You don't pay fees because it's it's own market, but doesn't that mean they might increase the available bitcoins to up the "price" of the bitcoins? Who's regulating this? Seems like the 1920's before the crash... Lol
There can't be more than 21 million bitcoins, the algorithm simply won't allow it. So what we will see are people trading in fractions of bitcoins. You would never pay a bitcoin to subscribe to APUG, you would pay 0.028 bitcoin or "BTC".
EdSawyer
bitcoin is hardly a currency. more like a speculative gamble. When it crashes (and it will) it will crash hard to zero. redeem any bitcoins you have as soon as you get them, IMNHSO.
They've been saying this for years but it continues to increase it's market, at this point growth is becoming exponential.. Bitcoin has already surpassed Westernunion. VC funds are dumping millions into it, over 100,000 retailers now accept it and this is growing rapidly. Here are some current stats:
Total Bitcoins currently available: 12,117,800 BTC
Current Market Cap: 10,772,724,200 USD
Determining pricing of bitcoin:
http://www.gadflycapital.com/markets/gadfly_capital_2013_12_12_valuing_a_bitcoin.pdf
If that pdf can be believed they show bitcoin with a market of 10 billion is valued around $850 US per coin (and that is what we are seeing now, market is 10.7 billion and the coins are at $900US each). The market will reach 100 billion at which point a coin will be in the $8,000 US range. 100 billion is a very tiny slice of the pie so as electronic transactions begin to increase further it's likely to only go up. Companies like paypal should be worried. They do not have to worry just yet because it's difficult for the average person to use bitcoin, but this is changing rapidly due to 100's of million in VC funding to create paypal like venues for bitcoin ( coinbase.com based in the US now has 600,000 users and growing 30% a month).
The big question is, will bitcoin continue to survive. It's estimated global acceptance around 2017-2019, then a considerable amount of the online transaction market 10 years later. If this happens a bitcoin will be quite valuable. If venture capitalists like Andreessen and Horowitz betting 25+ million that it's here to stay are wrong, then you are right it will fade into nothing only an interesting tidbit in internet history. I tend to side with those who think bitcoin is going to be as big as the internet. There could be a lot of people 15yrs from now wishing they had a few bitcoins. I don't think anyone knows how it will pan out, it's fun to watch though.