[..]
Never going to happen. Don't want to cause any confusion between me and Jaroslaw.

I hope so.. I'm long.  

The recent bullishness may be heavily correlated to this US gov't shutdown.  I suspect it is, and will continue as long as that anxiety continues.  The more fighting and bickering on capital hill, the more BTC is likely to appreciate in the interim.  People pissed off at politics like the apolitical nature of Bitcoin.

Time will tel, of course.  Put your money where your mouth is.   

10 years reasonable?

omg last I've seen you being a bear we went from 20 to 266  

so if the price keeps rising, how would we ever use it as a real currency to buy stuff?
i'm pretty sure everybody who has them has them for buy and hold or making profit, not for purchasing goods - I certainly don't because in two months the price might have doubled, and I would curse myself for giving them away "back then" instead of using real currency.

[...]
Last but not least, you can pick any multimillionaire, venture capitalist, Chinese, Winklevoss twin you want an attribute the price to him/her or it. If you think for one minute that a venture capitalist is going to sit back and watch their investment shrivel you are dead wrong. The companies, technology, implementation and legal battles being fought over bitcoin are much bigger than you, I, or anyone person on this forum and I can assure you that if, and when a significant price drop occurs they will prop up the market again and restore faith for the rest of the bitcoin community.
[...]

Could be true, so if someone wants price down he needs to dump at max $250 without ATH. Right?

Why would anyone want high price now? Why not hoarding for a year or two in the $50 - $200 range? Just a thought.

Market      Last      Volume (24h)   Bid      Ask      High      Low

mtgoxUSD       186.8000    88,184.96       175.40    175.50    233.40    175.30
btcnCNY       1160.0000    46,644.16       1160.00    1166.00    1328.00    1010.11
bitstampUSD    169.9500    45,086.09       168.99    168.00    205.44    156.20
btceUSD       170.1090    29,341.98       166.00    167.00    204.00    152.50
mtgoxEUR       135.2000    14,390.43       131.11    132.66    167.90    125.00

This should be a record high afaic volume transaction history. I like it...

We might go sideways for a while.

What happens when we hit 266? 

I can't believe I am here again watching Bitcoin price rising towards $266, everything about it seems to be magic.

its to bad i sold shouldn't of been playing with triggers

I have some play btc left

and still very bullish!  

Brother Rampion, hope you are well!

You bring up a great point. I really wonder about selling some at 700 ish (to make up for my initial investment, or maybe 1/2 of it). Then just watch the next 5 years unfold.

Now, when BTC goes to 10,000 dollars, that is when we need to start giving away BTC's to organizations to change the world. Just think of what Satoshi could do there...
Remember, this is a disruptive technology, let's disrupt.

IAS

ps - Yes, the mining investments were bad for me too. But, we will still make our money back at higher prices, so just look at it as a hobby that pays for itself.

You should not under estimate that a rocket if using the correct propulsion system (infinite probability drive) can create whales.

"It is important to note that suddenly, and against all probability, a sperm whale had been called into existence, several miles above the surface of an alien planet. And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity."

Overall sentiment is changing in a bearish direction, very quickly all over this forum.  From people expecting a crash from rising too fast, to Mike Hearns, Coin Validation, etc.  The writing is on the wall. All it takes is for a whale or two to want to be first to take some profits.  In times like these, in USD I trust.  

Someone (with a crystal ball) tell me what's going to happen price-wise on stamp over the next 5 hours. Is China still pushing the price up ? I don't see that kind of movement just yet, but anyway it's 5 AM on a Friday morning over there.

This is a good sign.

Bitcoin is taken seriously and they are already thinking about possible regulation!
Just to make sure that when this industry takes off the US will be part of it and not lagging behind!

It's all fiat. 

You should know I slaved away in Paint to bring you this.

It's obvious you misunderstand the full definition of "fiat".  Fiat can be a government issued currency but it also is defined as a currency with no intrinsic value.  Bitcoin, like USD, only has value because we agree that it does.  Thus Bitcoin is simply another form of fiat currency.  Bitcoin though, is not debt based.  So thats good.

The only people who bought in 2011 are people who understand Bitcoin.
Again my point is take yourself to a normal person thinking strategy. Okay let me spell it out for you.
You now only have a high school diploma. You work at a factory, walmart, you're a waiter bartender whatever.
You have 3 kids, a tiny house, and a minivan.
You live paycheck to paycheck.
You took your savings ($10,000 or so) you put it into this Bitcoin thing.
Now you have $5000 worth of Bitcoin/savings.
You think they are still holding and hoping?
You think they haven't sold and are screaming and cryin at the top of their lungs I lost half of my life savings Bitcoin is the devil to everyone they know?

This is why it is bad. Because the people investing in bubble rises are people who think they will get rich quick (99% of the population which is why lottery is the most profitable thing for states) and when "healthy corrections" happen it's devastating to the reputation to Bitcoin and the bigger they get and the harder they fall the more negative news and I promise you the 99% don't know, care or believe in BTC technology they believe in their dollar and you Bitcoin took it from them.

Come on Zangelbert.  You can't possibly believe everybody is going to get rich?  I mean, sure, if bitcoin is a more efficient method of payment and finance in general, then it will benefit the general population, much like the internet itself has already provided many benefits to the economy. But it doesn't instantaneously transform everybody into millionairs.

I am amazed to still find people posting about currency deriving its value from "faith".  That is a  preposterous  big lie which gains currency only from its constant repetition.  A currency per se derives its value from its use.  Not from faith orconfidence or backing in quatloos or fairy dust.  This is accurately and adequately described by the quantity theory of money:  PQ=MV.   The value thus derived is kept connected to the currency by the faith or confidence that the utility conditions described in this equation will persist over the users discounting horizon.

Bitcoins have uses other than use as currency, i.e. a medium of exchange, and therefore the fundamental value of  bitcoin is greater than the total M might naively imply,  but of course the quantity theory adequately accounts for this in the V factor.

I guess you can be safely ignored then.  I suspect that I despise the neokeynesian kleptocrats even more than you do, but you had might as well cast stones at the ideal gas law.

How many people here wouldn't give up the SHA-256 backdoor to the NSA for a truckload of money if they could? Yea, let's not pretend to be the new Gandhis of the world..

Not only does it encourage savings it encourages careful treatment of things including money.  People can relate to buying a tiny amount a while ago which is now worth a lot more.

The is the argument against a gold (or bitcoin) standard by the FED and banking status quo.

Under today's credit fiat system, it makes no sense to "save" money in currency since it continuously inflates. Instead savers are suppose to invest the money into businesses, capital spending, stocks, etc.

