The Gox/Malleability thing has provided a short-term price drop that isn't reflected by the fundamantals
What fundamentals are you referring to? This is a currency .. the price is determined by monetary velocity and speculation. I'm not aware of anyone who has done a thorough job at estimating the non-speculated price of BTC. That is, the price level maintained by the use of the currency to purchase goods.
You make a very good point. The things I'm thinking of as fundamentals don't provide me with any easy way to measure their contribution to the whole. But, I'm guessing, that's normal for such an immature market sector.
As far as "value provided by trade", I start by looking at the amount contributed to bank bottom lines by their VISA/Mastercard operations divided by the amount of money that the transfer each month via those operations, and multiplied by the ratio of credit card to bitcoin transaction fees. Then I multiply that by the amount being transferred monthly according to the Blockchain. That isn't much, but I'm also looking at expected growth, so yes I'm putting a higher speculative value on it.
Here is a list of reasons why I have "expected growth" in my calculations. Admittedly it's hard to know exactly *how much* growth to expect, ie, what fraction of the market bitcoin will eventually capture. But we can see the size of the market for money transfer at least, so there's a (very high) upper bound.
I consider Bitcoin acceptance at major retailers that have stockholders and file financial disclosure documents and quarterly reports to be a major "fundamental" in Bitcoin's value. Mostly because I think that when overstock.com came out in its quarterlies and said it saved $2 million on transaction processing fees by using Bitcoin as opposed to credit card processing, that both verifies a value case and demonstrates its reality to the rest of the world. People pay attention to that crap.
I consider the proliferation of Bitcoin ATM's (now in dozens of countries) to be a major "fundamental." It means, at the very least, that the owners of these coffee shops, convenience stores, etc, are finding it worthwhile to devote floor space and electricity to bitcoin trade.
I'm encouraged by the recent (absolutely, bleakly, dismal) quarterly reports of Western Union, the leading money transmitter for remittances worldwide. To the extent that WU shrinks, something has to take their place. And relative to that, Bitcoin under a recent agreement is becoming a service available at 7-11 stores throughout Mexico, which is ridiculously good positioning for the remittance market that WU is increasingly failing to serve.
I'm also encouraged by recent legislation in the EU recognizing Bitcoin as a form of privately issued currency, and guidance from fiscal regulators in the US clarifying its position relative to the US tax code. These both remove huge amounts of risk and uncertainty for companies dealing in bitcoin. I'm relieved by FBI memos that explain Bitcoin in neutral terms rather than regarding it as evidence in itself of criminal intent.
I'm encouraged by the shutdowns of Silk Road 2, Sheep Market, etc, demonstrating to legislators, law enforcement and everybody else that bitcoin isn't some sort of magic that permits criminal organizations to operate with impunity. If it were, then there'd be far more risk of it getting banned in most of the world's economic markets.
I'm encouraged by the BTCChina reopening and subsequent lack of arrests. I cannot make any grammatical sense out of their laws, but it seems BTCChina is either engaged in a legal operation or is getting a pass on it. It's very clear that Bankers can't trade Bitcoin in China, but that apparently isn't as much of a crippling factor as we thought when we were being pessimistic.
All of this has happened *since* the most recent high. So I see the way getting more and more clear for Bitcoin to become mainstream, while everybody is distracted by FUDsters and short-term events like the Gox attack.
