Time to Go Long Again on BitCoin? Feb14 $241/BTC

BTC Price in June 2011 - went from about 50 cents to about 32 Dollars. Down to 2 Dollars. Then stabilized for a while.

BTC Price in April 2013 - Went from 35 Dollars to about $266 (a few days). Down to $50 Dollars. Then stabilized for a while.

BTC Price Nov 2013 - (in 2 months) $100 to $1000-plus. Down to $450 in a few days. Then a longer slower "cooling off" and slowly losing more points for a few months.

A classic "parabolic break and fade investment" bubble". "Everyone" buys in, then there's a sell-off and crash (with panic) and it levels off for months. (typical)

BitCoin has had "many bubbles", and it is likely there will be many in the future. But the most important question is, "Will BitCoin (digital currencies in general) become adopted and in-use by a greater majority of people. And if so, HOW FAST? From what I can see, I believe that answer will be absolutely - YES. It will be an adopted method of transacting across the entire planet. (Replacing the American Dollar)

There just appears to be an awful awful lot of opportunity from the Business Development / Startup side of things (with Venture Capital "there"), and on the "Trading Side" as well.

And as BitCoin becomes a greater and greater part of the global economy, it will stabilize more. The volume of BitCoin trading is increasing daily.

ADDRESS- A bitcoin address looks like a very long string of random letter and numbers. Like this: 1EQ57QddcKvoKAuFApT6c9KyeQYP2uTp77. A BitCoin address starts with the number "1". And just like you may ask people to send "eMail" to your eMail address- you may ask people to send you BitCoin to your BitCoin address. It is THAT easy, and as fast as any eMail.

BITCOIN- Names 3 things: The currency, the Network, and the Software.

BLOCK- A grouping of transactions, marked with a timestamp, and a fingerprint of the previous block. A "block-header" is "hashed" to produce a proof of work, therby validating the transactions. Valid blocks are added to the main blockchain by network consensus.

BLOCKCHAIN- A list of validated blocks, each linking to it's predecessor all the way back to the genesis block. The block chain is replicated in all nodes of the network and contain a record of all 'work" done in the block-chain since the origination of BitCoin and genesis of the first block.

FEE- Most transactions require a minimum fee of 0.5mBTC

HASH- A "hash" is a digital "fingerprint" of some binary input

MINER- A network node that finds "valid proof of work" for new blocks, through hashing

NETWORK- The BitCoin network is a peer-to-peer network that propagates transactions and blocks to every BitCoin node on the network. It is a "Software Defined Infrastructure".

PROOF OF WORK- The "work" a miner does is "hashing" the SHA256 algorithm, as it "works" on it's copy of the blockchain. All nodes work at the same time, in consensus on the BitCoin Network.

SECRET KEY- The (secret) code that unlocks BitCoins sent to a specific address.

TRANSACTION- A transfer of BitCoin from one address to another. More exactly, a transaction is a "signed data structure" which expresses a specific value.

WALLET- Software used to "hold" or "manage" your BitCoin addresses and secret keys. Use a wallet to send, receive, and store your BitCoin, between yourself and others.

How many total BitCoins are in the network right NOW? - 13,334,550

What is the Market Cap of the entire BitCoin Network at this moment? - $3,315,272,325.26

How Many Transactions are processed per hour (right now)? - 4,926

How Many Transactions were processed the last 24 hours? - 118,231

How Many Transaction Blocks per hour are processed now? - 6

How Many Transaction Blocks per Day? - 160

How long did it take a node to "Mine" the last Block? - 20m 50s

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This information (and more) is all available and open to the public to study. The programming or "code" is available also for public consideration. There is nothing to hide, and nothing is hidden. That is the entire idea behind the BitCoin network. It's structure and function is quite fully understood. And it appears to be functioning as well as it's designers have intended it to.

It is a distributed network of trust.

And it has been designed to allow the approximately 5 or 6 Billion other humans on the Earth, to more easily gain access to a shared financial system. If we were to "grow" a financial system by 5 Billion new human bodies...

That would be some rather spectacular "growth".