no it hasn't collapsed.  definitely should call it a correction.  but i'm still concerned.  until gold can show me it can disconnect from stocks and the USD i'm skeptical.  

its not gold or silver that i'm against; its that i see us in a deflation not an inflation.  gold doesn't make sense with everything i'm seeing and i think further QE will have an unintended effect at this point; on the economy and gold.

having said all that, the very best trade so far has been to sell gold, sell silver, and buy Bitcoin.  period.

I agree the momentum is deflationary, and I agree that further QE will have severe unintended consequences. But further deflation will also have severe consequences.
The thing is History tells us that politicians nearly always choose inflation facing this choice, thus my opinion wrt precious metals.

Regarding PM/BTC, I won't deny that it is so far the best bet, and it will probably be long term. But I'm sure you won't deny that it is a very risky bet. Which is why I feel better having both, with a lesser fiat amount of BTC. Honestly, if I had more than 20% of my savings in BTC, i wouldn't sleep so well

i'm highly sensitive to trend changes; sometimes too sensitive meaning too early.

but think about it, when we first started this debate one year ago in the original gold thread, it was inconceivable that we'd be talking about Bitcoin so positively and with the confidence we do.  we're 3.5 yrs into this experiment and have weathered so many negative events and the hashrate, # tx's are just increasing.

when you say risky, i assume you mean from a gov't attack or attempt at making Bitcoin illegal.  read this guy blogdial, one of my favorites:  http://irdial.com/blogdial/  here's my favorite quote: "Bitcoin will see regulation as damage and it will route around it."

Bitcoin is a currency born from the internet.  its DNA is intimately associated with everything the internet was designed to do and that was to withstand destruction of large parts of it from a nuclear bomb.  just how many guys in suits, with sunglasses, in black vans coming to shut down your node would it take to approximate the bomb blast perimeter of a nuclear explosion that wiped out the USA?  

Bitcoin would just route around them.

*Nods sagely*

I agree that bitcoin should resist gov attacks, or attempts to make it illegal. Depends which/how much gov, but I'm confident with that. But be realistic, it would hurt the price a LOT.

Other risks I see is hacks. How confident are you that you'll NEVER get hacked ? Trust me, it's not as easy as it sounds. I have a master degree in computer science, though not an expert in security, and I know it's definitely possible. Stuxnet was a good example that any computer, connected or not to the Internet, is a reachable target.
And the higher the btc price go, the more exposed early adopters will be.

You can use paper wallets, etc to put your bitcoins "offline" (with the only "online" risk being a crypto-crack).

I've heard about deflationary fears, but I just don't get why there is this concern what with the QEs etc.  Is it because people are paying down mortgage debt and foreigners are hoarding USD?  What about all the govt debt?  Is there really any forecasting services that can accurately estimate how much debt people will retire?

Thx!

Thx for the recognition.  It is true that I felt Bitcoin had much room to grow at that time as evidenced by my plowing much fiat into it back then.  And by my regular gum-flapping about my actions and rationals at the time.

A solution such as Bitcoin is hugely valuable, and even partial exchange-centric utilization would, by my estimates, make each BTC worth thousands current USD per.

Today we are approaching a year from those dark $2/BTC days and there has been:

 - no core system exploits.
 - no change in the high quality of the core development team.
 - exciting run-ups (and downs) and a touch near halve the $32/BTC peak.

These things together make me much more confident in Bitcoin's potential than I was back in.  It is important to note (or I feel it so, at least) that I still consider Bitcoin more likely to fail than to succeed in the end.  ~labestiol mentions the sleep factor, and I think that's quite important.  I'm not ready to get even close to 20% of my savings in BTC at this point.  As I've mentioned before, success of Bitcoin means (to me) such astronomical numbers that one really does not need a huge footprint in Bitcoin to realize the potential upside in a big way.

(Of course it won't hurt my speculative investment in BTC if everyone goes all in, so, patient reader, go for it if you want...but I don't think it is a wise or necessary move.)

how many Bitcoin wallets have you heard of being hacked?  private ones, not those on servers like Bitcoinica.  allinvains wallet doesn't count either as it was an open mining wallet hooked up to a pool server.

Stuxnet, as i understand, was incredibly sophisticated developed by the US gov't and required an infiltrator that installed the virus on the Iranian computer probably with a usb stick.  that won't happen to me anytime soon.

I knew I should've changed my name