Not an April Fools joke
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(This is a screenshot from Bitcoinity.org with real-time trading stats. The guy who runs it is funny, he pops in animated gifs and changes the background for the lols.)
As I write this, coins are trading for $99.89 and there's a lot of trading volume moving the price around, but the mark has been broken.
ok, now 100.58...
I care a lot!
(Joking)
What would a random individual do with a bitcoin? If I can't pay my bar tab with it...
I want to invest in some Bitcoins. 
The more it climbs before I invest the worse it gets for me though! 
The thing is that I really don't trust the "exchanges". I got a shady E-mail from Mt.Gox about my account. G-mail flagged it as spam, but AFAICT it was legit. Even though I haven't accessed my account at all, and they were informing me that I had been accessing it in suspicious ways. So yeah, they're supposed to be the most stable, secure exchange or whatever, and I have this going on?
With Bitcoins being so expensive you're not risking twenty dollars. You're risking a hundred. And if you actually want several Bitcoins then you're actually risking several hundred. It's not exactly a small chunk of change anymore. It's hard to say what the risks of investing now are, even after you get past the exchanges. I sure do wish I would have invested back when they were only $20 though. 
It would be interesting to learn of the biggest payouts from Bitcoins (i.e., who had good fortune and got one in return).
I generated about 5 or 6 BTC a long time ago, now seems like a good time to cash them out... Just have to find the wallet file on an old HD 
148..
Remember Warren Buffet's "Mr Market". Normally we all know that it's good to buy something when it's cheap and bad when it's expensive. The fact that Bitcoin is so high means that it's low a risky time to buy it. Buying something because it ha a high current value for a low price is investment. Buying something for it's possible future value is speculation, i.e. gambling.
It's matter of definition of current value. And no, I would not buy bitcoins now. Though damn sad I did not when the topic first got raised on A.cc.
they were overvalued then. Let alone now. Though I keep wishing I held onto my 56 bitcoins longer. Sold at 17. 
That depends if people really start using them for payments, not just store of value. If so, the currency will live.
The only death I can imagine for it, is this(because I don't think a bubble pop will kill it, those who use it for transactions won't give a damn on the pop(well will, but..)), so to it's death scenario:
The injection of bitcoins becomes lesser and lesser, and there is not enough commissions to collect to keep appropriate mining rate. Then the system can be taken over by someone with bad intentions, which may kill it. And yes I know it has already survived that, but the day it becomes more or less easy the system will die.
Append:
Thomas, where did you get them from, in the first place? Mined?
There's supposedly malware on Skype which will mine bitcoins for the miscreant. And if it took off, governments would try to quash it since they'd have a hard time controlling it (taxing it, preventing transasctions they don't like such as drug payments, putting out huge amounts of their own to buy votes with, etc.)
The US govt has recently decreed that Bitcoin services qualify as money transfer services, so they are no officially regulated, and have to track payments to protect against laundering.
Thomas, where did you get them from, in the first place? Mined?
Nah, I bought them for between 4 and 30 cad per. My break even point after making a really stupid trade over a year ago was $16. So I got my money back. Which I'm happy about. Before the stupid trade (where I lost nearly half my "value" at the time), my break even point was somewhere around $8-10 ish.
I never really paid any attention to bitcoins because I thought there would be hundreds of other copycat bitcoin currencies making all digital currencies worthless before they even got above a few dollars. Why hasn't it happened and will it happen?
It may or may not happen, the point of this one is that it has no center, so no one actually has control over it, which is why it has its trust.
Whether or not will it happen is about if it is going to be widely used for payments, or not. It will not survive as a value storage.
The reason there hasn't been "competing" digital currencies is because there's no point. Bitcoin is open. Nobody stands to gain by introducing a viable competitor.
It's like a good open source project. With closed source software there are 30 identical wheels to choose from, all of them equally square. There's nothing to gain from creating an equal competitor (i.e., exact same features, no actually enhancements) to open source software. You can already do everything you could want with the original one (namely, use it, modify it, distribute it, and distribute modified copies).
One thing that I foresee as being potentially crippling is monopoly men that control the world currencies currently choosing to choke the Bitcoin market by buying them all up and hording them. The system promises stability because the number of Bitcoins is limited. If they are all taken away then the system becomes useless. You either need to create more, which could make it unstable through inflation, or the system just becomes useless since none of the currency is in circulation anymore.
