money for you when you want to spend it.

The paper money you can turn that account balance into has value only based on what you can trade it for. Government currencies mask volatility by printing more, but they can also create more money to devalue their own debts, to pay their bills, at the expense of long-term holders. I can no longer buy a car for $3000 or a hair cut for $0.25.

When the exchanges are less important to obtaining your initial Bitcoins, and merchants are willing to take 1 BTC for their product regardless of what number is showing on an exchange in another country, then you will see less volatility.

You work towards bitcoin replacing Visa and take over the 'billions', the rest of us will aim towards replacing the international wire system and take over the trillions.

Not true. One of bitcoins main advantages is that inflation is predictable. Maybe you understand the technical aspects of bitcoins but you do not seem to understand the problems with the current monetary situation or the political implications of Bitcoin.

Anybody know if there are any decent Charities that take Bitcoin yet for donations?  Like Greenpeace or WaterAid or Medecin sans frontiere or whatever?  I'd like to stick someone else's address in my sig.

The only worry I have is we're a market rather than an economy. We need to make 2014 the year when bitcoin destroys western union and is much more widely accepted for buying stuff. Remittance is the killer app.