The problem is today no one saves this way, instead savers (those with disposable income over expenses) spend money frivolously on vacations/restaurants/crap instead of saving for the long term, and many of those who do invest do so in bubble type assets (i.e. large houses).

The fiat credit system is suppose to work in theory, but in practice it obviously does not. Hence bitcoin. It provides a real escape for true savers.

Saving is good, hoarding like a lunatic is not.

Agree with some of the economics (although I am a Keynesian).

However, we are not gods - we are believers.  There is a difference.

Let's say only 300000 people own bitcoins today and they all decide to hoard their coins for 20 years. How will this new money spread to the rest of the population?

I know and I can forgive you.  It's nice to see economics theory here instead of mathemetics and physics for a change.  It is supposed to be a child board of 'Economics' after all...

If we break the ATH, we will be heading to $10k.... fck all these bears!!!

Man, analysis like this is why I keep coming here.

Do you have to do the shooting, or is there a 3rd party standing by for that?

This is why we need more female members.  So the little boys will start to behave like grown men.

China going to crack 6k.

This is why we need more female members.  So the little boys will start to behave like grown men.

I know there are already places in Europe where only half the cars are allowed to enter the city on one day and the other half the next. Those with the $$$, uh, I mean €€€ simply have two vehicles, of course.

[...]
I have asked in the Economics board what would be the expected state of the "bitcoin network" 15 years from now.  No one knows what will be the value of a bitcoin, of course.  But people cannot even answer (with justification) the more basic question of whether the value will be stable, will grow of fall gradually with time, or will be as chaotic and unpredictable as it is now.

Predictable changes, like a steady inflation or deflation, or seasonal variations. People can adapt to them. Volatility is unpredictable changes in value
[...]

Price will rise, basically with adoption.  My guess 2-5% per year.

Okay, you say nobody want's to buy due to deflation because price will be cheaper tomorrow. I say with the same logic nobody should want to sell due to inflation because price will be higher tomorrow. Yet people are selling things all the time. People are also buying massive amounts of phones and computers, even though they will be better tomorrow. In real life, very few people can afford to hoard and wait. We have needs as humans that can't be put on hold forever.

[...]

That is another stumbling block for economists.  Infation encourages people to spend or invest their currency as soon as possible, thus keeping the economy in motion.  Deflation has the opposite effect, it encourages people to hoard the currency.  If bitcoins increase in value, they will be hoarded, and therfore will be less used in trade, and therefore their usefulness will be limited, and therefore their value will collapse. How will this paradox get resolved?

it really pisses me off the dump scheme some manipulators are following, the only victims here are the newcomers which we call the weak hands, being not used yet to the bitcoin's volatility,  they can lose allot in aa minute because of fear which will automatically discourage further investing and strength the troll about bitcoin value.


if I had 20,000 BTC and even if I wanted to go all FIAT I would do it in a way that it wouldn't effect the price even if took me 1 month to cash out, but these people in purpose dump few thousands of Bitcoin so they get to buy a sum at a lower price and cash a sum to FIAT.....

I used this link to get to the vote...


http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-fund-raises-65-mln-205149343.html;_ylt=AwrSyCVULapSc28AQ9aTmYlQ

I guess the flip side is that it was posted on Yahoo, not exactly the cutting edge. Gives you a good idea of what 50 year old traditional business guys think though (which is a great contrarian indicator).

Well, this is not funny anymore, I definitely shorted BTC at very bad time 

Too early to glean anything meaningful from this. The number of searches per day is greater than it was in mid-november, but unsurprisingly the pace has slowed from the fever pitch it hit at the ATHs.

Fighting talk!!

http://www.independent.ie/business/eu-banking-watchdog-warns-of-risks-from-bitcoin-29835212.html

"The watchdog has been studying virtual currencies for three months and is still considering whether they can or ought to be regulated. It has powers to ban them, though questions remain over how this could be done in practice."

It has powers to ban them?

I wouldn't trade BTC now in any direction if my life would depend on it..

Get in, don't worry, be happy.

And that would have been an awesome investment compared to practically everything else available to average people on 11th April, noon GMT.

There are decentralized social networking efforts out there (Diaspora for one). Maybe Facebook will fall from favor as Myspace did. It's a bit of a juggernaut at the moment though.

he got caught by being a dumbass

China's about to wake up in 3-4hrs.
I wonder what they've got in store for us!

I'm glad the price popped up above 900 again on Gox - wouldn't be fun to have Monday start with a downwards momentum into the low 800's.

You just said at 820 we were very over sold. You really seem to have no clue what so ever. My advice to you is just stick to your coins and don't try any short term tricks.

What a boring day in the world of Bitcoin. Already increased my stash as much as possible, now what?

The US banks are starting to run away, scared.  This is pretty weird when you think about it for a minute.  Why should they be afraid, the have biggest powers in the world wrapped around their fingers..
Do they fear competition, innovation?
They rely on big buildings to make them appear stable and solid, but it is just a front.  None of them have been solvent for a long time except by stealing, cheating, and extortion (If you don't give us all your money, we wreck the world, if you don't use your power to take money from everyone and give it to us, you all die.  We're too big to fail, now make us bigger).

Yep,real 'to da moon' stuff. That's what makes me wonder if someone's willing to throw away a lot of coins to make the charts look bad for anyone looking for a route to safety. Even I know 'sell low' isn't how its usually done, at least not in the short term, but that's what seems to be happening on the lows. That should cause spikes if it wants to go down but the spikes are upwards, hard to be sure though because there's also a lot of negative slippage in both directions.


Yes but its not planned for implementation until 2016. That figure doesn't mean a whole lot, if it passes there's little to stop it being brought forward, but its a nice comfortable looking 'long way away' figure for the media.

It seems impossible to get actual verifiable information on what is happening with various governmental regulations and Bitcoin.  

Does anyone KNOW what the Chinese government has done, or are we still in complete rumor territory, or are we somewhere in between?

I went from liking Chinese to hating Chinese over night.  The people.  I love the food..

[...]

Worse than Hitler maybe but not worse than Josh.

I can't divulge more at this point, but suffice it to say- yes I do believe I've gotten around it.

it's important that we all know our place

I wonder how many people in the Bitcoin trade see BTCs as a tool to earn USDs, and how many see USDs as a means to grab more BTCs.

Tip for our dear early adopters, if you get are annoyed by this "ElectricMucus" guy, take a notice how he mentioned that he doesn't own bitcoins and doesn't trade bitcoins.
If you read between the lines he is just here to troll. He is hoping you are a big sucker.

He is just a guy claiming he knows a thing or two about Bitcoin. Also owns a coin or two. 

