[mcs]

There are extremists that believe Bitcoin is poised to be the new world's reserve currency (which to me means a highly sought after commodity to compare against), as gold once was in the past 200 years to some degree. This party of thought see it as digital gold that is fungible through the internet. It doesn't have enough critical mass of actual economic value hedged on it yet to be that, if ever, so it's going to be a wild ride when any big players decide to put some monies in the slot machine of the market. Small level purchasers aren't moving the market, and if they're in the US they're probably using Coinbase or some other "Bitcoin bank" that does off-chain transactions. The begrudgoned trusted entities that the current world requires to exist for people to get involved aren't moving the price for the most part, and their prices reflect what the other exchanges are saying. Regardless of the potential for transaction exclusion collusion, any large amounts of Bitcoin bought off the chain can cause wild swings on the markets that are averaged for the prices, and for a while if Bitcoin continues to excel, it will remain just as exploitable as any other financial system such stocks w/ press.

[baddox]

I believe that Bitcoin (or perhaps another cryptocurrency based on similar concepts) absolutely has the technical capability of and some desirable traits for being an important reserve currency. I don't predict with any confidence that this will happen, but I see no reason why it couldn't happen. Not sure if that makes you label me an extremist.