Bitcoin Forum

Hi, welcome! Very many links saying "Bitcoin" and the like, point to the thread. This is a 30-60 minute deeper-than-the-surface reading experience on Bitcoin. We don't link back to shallow things, at least mainly. This thread is actively moderated, so we encourage quality visitor content, but on the other hand both my own and visitor content will be moderated (deleted) after it is no longer relevant for new readers. We don't have time for critique, please have your thread for that. Oh yes, and we do use "minicoins" (/millibitcoins/mBTC) instead of bitcoins (BTC/BTC)

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Qc-li1Iok0k/UXkyUbktwoI/AAAAAAAABMA/Iremo8Kf6gk/w842-h632/IMG_20130425_163809.jpg Daniel 4:4 (rpietila at ease)

I started this thread in the depth of the bottom of Bitcoin price (about 0.05/mBTC). Originally it started a humble way like this:

"I figured out, some people may be interested what I am doing right now. In the past, I have spammed the Mt.Gox wall observer and numerous other threads with this info, but a dedicated thread may be in order. So, from now on, I will post the bulk of my notes to this thread. I will try to grasp the feeling of the moment."


In two short months, very many things have happened, and I have even been denied & prevented from upgrading the diary from the psychiatric ward. Now as I am under medication, it is good to have some things in order, and return the reading experience to what it should be.

TL;DR:
Bitcoin's exchange value can and will go to $300,000 per BTC ($300 per mBTC) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174620.msg1886147#msg1886147)

As I write, the USD/mBTC is crashing hard, struggling at 0.055 at the moment. But I am too busy to care.

I left for work at about midnight Finnish time (UTC+3), in anticipation of the Mt.Gox opening 5 hours later. I live in downtown Helsinki with my wife and Hilla the Beautiful (9 months soon). We have an apartment facing a park, in about 1 kilometer distance from most places of interest. My office is about 500 meters away, it is furnished in the style of the lobby of a 1960s Soviet hotel. It is in fact a former hotel, but the redecoration is recent.

Before going to sleep, I looked at the grim situation in the exchanges and bought 105,000mBTC from Bitstamp at 0.062.

Roni woke me up at 4:30, he is working for me as a bitcoin broker. He has 2 years experience on Bitcoin, about 8 months full-time. With me he started Monday last week.

We had a guessing, how low it will go. We decided to set the buy orders between $0.017 and $0.050. I had specifically banned all sell orders, because I did not trust the information flows, and gave P=0.8 chances that Gox had not improved its system enough to eliminate Goxlag.

When Gox opened, we could not buy anything as our guess was too low. Order placement did not work well enough, so we just invested all the money in other exchanges at about 0.070. Inter-exchange arbitrage was deemed too difficult.

I got back to sleep soon after, only to wake up at 10:30. We took a 1-hour breakfast in a cafe down the street.

Previous day I had secured money in the exchanges by buying codes at face value. I think it was worth it, since we got the money invested at good price today. I also learned about an interesting thing, which is perhaps the single most astounding fact underlining my conviction that Bitcoin is here for good, and that the current prices will be regarded as a steal barely months from now:


After coming from breakfast, Roni concentrated on arbitraging, and I took my phone to call clients. I have a huge waiting list of people willing to buy bitcoins, and the limiting factor is my own time. I try to spend at least one hour per day to call my list, and on average I can close about 20,000 €/hour. I make anything between 5 and 15 percent, for the last 2 weeks, it's been closer to 15%.

Today I could offer for 10% over spot, at about €0.067 (you notice the convention: the currency is assumed to be USD if not specified, and I switched to mBTC last Friday and encourage the others to do so as well). This was possible because of the quote above. I am able to buy the fiat that you cashed out, but which is now trapped in the exchange. But the way to buy it is for the seller to transfer it to bitcoins, take it out, and sell the bitcoins to me at a discount. I offer 3-5 days bank payment, and it is working like a clock. I can sell the bitcoins on, don't have any risk, am not in a hurry, and rake in 5+10%.

I am currently selling bitcoins in my website (http://www.hopea.fi). Today I got only one call, though. I have high minimums between 2,000 and 5,000 €, depending on the load. Serving one customer takes about 20 minutes plus the backend time, so I cannot really try to serve them all. The most I can take is about 4 per day, so you should not blame me for an attempt to make each of them the most profitable for me.