So, you KNOW that he is rich! You ABSOLUTELY SURE about it!
You are also sure that he made his money trading!

Too many assumptions, don't you think?

for some reason I have been so angry reading some posts from Mirsad and rpietila the past few days, the first for his racism and trashing a whole race (bosnians), BTW I am not even from balkan but I felt so angry when I saw his post I couldn't take it.

rpietila didn't piss me off until he started acting as a jerk you know what I mean " I am so rich" "rich people like me" "listen to who have more than you" " I am a pro trader" " my clients" and he doesn't even post a disclaimer where he states that his predictions shouldn't be taken for a trading plan... many noobs got owned by his "prediction".

 

forgive my tiny tolerance over such people, I do apologize to all members for crossing my lines and going off-topic....

We are nowhere close to mass adoption, not by a long shot. I just spent dinner with my extended family where there were five middle aged wealthy men attending (not overly wealthy, just have nice jobs, equity in their homes,  investments, et cetera). Not a single one of them knew anything more than Bitcoin by name. NONE of them were interested at all in investing in Bitcoin, too risky, too strange, to difficult to even understand for them.

I spent 15 minutes discussing Bitcoin with the most open minded of the bunch. He wanted to know what he would do to even buy a single coin. Holy crap, what method was I going to suggest to this guy who can barely get Skype to work correctly. I chose a paper wallet and Local Bitcoins. He thought it was reasonable, however, i could tell by the look in his eyes there was no way in Hell he was going to invest a single dollar any time soon.

The masses ARE NOT early adopters, they will not do research, take a chance, learn about digital wallets, trust some web site exchange or anything of the sort. If it isn't offered by their broker, or banker, or something they can buy at the local Gold dealer, then they are not interested. BITCOIN right now seems a world away from this mass adoption. A WORLD AWAY.

We are still in speculative, niche phase that has a long way to go to play out. It is the biggest reason Bitcoin can fail because if another Crypto steps in and solves these access problems look out. Guys like those in my family DO NOT care about the virtues of Bitcoin's distributed, non-regulated, anti-govt protocol. They will invest in the first thing that is 1) accessible 2) available to them through standard channels 3) endorsed by things they trust: banks, govts, large companies.

That said the price may go to $2000 in the next month , or $200....

Is this in response to my previous post?  Do you feel I mis-interpretted what you were saying? 

I know, I know I participated in the previous discussion of that idea. Didn't we conclude that the well known S shaped "tech adoption" curve would still be a straight line when mapped to log. Why does BTC deserve a "super S", if I may ask?

e^(1/(1+e^-x)) maybe

Disregard everything and just answer with a stupid question?

You didn't answer my question.

I'll take that as "a) Yes, plus I'm too proud to admit it".

And it's no secret either, you just choose to blindly ignore and disregard (quite the modus operandi you've got there).

Interesting debate guys regarding market manipulation.  I think aminorex's definition below is a good one (regardless of one's views on the ethics of such an activity):


According to this definition, I believe that market manipulation is indeed happening.  The next question is "is this wrong"?  vdcc says this is fraud:


I'm not convinced, but I'd like to hear further arguments.  Here's what I think is fraud:

A whale calls up the owner of an exchange and, says "I want to put up a 5,000 BTC ask wall to scare the fish into selling to me for cheaper, but I don't actually want to risk a bigger whale buying all my coins.  Can I pay you 50 BTC to ensure that if someone tries to buy my wall that your trading engine encounters 'technical difficulties'?"  If the owner agrees, this is fraud and we have laws that would apply in such a situation.  

But if two colluding whales buy and sell to each other on the open market to try and make it appear there is more volume at a price higher or lower than what they believe to be the market price, then could not one argue that this is simply "strategy"?  Is not everyone still playing by the same rules?

[...]
I say gloves off, anything goes, let bitcoin regulate itself.

Sometimes it annoys me. Then I check my Bitcoin balance and imagine the subject having to struggle to obtain a few hundred mBTC down the road and I feel better.

it's not just the 3rd world countries though, people in most countries are paying 5-10% premium because of the international transfers involved, Australia to Gox for eg. is like 5% + $90 USD.

Once wall street owns 90% of all bitcoins, what's the plan? Hard fork? Switch to PeerCoin?  

EU has the worst politicians EVER. All the wrong people to all the wrong places. No arguments, just random movements here and there to save their precious "unification". Where's Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Helmut Kohl, Konstantinos Karamanlis... those were politicians with balls. What we have here is their cheap imitations. Employees of big corporations, that play it "Leaders" in their monopoly games. I just hope it falls apart in pieces. If it's not bitcoin; let it be something else, I really don't give a rat's ass' shit. I just want better people governing. Not those clowns.

Maybe it's because I'm drunk, but I surely won't take back even a piece of what I've wrote. Good night people. Happy new year. Cya tomorrow, hopefully with not to much hangover.

I'm not jumping on any trains until the situation in china is cleared up. 

Whoever it is, is buying at a rate of pretty exactly 100 BTC/Hour. So pretty big buy-in summed up.

Isn't that the ping-pong I mentioned earlier? My guess is that it is a trading robot that sells to itself, alternating between two prices that increase 1-2 USD every few minutes. Has been going on since 2013-12-30 with a few interruptions.

TheCoinBull lasted .. honestly 2 minutes before I had to re ignore him.. lol


In other news, 900 by monday or 900 by next friday?

In Bitcoinia (the bitcoin country) we should ban all weekends and holidays.
The price will always go up! Or at least there will be high volume at all times.

 

Wednesday :/
But I will have 10. Maybe even 12.

Just went all coins. So im shutting my pc down now and complete all the things need to be done for my wedding this coming Jan. 15.  I wont be touching my coins. See you bulls on MOON.  

Better ask Imelda Marcos.

The imaginary economic growth thanks to controlled inflation is what brought us to the information age. Using a deflationary monetary unit worldwide will just bring humanity back to neo-feudalism with the bitcoin whales being even crueler than the current elite who are at least kept in check by politicians. I sincerely doubt that bitcoin or deflationary cryptocurrencies will replace fiat altogether, it will just remain a complementary niche market.

Looks like a breakout attempt. If the ~360 BTC wall @845 on bitstamp gets eaten, we'll break out.

LOL indeed!!! Let's have some more!!!  

You still short? lololol

Marathon buyer still present. Ignores price. Sideways for next hour, then slowly up.

Edit: Prediction: 10-20 BTC buy at 17:31

17:31:06 16.5734 BTC bought.

Edit: Next buy 17:36

Nice call!

edit: Next buy never happened. Oracle status revoked!

