RE: Cautiously Celebrating Bitcoin $10000
I am cautious because I believe the Bitcoin movement is being co-opted by people and organizations that are only here to speculate on the price. Bitcoin and Crypto Currency are so much more than that.
This is a vulnerability in the 'store of value'-led view of Bitcoin. What causes currency to be stable is that people need to have it available liquid in large amounts in order to cover ongoing expenses and commerce. Ongoing commerce ensures that there are always people buying regardless of price, that reduces volatility and increases liquidity.
If the transactional utility of Bitcoin is diminished then there can only be so much commerce, and the commercial demand gets overwhelmed by speculators. Look at what happened to gold: yes gold has retained value in the long run compared to fiat currency, but after being confined to bank vaults, it actually no longer serves as a reliable store of value in the monetary sense. Gold today is a speculative investment: you hold it as a hedge against stock market crashes on the judgment that it will increase in value when stocks fall (which is often but not always true). You can't reliably expect a certain amount of purchasing power day to day from a gold coin, nor can you easily exchange it for goods and services.
Due to the dominance of speculators, you get large swings in price, perpetually, rather than it becoming more stable over time as the trend had been before.