Sunny Day

I was surprised so many businesses selling tangible products are accepting BitCoins. The volatility alone makes it a problem. Even when BitCoins were under $1, the daily swings make it difficult to make steady profits. If you buy a product wholesale at $10 and expect to sell it at $15 and you have BitCoins swinging from $5 to $20 you have to adjust your price in real time. Not a way to make customers happy or insure you make a profit. Although I think most of these businesses are accepting BitCoins for the publicity or thought BitCoins would just keep rising.

If you shoot your own porn, once you break even everything else is profit. So it doesn't matter if you make $5 or $20 in BitCoins it's all profit.

Why won't BitCoins go mainstream? Once the IRS and state departments of revenue see mainstream businesses start accepting BitCoins rest assured those businesses will be getting more intense audits. Bars, a business already notorious for not reporting all income won't have to worry about audits. State liquor control will just prevent bars from accepting BitCoins or lose their liquor license.

Mt. Gox claims to be an exchange where a buyer and seller meet. That's the way the NYSE works, almost. Prices rise and fall on demand. But sometimes there are order imbalances (too many buyers or sellers). To smooth out imbalances, a broker agrees to become an Order Maker in one or more stocks. He personally keeps an inventory of shares and sells these to buyers or buy from sellers. But a run up or down even an Order Maker can't prevent prices to skyrocket or drop like a rock. In extreme cases the market closes.

Mt. Gox is a Order Maker. Prices shot up to $250, people decided to cash out. Mt. Gox couldn't keep an orderly market and had to close the market. There may have been some ddos, but it sounds to me more likely Mt. Gox is closing the market. Proof is Mt. Gox is a Order Maker is that they restrict sales to 1000 BitCoins per day. If they were just an exchange they wouldn't care how many BitCoins trade per day.