There will be proper demand of Bitcoin regardless of it being legal or illegal in the US, I can guarantee you that.
Yes, but if it's going to be illegal, or even semi-illegal in the US, it will be much less attractive as an investment.
There's real, actual demand for BTC, namely drug trade and gambling. They represent less than ten percent of the total demand, everything else is speculative investment.
I would call it a gamble more than an investment. There are so many things that can go south, and one of them is precisely the very real possibility of it being declared illegal by one or more Governments.
I agree that after we reached $20 at the en of January there was an explosion of speculative activity around Bitcoin, and that's why the price skyrocketed so fast. But real demand besides of speculation will grow steadily and quicker than before, now that Bitcoin has been exposed to the whole world.
Based on what, gut feeling? Certainly not facts. Bitcoin is slow and extremely complicated. You have to be above average technical to even consider using it and then, who's going to want to when you can't spend it anywhere except to do illegal stuff?
So, you're doing something that's super complicated. That's slow and could never handle micro transactions. That in this scenario presented would be illegal, thus you risk jail time all to buy a digital "currency" that you can only use to buy illegal stuff. And somehow despite all this, you think it's just going to keep growing and achieve mass adoption? It is the speculation thread but I think it's a flawed piece of speculation you've laid out. More like a dream with zero basis in reality.
Based on facts: the demand created by a single Darknet website (Silk Road) + a single gambling website (Satoshidice) is enough to take one BTC to be worth aprox. 14 of your beloved US dollars. Maybe you do not understand that 14 (fourteen) dollars for something like Bitcoin is not trivial (it was worth $0.079 in May 2010 - did you know?)
This is only the beginning. Bitcoin may be very complicated for you, I bet you are well over 30 yo - someone younger wouldn't feel it's so complicated. In fact, we will have a a new generation coming that will grow knowing that there is an "anonymous cash of the internet" in the wild, and they will understand it naturally, something you obviously do not do.
What I'm trying to explain you is that Bitcoin has a HUGE growth potential. It's price already went from $0.07 to $14 because of real but extremely reuced demand, that's a x200 increase in 1 year because of Satoshidice and Silk Road.
And then you have the bubbles, the one we are having now and the 2011 one, created by pure speculative mania - but we can leave those out and concetrate only on real economy demand.
Just wait for more people to slowly understand Bitcoin. For them to understand that they can use it to move freely their wealth - because you knew that there are a lot of countries where there are strict financial controls that restrict people's freedom, don't you? I can tell you a real story it happened to me in Argentina if you wish. And just wait for the "black market" to see how good can be BTC for them (Dread Pirate Roberts is a visionary, but give to his "folks" some years to understand BTC), and for more gambling sites to embrace it.
Sure, it will be a slow process. And that's why is retarded to believe that BTC is a get-rich-quick scheme, and that it will be at 6 figures next year. But there is a fact: BTC won't go away easily. It's here to stay. And solves a lot of real life, important problems related to monetary freedom, and that matter to millions of people in the world, regardless of what the US says.
And think about something, Coinseeker: there have been threats of Bitcoin being declared illegal since day 1. Just use the search of these forums and check the debates about Wikileaks accepting BTC, and how worried Satoshi was (in fact he asked Assange to please don't - read and learn, it's all on the forums). And what you call "a dream with zero basis on reality", is what happened. Real demand grew. And it's growing. And the core demand for BTC is at those who want monetary freedom, not a "quick minitransactions protocol". Because the core characterisitics of Bitcoin are a) decentralized and b) trust-free, and hence unseizable and uncontrollable by Governments. And that very characteristics will attract a very specific real and powerful demand, as they did with Satoshidice and Silk Road.
I wonder what would you have told me in 2010 when bitcoin was at 0.0x, if I told you that some day one BTC was going to be worth $14 on "real demand".
Coinseeker, if you want a fast transaction system for minipayments go and use Dwolla, or even better: Ripple. Bitcoin is not that.
