What is confusing is that people are declaring it dead because it can't maintain a constant price after an increase over 1000 times? I really don't understand this. Somebody please tell me how Bitcoin is suffering right now? From what I am seeing it has had great progress. I don't see anything to complain about.
The volatility makes it less useful as a medium of exchange. If you accept 100 bitcoins in exchange for some hardware and the next day those 100 bitcoins are worth 15% less, you may wind up taking a loss on the transaction. This matters because you typically can't pay your employees, pay your utility bills, pay your rent, or pay your suppliers in bitcoins.Otherwise, the price of a bitcoin measures a whole bunch of things mixed together. One of the things it measures is the collective opinion of the long-term viability of bitcoins as a medium of exchange. But that's mixed in with so many other factors that you really draw too many conclusions.
I think a lot of people just assume that a high price is good and a low price is bad without really thinking too much about it. They confuse the price of a bitcoin with things like the price of a company's stock.
