And is still extremely high compared to where it was not all that long ago. If bitcoin would have gone on a monotonic increase from < $1 to where it is today everybody would be speaking about a miracle. We'll see where it goes in the long run, so far if anything bitcoin has been one of the most interesting things happening in this new millenium and I'm very curious where it is headed in the longer term, but I won't make bets either way.
I also find BitCoin to be interesting but I'm not sure if that interest has really spread that far from tech-oriented audiences.
The people who really support BitCoin can be rather fanatical in their expectations of what BitCoin will become and I don't see its current growth coinciding with those expectations.
It would be interesting to see how many people are using BitCoin as a daily currency, and what the changes to that number have been over time.
We see lots of places accepting BitCoin (and using services that instantly convert that to USD so they don't actually hold the BTC) but is there the similar growth on the buying side? Who's buying BitCoin and why? If BitCoins growth has largely come from people who are speculating / investing, or are doing illegal things with it, then growth rates aren't sustainable and these crashes become more and more likely.
As for the miracle, I don't think it's that out of the ordinary. Apple went from being worth $0 dollars to being worth over $600 billion. Being on the ground floor of either would have been nice, but when BitCoins were < $1, they were still more likely to be worth < $1 today than being worth $200.
I can say one thing for certain: BitCoin's price chart since it's high over a year ago does not give me any confidence it in. I have no desire to hold onto something like that in the hopes that it becomes worth more. It just seems like a ridiculous thing to do. I see no value in using it transactionally and negative value in holding it and I don't really see either changing. I don't wish BitCoin to be a failure, I just don't see it being the kind of success that so many people have bet on it being.
I don't even want to have a wallet to use Bitcoin as a transnational currency because of how volatile it is. The USD is a pretty stable currency, so why would I change that stability to something as volatile as Bitcoin, especially given that we don't think Bitcoin is a good speculative device?
I just don't see the use-case, except buying drugs.