Today was the second day of bitcoin accounts in my other business (http://www.silverbank.net). This one allows people to buy bitcoins with the silver they have already stored in the vault in Tallinn. There is about 100,000 ounces of silver there. The only problem is that if bitcoins gain traction, we will need to sell some of the silver to balance our position. For our customer, it is the effort of one email to transfer 20,000 € worth of silver to bitcoins. For us, it is a 25-kilogram silver bag that we need to sell in an illiquid market where we are already the largest player.

The "bitcoin fixing" in Silvervault today (12:00 noon Estonian time, which is the same as Finnish time, UTC+3) was € 0.0758. Funnily enough, it is not even shown in our website yet, so none of the buyers today even know as of yet, how much they paid for their bitcoins. They do it under the assumption that "the fixing is at most 10% over the price quoted in the exchanges".

It is nearing 17:15, and I need to close my 17-hour workday - admittedly I slept about 5 hours of it though - and go to spend the evening with my family. Roni already left 2 hours ago, his day was therefore shorter, although as I was sleeping, he was catching arbitrages. I needed to quit Skype when I started writing this, since he was so eager posting stuff that it distracted my attention. My last advice for him was to take a good rest over the weekend. He is a young guy and has a bitcoin position himself. It's been a ride.

It is going for 0.077 as I write. Oh, in about 1 hour or so, I have made DELETED dollars or so, just holding bitcoins.

For the longest time.

I hope you enjoyed reading, feel free to comment!

I agree, perhaps someone with skills can do it.

Just ponder for a moment - if we assume that my man sold 500,000mBTC at $0.20, making $100,000 almost pure profit, what can he do to realize his gain?

Exactly, buy 1,500,000mBTC at $0.067. Transfer it to OTC merchants. The OTC merchants sell it on, to their customers, fresh people who have no business panicking, as they cannot in general even sell the bitcoins online, so the merchants can easily stop the panic from spreading. Forced strong hands. (Yes, I did refuse one "last week entrant" selling order today for $0.06. The guy will thank me for it. I only allow people to make money with bitcoin, not lose it)


Indeed. Now it gets interesting. Somebody sells 500,000mBTC and ends up spreading 1,500,000mBTC to the offline hands.

Why is the price rising... ::)

Meanwhile in another thread. Funny that I vary my style according to the thread...

I suppose it is because the characters resemble the word "reptilian", those lizard-like things...
My guess is that it is simply your name in the format R. Pietila. Probably *  ::)

Edited, just in case I nailed that...

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1860871_1860876_1861029,00.html

http://revolutionoftruth.blogspot.com/2007/05/reptile-conspiracy-theories.html

http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/new-reptilian-world-order

or just google "reptilian overlord" ..  

In Short:  Planet Earth is actually run by a race of shape shifting reptilians.. Their ultimate purpose is the subjegation and enslavement of the human race.

The "overlord" theme ties in nicely with the fact that you are one of the more dominant personalities on this forum.....

All hail our new Reptialian Overlord..

Sigg

Ok.. despite the controversy on my origin, I will continue with the ways, how to make more money with bitcoin:

3. First-level arbitrage (over space). This is a staple of all dealers. They are essentially making first-level arbitrage every time they close a deal. I am a dealer since at least 1986, and a full-time precious metals dealer since January 2006. Somebody wants bitcoins. OK, you pay 2% over spot. Somebody wants fiat. OK, you get spot-2%. The actual percentage varies.

This can also be used without needing to find clients. You can have money and coin in different exchanges, and simultaneously execute buy and sell orders in them, locking in risk-free gains. Today there was an opportunity to buy at 0.090 in Bitstamp and sell 0.110 in Gox. That was valid for about 200,000mB, which (would have) turned out $4,000 gain.

4. Second-level arbitrage (over time). Now, this one is tricky. Let's suppose you have value in both Mt.Gox and Bitstamp, and the price in Bitstamp is almost always 1-5% higher. You want to arbitrage the difference, but if you do, you will need to recycle your fiat from Bitstamp to Gox. The exchange rate trends upwards, which makes you lose outright if you tie up a lot of your funds in fiat for the transfer period of about 7 days.

