@Coinseeker:
1) you don't seem to understand that black market is not "tiny". It's a 1,800 billion/year economy. Do the maths.
2) you don't seem to know that the Bitcoin concept was born in cyberpunk and crypto-anarchists circles, and that was designed with very "unpatriotic" characteristics at its core. It's decentralized and trust-free (do you understand what does this implies for the US Gov and the FED?), and it is conceived from the very beginning to be resilient to Governments attacks. I wonder why someone like you is interested in such a concept.
Then, you mock me up because I said that real demand brought BTC to "a whole $14" from $0.07. You are blind if you do not see how immense growth is x200 in just a couple of years because of the demand generated by two tiny businesses (SD and SR). And you are just plainly ignorant if you do not understand how huge is the potential growth regardless of BTC being banned or semi-illegal. Give it time, and then we will discuss.
Just because the value has gone up to 130 , it doesn't mean there are 10x users than last year or we're doing 10x transactions.
Currently the price is based more on "what bitcoin will be" than is actual value.
True, the current price is based on speculation. The "natural" demand of BTC brought us to $14, and based on current electricity costs (miners won't sell their coins at a loss) the speculation-less price for 1BTC it's around $50. This is hard math, not speculation. Just check the numbers yourself.
Difficulty and thus electricity cost per BTC will keep increasing, and "real economy" around BTC will grow accordingly, as it always did: if there is a global ban (almost impossible), we will still have black market economy + "idealists" using it, and that will lead to steady (but slower) growth. If there is an US ban (unlikely at this point, but a possibility somewhere in the future), we will still have increasing demand all over the rest of the world, which will lead us to
exponential growth. If there is no ban at all, even better for us all.
There are only two lethal threats to Bitcoin:
a) the development of a superior crypto-currency with the same core characteristics (trust-free and decentralized and thus immune to Government attacks)
b) a fatal flaw in the technology of the protocol (highly unlikely at this point)
Every other scenario has been analyzed, and Bitcoin is designed to rise stronger from those scenarios, including a Government ban.
Actually, he does understand all that. He is here to spread FUD. You can see his alter ego's quite transparently. He is just trying to bring
fear into the
BTC equation.
I only reply to bring some as-semblance of balance to those reading his posts - so as they know they are FUD. We all do a pretty good job of that with Coinseeker.