Sorry if this caused problems for our customers. It was 17:38:20

Let me try again: Next 17:44, slihtly less than 7 minutes.

Off again, 17:45:16. My dice is not working. Must be the Fed.

Edit, I need that oracle status. Next marathon-buyer buy 17:52

This is happening for a few days now right?
He already bought tons of btc if thats non stop each 5 minutes

Yep, almost continuously.

rpietila just created a new self moderated thread: I will make it my duty to stop his fucking ego that harms the noobs.






he will delete and report me for sure, but totally worth it  

stop with german here, go to your subforum

so you say that price is that high and here are still many people who want to buy back? Interesting. My advise is wait for $5k and buy back when it crashes to $4.5k.

Sir main railway station? Have we been drinking tonight sir?

This.

I don't think many people here realise what it means now these Wall St. sharks are circling and amongst us ... they'll be picking you off one at a time like the ripe fat whales you are.

I've been watching/trading the Gold market for 18 years and you guys have no fucking clue what's coming ... it's not going to be pretty.

From here on out, either you're in bitcoin for the long haul and the protection of assets it provides or you're gonna lose most everything .... especially if you think you can out trade these guys with their trading algorithms, bots, deep pockets and propaganda machine ... they'll out psyche you every time and then take your money when you are beat ...

You've been warned. Get real or get out now.

I like to think that when I trade its to help stabilize the market to find the true value, and the market rewards me  

nope. u posted shit besides feeding the fucktard. but hey, u finally made it to my ignore list. congrats. i am not interested either.

How long until quintuple digits? I recommend researching villas, private jets and supercars that you would like to buy within the next months so you are ready. Might even get to purchase it with Bitcoin then.

Enjoy your deflating currency.

Curious, what does the article say why this is bad? I can't make out any argument, just a prolonged statement that it is.

Oh and the analogies suck. (The fear mongering too)

You are presenting a Circular argument.
In case you haven't noticed: Excess reserves aren't supposed to be in the public hand in the first place or part of any economy. And that they aren't suggests that the FED is doing something right.

No. Normal reserves are mandated by the fed, and is (was) used to regulate the money supply. Too much money in circulation, mandate higher reserves and vice versa. If the banks had more money, they would lend them in the market. It would not be rational to deposit them at the fed, because the fed did not pay interest, so not lending to the market would be a loss. The fed changed it policy, not by increasing the reserve requirement as usual, but by paying good interest of the deposits. They are called excess reserves because they are not mandatory.

Deflation means change in price, so that is not "base value" but the very unknown variable that the market has to define.

Savings is not "destructive" because the bitcoins saved will be traded again depending on expected price.  Indeed every bitcoin is always someone's "savings" except for an instant while it is being traded.

(Perhaps one may consider that bitcoins are "destroyed" temporariliy while a transaction is awaiting confirmation from the net, if they cannot be traded or used for commerce in that interval.  From that "consumption" and predicted volume of commerce one may be able to compute a "base value" that does not depend on speculation, assuming that Bitcoin will be the only cryptocoin in use.  However, the volume of "consumption" depends on the speed of confimation.  Is that predictable?)

[...]
Methinks that 1800 dollars is too much money to gamble. (My betting limit is a pizza and a beer, and I have made only three or four such bets in my life.)  I would rather spend that money on tools or other grown-up toys.
[...]

I am Brazilian. I will spare you the history of Brazilian inflation, suffices to say that the currency was devaluated by a factor of 2.75 quintillion (2.75 x 10¹⁸) in my lifetime. So I do know something about the world of "fiat".  


Yes, IF I knew at the time that bitcoins were going to appreciate that way, I would certainly have bought them.  Ditto for gold or Apple stock. But with my luck I would probably have invested in Enron or the Madoff fund instead...

But right now Bitcoin does not look like such a good investment, does it?   It may be a gold mine for day traders, but to prosper one must be smarter and quicker than all the other smart guys, which I am not.  

My favourite altcoin is Mike (μBTC).  They're crazy cheap at the moment - you can pick up a thousand of them for less than a dollar.  Definitely gonna go moon IMHO.

That looks more like back(ing force) than consecutive bottoms.
Plus, that's hardly hairy.

The chart shows that the previous bubble didn't fully deflate, it should have bottomed around 30$ - 40$, not 67$.
That's one reason for the current bubble to happen so soon after. Maybe this bubble won't fully deflate either and there will be
another one soon, with an ATH in the 5k$ range, and then the very early adopters will dump millions of coins and crush the price.

The same thing can be said for [sensored]Dogecoins[/sensored]. I am pretty sure the rate of adoption for doge coins is comparable to bitcoins right now.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-23/china-bank-run-beginning-farmers-co-op-unable-pay-depositors

Gonna be huge, right?

Everything is bullish. That's how.


[...]

Low volume is a confirmed strong bullish SHOTR signal.  Maximize the leverage on any current SHOTRS due to this confirmed signal.

I'd need some confirmed Chinese or Russian sources on this before proceeding.

[...]
Good. I want it to take a longer time to reach an ATH. Because I am jobless with almost nothing. So, I can't drop a few thousand and pick up 10 or 100 coins. At these prices I can buy like 2 BTC - at lower prices I can triple that. Its a huge difference for me.

You are drawing extremities. Why should he buy at 4000$ or at 200,00$. There are more moderate prices...

...or is it so, making a cup of coffee, coming back, and the price will have reached 4000$ or 200$?

It can't be reserve currency, not in the near future, not when 47 people, holding 30% of all bitcoins, mostly very young people can dictate its price... When, and if, they start to cash out we might start think about it...

Can anyone explain the $200 difference with Gox?

wtf ....

This is exactly the sentiment that causes these panics. Everyone thinks there is some insider information and the more people that participate, the strong the feeling becomes. But in reality there is no information. More likely what happened is MtGox's 1D MACD crossed and all the heavy duty bots started buying, and then this massive movement caused all of the other markets to panic. I was watching - Huobi was following mtgox.

Does anyone know how bitcoin investment is being promoted in China? Are there TV ads?

I am the only one with insider information. Can't say it all, but price is going down.

Do you all think that prevalent use of a protocol such as colored coins could make each bitcoin even more rare and thus drive up price beyond the theoretical future valuations we have predicted?

Erdogan: you had me for a moment.  You should start a "Confirmed good news thread--no circle jerking, just FACTS!!!2"

What are colored coins and coinjoin / stealth addresses?

I was ironic. I don't trust them.

What? Colored coins create different assets from bitcoins. Meaning that a bitcoin can be representative of property - thus it won't be used as a currency, but held. Theoretically, this would make the monetary bitcoins more rare. Has nothing to do with eliminating fungibility.

