Rua Santa Ifigênia is the traditional "electronics street" of São Paulo, some 5-10 blocks with tiny to medium-sized shops selling from transistors to consumer electronics, with sidewalks lined with street merchant stalls selling all sorts of accessories, cartridges, software, etc.. A large part of it is contraband, pirated, or counterfeit (you can surely find a "legitimate" copy of Photoshop or Autocad there for a few bucks). Once in a while the police raids the place, confiscates a couple of tons of merchandise, gves out fines and maybe some arrests, just to justify their salaries; but that is all "priced in" as you might say.

Some 10-15 years ago a Ph.D. student of mine bought for her project a Sony camera that had a CD burner built-in and recorded images directly on small 3" CD-Rs.  (There was a short time window when that camera made sense, because flash memory cards had about the same capacity as those CD-Rs but were much more expensive.) She was running out of the original supply of CD-Rs, and could not find then in Campinas; so one day we happened to be in São Paulo we thought of checking at Sta. Ifigiênia.

When you buy anything in Brazil the store is supposed to give you a "fiscal note", an official serially numbered receipt, of which they keep a copy.  Those receipts are used by tax auditors to check whether the state sales tax is being paid.  Obviously street merchants and  stores selling contraband don't give no friggin' fiscal notes, especially for a small purchase like a box of blank CDs; but since we were paying with federal grant money we needed the fiscal notes, and moreover we had to pay with a check from the government account.  We had to walk the whole street, asking at half a dozen computer supply shops, until we found a store that had those 3" CD-Rs, accepted the check, and gave us a fiscal note.

While we were walking back, people started shouting "tax inspectors, tax inspectors" all over the place.  In ten minutes (no exaggeration) half the small shops in the entire street closed their doors, and all the sidewalk stalls had been hastily folded and thrown into vans that disappeared from view.   For, you see, they had spotted two odd-looking people entering random shops and asking to buy some trinket with a fiscal note -- what else could they be?

So: don't underestimate.

Why Tuesday?

My thoughts always gravitate to it being mostly to do with people just making a bit of extra money but more importantly more coins.

There are very few investments where you aren't trying to come out with a bigger pile of fiat, in general when you trade a normal stock you tend to buy a position and then sell (or buy if you were short) and leave with the profit.

With Bitcoin however people are trying to make more of the 'stock' than fiat (obviously a generalization but can you draw any parallels?) a lot of people are also all in in terms of how much they are willing to invest, to make more BTC and not more fiat without leverage you have to sell and buy back at a lower price. I seriously think this is one of the reasons people are so willing to sell their BTC for the chance to buy it back lower even though the majority of them would have been better to buy and hold.

like MF Global?

If they are like SMBIT, a steadily rising price will make their fund more attractive to clients; but if they play strictly by the rules, the company's revenue will be only from fees (SM collects a few percent when the client buys SMBIT shares, when he liquidates those shares, and for every year that they keep his money).  So GABI's managing company will make some profit whatever happens to the price.

GABI's managing company will have a bigger profit margin if they don't play by the rules and speculate with clients' money: if they buy coins beforehand when they think that the price will rise and there will be more clients buying fund shares, or sell beforehand when they think it will go down and more clients will liquidate.

Creating such a fund is a great way to sell a large stash of old cheap bitcoins without immediately depressing the price.  SMBIT started last September with some 17'000 BTC of seed reserve, presumably "bought" over the counter from some founding investor. (Note the difference between "clients" who buy shares of the SMBIT fund, and "investors" who own stock of the company that manages the fund, which is either SM or some subsidiary.  Clients may gain or lose depending on what happens to the price of bitcoin, but investors will gain no matter what.)  Those seed coins were effectively sold to SMBIT clients over the next month, but are still locked out of the open market (together with the other 90'000 BTC that SM supposedly bought since then).

Does GABI have any features that make it better than SMBIT and PBP?  IF not, then I don't think it will have much immediate effect.  GABI will divide the future clientele with them, and I would not expect them to buy on exchanges at first.

(Before the first USMS aution, some people speculated that those ~30'000 bitcoins would be worth more than ordinary bitcoins in the future; both for having been "blessed" by the US government, and for their historical value, having been through SilkRoad and its takedown.  But no one mentions that now.  The "collectors overprice" of those bitcoins now must be the same as that of the the dollars that once were in Al Capone's bank account: none at all...)

