If you lose something valuable you are accountable. No one is making any promises to you here.

No one is making any promises, and in priciple I agree everyone is responsible for their own stupidity. But if I'd been one of the core developers and if I would have any doubts, I'd still feel moraly obliged to speak out very loud before cashing in bigtime.

Or... you could hold yourself responsible for not speaking up to yourself when you sold your house to buy bitcoins and they crashed.  I suggest suing yourself for all losses, as your silence on the subject when you are so easily accessible to yourself would be nothing short of criminally negligent.

I'm actually suing myself right now because I didn't tell myself to buy Bitcoins last October; given that I act as my own financial adviser, I think I owe myself all the lost income from the price rises that I couldn't take advantage of.  I'm such a bastard.

Thanks for not mining. I agree the situation is purely hypothetical. And I made a mistake saying the developers are accountable, they are not accountable. Unless they've actively mislead us into believing Bitcoins should be paid 30$ for, of which I have no information.

But I do hope some of the developers see that this might be getting a little out of hand. A (hypothetical) crash might reflect badly on any cryptocurrency and might reflect badly on them.

I think one of the really great things about Bitcoin from a philosophical ideological point of view is that due to its decentralized nature, it returns responsibility and power to the individual. There's no company, no bank, no government that is responsible for Bitcoin, and no single individual or small group of individuals. It's a very large group of individuals - and anyone doing anything with Bitcoins (even talking about it) is part of that very large group.

So it's the real thing: Everyone is fully responsible for their own actions. One really nice thing about Bitcoin is that it's fully transparent - from the core concepts to the individual transactions to the client source code (and since it's a P2P network, there's no secret server, only equal clients ;-) ). So, what you do with Bitcoins and the consequences you have to face of what you do with Bitcoins are fully up to you. If someone feels they don't understand what's going on: Educate yourself, do the research, ask specific questions.

If someone feels they want to hold someone else accountable for their own actions (i.e. whether or not you buy and use Bitcoins or not), they're clearly not ready for this new age of which Bitcoin is a part of. In that case, it's probably best for you to stay in the illusion of powerlessness and blaming governments and banks for the financial desasters (and wars), and oil companies and Tepco (and the likes) for the destruction of our planet ... or big pharma for the destruction of our health - while in reality it's "most people" who gave those "evil greedy institutions" their money and power to do what they do (much of which I personally consider "seriously criminal" by the highest standards). IMHO, it's time for people to wake up and reclaim their own power and responsibility - step by step. It's kind of hard and usually not wise to try to drop out in one big step immediately - it's much more realistic to sustain by taking small steps, considering each step carefully before taking the next.

And Bitcoin clearly helps with that. IMHO, this is actually even kind of built in. Another thing that clearly helps, of course, is buying stuff from companies you did a little research on and did your best to find those that don't operate on greed but motives that are truthfully supporting life. And, equally important, working for (i.e. supporting) companies that you feel deserve your creative energy and make good use of it. Or completely do your own thing ;-)

Please explain?

A btc is worth the economy behind bitcoins. The more shop accepting bitcoin, the more demand for btc. Supply/demand law etc. No one, absolutely no one can predict what this economy will be.

But the potential market is huge. I personally think a btc will be worth a 4 figures number of current euros.

Accountable of what? What contract or oral promise did they break? Im honestly interested on knowing what do you think they are accountable of.

Whenever I think about putting more than a few thousand bucks into this I always go to the help menu and read the version number where it says this is BETA software.

Has bitcoin had a legitimate peer review done on it? There may be some big vulnerability discovered still that wipes out everything I put into it.

I love bitcoin and support it. However. It is new. It may not work. The idea behind it though is awesome!