[CocaKoala]

Have I fundamentally misunderstood bitcoins? I thought it was a crypto-currency, not a crypto-stock. If it's supposed to be a currency, then judging it in relation to how other currencies behave isn't unusual at all. If it's supposed to be a stock, why does everybody call it a currency?

[jafaku]

If you don't see the difference between a currency that can regulate its price artificially by printing more of it and Bitcoin, then you have definitely misunderstood it.

If you don't feel comfortable comparing it with stock, then compare it with gold. Even after thousands of years, and a market capitalization of 8 trillions of dollars, it still has price fluctuations.

Bitcoin has only ~7 billions of dollars of market capitalization. It's comparable to what we call a "penny stock". Anyone with a few millions can move the price. And even with hundreds of thousands of dollars, you could move the price in one particular exchange.

If you still don't understand it, watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHUPPYzzZrI

[baddox]

It's more of a crypto transaction system, which has obvious potential uses as a payment system or a stock. There is no objective "supposed to be" for the technology, but obviously the primary focus of the Bitcoin community is as a payment system.

[javert]

Bitcoin is brand new and it has to have a growth process because of its nature, unlike state-sponsored currencies like the Euro that can just be "rolled out." So you can't fairly compare it to mature currencies, even though it is a currency.