Are you kidding me? Look at the change in exchange rate over just the
past half year.
Even soon after were first giving away half a BTC in this very thread when a BTC
was worth about $7 it shot up by about 10x that value in about three (3) months. That was just a tiny jump in value compared to what would come. In December we saw BTC shoot up to over $1000/BTC, about 100x its value a year before.
Look at how things have changed. Now it's about 50x that in value, and that was only in a matter of a year.
Rarely would even the most volatile of stocks fluctuate like that except in a massive financial disaster. It didn't mean that people were making huge amounts of money though, because nobody would trade BTC because of the volatility. It caused a huge credit crunch of sorts. That's what we don't want out of a currency.
Perhaps the only reason you can comfortably store hundreds of dollars in BTC is that it has jumped in value so much that the fluctuations don't seem as big relative to the exchange rate as they once were. Still, even now,
BTC is very volatile even on those scales. From Feb 1st, the currency has lost 1/4th of its value. In early March it spiked 15% or so, only to slide back down.
What BTC really needs is to stabilize so that people don't feel compelled to hoard the currency or dump it, but rather spend and exchange it for goods. I thought it would settle around $100/BTC, which I was quite amazed at, but instead it is 5x or even 10x that. I don't even know what it'll settle at, but it'd be nice if it were relatively stable over longer periods like a year or so. It was pretty good in May to October, but the last four months alone have been ridiculous.
I want BTC to succeed, but it needs to settle down.
) is that when you buy anything with it from a store which has adopted btc they charge at a horrible exchange rate. Its also way too volatile to be taken seriously as a currency, I see it more like a stock.
