[patejam]

And it is terrible for legitimizing them. Why should someone adopt Bitcoins as a currency if there's not a stable value? Bring in all of the security issues that have been popping up as its popularity has increased and I see a decline in Bitcoin adoption coming soon.

I don't think Bitcoins are the answer to the problems they are trying to solve.

[rnbrady]

And what problems are they "trying" to solve?

This is what traction looks like, sometimes it's messy. That doesn't mean it's not legitimate.

What does legitimising a currency mean anyway? It's already used as a medium of exchange and a store of value, that's legitimate.

But if you are going to try and compare it to the "legitimacy" of fiat money, you're not going to find what you're looking for.

Bitcoin is an anarchist concept, it does not seek to be legitimised. It is achieving exactly what is set out to do.

you could just see the fluctuations as the currency being honest about its value as opposed to fiat money which is just as vulnerable yet artificially stabilised (legitimised?).

[oscilloscope]

Because the cost of accepting them and converting them to currency is less than the transaction fees of credit cards or PayPal. If you don't need to convert to cash right away, then the transaction fees are very low indeed.

[citricsquid]

Not for reddit:

    So far we're spending more money on accountants handling the non-trivial 
    reconciliation of our BTC transactions than revenue we're making in Bitcoin, 
    haha. Hopefully it will get better.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/19t3uq/hey_rbitcoin...

[Helianthus]

Bitcoin hasn't been legitimate for a long time. The last boom-bust they went through proved that and nothing has changed since.

If you still have Bitcoins, sell'em and don't buy more, except as an intermediary exchange for your discreet transactions.

[zwtaylor]

If everyone took your second piece of advice and only used it for discrete transactions, then Bitcoin would be worth exponentially more than it is now, which would invalidate your first piece of advice. The number of bitcoin users is still exceptionally small.

[Helianthus]

Implicit in the advice is the (strong) assumption that not everyone's going to take it.

-_-