What price did Willy stop buying? Anyone know?

All headlines about financial events are always composed in the following manner:

<something just happened> [as|after|despite] <something unrelated that happened at the same time>

The second part after the "as" is chosen randomly. Its sole purpose is to make it appear as if they were able to understand or explain what is going on. You will not find a single news source that would ever publish an article about a currency or commodity or stock rising or falling without the obligatory "as"-clause attached to it in the headline, no matter how absurd it may seem:

"Bitcoin drops as emerging market concerns ease"
"Bitcoin drops as Fed is cutting stimulus further"
"Bitcoin drops after disappointing Apple report"
"Bitcoin drops despite disappointing Apple report"
"Bitcoin drops as Google Doodle celebrates Year of the Horse"
"Bitcoin drops despite 6-time All-Star Lance Berkman announcing retirement"
"Bitcoin drops as Justin Bieber is charged with Toronto limo driver assault"

"Bitcoin rallies as emerging market concerns ease"
"Bitcoin rallies despite Fed cutting stimulus further"
"Bitcoin rallies after disappointing Apple report"
"Bitcoin rallies despite disappointing Apple report"
"Bitcoin rallies as Google Doodle celebrates Year of the Horse"
"Bitcoin rallies as 6-time All-Star Lance Berkman announces retirement"
"Bitcoin rallies as Justin Bieber is charged with Toronto limo driver assault"

hopefully this is a correct interpretation of the law, and they will be allowed to do this. but china doesn't want money leaving the country, maybe chinese regulators will ask US regulators to make sure a chinese person is not allowed to exchange their bitcoins for USD via an exchange.

Lesson for the media everyone: Don't trust anything written on the speculation sub-forum! 

Quick someone buy all the 42coin

Really strange thing that this comes from Volgograd...

...maybe virtual currencies were envolved with the terror attacks there.

This sounds interesting but I'm not following.  Run on what bank?  Evidence?

Silk Road also went down over night with over 200k Bitcoins on it.

I simply don't want to risk this worst case scenario. I mean if I would be somebody who could face jail because of my Bitcoin exchange, I would turn it honestly off and run away with all the Bitcoins on it. As evil is it would be, it would be just smart.
Maybe you can even buy free of the Jail with that money later on, who knows?

I don't want to black talk or something like that but bad things have happened.

It isn't the fire that burns, its the heat.

It isn't the gun that kills, it is the person who fired it.

It isn't the knife stuck in your guts that kills you, it is your arteries pissing out blood that finishes you off.

Yeah yeah....but Bitcoin is a pretty good tool in the money launderers arsenal. Especially the small/medium enterprise money launderer that doesn't have access to corporate banking routes of money laundering...or even the large scale money launderer that doesn't want to pay the premiums of going through the conventional routes.

they held a public forum, I wondering if these reddit posts asking for questions and reasons for btc to be implemented are actually people going to events like these.. please lord let them see the light and yes I am speaking to His Most Eminent Highness Grand Caesar Imperator Goat.

That's only verbal diarrhea. BTC-China will stay a zombie, and if not, that doesn't change nearly nothing.

What should be the difference to Huobi?

Moreover Huobi will be stay more attractive for chinese traders, since they have no trading fees.

received more "insight" on that february 2014 "event" from those nutjobs (?) at the farsight institute.

just dropping here for -- I don't know -- entertainment?:

Excerpt LA Times:


 

Note that the article was written before the Chinese stomped on bitcoin.

But even if nothing had changed, there is one little snag in that article.  If a Chinese citizen uses Yuan to buy bitcoins in China and then sells them for dollars in the US, there is no export of Yuan to the US actually.  Instead the guy gives his Yuan to other Chinese traders, and the US traders give him a bunch of dollars. 

So why would the Chinese government object to a Chinese national receiving a gift from americans?

Sure, after that transaction there would be fewer bitcoins in China and more bitcoins in the US.  But since bitcoins have no intrinsic value, the material wealth of China would not change. There would be still the same amount of food and cars in the Chinese market, and the same amount of Yuan in circulation inside China.

If bitcoins could be used to buy things in China, there might be some Yuan inflation as the bitcoins became scarce and the Yuan lost value relative to them.  But that is why the government banned their use in commerce.

Oh look, Bitcoin cultists actually don't have any money they could use to buy with. They are merely hoping for others to do it for them.

 

Here's a question:

What happens to your nation's currency when you go "all in" on bitcoin?

Meaning, the government of said nation (Cypress? Singapore?) fully embraces bitcoin and allows banks to freely exchange their national currency for bitcoins.

The specific question I have is: would that make the relative value of that nation's currency rise or fall versus all the other nations?

[...]
My picture of the typical Huobi client is a low or middle-class person, who does not understand English, has no programming knowledge, and keeps his bitcoins in his Huobi account.  He cannot use bitcoins to pay for things in China and does not usually travel outside the country.  Would he need to download the software and/or create a private wallet in order to open an account at Huobi?

+1

A "speculator" exercising a reversion strategy will tend to dampen price swings.  A *speculator* exercising a momentum strategy will tend to force price swings.

We need lots of buy-hold-buy-mores, and lots of successful daytraders.

for such a nice person you sure make a terrible president of turkey.

[...]
Actually it is production that creates wealth and production is stimulated by consumption.

When world currency would be deflationary then consumption will slow because everyone will be motivated to hold onto their money,

[...]

and consumption is made possible by production.


... which means that in the current inflationary environment, nobody would ever sell anything, because they would get more money tomorrow.

This is nonsense, every trade has two parties, that include you selling your work-hours.
Inflationary means the seller will quickly turn his new money into something of real value. Deflationary means that the buyer will quickly sell more to recoup his money. None of these forces have more weight than the other.

The difference is that in an environment with inflation, it is more rational to hold no or a negative amount of money when you want to save. With deflation, it is more rational to hold money, and value will be souped up in the money system in stead of real assets.

Inflation is wasteful because of all the unnecessary resources you take up when you save, and it takes power away from you because you are in constant debt. Deflation economises real resources and allows you to use your saved resources more freely.

Even more important, the value lost from the money in inflation ends up somewhere, but not in your pockets.

Perhaps it seems that way but wealth can be stored in other means than cash. It does not neccessarily increase my consumption. Whether people 'save' in production should be a free choice to make, not a forced one.

In the interest of saving forum space, I'll fit all the replies in one post.


I can see that the the level of intelligence of the poster is in perfect correlation with the ability to spell my name..

