If you have to ask HN this question, the following adage probably applies to you: "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."
Yeah, it's apparently possible to short bitcoins. If the recent rise in price is a bubble, and it crashes back to about $30, it will still come back to about $100 in a year, if bitcoin adoption continues.
Smaller shops and corporations will naturally adopt first. There's many cafeterias and restaurants that accept bitcoins these days, but adoption will naturally start from internet-related services.
An impressive list in quantity, but upon closer inspection I don't see any essential goods & services. Under "consumables" there are literally no general groceries, just specialty foods. Under clothing, a bunch of niche items. It's also worth noting that nearly all of these look like to be pretty low-quality vendors.
There's lack of payment options with "essential goods & services", like groceries, but what's your point? Any new currency, especially digital, doesn't start with supermarkets, because supermarkets tend to be owned by large corporations that are not first adopters.
If bitcoin will become a major currency, it will have to have a phase where it cannot be used in general and only with a small number of companies. That's not evidence that bitcoin will not become a major currency, it's evidence that it hasn't yet, and nobody claims it has.
What you say is true, but I don't see mass adoption anytime soon because it seems there are no essential goods and services(and perhaps more importantly complex B2B services) being bought and sold with bitcoins alone. I think it's safe to say that the majority of these vendors accepting bitcoins are turning around and converting them to USD to pay for operational costs and only a small(if any) portion of their bitcoin revenue is traded as bitcoins. It will always be that way until the large corporations that we are all beholden to, especially as businesses, accept bitcoins.
So at this point it's really an investment vehicle and a convenient method of exchange, not a replacement for fiat currencies.
It is incredibly easy to buy and sell Bitcoin options: icbit.se is just one of several reputable derivatives markets that focus on Bitcoin. So yes, if you are completely sure this is a bubble, it's easy money...right?
Yeah it is incredibly easy to short Bitcoin by trusting an unregulated, anonymous website without exposing yourself to any counterparty risk... There just isn't any real way to short Bitcoin, because if your investment thesis is true and collapses, it will be very difficult to collect your winnings.
