- Jan 17, 2004
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The price of Bitcoins surged this week, rising above $9 for the first time in almost a year. The increase suggests growing public interest in the peer-to-peer cryptocurrency.
Last month, we marked the one-year anniversary of the Bitcoin bubble popping. We noted that after plunging for the last six months of 2011, the price of Bitcoin had begun to stabilize around $5. But almost as soon as we published that article, the currency began appreciating rapidly. Today, one Bitcoin is worth about $9.20a 40 percent increase in a month.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...-above-9-for-the-first-time-in-almost-a-year/
'Official' bitcoin site: http://bitcoin.org
It looks like Bitcoin is back stronger than ever. The price is now even higher than when this article was posted, going between the low 10s to the mid 11s. There are more exchanges, more places to spend them and Bitcoin mining is roaring along with new ASICs coming out soon.
Bitcoin isn't really a 'currency' yet. It is too volatile to have sticky prices etc. but I see the following use cases for it:
1. Online casino tokens. You can use Bitcoin to gamble online with instant payouts to your Bitcoin wallet.
2. International transfers. You can transfer any sum of wealth to anywhere in the world to bypass capital controls of a particular country.
3. Underground purchases. Bitcoin can be used to purchase illicit items such as drugs as well as grey market items where the purchaser would rather not leave a paper trail.
4. Long term wealth storage. This use case is kind of iffy because of the volatility, but if you can weather the volatility of Bitcoin, you can put a bunch of coins in 'cold storage' in an offline wallet where no government or thief can get to them.
There are online retail stores that accept Bitcoin, but this is not really a strong use case yet since there is still a premium charged to acquire Bitcoins. But if more retailers start accepting them and offer a discount for using them, Bitcoins could become the de facto currency of the Internet.