scotttswan
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this is pretty accurate for the state of bitcoins just now.
buying into bitcoins right now is a dumb investment, and it has always been a dumb investment, because the market was and continues to be completely unpredictable and entirely unregulated. there is absolutely no way to predict anything about where the bitcoin->usd exchange rate is going to go, because there is no connection between bitcoin and the real world at all and most of the people involved are not rational actors by even the loosest definition from your freshman economics textbook. the amazingly shitty state of tech "journalism" doesn't help either (although there are surprising exceptions)
at this particular moment it appears to be possible to turn bitcoins into something useful, as long as you're in a country or economic zone with a working and reasonably trustworthy exchange, which includes the united states and (apparently) the EU, but does not seem to include Canada. the "you can't use your bitcoins for anything" canard is not completely true any more, it is only annoying and not impossible to do so
but even the exchanges that some people have had positive experiences with are not regulated in any way and are generally run by the same sort of internet startup types who think mongodb is a good idea (and if you don't know what that means, imagine a database architecture that trades data integrity for speed). some of these exchanges also require you to buy bitcoins first before you can sell them, and some of them require sharing a complete identify theft kit with them before they'll give you any real money. they are risky to use, but that risk may or may not be worth it for any particular person's situation. buying amazon gift cards on gyft through bitpay appears to be the safest and most reliable method so far, but this only works for Americans and obviously has its own limitations
anyway, if you mined a bunch of bitcoins back when they were possible to mine with a cpu because you were curious, hey, you got lucky and now you can buy yourself some new toys. if you bought some on a lark when they were a novelty worth a quarter each, without any expectations of returns, and you just now remembered you had them, then it's probably a good time to cash out, while the bitcoin exchange rate is high and there are some exchanges and companies that appear to be at least somewhat reliable
could bitcoin shoot up to $10,000 each by January 1st? who the fuck knows, we're dealing with a virtual commodity favoured by libertarians and anarchists here. will coinbase and bitpay still be around at that point? nobody knows that either, which is why you have to decide if you're willing to "let it ride" and risk losing everything you already have on the chance you might make even more off of the idiocy of ron paul fans
if you bought bitcoin at any previous point with the expectation that it was going to rise in price, you're a lucky gambler and nothing else and you need to figure out if you want to let it ride or not. if you buy bitcoins now, you're also a gambler, and if you're okay with that, then go for it, but everybody with any sense is going to think you're the same kind of idiot who risks their money in vegas
this is all, of course, assuming that you don't have an ideological stake in bitcoins and are just interested in them as a commodity to make money on. if you actually think bitcoins are going to cause a revolution in money, you are an order of magnitude bigger idiot that somebody who bought bitcoins in the hopes of making a lot of real money off them. you are the kind of people that the lucky gamblers won their money from
in short, bitcoins are still a stupid, unworkable idea, but like many stupid and unworkable ideas on the internet, people are throwing money at it anyway. you might be able to take advantage of that, and a lot of people already have, mostly through the luck of being in the right place at the right time, not through any sort of savvy investment strategy. every possible indicator said and still says that bitcoin is a bad investment: mea culpa, caveat emptor
buying into bitcoins right now is a dumb investment, and it has always been a dumb investment, because the market was and continues to be completely unpredictable and entirely unregulated. there is absolutely no way to predict anything about where the bitcoin->usd exchange rate is going to go, because there is no connection between bitcoin and the real world at all and most of the people involved are not rational actors by even the loosest definition from your freshman economics textbook. the amazingly shitty state of tech "journalism" doesn't help either (although there are surprising exceptions)
at this particular moment it appears to be possible to turn bitcoins into something useful, as long as you're in a country or economic zone with a working and reasonably trustworthy exchange, which includes the united states and (apparently) the EU, but does not seem to include Canada. the "you can't use your bitcoins for anything" canard is not completely true any more, it is only annoying and not impossible to do so
but even the exchanges that some people have had positive experiences with are not regulated in any way and are generally run by the same sort of internet startup types who think mongodb is a good idea (and if you don't know what that means, imagine a database architecture that trades data integrity for speed). some of these exchanges also require you to buy bitcoins first before you can sell them, and some of them require sharing a complete identify theft kit with them before they'll give you any real money. they are risky to use, but that risk may or may not be worth it for any particular person's situation. buying amazon gift cards on gyft through bitpay appears to be the safest and most reliable method so far, but this only works for Americans and obviously has its own limitations
anyway, if you mined a bunch of bitcoins back when they were possible to mine with a cpu because you were curious, hey, you got lucky and now you can buy yourself some new toys. if you bought some on a lark when they were a novelty worth a quarter each, without any expectations of returns, and you just now remembered you had them, then it's probably a good time to cash out, while the bitcoin exchange rate is high and there are some exchanges and companies that appear to be at least somewhat reliable
could bitcoin shoot up to $10,000 each by January 1st? who the fuck knows, we're dealing with a virtual commodity favoured by libertarians and anarchists here. will coinbase and bitpay still be around at that point? nobody knows that either, which is why you have to decide if you're willing to "let it ride" and risk losing everything you already have on the chance you might make even more off of the idiocy of ron paul fans
if you bought bitcoin at any previous point with the expectation that it was going to rise in price, you're a lucky gambler and nothing else and you need to figure out if you want to let it ride or not. if you buy bitcoins now, you're also a gambler, and if you're okay with that, then go for it, but everybody with any sense is going to think you're the same kind of idiot who risks their money in vegas
this is all, of course, assuming that you don't have an ideological stake in bitcoins and are just interested in them as a commodity to make money on. if you actually think bitcoins are going to cause a revolution in money, you are an order of magnitude bigger idiot that somebody who bought bitcoins in the hopes of making a lot of real money off them. you are the kind of people that the lucky gamblers won their money from
in short, bitcoins are still a stupid, unworkable idea, but like many stupid and unworkable ideas on the internet, people are throwing money at it anyway. you might be able to take advantage of that, and a lot of people already have, mostly through the luck of being in the right place at the right time, not through any sort of savvy investment strategy. every possible indicator said and still says that bitcoin is a bad investment: mea culpa, caveat emptor
lol Probably not the best handle for my bitcoin trading account however 