In theory, if everybody then agreed that Bitcoins are and always will be worthless then we could prevent any harm, create a whole new system again, and take comfort in the fact that the monopoly men just threw away that "money". Except you can't control what people place value on so I'm sure that if they started circulating Bitcoins again people would adopt them, and they control the world's existing currencies so you can't actually cost them any money, and therefore it wouldn't really do them any harm... So yeah, I'm not sure what we can do to prevent that...
there's been a bunch of other wannabes. especially a year or two ago. They all pretty much failed right away. They got boosted super high, and the value against bitcoin eventually made it unprofitable, and people bailed.
You guys might want to consider getting in before it goes past $200 next week.
You guys might want to consider getting in before it goes past $200 next week.
Last time I did something like that the price was $30, and it dropped to $4 not long after.
Yea. Play at your own risk, really.
Last time I did something like that the price was $30, and it dropped to $4 not long after.
Me too. I still have those coins, though.
I'm working on Bytecoin. It's like bitcoin, but they are worth 8 times more.
I'm working on Bytecoin. It's like bitcoin, but they are worth 8 times more.
I bought a good amount when they where 5$ and mined another good amount when it was quite profitable to mine with a single FPU. Yay!
I was expecting for the price to catch up again after the flop (so I'm happy I didn't sell due to the panic, although I did a bad operation back in the day losing about 8 BC, which by that time wasn't that much, but now...), but I didn't expect to go this high 
Someone has mention Litecoins here. I mine them now -_-
And well.. 2nd opportunity for those late for bitcoins, and well.. They have the advantage that it's not as efficient to construct a specialized rig for them, so its mining is going to stay a lot more distributed than bitcoins is.
I even wanted to buy some litecoins, but couldn't find any appropriate way to.. :{
I mine about 0.7USD/day at the moment, though I literally don't feel a slowdown on the computer. I played Starcraft 2 with it running in background.
And well, should it grow, and I guess it will do.. Then the mined stuff may even worth a new CPU for an upgrade in few years
You have to balance the cost of mining them against the value you get back out. It was already not really worth it a year or two ago to mine bitcoins. At least not without specialized hardware using an FPGA or ASIC.
I wish I had kept the coins I bought back in those days as well. 
You have to balance the cost of mining them against the value you get back out. It was already not really worth it a year or two ago to mine bitcoins.
It depends. If you're not a very good trader, it's quite profitable to mine now at a loss (that is, you'd lose, or not win much if you'd sell them asap) and wait for the price to rise and sell them then. Those bitcoins mined a year ago are worth a ton today.
You guys might want to consider getting in before it goes past $200 next week.
I'm sorry. The luck I've had with these things tells me I shouldn't do these things. It's also not worth the headaches and crazy it causes.
The difference for my is working CPU vs Idle CPU.. Which is I'd estimate some 0.5USD a day in electricity, I've never turned of my PC anyways. More than that, it just mines in background with low priority and doesn't prevent me from doing anything with the PC, including gaming.
The income is negligible, I mine some 0.3 LTC a day, which is 1.2USD at todays prices. That's if the Litecoin is worth 4.1USD, as it does today. It did 3.4 yesterday morning. I ain't selling it for anything below $100 of course. Should it never reach that- oh well..
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Mark, you also said to buy at $30 a couple years ago. Look how well that went for two years.
This bubble seems to be even bigger than the last one 
. $175 to $225 in just 24h...
It touched 240.
I wish I had kept the coins I bought back in those days as well.
l o l @ bitcoins.
I believe in gold (or equivalent values in other valuable commodities). All else is just a promise, and you all know how easily promises are broken. Oh, yeah, it also requires faith on the part of the people holding the scrip.
Actually not exactly.. You don't have to trust in bitcoins to use them. You can keep an account on one of these exchanges, and in order to make a payment just convert on the fly. And in certain cases it ALREADY IS easier to pay for a service with bitcoins. Especially if you want to do it gray.
You don't have to trust in bitcoins to use them.
Suppose they go down to $10 tomorrow? Or if somebody finds a way to "counterfeit" them? Or even if the latest trojan takes over enough computers to cause inflation? You must be talking about the very short term.
If these things are so great and bitcoins are here to stay, why doesn't the company keep them for themselves and mine all the bitcoins at a massive profit?
mine all the bitcoins at a massive profit
As I understand it, there are only a limited number of bitcoins available in this algorithm, and now the remaining bitcoins are so hard to mine, that the electric bill powering the computer(s) exceeds the value of the bitcoins.