But why won't the same people more consistently invest directly in BTC? It wouldn't take much for all those VC investors to prop up the currency/token such that their more indirect investments stands a much better chance of succeeding.

Thanks, I see the ratio down left on the page. I still don't get it because there is allways a buy for every sell. Maybe it's trades with bids registered versus asks registered? This is probably obvious to a seasoned trader, lol.

A guy using the official wallet with passphrase protection lost 16 bitcoin to malware last week posted on reddit. I see these posts more often now. I can appreciate the reasons to run a full node but security of your bitcoin is not one of them until Bitcoin Core supports hardware wallets. Sure you can use Armory cold storage but that is not very convenient.

Talking about secure wallets, are there none with 2FA? I thought I remember reading about a technique that would make this possible. Signing transactions with Authy or the like would be awesome.

It wouldn't require entrusting stuff to a third party. Your keys would be shared between two devices and you'd need both to sign a transaction. I think this was the paper: https://eprint.iacr.org/2014/629.pdf

Huh so he finally found his crowd. Thought he'd get bored singing to a choir there. On a side note, Segwit on LTC is a major win for core, r/btc will need bigger guns to put a negative spin on that

i have to walk to the local bank on a daily basis (part of my job). there are beggars sitting on the sidewalks. i always gave them change. since december, when price rise started to accelerate i decided to give em more as long as bitcoin is rising. not long ago i had to start handing out € 5 notes which raised some eyebrows. last week i switched to € 10 notes. they must really wonder what kind of freak i am, because next week i will start with € 20 bills and if this sucker keeps rising there are still € 50 and € 100 bills. not sure what price level must be reached until i pull out the € 500 bill. but i am commited.  

It's a speculation thread  

Edit: Plus, you think adding more sheep will change the behaviour of the flock? That's hilarious.

... precisely what NLC would say ... i'm just doing the math. 

One of us here is NLC, it's like the hunt for satoshi, it will never end

Who's to say it was a success? Do you think anyone actually sold any coins on account of geezer porn?

I have made my point sufficiently. People can make their own judgments going forward.

It would be shame if they copied all of Gox's moves.

While that's all lulzy and shit, it may be pointed out that -- at this moment -- core is vulnerable to the exact same attack.

I don't think you understand how malleability works. Nor how widespread and cooperative the Bitcoin Cash movement is.

I for one have started to migrate my coins out of their old private keys slumber. I'm tired of being forced to own fork coins.

John McAfee‏Verified account @officialmcafee  15h
 "Yes. Get your head out your ass. I am a realist. Developers have never had power. they can be replaced. How do you replace Jihan? Get real."

https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/909728256068173824



(oh and bonus from tweet "Jihan Wu enlightening Roger Ver and Myself about China's cryptocurrency intent at my birthday party in Hong Kong."   hmmmmmmmmmmmm has this entire Bcash thing been part of a bigger Chinese plan ? which the recent bans are all part of? what are these sneaky ferrets up to?)


John seems to fail to realise that miners can and will be replaced, and mining manufacturers too- it is literally about to happen (Japan for one) we  can live without China, without Bitchmain, without Chinese miners... all of that is replaceable and not just replaceable but with an upgrade (legalised , no bureaucracy in Japan the home of tech - not the imitators - amongst others)

But John seems to think good solid Devs are easily replaceable  and not important.

I think John is proving to be a bit of a Douchette.....

Well, there we have it. The world's first crypto-cuck, in John "Bath Salts" McAfee.

Agree.

a Trump voting taint tonguing bitcoiner eh?
 You have my utmost respect my friend... (btw...sorry for my rude  interruption...please continue...)

Is the only way to get your Bitcoin Gold to use Coinomi. Is there not a web wallet like Electron Cash but for Mac?

BitcoinSegWit is not Satoshi’s immutable protocol, i.e. it is not Bitcoin. It is a “pay to anyone” shitcoin. I smell a rat on the horizon combined with shorting on futures markets.

That's my thinking too.  There's no way I could provide details of every transaction I've made over the last 4 years, especially bct to alts to btc, etc.  And also considering that there's now no way for me to access any records from Mt.Gox.  So presumably the tax authorities (HMRC in UK) would reasonably accept the "$out minus $in" figure. That's my hope anyway.  But still, paying Capital Gains Tax on crypto profits would grate, a lot.