The way to make profit is to chart the premium, and find out when it is the lowest and when highest, and what there "trading values" are. If you sell at Bitstamp when the difference is 5% (and buy back at Gox), and do the opposite when the premium is only 1%, you will realize a profit, regardless of either 1. the exchange rate, 2. its trend, 3. its volatility, or 4. whether one of the exchanges is patently higher than the other. The only thing that matters, is that there is volatility in the premium of one exchange over the other. And granted there is :)

That very friend of mine called the bitcoin bubble already last autumn. He said it will go to 0.300 and drop to 0.120. It felt preposterous back then as we were not even near the old ATH of 0.032. I adopted his thinking in January and publicized it here in the forum. From the hindsight he was quite correct while shepherding his sheep. All the exchanges peaked at around 0.266-0.318. The period of stability, if we will see it, will likely be very close to 0.120.

As for the visual image, you will have to wait until I get some technical help :)

From another thread. Quotes edited to show the values in millibitcoins (originally: BTC).

See? Your school did better in teaching math then those which educate the so called "American journalists." Now try to be appreciative! ;D

The third option, why somebody would now have anything between a million and 25 million, is just being so ignorant to not care about the price or its swings. If you have other things in your life, and your investment was just a speculative longshot anyway.

Some of my friends who bought bitcoins last autumn, only checked the price in March, to find out that they were sitting on 500% gains. Even the following story is true: Easywallet started having a 12% APR storage fee for large balances in November. My clients still have anything up to 300,000 mBTC in easywallets (which they started to use before the storage fee), which now generate hundreds daily to the system administrator.

I am just too busy to call all of them and advice that Easywallet is not suitable for storing EUR 10,000s per URL, and it is also costly as you lose 1% of the balance monthly.

Nouveau riche and their problems...

Hello all,

I think this is a good spot for me to introduce myself to the Bitcointalk community. I have been a long time reader of this forum since 05/2011, but I have not been writing here. I am well known in Finnish Bitcoin community, but internationally I am a new face. I met handful of you in London Bitcoin conference, where I was representing Bittiraha.fi. Bittiraha.fi belongs to Prasos Oy, a Bitcoin company in Finland. I am proud to be one of the founders of that successful online startup.

I met Risto for the first time last autumn in some Bitcoin related stuff. Immediately we had a four hour meeting, found out that our companies can do mutually profitable business together, and that has been going on from ever since. Lately, as he said, he offered me a strong position in his organization and I did not hesitate to take it. I had a lot going on in Bittiraha.fi as well, but for now I leave it in excellent hands, while I concentrate on some new stuff and learn from a respectable and successful businessman. I will finish a capital round which I started and leave the company standing stronger than ever before.

Alongside some occasional coffee making, I was immediately given quite free hands to explore ways to accumulate more wealth (=bitcoins ldo) for Risto. That is what I have been doing and what I will be doing. I feel so supercharged with Risto's resources, finally some serious wall building. I just hope he would drink less coffee so I could focus on making bitcoins.

Something about myself. I am 25, keen on computers, game theory, Buddhism. I have studied Information and Knowledge Management master of science program in Tampere University of Technology, but for the last three years I just have not had time for it! I traveled the world quite extensively, then I found out about Bitcoin and it immediately got all my attention.

To contribute some about recent events.. yes, Friday was interesting trading day for all of us brokers. My own position is long term hold and as a broker for Risto I would not even have time to think my own coins. Anyway, during Friday we focused in buying. Our first approach did not work, the price did not dip enough. The second approach was to systematically get it in with $51-$71 range and it worked perfectly during the afternoon. Yeah, it took some waiting, but it is game of patience!

Thursday was also interesting day.. I made my weekly wage for Risto in less than two hours. Raking in bitcoins so fast made me happy. I was very tired all day as I was woken up around midnight to follow the cra.. price correction and I did not get any more sleep. Volatility creates opportunities and I focused on low-risk but medium-yield moves in couple of exchanges. Luckily being competitive RTS player gives me an advantage with rapid clicking of mouse! I hope we will see a quiet day or two during next week so I may focus on improving my trading tools. I have to setup quickly: backup Internet connection, a multi-display setup, customized programs and some improvements on data sheets and charts used etc.

I look eagerly towards future. I think we are headed into interesting times as Bitcoin is quickly becoming main stream.

that is for sure. Note that i still think it s a pretty good buisness with return superior of what i initially think.
Now i personally lost money (well not yet but bitcoin-24 smell very bad now) in that game too.
I guess it s always the same, only invest what you can afford to loose.