Either the "mining rig" is worth $2,499.00 or it's not. If it is, then why doesn't the company keep it? If it's not, why would anybody buy it?
This isn't like regular goods where after buying it, you'd need to use skill, or have access to some resource. You just plug it in and it gives you coins. It's like a golden egg laying machine. If you've got one, why would you sell it?
The process of finding blocks is now so popular and the difficulty of finding a block so high that it could take over three years to generate any coins.
Yeah, but he's mining at 40Mhash/s, while that machine is 50Ghash/s, an increase of 1,250x. If they kept all the equipment themselves, then they could run their own pools and dominate the bitcoin mining corner.
But really what they are doing is selling performance enhancing drugs to cyclist. The first few people that buy in will do better relative to the regular folks, but soon everybody will have one, which will equalize the playing field and everybody will be back generating the same number of bitcoins relative to each other.
There are a couple of things that make me a bit uneasy about bitcoin.
One thing is that people with the most mining power have power over the currency. ie. wealthy people who can afford powerful mining computers are the ones who get the most say in how bitcoin operates.
Another thing is that bitcoin is a deflationary currency. As the bitcoin economy grows, the purchasing power of each bitcoin increases. The people holding the most bitcoins are the ones who gain the most wealth when the bitcoin economy grows. ie. the rich get richer without even having to do anything.
I think wealthy people have enough advantages already with normal currencies without giving them these additional powers.
--
All that stuff aside, is there any easy way to tell how many bitcoins I have without having to download gigabytes of new blockchain data? It seems like a bit of a drag.
Either the "mining rig" is worth $2,499.00 or it's not. If it is, then why doesn't the company keep it? If it's not, why would anybody buy it?
Why not both? They take space and consume electricity, so they can only run a limited amount of them. Sell the rest.
Why not both?
If you mean run them until it's not profitable, and then sell them... Then of course, that's best of both worlds.
The only reason the product exists is because the people making it feel that they are scamming the buyers by selling them a printing press that won't be able to print out as much money as was spent on it.
The only reason the product exists is because the people making it feel that they are scamming the buyers by selling them a printing press that won't be able to print out as much money as was spent on it.
Roughly speaking, I think you're right - but I think there's a bit more too it than that.
The makers of these mining machines can probably estimate how many bitcoins the machines are capable of mining, and thus calculate whether it is worth selling them or worth using them to get the bitcoins themselves. If they sell the machines, they can get money right away. But if they use them to mine instead, they expose themselves to certain risks. eg. there could be a crash in the value of bitcoin; or an unrelated company might sell a heap of powerful mining machines which end up driving up the mining 'difficulty' and thus reducing the expected output of each mining machine.
Presumably the makers of these mining machines wouldn't sell them if they thought it would be more profitable to just use them instead - but there is a lot of uncertainty in the expected value of using the machines, and not a lot of uncertainty in the value of just selling them.
No at the same time. If you produce let's say 10,000 but you're only capable of running like 1,000 (space and electricity limits), sell the rest. Why holding them doing nothing? there's no benefit doing that.
Why holding them doing nothing?
Because if you sell, then you decrease your ability to mine since everybody is chasing the same limited pot.
Presumably the makers of these mining machines wouldn't sell them if they thought it would be more profitable to just use them instead - but there is a lot of uncertainty in the expected value of using the machines, and not a lot of uncertainty in the value of just selling them.
I agree, but it's more fun to just think of it as a company building mining equipment is betting that their product won't pay off.
$233
It seems many people became millionaires thanks to Bitcoin. Now I'm sad I didn't mine in the early days.
$250
Suppose they go down to $10 tomorrow? Or if somebody finds a way to "counterfeit" them? Or even if the latest trojan takes over enough computers to cause inflation? You must be talking about the very short term.
You do not have to keep it in order to use it. The chances of it falling while you are performing you transaction are miserable, besides you ain't losing more than your transaction is worth.
If these things [products.butterflylabs.com] are so great and bitcoins are here to stay, why doesn't the company keep them for themselves and mine all the bitcoins at a massive profit?
Because it would hurt Bitcoins credibility, and then both Bitcoins AND the machines are going to become worthless. And in the long run the status quo will be supported by multiple companies producing these SLICS.
Another thing is that bitcoin is a deflationary currency. As the bitcoin economy grows, the purchasing power of each bitcoin increases. The people holding the most bitcoins are the ones who gain the most wealth when the bitcoin economy grows. ie. the rich get richer without even having to do anything.
