Is this the beginning of the end? Who knows?? In 2011, the USD price spiked to $31 only to fall to the mid $2s. Bitcoin climbed back, slowly, with little mainstream attention.

It is likely that mainstream attention drove the recent spike and crash (correction ?) debacle. Mt. Gox was not prepared for the overwhelming number of new accounts and sheer trading volume that built up exponentially over the last couple months. It is not clear if anyone could have been.

Mt. Gox has been communicating fairly well, tho’ hardly NASDAQ-esque, on its facebook page. The main site itself broadcasts user info far too infrequently to keep anyone updated.

As I’ve said above (tldr;) there are fundamentals in this (i.e., bitcoin) economy but almost no one is paying attention to them…

Felix Salmon, paid Professional Journalist, and card-carrying Cathedral Member, whose oft-cited Reuters piece (even carved in the stone of Wikipedia!) and in his interview with the insufferably hip Planet Money NPR show think that “there’s nothing there”, that the speculative FX trade is the only thing it has going. Jeez, if he’s so interested, you think he might have at least heard of the blockchain info site. That isn’t what the numbers show.

Is IT on?

Who knows…

https://ripple.com/

It is important to note that trade DID continue at the the various other exchanges (btce, bitstamp, bitfloor, etc.) and BTC/USD traded in the $50-$100 range. But these exchanges are so tiny that even a few hundred bitcoin moves the markets immensely. The world (of bitcoin) was waiting for Mt. Gox to open and see what would happen.

Starting at 10pm local time, Mt. Gox’s reported USD price, as expected, fluxuated wildly between a low of $65 and a top of $130. (Yours truly picked up a, sadly, tiny buy at $90) At the time of this writing, it is printing at about $98, which is just above the closing price on April 2.

UPDATE: just noticed that bitcoinity hasn’t updated the Mt. Gox report in over an hour and Mt. Gox’s site isn’t loading. Don’t know what’s happening. Stoners may have to gather up some government issued currency and hit the streets tonight.

Yeah, well, while it lasts, we get comfort the old-fashioned way.

None of these functions are seriously upset by volatility, although if your main interest in BTC is that it smooths dope purchases, it’s probably quite annoying.

The dope sellers and purchasers are almost entirely indifferent to price. They are both trading in and out (respectively) of government issued currencies within minutes. Unless, as was true til yesterday, holding bitcoin happens to be profitable. Then they’ll hold a few extra. If the btc/gov’t currency price crashes (like yesterday), then they’ll go back to holding only what they need for a few minutes and being relatively indifferent to price. Seems to put a stable floor on bitcoin price. I don’t know what it is, but it is non-zero.

That’s it. That is its innovation. But it’s a big one.