I like this thread, gives me a glimpse into the inner workings of a "career in bitcoin" ;-)

You have inspired me to finally get off my ass and start selling bitcoins locally, OTC. I won't be making $10,000 an hour, but I'll be spreading the love and making a little extra on the side. I'll definitely be looking here for useful things to incorporate - even with the huge differences in scalability between a bitcoin mogul's operation and a little person selling on localbitcoins, advice like "don't spend too much time negotiating with picky clients when there are 10 other people waiting who will pay the price you give them without complaint" is golden.

Several thumbs up, I'm liking this diary so far.

Since this is a diary, and not a rant or a collection of my theoretical thinking, I might perhaps post what I did today.

We had agreed to meet in the office at 9:00, and Lauri would come one hour later. Lauri worked for me as an operations manager in my mobile scrap gold business last summer. He is expert in newspaper advertising, as the scrap gold business was at that time all about newspaper advertising. It cost in excess of $20,000 per month to keep one mobile gold buying desk open. The rent per 24 days was more than $5000, and the advertising cost also $5000+. The rest was personnel and overhead. People ridiculed our humble plastic equipment, asking, whether we would soon be rich enough to actually rent a permanent shop. I had one all the time, with the montly expense running at about $2000 excluding my salary. They did not know that I could rent 2-3 prime permanent locations for the price of one mobile buying desk.

Oh sorry, I need to stay in topic. Lauri is an expert in the field that I was about to start a skirmish in - newspaper ads. The reason why I needed such, was simple. I want to sell bitcoins OTC for a nice margin, and I figured out there was an opportunity in the market for the following reasons:

- The current operations in Finland - other than me - are designed for nerds, by nerds. And that market is more or less tapped.

- There was this 2-page featured article in Helsingin Sanomat on Sunday. In addition, the morning TV today was also heavy on Bitcoin. There were three experts on the subject doing the talking, and the reporter was appreciative. Even the recent crash was not an issue, rather it was presented as a buying opportunity. (Seriously - this is a state-owned TV!) The general populace is primed for Bitcoin, but the supply is not there.

- It cost a mere $5000 to put a postcard-sized ad in the newspaper, and our profit margin is 15%. Our break-even point is therefore about $35,000 in cumulative sales, which I estimate will be achieved in 48 hours. Everything above that is pure profit. (OK, Roni's estimation of the payback time is 4 days, and there is no guarantee about it ever paying back and blahblah, but I am positive. You will see if I am wrong, since most of the time I am)

- Organising such a(n ad)venture is fun and easy for me, and easy enough for someone else to do after me. I believe we got a headstart of at least a day, maybe more. While there are many organizations capable of doing the frontend part, the backend (exchanges, etc.) is sorely lacking, and realistically I don't expect any competition from anyone. It's like the 7 days' war. Either you got the coins, but you are not a businessman, or you are a businessman, but you ain't got the coins, and won't get any to sell in at least a week if you start now. The only one who can quickly sell you such a number of coins is me, and I will not be selling them to anyone for any less than 10% over spot, which makes a profitable resale difficult. Checkmate. No competition :)

First at about 11, I bought 10 one-kilo silver coins from a gentleman for 68,000mBTC. In dismay I had realized that silver price had dropped 10% since Friday. Even 30 days before it would have meant a busy week for me, writing articles about silver, but now I didn't have time to think about it. I sent Lauri to realize some of our gold reserves and he netted about 21,000 € for 19 ounces. Much less than planned.

Most of the time went to practical details with the newspaper ad. Our staple graphic designer was busy with other orders, so we needed to quickly get a new one. Partly because of the risk associated with this (we had about 3 hours from the decision to put a large ad, to the materials deadline), we decided to use a very plain ad. It is similar to the one appearing soon in the central part our website (http://hopea.fi), but larger. 

Somebody dropped by to pick up her paper wallet of coins I had sold the previous week. I had a lunch, river crab cocktail feta salad, with coffee, since there was no wine left. Tomorrow we have our private club upper layer meeting, which will feature wine and champagne. Exactly two weeks before, our reason for celebration was breaching $0.1 from the downside. Now we can celebrate the same number again. I hope for the next 12 meetings we could celebrate $0.1, since that would be an excellent round number breather, during which we can gear up our engine and gobble up lots of coins for reasonable prices. Due to my intuition that I am not the only one hoping, I won't count on it, though..