Just wondering if anyone here has yet made a CGT return to HMRC and how it was dealt with? They're massively under-staffed (up to 45 minute waiting time when phoning them, if you manage to get through at all).  My guess is that they would accept pretty much whatever method you decide to use (i.e. a "$out minus $in" figure) as long as it seems justifiable, and they would only rarely investigate further to see if your figures are accurate, in the way that usually just accept at face value most people's regular self-assessed tax returns. I doubt they have the resources to do anything further.

Has anyone here actually dealt with HMRC yet regarding btc profits? It would be interesting to hear about your experiences.

Thats correct.
He is worried about the volatility of BTC and also says his suppliers etc "haven't even heard of BTC!"  
(I think he should ask them before jumping to conclusions)
Thx for the advice.
Thx everyone who replied!  

Are
https://www.itbit.com/
and
https://binaryfin.com
legit as stated?

I am adding
Gemini
Bitstamp
to the list of possibles.
Any other recommendations?

I had a look at Notlambchop’s post history. Doesn’t look sufficiently literate to be an FT journalist.  More of a word salad type like Roach.  We do have a track record of attracting the mentally ill.  But I’m sure it’s worse elsewhere.

Not so hard when 19 out of 20 in this space is a scam...

Disappeared around the end of 2013, IIRC, about the same time avatars were locked (for years).  Avatars became changeable again within a couple years, but the forum just couldn't afford the expense of glowing ignore buttons.  There's the new software to develop, you know!  Can't be robbing from that for trivial things.

So what do you think, guys ? Sell my next block @ $11.5k or hold out for $12.5k (likely within 24 hours...)

weee

On a different.. wall observing kinda note, the UK annual self assessment tax MUST be paid by January 31st. I’m sure many people that spent well in 2017 (knowing they had massive BTC profits to fall back on) didn’t really plan ahead so needed to cash out a few Bitcoins to pay their tax bill... I’m one of these people. I cashed out at £10600 (approx $14k) but I’m sure others have been holding to the last minute hoping.... it goes a bit higher than now...

This wasn’t my Capital Gains. This was just the tax on my self employment that I frivolously spent on hookers and blow rather than saving for my tax bill. I have CGT to look forward to next year.

Old bitcoiners consolidating small amounts into segwit addresses?

Ugh. This is tragic to hear. Coming from an IT background in a former life, I've learned about having redundancy for redundancy.

eg: All my main storage is via two Thunderbolt Promise RAID chassis DAS units running RAID5, that are backed up hourly to two Synology NAS' with massive storage capacity with Synology Hybrid RAID.

I've, blessedly, not had a catastrophic failure that I could not recover from within a few hours, over the last 10 years.

With no irony or snark, I'm sorry for your losses.

I know how it is. Sometimes you get so "tired" you've gotta hide behind black tape and drown your sorrows. Mmmm, Cerveza Sol.

You can spot me 'cause I'm the guy with the black tape and the BTC ballcap.

You can also see why I need dental work.  

You made me Google Popul Vuh.

I never heard of the band or the movie. Seems Popul Vuh is the Mayan book of creation.

That photo was taken in the village near my land, in the heart of Mayan country. It's actually on Mayan land.

This is how I was able to buy it. Mexican law requires 100 years of family residency to own land. Being on Mayan land, my purchase was strictly between me, the former owner, the Mayans and the blockchain.

About half and half, the rest in cash.

I've done quite well by following them.

A secondhand ridiculous fat box on wheels could be worth more than the one you want.

A very special secondhand 1990 Lamborghini LM002 sold for $467,000 via RM Sotheby’s in New York.

This cheaper secondhand white version is for sale at $399,950.

LOL. Do they ? TIL !

I think Goat drives one too, speaking of tool wagons.

With all due respect, you are mistaken. He drove it to see his brother, about a 2 hour drive. I used to have pics, but I think I lost them in that terrible canoe accident. I tried to get him to come see me play live music near there (a packed blues jam, in a non-town of 50 people), but it was a long and curvy rural blacktop, and the weather/road surface was bad, for that winter.

Good to see the Colonel up there. But as far as usernames go he could take some drills in panic from yours truly

I do my best work after lunch.

windjc gave excellent advice back then.  I remember clearly, thinking it was probably a good idea to follow.  Wish I had 

One simple rule. Make me laugh, get a merit. It's automatic.

He appears to live in an industrial unit on an industrial estate. I presume he sleeps under the Lamborghini to stay warm at night on a bed of precious metals.

