Bitcoin hits $750, up 107% in a week

[muriel_volestrangler]

The virtual currency rose to $750 on Mt. Gox exchange Monday afternoon, up 42 percent from Sunday's close and up 107 percent from a week earlier.

Its latest gains come as the potential for regulation hangs over the market. The U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (HSGAC) began a hearing at 3.00 p.m. Washington time on Monday. The event brought representatives from different federal agencies and representatives from the bitcoin community to discuss virtual currencies.

Ahead of the hearing, entitled "Beyond Silk Road: Potential Risks, Threats, and Promises of Virtual Currencies", several government agencies wrote to the committee outlining their views on the currency. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke stated that the bank had no plans to regulate bitcoin.

"Although the Federal Reserve generally monitors developments in virtual currencies and other payments system innovations, it does not necessarily have authority to directly supervise or regulate these innovations or the entities that provide them to the market," Bernanke said in a letter.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101205416

While this looks like great news for someone who already has them, it shows that people really have no idea what value they should put on bitcoins.

[Newsjock]

1. s/bitcoins/tulips

Beware.

[longship]

3. Or consider the tragedy of the Triganic Pu!

In fact there are three freely convertible currencies in the Galaxy, but none of them count. The Altarian Dollar has recently collapsed, the Flainian Pobble Bead is only exchangeable for other Flainian Pobble Beads, and the Triganic Pu has its own very special problems. Its exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu is simple enough, but since Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Ningis are not negotiable currency, because Galactibanks refuse to deal in fiddling small change. From this basic premise it is very simple to prove that the Galactibanks are also the product of a deranged imagination.

Damn! Douglas Adams was smart.

[pnwmom]

4. EXACTLY!!!!!!!

[gcomeau]

2. Just what you want in a currency...

Massive levels of volatility!

Wait.... no... that's just what traders and market manipulators want in a currency...

[cemaphonic]

5. This current bubble is insane, even by bitcoin standards.

Isn't it still basically impossible (barring jumping through a bunch of hoops with intermediary companies) to withdraw USD from Mtgox?

If so, it's an even weirder bubble than normal, as it's still just a paper profit even for the sellers. But then, almost nothing about bitcoin makes sense, until you remember that it's a hobby project for libertarian true-believers that recently became untethered from it's main link to any tangible economy - buying and selling illegal drugs.

Fun fact. Mtgox is an acronym for Magic The Gathering Online Exchange. Most of the bitcoin "economy" is facilitated through a website repurposed from selling virtual trading cards. (not the actual paper cards, mind)

[Kurska]

7. "recently became untethered from.... buying and selling illegal drugs." what

One silk road shut down, but another one is already up. That is only one market anyways, you really don't think there is more than one illegal drug market on the dark web?

Bitcoin is the currency for many illegal things besides just drugs anyways.

[cemaphonic]

6. And now it's down nearly 50% off its peak yesterday

Kind of fascinating to watch a speculative bubble form and pop in realtime.