For that reason I extended our trading capital to buy Goxmoney for $50k. It is 500,000+ millibitcoins, man! Our trading position is over 100% right now, since I have accounts payable in excess of the fiat-denominated cash equivalent. Either I get to sell 1,000,000mBTC to the public during the rest of the week, or I need to sell it in the exchange. The latter option would be a wash or maximum a 5% profit (the discount I apply to buying Goxmoney). If USD/BTC tanks hard, it will be an "ouch".

My silver dealing is nearing an inflection point. The paper silver price is dropping like a stone, and physical premiums are skyrocketing. Today's fixing in Silvervault was 16.05 EUR/AGD, which evaluates the entire content of our vault at a measly EUR 2 million. When the Bitcoin millionaires start to cash out, there'll be a whiplash of 20% immediate increase in the silver price, followed by a 30-day busy importing period, during which any additional demand can only further push up the price. This is in absence of external shocks, which will no doubt be many... such as our main supplier in the U.S. being almost constantly out of stock for 2 months now.

We did not actually do more than 8 hours in the office. The closing of the day was about rolling out our newspaper ad campaign to 4 other newspapers the next day, counting money and hunting receipts for bookkeeping. When dealing with physical cash you need to do this every once in a while - we even have the term "kymppi" (literally: a ten (grand)) which represents a stack of physical euros with an approximate total value of 10k. Sometimes you go wrong, though.. today one kymppi only contained about EUR 3,000 since there were 20 € notes in the middle. We seldom see anything except 50, 100 and 500 € notes in quantity.

After taking care of my daughter during the evening, the family went to bed. I finished some buy orders, will set some sells to the $.12 range in no hope that they'll be fulfilled but just in case, finish this post, and start polishing our website for the new visitors tomorrow morning.

I will be in London Th-Su this weekend.

Thank you, this is the intention. Bitcoin is so very small at present. I get labeled a bitcoin mogul, although in reality I own 3 coinshops in tiny European countries and my staff number about 5 :)

Never invest more than you can afford to lose. If your intention is to life an easy life, sell to the strength. If you want to be a bitcoin mogul, buy bitcoins with all your spare cash. If enough businessmen do this, bitcoin will be quite valuable.

I think it better represents the actual position of the basic unit in the universe of values and speculation.

Bitcoin is currently traded like a stock. The market cap of listed companies divided by their share count, gives the share price. The companies cannot easily influence their market cap (increasing this is generally their aim, though). What they can do with ease in most jurisdictions, however, is to adjust the number of shares by splitting and (less commonly) reverse-splitting them.

I followed the development of Nokia Corporation in 1993-2000 from a diversified unprofitable midsize Finnish company, to the unrivalled global mobile phone giant. The market cap rose more than 100x from the bottom in 1993. Nokia did not want their share to look expensive, bubblish, or "too rich and lazy" at 266 euros, though. They kept on splitting it to keep the price in their sweet spot range.

Small companies that are risky, often want their share price to be in the sub-$1 range to attract the kind of people looking for quick profits, and also to mask illiquidity. Just consider, if bitcoin "ask" is $140 and "bid" is $120, it looks very wrong. Otoh, if a millibitcoin trades in between 0.12-0.14, everybody is OK with it, since you cannot expect anything more from a penny stock.

In my opinion, it is much more fitting for the current state of Bitcoin, to have a stock of 21 billion basic units, trading at 0.06 at present, than to have 21 million units trading at $60.

The change is voluntary, except in this thread, where you risk your post to be moderated if you don't abide the rules  :D Oh well, I have deleted most of your posts anyway in order to keep it readable. After all, I am developing a story, which you can read starting from the OP all the way to the last page, without dying of boredom. Please tell me how I am doing!

So far, an "ouch"  :(


Silvervault hit 17.38 (up) today in the face of paper crashing, because the physical premium in the U.S. (Apmex) is already $6 per ounce(!!), which is incorporated into the formula. So far no cashing out of Bitcoin millionaires though, that would be interesting.

Oh well.. good days, bad days.