If it were me I would've spent the money on a house but we all have our priorities.

Just on this point, and not personal to you, but for info for all: it's the bank who can steal from you 'safety deposit box'. Have you read a contract with them?

It is common for banks only to insure a box for up to 25k usd. and specifically exclude damage from robbery, fire, water... virtually anything (via @ascilifeform).

And "We will not have any liability to you or any third party for incidental or consequential damages.  If an arbitration proceeding is commenced, evidence that tends to prove that something was left in the Box on last authorized entry, and was found to be missing on the next entry, will not create a presumption that it was lost because we were negligent, intentional did anything wrong or failed to exercise ordinary care.  Nor will we be required to prove that the loss was not our fault."

Then there are executive orders and any number of men-in-black shenanigans.

Boxes are great, of course, for giving up a few coins to put them off one's trail.

very quick short list  for a small "game list" or how i have to call it..... only  when breaking 12288 dollar price.....  almost same rules as the list before just a winning date AND
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              .15 BTC for correct date
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              only accounts with minimum 5 Merit and 20 activity (last time to many new pop't up  )
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              LIST CLOSES tuesday 12 CET allways CET time  no execptions
just for quick enjoyment

normal tommorrow i look @the dates.... firts one posted has the choosen date , some one with the same date have too take another one so look out a bit....
DATES sended in PERSONAL MESSAGE will    NOT count

let us break back 5-digits

The authors don't detail much experimental evidence about their new taint model (basically FIFO accounting for taint), but they do offer a couple of numbers which, if supported by more testing, would be quite impressive. At any rate, there's ample food for thought.

If the legislative landscape they hint at really comes into being, I don't know where I'd stand on the line between "hard" and "soft" approaches. Bitcoin enthusiasts? Investors? Law enforcement? All of these positions would entail both "good" and "bad" practical consequences from my self-interested point of view.

Nice piece of work. Computer scientists discussing legal implications with a practical, technically sound background. A rarity.

Tasty find merited.

Hm, I hadn't thought of that.

Can you name a scenario where the game of falsely reporting a crime ("someone stole my coins!") has a positive probabilistic sum? Penalties can be harsh, and partners in crime won't be happy to see their newly tainted coins decrease in value.

Just make an example, please. I still don't follow you. Remember, once a coin is successfully disputed, it is tainted. This is not always desirable. Furthermore, if they bust you bullshitting the system, it's trouble that goes beyond losing some coin.

With LIFO tainting, there's no taint spread. WHICH addresses get tainted might be arbitrary in some cases (coin mixers/tumblers, especially).

I'm thinking how this would work in a world where LN has taken hold. LN is a bit of a tumbler in itself. Once a coin reaches, say, Amazon or Starbucks... who takes the hit when the taint hits the fan and some customers rightly complain? They haven't considered this - or maybe that paper is pre-LN, I haven't checked the date.


In that paper, this is called the "bitcoin enthusiast" (or supporter?) position.

 Well, one day we'll laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again.

edit:
    The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
    That's how it goes
    Everybody knows

There was this user "goat" on Bitmex. He was very active in the trollbox. He defined himself as an old guy, at least in comparison to the juvenile crowd there. Boasted a lot about his riches and his profits. Gained an awful lot lot, until one day he got very, very, very badly rekt. That was a few months before the drop from ~20k down. Unseen until then (like 18 or so months ago).

Could it be him?

I think you need 100 merit to have an avatar.

My brain is frazzled and running on caffeine. Here are some loosely organized thoughts:

I started GPU mining around May 2011. BTC bubbled to ~$32 somewhere thereabouts (June-July?) and then collapsed to ~$2. The bear market was swift and brutal.

There was practically no infrastructure or major investment, aside from early ASICs that would soon come online. Hell, Roger Ver's memorydealers.com was one of the few places you could even spend bitcoins. Mt. Gox was basically the only exchange, of course.

Home GPU miners like me were a major part of the ecosystem, and we were purged at this time, as decreasing prices and skyrocketing difficulty soon made mining unprofitable. There was a sort of loss of innocence as we were wiped out and large industrial mining farms took over.

The overall feeling was similar to other bear markets - agony, despair, etc. However, many of us took to heart the rumors of bitcoin's demise. It seemed likely that bitcoin would, at best, remain something of a hobby for cypherpunks. OTOH, the despair was different. It was more about the loss of a dream, and less about the loss of money. Since BTC was so cheap, most people only had like a few grand invested, at most. Unlike Dec. 2017-18 when even the shoeshine boy lost $100K+.

