There is an old stockbroker joke about penny stocks.

Broker: "This stock is at 1 cent and could keep on going up."

Client: "BUY!"

The next day:

Broker: "Good news, the stock is at 3 cents and is showing no signs of slowing."

Client: "BUY!"

The next day:

Broker: "Awesome news, the stock is at 10 cents and people think it could hit 50 cents in a week."

Client: "SELL!"

Broker: " . . . to whom?"

If you are in the US, use CoinBase I don't even know why people even consider using Mtgox.

If you can find a place to buy a macbook directly with bitcoins, you'll be OK. Selling BTC for dollars is whats tricky, as it requires money to pass through Gox's bank account. The banks don't really like BTC that much, so it's a pain. I've bought things directly with BTC before and it's an easy process.

You may sell half. If it crashes you cashed out quite well. If it diesn't and reaches $10K you won't be sad.

If you want to cash out to USD or Euros I run a service http://bitcoinsaresexy.com - you can cash out to amazon gift cards or even paypal money and then buy whatever you like ;)

Edit: really ? downvotes on this ? why ?

No need to cash out, you can buy from anywhere using all4btc.com. If you'd rather order it yourself than have someone else buy then try an Amazon gift card from gyft.com instead.

There's always localbitcoins! (And Coinbase has been relatively smooth)

heh this is funny to me (though i'm sorry for you, i don't mean to rub it in) only because when i suggested dollar-backed or gold-backed bitcoin a lot of people made fun of me saying "oh it's been done & it was corrupted" "mannnnn" "original sin" "blahhhhhh"

but.... whos to say the Bitcoin exchanges are better at banking than traditional banking industries? I understand they represent individual points of failure in the ecosystem, but soooooooo many users have gotten screwed by them thus far.

So sell them at an exchange that doesn't suck at withdrawals. BTC is trivial to transfer.