Tuesday I started my new OTC selling market (http://hopea.fi/toimintaohjeet-bitcoin-vaihdossa/). It's now been two days (http://hopea.fi/bitcoin-kurssihistoria/). I had high expectations of the ad making money in two days, but...

...the reality so far is one minimum size (€500) order. So far it is insignificant compared to my other businesses, where we are talking in excess of 10,000 euro deals and 1,000+ profit per day. Because although I am wrong most of the time, I don't like it. So I had a bad day. Roni was sick and didn't show up. Lauri was organizing the next round of newspaper ads.

Also we had a higher echelon club meeting with low attendance. Perhaps people were in a bad mood because of bitcoin hitting $0.05, and did not care to show up. Also everyone was too tired after a stressful week that the meeting was closed already at about midnight.

The following day was more of a success. I was very interested to find Sergio's newest analysis on the Bitcoin network of 2009. It seems that Satoshi himself mined most of the coins in 2009. This subject has intrigued me a long time, finally now I have the answer.

Also because of customers showing up, I sold some silver and bitcoins today, and bought some scrap silver and gold. The total rake was about EUR 1,500 which is basically OK. A funny detail was a gentleman buying silver with 20 EUR notes. I did not want to count the bills, so I weighed them instead. About 260 grams of funnypaper bought him 6.5 kg of silver.

We decided to organize a senior-level Bitcoin miniconference in June. A deep experience for a handful of people is our aim. I am currently restricted from providing any more info on this, but I am enthusiastic myself.

What I believe will be my greatest service to the Bitcoin community, is to organize a "dealer network" of BTC dealers and traders. The aim is to develop a members-only clearing system for large USD/BTC transactions. Bitcoin needs to grow up - too many people think that Mt.Gox has anything to do with the fair value of BTC. A system with periodic orderbook matchings and clearings, price lock-in with no cash outlay, and T+3 settlement of trades (both fiat and BTC will change hands 3 days after the trade) works very well in physical silver, and will work with BTC.

In contrast, the exchange-centered system is a neverending source of problems in both. Just have a look at silver price "dropping" in the COMEX exchange (due to persistent manipulation, fully exposed 5-10 years ago but still ongoing), while physical silver is about same price as before the crash, but harder to find for the reason that the exchange is messing with the price signals. Soon we will see a two-tier pricing of BTC if we do not remain vigilant... one price for bogus exchange trades, and one for actual hard blockchain transactions. The dealer network, connecting all interested parties with active BTC trades and 1,000,000mBTC or more trading capital, is what I will be helping to succeed.

The weekend from now on I will spend in London, likely not posting here very much.

We are now getting a green candle after a week of red. Very, very, good. I mean both the red ones and the green. My guess for the trading range a few days ago, was $0.10-$0.12. Since we spent such a long time sub-0.1, it is now a resistance. Support is in 0.05. Therefore if I had a trading mentality, I would sell at above $0.09, aiming to buy back lower. In reality swing trading is something I almost never do. Since my broker is sick, he can't do it either. So don't worry about any crashes because of my actions.

Call this a week.

Visible to a naked eye from 5 meters, BITCOINEJA (engl. "bitcoins!"). This is the last page, so even when folded, the paper may end up showing this ad.


Huge media attention over the last two days before ad placement. 2-page brilliant article in the leading newspaper, morning TV, lots of buzz.


"Alennuskoodi" means "discount code", which obviously can be checked out only from my website.

The campaign webpage was visited 800+ times, so this is not totally bad. Perhaps those people just need an additional 1-2 weeks before making their purchases. Even a sublink in the text of the campaign page, was clicked 122 times (edit: 35 more times in last 12 hours even though it's 8 AM here now!).

I think the ad was good. What would you have done to make it better? Go to the website and teach me! :)

What an unbelievably bad timing. This just underlines the fact that you should never trade with a significant position, if your overall position is significant. (And if not, and you try to double your small stash by savvy trading, be adviced that you could as well employ a roulette wheel...)

So I take courage of the fact that I still have both my long-term position, and >50% of the speculative position left. The latter will be sold on Monday, if the rally continues.

I found out that there is indeed Internet in the conference venue, so I will be able to post the most important things during the weekend.

TL; DR: How long can bitcoin's purchasing power go? I have seen pundits posting as high values as 1 satoshi == $1. I do not think this is possible, the realistic limit for a value of 1 bitcoin is $300,000 in 2013 dollars.