"Kernel" would have been a nice touch

It's a merchant. I can pay by bank transfer, which I imagine will be slow and expensive, or by Bitcoin, with a nice 70% surcharge. I feel like I'm being bullshitted with bitcoin, though.

Wait. You believe Putin would poison someone with Polonium in the UK while having him stabbed by a random hobo in a botched 'hit 'n run' would have the same effect? Do you think Putin is retarded? Emotional? He has always seemed the most intelligent and emotionally composed of all world leaders so that seems rather silly.

I think you have been drinking the western cool-aid a bit to much. What's next? You also think Brexit is bad and that there's any evidence for human caused global warming?  

It is cheaper to take a mortage than paying the full price directly, even for a billionaire

He did the right thing. It's very important to find the other half who understands you.

Not only that. The property is also collateral... Plus all his net worth... present and future income. It's all just a publicity stunt. A good one though.

The mighty Floppy disk
The only mobile storage available back then.
Who had one/some?

Are you saying the Floppy disks are still in the market?

But why is that finex whale making it so obvious he's selling so much?

It's not a Finex whale.  It's finex.   They buy on Bitstamp where it's lower volume but high influence, push the price beyond finex to get the sheep to buyl the walls on finex and get shorters to close or to get margin calls if they can.  

It's pretty obvious.  They will go as high as they can before the natural price resumes and the price crashes.


They have all the data on what possitions are held and can thake calculated risks on how high they can pump the price an other exchanges will follow before a crash.  But it will crash hard sooner or later.  

Im not going to explain that to you.  Ask your boss at bitFinex he/she will explain it better

You registered April 9th 2014 ,  the day of the crash that kickstarted phase B of the 2013 bubble elliotwave!    On june the 3rd of the same year you are telling people to buy coins just before the crash to $160

You do work for, or are affliated with BitFinex so please FUCK OFF OFF THIS FORUM YOU LYING DISINGENUOUS TWAT!  Along with your army of Finex Bull Trolls

If you could eplain why you joined on that date?  why you were telling people to buy bitcoin before the crash, and why you're back now doing the same?

You don't have a very good track record of being correct, so what is you current purpose of posting on the forum ?  What is your prediction of the price?   Off couse you can always log in on one of your other usernames to back yourself up if you feel im picking on you.  Just remember i can see your last log in time

Respect to long HODLers if thats the risk they want to take,  thats up to them.  But please tell me how you see the rest of 2019?  But why didn't you tell mat to buy after the crash not in June 2014 when every man and his dog knew it was going to crash?

Please explain that one.  

Please explain why Bitsptamp always leads people to buy the finex walls then it crashes.  Please explain why you are here on those dates?  

 

If BSV was a scam, why would
@CalvinAyre
 invest $300 Million dollars into mining equipment that loses all its value in less than 2 years?

That’s $300 000 000. Take just 2 seconds to think about it.

Open your eyes people, the  train is full steam ahead, so get on board!

Thanks Mr 8.  I would be delighted to have a beer with you. Oxford looks like it is very doable by train from London so will give you a holler next time I am in the region.

what is the best resource for a full view of buy and sell walls? is there a better site than http://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/books/USD ?

Could be setting up for some major carnage at the CME that's for sure. ... bulls have got it back to the AYH right before the open too so it might spark a massive surge up on the short squeeze at the open.

When CME went live with the contract in Dec. 2017 I recall an ex-CME head or regulator warning that CME had never dealt with a truly hard asset like bitcoin and it was a real risk for it to cause major failures ... which is a joke because he was admitting that gold was not a hard asset in the way it has been papered out of existence.

Edit: meant to add that there will be a battle to get it back closer to friday's close before the open to stem the bleeding.

I think you'd have to be a legitimate crazyhead to use Coinbase for sums above the holiday/car level.

Imagine how seized up and overloaded they'll be. Imagine how many get caught up in their obscure trigger mechanisms that even they don't understand.

The last thing you need is to wind up some forgotten ticket number. You should sound out proper OTC operations.

I've not read good things about Coinfloor. They also don't seem professional in the slightest. Some of their policy changes have been so extreme customers thought it was an April fool until they confirmed it. I wouldn't want to touch them either.



I can stand on my own two stumps and point to every penny.

Yay! Proudhon is back!

Tell us all your stories!