> As long as its stable enough for that, [...] It isn't stable enough for that. The price has moved +30% within a few hours [1]. That's easily short enough to

> As long as its stable enough for that, [...] It isn't stable enough for that. The price has moved +30% within a few hours [1]. That's easily short enough to cause problems for both merchants and consumers. For consumers, they risk the bitcoin price falling after they've purchased bitcoins, but before they've purchased something with them. And even if you succeed in buying something with your bitcoins before the price has gone up in bitcoin terms, the store owner might lose if he doesn't cash out the bitcoins he has earned before the price falls. There are plenty of risks to non-speculators. But in fact, the speculators, by providing liquidity, help the non-speculators enter and exit a bitcoin position quickly and with minimal losses (tight spread). Were it not for the speculators, services like Bitpay couldn't exist. Speculators continuously incur risk holding bitcoins, and market makers literally take on the risk of holding bitcoins, transferring this risk away from the consumer and merchant (who can quickly enter and exit the bitcoin market because there are constantly people willing to sell and buy bitcoins (among them market makers and price speculators)). TL;DR: Have you thanked your local speculator lately? [1] http://i.imgur.com/zV6Iyte.png http://i.imgur.com/zV6Iyte.png