It's more or less self controlling. It's not a replacement for govt controlled $(not for now at least), but should it's deflation hurt it's price, it's price growth would slowdown pushing down the deflation as well.
The chances of it falling while you are performing you transaction are miserable
How about the chances of it falling while you sleep? Unless you have some sort of web scraper that blasts an alarm out of your speakers if it falls below some threshold.
it would hurt Bitcoins credibility, and then both Bitcoins AND the machines are going to become worthless.
So people do have to trust bitcoins.
How about the chances of it falling while you sleep? Unless you have some sort of web scraper that blasts an alarm out of your speakers if it falls below some threshold.
No. You hold $ or RUB or EUR or whatever on your account on some exchange. Then the moment you decide to pay using bitcoins, u buy the exact sum you need for the transaction, make it and forget about it.
And there are maaaany people on earth, for whom it already is easier than make a Paypal, trust me. (I'd be among them until some three years ago, eventually).
Append:
So people do have to trust bitcoins.
People have to trust their medium if exchange if they are keeping it. If you store bitcoins, you should truth them and have some others who do. If you use them as in above example, you don't give a damn.
The exchanges also support some semi advanced trading features like limit trades. You can setup automatic trades to trade at certain levels.
I had also written an automated trading bot. It's not good enough for me to give it several hundred dollars though. But long term I think it comes out ahead, depending on market reactions to things. Back when I wrote it, it did worse than I expected due to how insane the market was. I think it may be a bit saner now. might be time to experiment with it again. maybe.
Yeah it could be a nice speculation' investment exchange as well. But so far I prefer the idea of selling the Yen rather than buying bitcoins which MAY just collapse for some reason.
Because if you sell, then you decrease your ability to mine since everybody is chasing the same limited pot.
That would be true if they were the only company doing that kind of hardware, but they're not alone, so if they don't sell those, people will just buy from any other company doing them. Also, bitcoins is a risky investment, I don't think any sane company puts all his money into a risky investment, so it's quite normal they do themselves some bitcoin mining, and at the same time sell the hardware for steady and low risk income.
At 50 GH/s, you currently mine (at current difficulty and exchange rate) ~ $800/day [1], so you get your investment back in just a few days.
What I can see is bitcoin price droping, at least a bit maybe not much, when people start mining with these, since these "professional" miners usually sell most/all their mined bitcoins ASAP.
What I can see is bitcoin price droping, at least a bit maybe not much, when people start mining with these, since these "professional" miners usually sell most/all their mined bitcoins ASAP.
You can speculate on that of course, but what is certain is that if a lot of people will start using high-performance miners, the current difficulty will quickly increase, giving you a lot less money/time. I would guess that after a month or two after they start shipping, it'll be very hard to make up the hardware cost.
EDIT: The difficulty has already increased by 250% since january, and is estimated to incrase by another 18% by the next recalculation. IF that is a reliable trend, the bit-coin generating power of your hardware will decrease by 18% every 12 days.
All I know is until you can turn it into goods or services it's nothing more than a dream. Acquiring Bitcoins is only half of the battle. Liquidating them is the part that matters. Has anybody here successfully made a real profit from it (meaning, turning BTC into either "real" world currency or products/services)?
Sure. I sold my BTCs for $1100 a while back. Had I waited, I could have $13440.
Some places actually take BTC. So its slowly becoming valid. The question is how long will that be the case.
There are several exchange sites. It's pretty easy to sell your bitcoins for & or € or other currencies. How do you think the value of Bitcoins is established otherwise?
Well here we go.. Bitcoin back down to 200. -20% on day
Bitcoin, as used today, is more like stock than currency.
http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/
*popcorn*
Yeah, figured this would happen.
Also mtgox seems to be broken. Can't make orders 
You guys see this as bad? Soon it will be time to buy big, then sell when it hits its new high (~$300 probably) and become a millionaire.
LAWL. And it may take a few years to get back up to the levels it hit today. If people don't get bored with it before then.
Who's buying when it's that high? Is it people taking advantage of online retailers who exchange products for bitcoin based on realtime market value?
No idea. I imagine traders and stupid people that think stocks and investments can never go down when they are going up in leaps and bounds.
If anyone wants to buy probably now it's the moment, it has stabilised and starts to go up, it seems.
I'm not surprised by this, it's not the first time by far that these kind of downs and ups happen. I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow it's back to $250. Too bad I got late to the party .
Bitcoin, as used today, is more like stock than currency.