1) Hyperinflation is as bad as hyperdeflation. Both are unstable forms of financial planning that will mess up the economy. While most of the communism countries suffered from hyperinflation, then hyperdeflation is the inevitable outcome of bitcoin.

2) Where the hell do you get this stuff?
Post-Revolutionary USA had economic growth first because of the success of cotton plantations and slavery, and after that, the industrial war nature of the civil war stimulated urbanization and building of railroads, all of this gave a boost to the economy.
Finance was a big mess in 1800s USA with series of failed banking acts and attempts to create a solid currency.

---

It doesn't work like that. Consumption creates production and not vice versa.
When Jack feels hunger, then Jack has to work before Jack can consume the food to satisfy his hunger.

Need for consumption always dictates the need of production. There is no need of production without the need of consumption.
So one does have more weigh then another.

---

Well, thats life that everyone won't have an equal chance. The same thing is already set by nature, with some born weaker, shorter or with less intellectual potential. Life isn't fair and it sucks.
Communism actually had a goal to make things fair to everyone. It failed because it was unnatural and only created more problems then it solved.

I'm not inventing the wheel here with saying that inflation is more effective in aspect of economic strength. Academics who are a lot smarter on the subject then me and you have disputed the same subject and still the answer has emerged that controlled and stable inflation is the best way to go when considering economic strength.
But remember, with bitcoin we are not talking about controlled and stable deflation. We are talking about uncontrollable hyperdeflation.


When you'll find holes in my scenario then point them out and I'm happy to dispute or to agree with you.
My speculation about what are the "big boys" doing is far fetched I agree. It's solely based on assumption on what I would do if I were in their shoes. Assumptions like this have mostly served me right.

---

Nah, it's not free. Service companies similar to bitpay, who take care of the conversion, have to pay the early adoptors for the privilege to use the "protocol". Everyone who has to hold their value in bitcoin have to pay tribute to the early adopters.
This is the pyramid scheme part that attracts those big herds of people who wish to get rich quick without doing any work. This hyperdeflation part is good for attracting simple minded folks with promises of easy riches, but it makes bitcoin useless as an serious financial tool.
The enthusiasts make it sound like they are all about financial liberty, while actually they are just hoping for wealth redistribution. They don't want to change the world in a way that there won't be a class of wealthy elite people who only enjoy luxury without doing much work. They even want to increase this mentality and only change the people who are at the top, so they themselves can be there.


It's too hard to lie to myself and pretend that all is fine. I'm not very good at comforting myself with false hopes made out of pretty illusions. I would be happy and calm if I would truly see that this will work. But I can't, no matter how much I try, I still see the ugly truth.

---

First mover advantage is the only thing that bitcoin has. The only reason why it's more expensive then the tens of other altcoins that have been created from the same source.
Rest doesn't mean much tho, because the development in bitcoin source is very slow and it's actually crippled by core properties like work-of-proof mining and 10 minute transaction times. You can only better the GUI and fix some bugs while you can't develop the core properties that actually need development the most.

---

And you can freely save up by buying necessary goods that hold value. Inflation doesn't stop you for doing that. Inflation only pushes you towards using your money on something, not just sitting on money.
Production isn't forced, but it's favored because it does increase it's countries economic strength. And economic strength is the thing that decides the survival of the fittest in the modern world.
Controlled and stable deflation system could also be used like the an stable and controlled inflation system. But the first country will always have less production then the last one.
But with bitcoin we are not talking about controlled and stable deflation, we are talking about inevitable uncontrollable hyperdeflation. And hyperdeflation is just as bad as hyperinflation, because the instability creates a lot of problems that will slow down the economy.

---

Broken window fallacy isn't exactly an outcome of an strong and growing economy, but it is caused by the corrupt public sector that I talked about.
When world leaders decide to wage wars to stimulate the economy, then the economy is not to be blamed here. You could also start huge scientific projects with goals to colonize other planets or discover new ways to extract energy. This would stimulate the economy just as well as starting wars.
But people are to blame here who elect weak and corrupt politicians who act on the orders of warmongers, not on recommendations of top scientists. To make it short, broken window fallacy is cased by the lack of proper vision.

---

I hope I didn't miss anyone..

I don't understand why Bitcoin ATMs are such a big deal. It's almost like a kiosk for paying a credit card bill or something. Why would I pay a ridiculous premium for something I can do for so much cheaper at my own home?

@KeyserSoze,

I have promised to keep my negative views to myself in this forum, but you insist asking for them...

Is what I wrote on twitter and put on my homepage any different from what I already wrote here?

(You missed my last tweet, "One day bitcoins will be worth their weight in gold".)

Even if bitcoin ultmately succeeds (which I wish it will, but doubt it) and bitcoins becomes extremely valuable (which I very much doubt they will), bitcoin trading is ultimately a zero-sum game.  Any profit that one makes from it is someone else's loss.  In order for @Goat (or someone else) to buy his Lamborghini, @windjc (or someone else) must lose his house.

I believe that adults have the right to gamble their money and property any way they want.  They even have the right to play at this crazy roulette-by-phone where the casinos may not have money to pay off, and the dealers are know to be liars, cheaters, and thieves.

So I have no objections to bitcoin trade and speculation --- as long as the people who come into the game are aware that it is a form of gambling, and that their expected profit is slightly negative (because of fees and other losses). 

However, this particular game will be profitable for its current players only if the price goes up; and that is not likely to happen if the "market" consists of the same guys trading the same bitcoins and the same dollars back and forth among themselves.  In order for the price to go up, and the old players to make substantial profits, new players must come in and bring new money.

So, in that aspect bitcoin trading is indeed a classical Ponzi schema: the money invested by new members is used to pay the large profits of the early joiners -- if these are smart enough cash out while the price is higher than what they paid for their coins.  The net effect of the game is to shift money from the late entrant' pockets to those of the early entrants.

And that is when the game stops being OK.  That is because in order to lure new players, some of the bitcoin "evangelists" are resorting to plain lies, painting bitcoin as a "good investment", an hedge against "rampaging inflation", etc.  They keep showing that false arithmetic of total e-commerce divided by 21 million.  Some still claim that bitcoin payments are untraceable and un-seizeable. (You may have seen my tweets a couple of weeks ago where I argue with someone who claimed just that.)  And the bitcoin salesmen conveniently forget to mention the growing legal barriers, the dozens of exchange failures that ate millions from their clients, and the many other things that would turn sensible people, even uneducated ones, away from the bitcoin game.

One feature of Ponzi schemes is that most people who join feel the urge to become salesmen and convince others to join too.  You do not see long-term stock investors doing that; that's because those people know that other smart investors will look at what the company does, and will not be impressed by sales hype.

