2dimes wrote:I did not ask who is backing it. I know it's currently trusted and there are several smart guys doing that. In fact today I would love to have a bunch. Now that's out of the way.
If everyone tried to get their money, do you think it's there?
One should never try to catch a falling knife.
It's not a bank, so there is no such think as trying to get your money out (in dollars). The investor/consumer has their coins, if everyone decided they wanted to turn their coins into something else all at once the price relative the other currencies would go down fast certainly. I would also add that this has happened multiple times. Some pretty fantastic crashes, but every time bitcoin has recovered because enough people bought back in. I'm not saying it couldn't crash again, it's almost certain to crash many many times, but it keeps recovering (at least so far). To answer your question more directly, it's first come first serve pricing on bitcoin, just like the stock market. if there is a crash and everyone is selling the price drops and you snooze you lose and your coins won't be worth what they were 15 min ago when you heard it was tanking... but if you don't try to turn those coins in for something else at at the shitty fallin price and just sit on the history has shown the price will bounce back. I don't think anyone out there is advocating storing all your money in coins, so I don't think we are in a position here where you can't get your money out of the bank and can't pay your rent kind of tragedy for anyone if the price does crash.
The opposite is also true though. If you lived in a country with a weak currency and rampant inflation like say oh hell I don't know say Zimbabwe, and you didn't want your savings to be kept in their currency maybe bitcoin is a viable alternative for you. Not for alot of 'transacting', but as a store of value (like buying gold). It's a brave new world out there with this stuff! I find it really interesting to read about how these gov'ts try to respond, sometimes banning, sometime embracing sometime bouncing back and forth between the two. Might not be bitcoin specifically, but crypto in some form is sticking around. Will be interesting to see what China does with a digital currency.
Now I'm NOT saying bitcoin is a replacement for gold, but i think there is room for both. It is probably much easier in Zimbabwe to buy a virtual coin then to buy gold, and certainly would be 'safer' than living in a poor country and word getting out that you are hoarding gold.