Absolutely.
I'd be interested to know what proportion of bitcoins are bought to be actually used as opposed to bought based on price speculation. My guess is 'very few'; and I'd guess that the total $ cost of all good & service that can currently be bought with bitcoins is a lot less than the total $ cost of all bitcoins.
It seems to me that the main big driving reason for buying bitcoins at the moment is to be one of the 'wealthy people' I was talking about earlier who can realise big profits just by holding lots of bitcoins and letting someone else actually grow the economy. And of course, it is easier for people with lots of $ to buy/mine lots of BTC. If the bitcoin economy doesn't grow, then the price may actually drop - but again, the people with lots of money are the ones who have the power to actually make the bitcoin economy grow. Money is power in this game. (and it's not really a game I want to play)
No idea. I imagine traders and stupid people that think stocks and investments can never go down when they are going up in leaps and bounds.
Wrong, traders aren't the stupid ones here. The "folk" that "gets in" late is stupid, as always.
If anyone wants to buy probably now it's the moment, it has stabilised and starts to go up, it seems.
Yep.. But it's still too high for me. And I do realize it may never get to the value that isn't going to be "too high" for me.
Yet on the other hand, if there was a simple way to buy it, I'd buy bitcoin and converted it to litecoin. The ratio of bit/lite is rising, and lite is a lot younger. They're also freely convertible, so I see no reason for two currencies to exist, and eventually the technically superior replacing the first comer.
Is what way is litecoin technically superior?
I know very little about it, but from what I've heard it's basically the same thing but with a different hash algorithm.
Indeed, the actual hash algorithm makes it kind of superior. First, it is programmed to work faster, and I doubt it's possible to easily adjust for bitcoin. (block every 2.5 min vs 10)
New block is necessary to confirm all transactions.
But most importantly, is the complexity of the algorithm. Due to litecoin's algorithm complexity, GPUs give a lot smaller advantage over CPUs in mining, relatively to bitcoin. (mining litecoin with cpu is still effective, even relatively to GPU). So, essentially any user can be mining it and thus at least covering his transaction fees(in the very long run).
Furthermore, wider network redistribution is just likely to support more users. Few are willing to pay 2.5k USD for a SLIC miner, and very soon it's going to be the only way to mine bitcoin.
I don't really understand bitcoins. Seems to me like "waste electricity and we'll give you some made up currency!" What am I missing?
How can the algorithm be faster to calculate, but be more complex?
How can the algorithm be faster to calculate, but be more complex?
Memory bound vs compute bound. As far as I understand the Litecoin algorithm requires a lot of random memory access, something GPUs are bad at.
How can the algorithm be faster to calculate, but be more complex?
Yes indeed, it's it. Though its mem req is still small enough to fit in to CPU cache, which is perhaps a bit sad. May may trouble in the long run, more mem req would be wiser IMO.
In litecoin, the calculation difficulty is readjusted each block(as I understand), so that the next block would be found(on average) in 150 sec. And in bitcoin the value is set to 600sec. For no reason, either. So Litecoin is a bit more bandwidth intense, but it performs transactions faster. (x4)
What am I missing?
You probably don't understand Progress Quest either. 
What is this :-S
I don't understand it either. The browser game never finishes loading, and the downloadable zipfile isn't valid, yadda yadda yadda. Did Matt put Yves up to this?
My character is a Double Hobbit Battle-Felon. One day I'll sell this character for over $100!
For me it did load, and started to do something. And it still does it. 0.0
Name Broockwheb
Race Land Squid
Class Hunter Strangler
I've only recently started, but I reckon I'm doing pretty well so far. I've got 27 gold. That's more gold than I have bitcoins.
Woah, nice! I've only 15 :{
You buy things with your gold. You cannot get very far with only a sharp rock as your weapon.
It looks like this guy, erm.. "Talking P0ny" finds some place to dump his gold to, since it's still a pony with a sharp rock..
And still five hours til' something. Oh well. He only takes one tab.
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Yay, the 3D enhanced interface works with PQ browser edition as well!
I'm going to take out a big ass loan to buy many many Bitcoin's. Just need the value to drop a bit more.
Quick, someone spread some false rumour to make it drop!
Quick, someone spread some false rumour to make it drop!
Why spread lies, have a look, the price has halved in 6 hours. Buy gold instead, it's always a safe bet.
You probably don't understand Progress Quest [progressquest.com] either.
I've left it open for awhile. Now I don't want to close it, I've made so much progress!
