Relevant:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.795648No. Bitcoin is not stabilizing. It may be less volatile for a while, but that’s because it’s preparing to break out in a huge wave (and personally I suspect up) once enough people think Bitcoin is "stable".
Stability is relative. I've been hoping for more volatility as a speculator - these
sideways ranges we get into for several days at a crack are tough to make money in!
As I saw someone else point out, most people aren't used to having to account for fluctuations in exchange rates to do business. Right now, everyone has to convert their BTC to purchase supplies & services to run their businesses. If more business was able to conduct their back-end business (the b2b part) via bitcoin, rather than just the customer facing side of the business, "stability" would be perceived. We view our "home currency" as the one that's "stable" but, in reality, this is rarely the case. My "home currency" the USD has been on the rise lately, even against gold, but making USD-USD transactions, I don't really notice, I only notice over time due to inflation or deflation.
It's also my opinion that we're likely to see continued volatility (primarily due to low volume/liquidity) for most of the rest of the year. Speculation based on FPGA purchases and the block reward decrease will likely bring a significant push to the upside.
I'm of a mind that the addition of various derivatives and increased interest in the GLBSE will detract from the overall volatility. The growing prevalence of purchased mining contracts also suggests lessening in overall volatility, since this will help to limit the upside of mining (overall) as well as limit the downside potential.
However.....the biggest thing to consider, I think, in the long term: what is the overall potential market penetration of bitcoin? We're at a market cap of ~$40M, with some part of 50K users on this forum representing the core of the market. Market penetration is slight, at best. Even if we were to count the market cap by using all of the future bitcoins, we're still at a very very small number, compared to typical multi-national organizations. Several orders of magnitude smaller. In reality, this suggests that the $30 bubble last summer would represent a very small bump in the rise of BTC value.
It's not clear that bitcoin will become "the people's currency" - there is some speculation that it could replace the interbank system (i.e. replace SWIFT notes, SDRs and the like) while others speculate that it's the new Visa of the future. Until this is known, it seems that relative stability in the exchange rate will be hard to achieve. Again, either way, market penetration is slight at best.
Yep. Volatile, and lots and lots of long term upside. I'm expecting that it won't be all that long before the most commonly used denomination is the centibit (bitcent) as a single bitcoin is too large a denomination. I wouldn't be surprised to see USD$1 = mBTC 1 - In fact, I think a lot of people here wouldn't be surprised to see that. And, looking around at past history of internet companies, comparing BTC to internet stocks, the potential for that kind of growth is definitely there for bitcoin.
In the meantime, I'd sure like to see $4.90
But, while i wrote this, everyone decided to SELL SELL SELL - and I must look to see if there's a nice entry forming
