I swear, when will these insane claims stop? Bitcoin is dead? Says who? Some random blogger?
While I do not necessarily agree that the price is directly related to it's success, it is a good judgement of momentum. So far, bitcoin has stayed steadily positive, rising over time, with a few bubbles, followed by corrections that lead to a new stable point. It is now in one of those stable points, which is evident by the rebound from Mt. Gox' fall.
The first bubble was the original rise from less than 1 cent in 2010, with momentum that built to a flash point, driving the price to $30 in 2011, but only for a short time. Mt. Gox was hacked (there is a reason people are glad they are gone...irresponsible amateurs), and the price snapped back down, eventually stabilizing around $2, which was still an increase of a few thousand % over the previous year. After that, there was a long period of stable, constant growth, leading up to early 2013. Early 2013, another meteoric rise began, though not as quickly as the first bubble, and took the price to over $200 before, once again, Mt. Gox crashed, people panic, and the price dropped down to a wildly fluctuating range between $50 and $150, eventually stabilizing just above $100. At this point, most of the community began to abandon Mt. Gox. They were by far the highest volume exchange, but by 2014, they had fallen to #4.
Throughout 2013, bitcoin rose steadily, until news out of China caused another huge leap up, to $1200+. This was followed by a crash related to attempts by the Chinese government to stop bitcoin in their country, which was ultimately unsuccessful. The price stabilized at $600-700 or so. It had began to climb again when the final Mt. Gox fiasco started, but their impact only managed to bring it down to around $500 (except on their own exchange, where it hit the floor, because they had halted all withdrawals), and quickly rebounded to over $600, and is now climbing again.
Believers in bitcoin are not doing it blindly. A large portion of us actually understand the technical reasons that make bitcoin revolutionary, and believe in what it represents. Very few of us expected it to even rise this fast, and are more focused on the long term rather than an overnight revolution in finance. The only fanaticism I can see is related to the fanatical opponents of bitcoin who are fighting tooth and nail to demonize the entire bitcoin community, and protect the legacy banking system for some reason. I know change is scary, but you should really look into what you are trying to protect. Bitcoin, or, more likely, bitcoin 2.0 will be the future, and it is built in a way that gives significantly more power back to the people.
But, good luck with your fiat. You can have a currency that has lost 98% of its value in the past 40 years if you want. I just prefer to use something that isn't manipulated, and inflated, by a small group of fantastically wealthy individuals who only have their own interests in mind.