A javascript bitcoin miner under the bonnet perhaps?
Buy gold instead, it's always a safe bet.
Not when Piccolo finishes his Matter Transmorgifier!
1 bitcoin = 59 usd
And the main trading site has shut down for a day to try to stop the free fall.
*popcorn* x 2
[EDIT]
I just came across the best alternative name for Bitcoins yet: "Dunning-Krugerrands"
Damn awesome game! I don't eat, don't sleep just play it all day long. I've lvl 3 already, and it finally says only 4 hours remain to finish prologue, no 5 hours!
I've 86 gold!
There used to be an Allegro guild.
There used to be an Allegro guild.
It still exists in the records
A proper setup wouldn't require you to take the site down. Now when things go crazy like that in the stock market they stop trading. For a very good reason.
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.
Cheap coins for sale. 
For some reason I find it very irritating when people say stuff like this. Whenever there is a crash, there are a bunch of people talking about 'cheap coins', and 'buying opportunity', and junk like that. It sounds very manipulative to me - as though the real message is "please! We all need to keep believing in the value of bitcoins, otherwise I'll lose my money!" (I'm not asserting that that's what you mean by it. I'm just saying that's the kind of feeling I get.)
I'm not bothered by people talking about 'sound fundamentals' and other potential reasoning for why they think the stuff still has value. But I just find the 'cheap coins' thing very irritating. (I wonder if it's just me.)
Meanwhile, in Progress Quest, I've now got Rabbit Punch level 2. That's a kick-arse spell.
Now Amazon's jumping on the bandwagon.
Protip: When major corporations try to cash in on a fad, it's time to bury the corpse.
It's not the same thing. Amazon Coins are essentially the same thing as Microsoft Points. or Nintendo Points. Only good for amazon stuff from amazon's kindle fire store.
For some reason I find it very irritating when people say stuff like this. Whenever there is a crash, there are a bunch of people talking about 'cheap coins', and 'buying opportunity', and junk like that. It sounds very manipulative to me - as though the real message is "please! We all need to keep believing in the value of bitcoins, otherwise I'll lose my money!" (I'm not asserting that that's what you mean by it. I'm just saying that's the kind of feeling I get.)
I assume Mark said that because he is actually following the market. He knows spikes like this (and subsequent crashes) have happened before. Time and time again he has proven you all wrong.
He will do it again.
For some reason I find it very irritating when people say stuff like this. Whenever there is a crash, there are a bunch of people talking about 'cheap coins', and 'buying opportunity', and junk like that. It sounds very manipulative to me - as though the real message is "please! We all need to keep believing in the value of bitcoins, otherwise I'll lose my money!" (I'm not asserting that that's what you mean by it. I'm just saying that's the kind of feeling I get.)
Yea, I think there's some truth to what you're saying. I get a little bit of that feeling when people say it too (myself included.)
Now Amazon's [developer.amazon.com] jumping on the bandwagon.
Like Thomas said, Amazon's "coins" are more like Apple's "maps" - it's just not the same. Too much real human labor has been put into Google's maps, and Apple's maps just don't compare. Amazon coins is a little addon, Bitcoin is an entire infrastructure. Most people probably won't care one way or the other, though.
I assume Mark said that because he is actually following the market. He knows spikes like this (and subsequent crashes) have happened before. Time and time again he has proven you all wrong.
Eh, we'll see. Now that the bubble has popped, I feel a little more comfortable. I was starting to get anxious at 240. I think the sooner the pop, the more stable the long-term. Right now, could go up, could go down. There's justification for it either way. Either medium-long term downward slide (people are spooked from the recent crash), medium-long steady upward (the number of buyers still waiting to get in appears to still be substantial), or even another spike up. what I don't think will happen is a spike down. The panic sellers are mostly out at this point.
Like Thomas said, Amazon's "coins" are more like Apple's "maps" - it's just not the same. Too much real human labor has been put into Google's maps, and Apple's maps just don't compare. Amazon coins is a little addon, Bitcoin is an entire infrastructure. Most people probably won't care one way or the other, though.
More importantly they have nothing in common. Amazon coins are just a way for them to reduce credit card charges (which is quite common - most 'free to play' games have a virtual currency like this). It's not decentralized in any way and their "value" is set to a certain dollar value (or whatever they base it on). And now I'm just guessing, but I'd wager that you can't send them to someone else, change them back into real money or purchase anything not amazon related with them.
Cheap coins for sale.
55, beat that!