The question of where bitcoins get their value has been chewing at the back of my brain for a while now. Yes, I know speculation and dollars invested gives it value, as do the goods you can buy with them. However, as long as dollars remain a more convenient alternative, I think the general public will be slow to adopt bitcoins. This low adoption rate will likely keep the value of the bitcoin down.

If we can find a "killer app" for bitcoins, a commodity that can only be bought through bitcoins, then we will have effectively ensured demand for bitcoins will remain at least as high as demand for that commodity. I hear the US uses oil for this purpose, though I haven't researched that claim at all. This commodity would, of course, have to be unique to our own "nation;" that is, our bitcoin community.

The collective computing power of our network is phenomenal. There are a massive number of GPUs and GPU clusters grinding away to create new bitcoins every day. But what if it were more profitable to pool together our resources and rent them in exchange for bitcoins? We would be selling bitcoins to people only to have them give those coins back to us later, and at potentially a higher price than we might have earned by mining those bitcoins. After all, we are more efficient than any of the commercial clustering services out there and our margins could potentially be high. How many of you have tried looking for a clustering service only to find they were all priced too high to be profitable for you?

And, of course, if mining ends up being more profitable because of bitcoin deflation as a result, it would be a small matter to devote more of our nodes to mining again until the situation reverses again. At the very least it would establish a way for us to earn some good money with our mining boxes once all the bitcoins have been mined.

As a network we are faster, more efficient, and much more powerful than any other clustering service I've come across. Computing power is a commodity and we have a ton.

What do you all think? Am I on to anything?