It was the opening of the Chinese market that lifted the bitcoin price from the low tens to 1200, and it is the Chinese who are holding it at the present levels.  But that market is no longer growing. So, where will the necessary new suckers come from?

I have seen people here and elsewhere saying that the only hope left now is Latin America.  Well, I cannot sit and watch fellow countrymen being conned, can I?

Several times I felt the urge to end my posts here with a friendly "I wish you all get filthy rich".  But I cannot honestly say that: if some of you do, others necessarily will become filthy poor.  I thought of writing "may you all get back most of what you invested", which is the fairest outcome one could wish for in a zero-sum game.  But I cannot honestly even wish you that, because many people have already walked out of this game with millions of profits or stolen money --- so you all are, like those guys in my parable above, spinning around only a fraction of the money that you all put in.  Sorry, folks.

It feels like it's set in stone, because there are no development or even open discussions on important aspects, like the one I brought forward in my previous post. It's ignored and everyone are just enjoying getting rich with abusing the hype. Litecoin and other altcoins also use the "bitcoin protocol", and because of that, they are suffering from the same problems.
If there were some responsible people around, then someone would say: "Hey, stop this wasteful nonsense! let's figure it out how to build a network that actually makes sense!".

What has happened in past two days?

...what I have understood is that bitcoin isn't a good invention, but it's a good innovation...

You are either with us or against us.

While I agree, that blockchain is the part that could be classified as an invention the most. Then I still have to say that I see it more as an innovation, because it is built on already created inventions in cryptography. I think that blockchain is a great innovation, but I also think that it will be as great of an innovation in the future as iPhone1 is right now.

If an country would adopt this "feature" in it's currency then it will soon fall behind competitiveness, because it hurts both trade and production. That is why countries are not using this model. The bitcoin community isn't a pack of tortured geniuses who knows the answer how to prosper, while the rest of the world is just so dumb, that they wont understand the enlightened truth. This is the work of the cult mentality that I've been talking about.

Fiat money and sound money aren't opposites. There are fiat that are soft and there are fiat that are hard. People are whining that money isn't directly connected to gold anymore and they don't even bother to study why. Instead of gold, today we have the petrodollar, where the actual thing that gives value to the dollar is oil that has better practical value and less speculative value.

How come can the government, or more specifically an politician, steal more in case there is a steady inflation rate?

Problems with suboptimal production and capital consumption come from places that lacks education, tradition and culture. I think you are right on that, there is a connection there on how more developed societies can handle themselves better under more intensive investment pressure. There could be a rule that less developed countries need stable deflation rate instead. But.. in this subject we are talking about bitcoin, that has no stable deflation rate. It is volatile and with a never-ending rise. It's a beautiful piece of art, but it has no place in serious finance because of that.
It's job is to introduce the entire subject, so it needed to be attractive to the regular folks who believe financial fairytales. Through regular people, the subject can also reach more influential people, who can start implementing the realistic parts of that idea to everyday finance.

There is no use trying to convince me that bitcoin can survive more then couple of years, before it will get eaten by competition. To me it sounds like, when someone is the first to struck oil, and then no one else on earth will drill for oil any longer, because someone else already did it. Creating the perfect digital currency will soon be the holy grail to everyone who consider them to be geniuses at software engineering.

Hm, not sure... it would be more bullish if he said he lost keys for those coins.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/28/5453596/voynich-manuscript-decrypting-the-most-mysterious-book-in-the-world

^ might be of interest to Jorge.

Also, how can we interpret this as bullish for bitcoin?

It would be nothing but endless Goxings. And as with any utopia, who would clean the toilets?

try to wipe your ass with Bitcoin.....and you´ll see cash is king

Not sure if serious.

that's the oldest i remember when the bot was the only one trading

Something is wrong. It should be at 600 by now. Could everyone reconsider their bids ands asks? Thank you.

I've read somewhere stamp's api doesn't support the real time order book... But it would be awesome if we could have the same for stamp as we did for gox.

Well, but cash isn't like bitcoin isn't it. Cash wasn't introduced with decreasing supply, where drug trade was the main market engine, while half of the coins came out in couple of years, with the rest coming in a period that is over hundred years
Bitcoin was designed mainly to reward early adopters and have a strong starting momentum by this. Most of the early adopters with bitcoin are in all probability different kinds of criminals. That is probably the reason why there are so few "whales" who like publicity.

You guys realize we went from $400 to $700 in a week, right? At that rate, we'll be over $6000 in month.

Extrapolation, bitchez!

Who wouldn't be jealous on people who got rich without needing to do any work or even have a decent enough education? I think that everyone agrees that it would be awesome to win the lottery.
But my previous post wasn't about my personal jealousy, but about the absurdity of bitcoins coin supply.

To tell that buying BTC in 2010-2011 is mindwork is funny at best. You can also say that picking the right lottery number is mindwork.
Yeah, it's not over. I think that BTC has about 1-2 bubbles still left in it before the final demise. So, I'll probably still make some money from it
But that doesn't mean that I have to join the cult of bitcoin and start lying to myself what bitcoin is and what it isn't. Bitcoin is mainly a scheme where you can earn on the stupidity of others. Bitcoins coin supply was designed in a certain way, so it would give a strong starting momentum by attracting people with promises of over the top high rewards. There is a downside on that also. When people start to see that the starting momentum is over, then they will lose interest. Currently there is still hype left in it with attracting fools who actually think that bitcoin is the solution to the problems in world banking. Until that hype lasts, you can still earn. I know it's not nice to earn at the expense of others stupidity, but when you do it, then at least don't lie to yourself.

But then, what is "honorable" about bitcoin?

Money thats value is held up mostly by a group of unknown people, who are in all probability former drug dealers, crackers or confidence men. The value is held up by those people and their decisions whether to dump their coins on the market or not.
This is the definition of sound money in the cult of bitcoin

I must confess that I am quite unethical when earning with bitcoin. I'll try to balance my lack of ethics with general honesty
As I have understood then Jorge is actually ethical and he is not earning any money with bitcoin. Can't say the same thing about me tho..

Calling bitcon "solid money" is a lie, pure and simple.  There is nothing to sustain its value, no reason to believe that cryptocoins will succeed, no reason to believe that bitcon will not be superseded by other coins.   "Fiat money wannabe" is the most optimistic description one can use, gievn what we have seen so far.

People who value it's properties will sustain it's value. Once it's properties are no longer valuable, people will no longer sustain it's value. I expect it's properties to become more valuable as governments continue to increase capital controls.

Could you define "solid money" for us?

But that would mean getting the horse out of the stable, riding it down to the library and searching through through the card index to determine which vellum covered tome to consult to find the definition. And he doesn't even have any quills sharpened to take notes.

