Right now the price of each bitcoin is $27.28

The block having that happened a while back means that bitcoins are now being generated at half the rate ( 25 per block ). Over half the bitcoins that will ever exist exist already.

A few dedicated ASIC mining machines have been built and shipped to ensure the safety of the network. This will ramp up in the next few months.

No serious security threat to the bitcoin network has ever emerged although many bitcoins have been stolen from insecure sites or by old fashioned social engineering.

Bitcoin continues to pickup new users, new services, and gain more publicity every day.


The future looks rosy for bitcoin.

BitCoin is also an extremely volatile currency that makes it extremely risky for any business to accept. The value range in USD over the past 30 days is 14.45 - 27.60. How can any business set their prices based on that sort of madly fluctuating exchange rate?

With great difficulty I should imagine. This is currently a major issue but one that is gradually fixing itself as the bitcoin economy grows larger.

All currencies fluctuate in value, just in most it's at such a low level that normal people buying normal things don't even notice.

Most currencies don't fluctuate by 100% of their value in a 30 day time period, and this isn't unusual for BitCoin. Few serious businesses will have any interest in it until it stabilizes, which it has shown little evidence of doing so far.

Currently it's pretty unstable but it's getting better. Every time a new business uses bitcoin it gets a little more stable and new businesses are turning up almost daily. You can buy bitcoins at 7-eleven and walmart now so it has some serious traction.

I'm sure it will gain enough stability to be usable as a practical currency, but I can't say when.

Ok there Heisenberg.

With no regulation, nor any real government or business to be tied to, the likelihood of bitcoins becoming a practical currency is slim and none. If (and it's a huge super big if) it ever became even the slightest bit popular, then all types of regulation and legal hell will rain down until bitcoin is a mere damp spot on what used to be a ponzi-esque based hobby.

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Either provide enough details for people to help, or sit back and listen to the crickets chirp.
Security thru obscurity is a myth - and really really annoying.

Mister negative,

There are businesses, lots of them actually. Check out https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade

Peer to peer networks route around legal issues. Maybe you noticed the corporate giants sinking a fortune into stopping torrent networks from stealing movies? All that money and influence is getting them nowhere. Torrent networks are not even fully peer to peer and they are still practically unstoppable.

Bitcoin is fully peer to peer and can be tunneled over any digital network.

Governments can't stop bitcoin without truly drastic measures, I expect they are intelligent enough to recognize and accept this. They will likely just treat bitcoins like any other non-physical asset when it comes to tax, they have no problem taxing shares denominated in foreign currency for example.

*snigger* You used government and intelligent in the same sentence.

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If major governments pass legislation declaring it illegal for a company to use or accept BitCoin, I'd like to see a company try to argue in court that they're not liable "because P2P!" when the government charges them with violation.

BitCoin's use of peer to peer networking has absolutely zero impact on legal issues. The mere fact that the government is already working on their own digital currency which will be heavily regulated should be enough to illustrate how an unregulated digital currency won't be allowed to operate long.

If is the critical word here. If the major governments outlaw unix we will have to run our mail exchangers on windoze. It's not going to happen. Although the US government does have a history of robbing its citizens of their private assets, see the gold confiscation of 1933.

The Canadian effort won't work, although it's nice that they try to innovate.

deleted

Why would governments want to stop bitcoin? It's no different to "Sony PSN credit" (which can also be bought at major retailers). From a tax perspective (eg income tax) then it's a no brainer; the employer and employee have to state the earnings (eg in USD for US based employees) and "payment in bitcoin" would have to be converted to USD value for reporting purposes at the time of payment (same as with any other type of "payment in kind"... shares, gold bars, ruppees, etc).

From a consumer perspective, the day I can walk into Walmart and buy a flatscreen TV with 20 bitcoins then it becomes interesting; otherwise it's a PITA with limited use... no different to PSN or Microsoft credits.

Bitcoin: all the hype, none of the utility.

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Rgds
Stephen
(Linux user since kernel version 0.11)

Well if Kim DotCom and Mega are willing to take BitCoins, they MUST be legit - right?

Bwahahahahahahaha.

The difference between Bitcoin and the other "in-house" currency (like Sony PSN credits or Amazon's upcoming Kindle credits) is what lawyers call the "lawsuit test". With Sony & Amazon credits, you can sue those company's, but with Bitcoins, if the Scheiße hits the fan, who can you sue???

_________________
Either provide enough details for people to help, or sit back and listen to the crickets chirp.
Security thru obscurity is a myth - and really really annoying.

Vonskippy - Who got sued when banksters screwed the global economy? No-one, instead the governments of the world inflated a load of money and gave it to the very slimeballs who caused the problem. Nobody gets sued when governments or central banks decide to play dice with the economy because some thieves are above the law.

You can't sue the Internet in exactly the same way you can't sue the government. Therefore your 'someone to sue' argument is flawed.


Despite the negative feelings from the esteemed members of this forum the utility of bitcoins measured by the number of people and companies using them keeps increasing. The price of bitcoins also keeps increasing. It's an experiment but it's taking off.

Lets check back in 6 months to a year and see if it's collapsed as a bad joke or taken off like a rocket.

Epic math fail.