You could just as easily have asked what % of the dollar economy does ExxonMobil represent?- Obviously ExxonMobil is a powerful corporation with great influence on oil prices. But the link between ExxonMobil and the dollar at this precise second is indirect. A dollar, or a share price, or any price for that matter, is determined by supply and demand. So that is what needs to be explained. Yes, logically some of the demand for USD must be to do with people placing gas into their automobiles, this is known as "the fundamentals" by market analysts, it is the logical underpinning of the price. However you wouldn't suggest that ExxonMobil is the main driver of dollar price vs other currencies. There's too many other variables, even when just looking at demand alone, especially market sentiment i.e. herd instincts, emotion.ExxonMobil is part of the "real economy". The corporation does useful work. Prices not do reflect the real economy at all in the short term. In long term, over a period of months or years, prices tend to converge on the true value of things like shares, dollars, corporate valuations etc.A famous investor called Benjamin Graham explained this most succinctly by saying:"In the short run the [stock exchange] resembles a voting machine. In the long run, it acts like a weighing machine."This has always, and continues to, cause an immense amount of confusion to Socialists.General Pine Thoughts. Watch out, WOT incoming!--Current BTC prices do not reflect the actual BTC economy. This is always true at any particular time, since value and price could only be perfectly synchronized in a world where nothing changed. However the average BTC price over several years shall certainly represent the BTC economy. --The majority of movement on BTC exchanges today can be attributed to naive speculators. Bitcoin is a great idea for a medium of exchange but it's still subject to the basic laws of economics that govern every other currency.--It's important to know that all currency markets are zero sum games. The only legitimate way to (consistently) make money with the BTC economy is to offer services and products, such as the Silk Road, such as offering OTC exchange services in your locale and so on.In every other situation where you are not adding your labor value to the market in some way, it is a zero sum game. This means for every BTC you snag by speculating, somebody else must have lost a BTC. There is no free lunch here. All speculators eventually get burned unless they walk out of the casino in the event of a successful trade.--It is hilarious that DDOS is using used to manipulate BTC prices, because now that it is known that DDOS is being used to change prices by stamping down demand, that information itself changes the price of BTC. In other words, this ultimately won't generate profits for the attackers. It only works when it is asymmetric information, when they are DDOSing and nobody realizes they are doing it, believing that the lower demand is caused by a legitimate source and they are the only ones who believe the price should be higher... Since that is not true, DDOS only leads to a reduction in the price as that information is factored into the market such that the manipulators find themselves holding their "cheap bitcoin" which are seeming more expensive by the second since the price is dropping and they can't dispose of it for a profit. They shall only catch the falling knife. Markets are a form of collective intelligence gathering, you battle them at your peril.Awesome.Truly Bitcoin is the Devil's method of teaching geeks economics! I think the participants in the BTC economy are on a sharp learning curve which is very healthy. Even if you yourself lose some money, I suggest taking it philosophically as a learning experience, because it'll prevent you making dumb mistakes with much bigger sums of money later on.It is possible to manipulate small or highly illiquid markets successfully if you have a lot of money and a measure control over communication channels (think the pump and dump or boiler room scams), just not as crudely as this. Using other people's electricity and computer power to generate bitcoin is smart, albeit immoral. --Perversely, even though SR is not a major component of the price movements and volume right now, if SR were successfully interrupted for a while it would likely cause Bitcoin to plummet to single digit prices. That is because the narrative or story about BTC is in large part about "The Internet Black Market Dollar". Once a panic starts, starting with a logical reason, it can spread without reason. The smartest movers have a disproportionate affect on the actions of other market participants when their actions become known (witness the Buffet following cult).--Ignoring the bitcoin price level entirely, and focusing on the concept and its virulent spread from experiment to prime time. That is what is really interesting.The best part is that Satoshi Nakamoto and the others are manipulating millions of people's decision making processes from ten thousand feet. This is the definition of cypherpunk, using a mixture of crowd psychology and manipulation of the network super structure (computer/financial/political) to achieve our objectives. Economic structural changes change people. Physics->Chemistry->Biology->Economics->Society/Culture->Politics. When you manipulate one of the lower layers, it affects the layer further up hugely. Code is Law. Each and every bitcoin boom cycle spreads information about BTC further and further afield generating a meme that is incredibly hard to suppress.Satoshi Nakamoto is the John Gault of Cypherpunk, What wasn't remotely possible in Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged", the idea of the productive members of society moving out of the old economy to start their own economy, is now technically feasible. It was completely preposterous. A libertarian pipedream. Now it is a realistic proposition. It is imminently practical and becoming more so all the time. That this is true is incredible and we are privileged to witness the rise of the Cryptocurrency and the Darknet Markets. I mean this is legitimately a first in world history. I am absolutely certain that cryptocurrency and anonymous communications is the key to hollowing out the State. It won't suddenly happen though. You're going to be telling your grandchildren about this. If I am intercepted, I shall become a political prisoner or I shall starve myself to death in a cell. Because this is a War. We are soldiers in a battle against our enemy the State. The State shall, once it has got it into it's thick skull what we are about, shall act violently. It always has done before now and this time shall be no different. To fight against such an immoral enemy is the highest honor. Live free or die. If you're not willing to sacrifice everything for those you love, then it's not worth being alive.At the end of the day, with the encroachment of the State on every form of economic activity, the Cypherpunks are just ahead of the curve. Ultimately the majority of people agree with the ideals of the Cypherpunks, they just don't know it yet. They are worn by cynicism and apathy. They don't vote any more because the two parties are for practical purposes identical and everybody knows it. Centerism is political cancer. Nobody has any new ideas except for the Cypherpunks. The Occupy, Zeitgeist, Thrive idealogies are simply rehashes of ideas that already exist. They are all correct in that there is a real problem and perspectives need changing, but they offer no structural change to make that happen beyond propaganda. Cypherpunk is an injection of pure adrenaline to the heart of this system. It is *exactly* what is needed.It's this or we become slaves anyway. The majority of Western countries are taxed over 50% of GDP, half of all production goes to the State. That trend cannot continue without turning into some boring variant of economic Communism or Fascism and destroying us all. Ironically, without some kind of creative destruction going on, the System can eat itself. Not taking a risk can be the greatest risk of all.There are better things to be patriotic about than arbitrary geographical boundaries.