[...]
Here in Brazil we have clandestine (illegal) lotteries and cassinos, and an official lottery that is run by a state-licensed private company.  Some slice of the profits go to the state, to make it seem morally acceptable.  They run ads encouraging people to play; so, yes, I think they should go to jail.

I agree with a large number of your points and subpoints however, I do NOT understand why  bitcoin and/or some other crypto-currencies cannot fit within your world view.  In other words, neither bitcoin nor other crypto-currencies need to be incompatible with your world view.  We can still have government and crypto-currencies.  I recognize that there are a lot of libertarians in the crypto-currency space; however, I am NOT one of them b/c I believe in government as the will of the people... I also believe that crypto currencies can facilitate the will of the people.. and likely facilitate government that follows the will of the people.

That pretty much nails it.

[...]
As for the reactions, I don't mind people blasting my ideas.  To those who take it on my person instead, I warn again, don't push it -- you don't know what I am capable of (both in the sense of "having the means" and "having no mercy".)  Anonimity, distance, firearms, friends in the Yakuza, tears from you mom -- nothing will protect you.

The above quoted article is such bullshit that it is hardly worth repeating.... Maybe I am guilty of the same but I just wanted to make clear my referent?   Surely, with any movement, there are going to be some people who are true believers, and they have NO basis in fact for their beliefs - however, to put bitcoin in that category and to suggest that a lot of bitcoin followers fall into cultish behavior attempts to poo poo and to minimize a large number of concrete and positive contributions of bitcoin.  

Is this an attempt to run off one of the unfaithful?

I'm here for the same reason any of us: talk about BTC.  That doesn't mean I have to be part of the echo chamber though. Once in a while it's handy to have an unbeliever in the midst, just in case the emperor really is naked.

Like most here, I'm a BTC speculator - I do hold some, and even lost some when GOX collapsed. My investment in BTC infrastructure is limited to the few bucks I've paid in exchange fees though. I've been pleasantly surprised by the price increase since the spring of 2011, but I don't believe the price accurately represents any underlying value yet.

The price thus far has been determined by limited investment of money,

so the market cap is on paper only.

Total investment divided by total coins available would be a much smaller number.

today was a low volume day

~10,230 coins were traded for ~6,800,000$

price ranged from 675 - 650


i'm pretty sure depth on both sides is meaningless

i had 100, was down at 67 around december, now i got over 100.   

[...]
... ... OTHERWISE, we will truly be living in a survival of the fittest, dog eat dog world... Most people would NOT want to live in such a society.

The main problem with ancap is that there's nothing preventing a violent gang (a new government if you will) from forming, because everyone else is being so peaceful, and if everyone else stops being peaceful, then it it isn't ancap any more - its just regular anarchy.

Ancap will only work if there is some force to stop people from conducting acts of violence, preferably some force that isn't corruptible. So, until we have open-source peacemaking enforcement droids no such utopia can exist.

My first thought is 'I wonder if I can keep this guy from killing me for my boots'

naivete at its finest. why did we develop a code of laws to begin with, because everyone is an angel?

NOTE: Huobi's CEO denied allegations of fake trade volume, but said nothing about fake Glyptodons.

Chinese corrupted officers will push Bitcoin price up 1000 times

http://www.bit-sky.com/index.php/english/370-chinese-corrupted-officers-will-push-bitcoin-price-up-1000-times

For the same reason most of the laws in the U.S. exist:  To keep everyone in a constant state of fear and submission.  If you step out of line, there are probably a dozen felony charges that can be laid against you at any time.

Apologies if this has already been posted or opened up for discussion - but what do you all think of the NY regulators proposal to accept applications for regulated bitcoin exchanges in the US?

http://www.dfs.ny.gov/about/po_vc_03112014.pdf

Oh man, piling on naked shorts in JPM coin?  What competing banker could resist?

Bought some gigs at Fiverr. But who cares? I'm in it for the store of value.

$200 billion in potential savings in retail, Etail and remittances. What about micropaypents, equities trading, voting, corporate management, wealth storage, accounting, and charities?

a $10,000 bitcoin at Google market cap is a reasonable expectation for the next couple of years, but he the upside potential is substantially greater than that.

The Bank of England have released a quarterly bulletin which is mainly about the definition of money, and its role in a modern economy. It (of course) includes some stuff on Bitcoin and digital currencies, as well as local currencies - Coin Desk have an overview here, or you can read the PDF directly here.

This is where you slip up. It is an IOU from the state which people trust enough to trade between themselves as if it had value.

gotta say i am impressed with our forum though, it has been about ten pages of this argument and Hitler has not been mention yet, correct? what's that fundemental rule of internet forums, all arguments eventually devolve into invoking of hitler?  but not here. : -)

But if I give it back to them when they come calling, I get to stay out of jail.

It's not unusual for debts to change form and ownership. I could buy somebody's poker markers and they might negotiate to pay me back by mowing my lawn. Of course, there's not much negotiating with the government.

Because it only has gone down over the last few months. That in combination with nothing but scams, hackers and crooks and no sane, rich person would put his money in Bitcoin. Not exactly rocket science.

Ok, since the UTC idea is already taken, my plan now is to convince Dogecoin, Bitcoin and Litecoin to merge their blockhains to create the DogBiteCoin.   

That is really wishful thinking... ... likely, this kind of thing, if it were to occur at all at some point, would come from a smaller location first.. maybe argentina... or greece or zimbabwe or Haiti...   and probably it would NOT be all in .. but instead a experimental type exploratory situation

Is this a bad thing? It sounds good.

There, I found another reason to be skeptic about the success of bitcoin: bitcoiners will shop at Walmart instead of at their local grocer, therefore they will eat less healthy food, therefore the genetic predisposition to believe in privately issued cryptocurrencies will soon be weeded out of mankind's gene pool by natural selection.

i lol´d hard.

These are some real green shoots of recovery after you let big companies fail, instead of bailing them out as is the norm today. What is happening is that people, shocked, and sobered by this fiasco, start to demand things like proof of reserves and transparent exchanges. Companies trying to claim market share (there should be lots of it up for grabs with Gox gone) are stepping forward to meet the new demand. The whole Bitcoin ecosystem is growing more robust as a direct consequence.

I am happy with this development and feel like it validates my initial intuition I had after the final Goxing, when I felt that this is going to help Bitcoin in the long run a lot!

:-) I guess you would use both hands and then realize you have been trapped. Then all you can do is hodl tightly and hope it will eventually break. While you wait you will have time to regret your purchase.

I'm sorry that was just plain silly.