Topic: Bitcoin is not the problem its the current users. - page 2. (Read 1676 times)

Except that no other kind of money swings 50-200% a day and at this volatility why would merchants even bother with such a "currency"? And if regular people don't use it as a currency, then the only use of Bitcoin remains in it's anonimity (drugs, tax evasion) and volatility (speculators) - both niche markets, meaning it will NEVER grow to the point where the price might become stable on the size alone.

There are a lot of speculators, if not, the majority of people holding bitcoins are speculators as opposed to real users.

This is not necessary a bad thing though.

Bitcoin still has to mature a lot to be used more in real world transactions, and the speculators are what will help keep it alive until it has time to grow to this stage.

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I am not arguing that the speculators are not important or useful to the Bitcoin economy. Yet currently the speculators are probably out weighing the actual users of the currency.

to many points to correct no one except those that bought in the last two months have watched the price drop and that's a pretty shallow time frame

This is all part of the process to adoption. its something bitcoin has to survive to grow. Its also commonly agreed upon that speculation will help it get from where it was to where its going.

its price has to rise over time. For anything with a rising price, its going to attract speculation. this is especially true because regardless of bitcoins ups and downs it always ends up higher. This is vary attractive to speculators. i dont think it can be helped and it also helps bitcoin find its price.

Trust builds over time. There is no way to force this or speed this process up. For each year that bitcoin weathers the storm, people will consider it stronger.

It's hard to trust a system that has only existed a few years and can (in the eyes of many users) disappear at any time. So that makes especially new users understandably twitchy.

You do realise this has been repeated constantly on the Bitcointalk forums since Bitcoin was trading for $50 right? Perhaps even earlier because I wasn't around before then, speculators will always be a part of economies and that's just a fact of life, blaming them for volatility isn't going to change anything, more and more people now are accepting Bitcoin for their businesses or as payments so eventually what will happen is the volume will spread out and then the price should start to settle down.

Now that isn't to say there won't be jumps or price spikes in the future or that the currency won't continue to rise and make paper money look like the devalued, hyperinflated mess that it is or there won't be a crash or two but that's just how economies work. You see, this is happening precisely because Bitcoin is unregulated or rather self-regulating, there's a mathematical limit to everything, how many can be traded how many can be created out of thin air and the prices are simply honestly reflecting that, you don't have a central bank here desperately trying to keep it at a fixed rate by pumping it any time it falls or selling off the moment it rises.

Global economics was a fixed game before, now it isn't so it's better to just get used to it rather than witch hunting speculators.

p.s. If you don't like how Bitcoin works I don't understand why people don't just go out and make their own coin if they know better, welcome to the wonderful world of open source

I just like most others when first hearing of Bitcoins was excited, confused and intrigued. Now that I know a little bit more  (my knowledge is still minimal respectively to others on this forum) I feel that Bitcoin is currently undergoing a power struggle. Between the speculators and the believers.

My understanding of the Bitcoin was a decentralised currency giving the people the control. A currency which was controlled through the consumers demand and not the governmental supply. I'm sure many others see the Bitcoin in a similar light, yet at the moment the Bitcoin is nothing more than a speculators dream.

It's ironic that statements from a governmental organisation can inflate and deflate the value of the Bitcoin so greatly when the whole point of the Bitcoin is it decentralisation. You see the way I see it, the Bitcoin is nothing more than a traders tool at the moment. It's current purchasing power is fairly weak and it's extremely volatile. Ofcourse this is expected at the current Supply level, yet it's not helped by the speculators not trusting in the technology and vision of the Bitcoin and hoarding there coins away when governments issue statements.

From a businesses point of view how could I accept a currency that could potentially be worth 40% of what it was worth upon accepting it. Currently a lot of people pin the value of the USD to the Bitcoin. However to truly fuel the biteconomy we need to spend the BTC we have and covert them into USD (and yes we need to volatility to settle). 

The way I see it for the coin to succeed we need the right users behind it. Because ultimately it is only worth what we make of it.