I think the largest possible long-term value for a bitcoin is reached, when all the civilized world is using bitcoin as the reserve currency, upon which the international trade rests.

As we all should know (albeit very few do), gold was used as a sole reserve currency after the hijacking of bimetallism in about 1873. The gold standard was suspended in 1914, following the outbreak of the Great War. The framework for its destruction was already started being laid in 1913, when the Federal Reserve was founded. The destruction was carried out piecewise following World War I, so that FDR in 1933 could blame the remaining vestiges of the gold standard on all of the world's problems, and order the gold confiscation of 1933, and the devaluation of the dollar by 40%. This caused the great depression of 1933-1941. They needed another war to lift the country from stagnation. We are in a similar precarious situation now, and an apocalypse can likely be avoided, only be quickly increasing bitcoin's value, which is why I post this essay.

During the gold standard, as well as both before and after it (http://www.numbersleuth.org/worlds-gold/), the total stock of above-ground gold in existence, divided by the population of the planet, has stayed remarkably constant.

In 1913, there was 1.65 billion people and 31 000 tons of gold. It is 18.8 grams per person.
In 2013, there is 7.11 billion people and 165 000 tons of gold. It is 23.2 grams per person.

Gold's purchasing power has stayed essentially unchanged from 1913 to 2013. A skilled worker in the U.S. earned $50 per month, which is 2.5 ounces of gold. The same 2.5 ounces today costs $3,500, which is still a reasonable wage of a skilled worker. Both amounts let you live in a relative comfort.

In 1913, all international currencies were defined in terms of a fixed quantity of gold, and were therefore linear representations one of another. Despite the large number of bills (banknotes) in circulation, the existence of real bills (http://www.professorfekete.com/articles%5CAEFRealBillsWaggonWayInTheAir.pdf) kept the gold's value from appreciating without bounds, regardless of the fact that the world trade and living standards increased very rapidly from 1873 to 1913.

When there was many goods coming into the market, the increase in the economy did not require dipping into the pool of the available gold coins. On the contrary, the overabundance of goods effected the rise in discount rate, which made holding present gold a relatively worse deal compared to holding future gold (i.e. real bills denominated in gold and payable in gold coin only, after a maximum of 91 days from writing, with 'interest'). Therefore the inordinate rise in gold's price as the consequence of specialization and the economic growth never happened. If somebody says so, it is not true. The economy expanded on self-liquidating, non-fractional reserve credit. (There was also non-self liquidating credit available such as mortgages and business loans, but delving into them is not the issue here.)

Bitcoins could serve as the basis of the future economy, in the similar way as gold did in 1873-1913. As as little as about 20 grams of gold per person could serve as the economic and financial backbone of the planet in 1913, BTC0.003 will do in 2013 if we give it a chance.

Making a quick conversion, using the value of a U.S. worker's monthly wage, we can calculate the potential value of bitcoin if this scenario ever becomes true. The monthly wage of a skilled worker would be 1.2 million satoshi, having a purchasing power of $3,500 in 2013 U.S. dollars.

Therefore a satoshi will be worth no more than $0.003, and 100 million satoshi = 1 bitcoin, will be worth $300,000. Any price above this (remember to factor in the USD inflation, though!) is likely a short-term aberration, or a bubble, and should be treated accordingly.

Understanding the exact mechanisms, how the great depression was caused, is a topic of deeper study, although I think professor Fekete is correct (http://www.professorfekete.com).

LOL I should have gone long bitcoins following the publication of my analysis, I kind of expected the price would rise  ;)

Daytrading is difficult, though [EDIT: values in quote converted to mBTC, as is the norm here]:

i attended one of his seminars about 6 yrs ago in S.F.  it was great.  my own thinking has been influenced alot by his theories on money, gold, and especially UST's.

clearly, i disagree with him on where gold is headed but this only occurred after Bitcoin.

i can't remember the name of his other colleague that was there; the guy who pissed off the Mise's Institute last year and who has worked on the gold basis...

So as I understand it the monetary properties are that a company/trader issues a real bill with a promise to deliver the goods or the bitcoin in 90 days (60 days, 30 days, 7 days also options?).

Would someone mind spelling out specifically what real bills need to do in terms of payment, settlement, delivery schedules, etc?

The idea is that real goods are moving through the chain from production to the consumer, and instead of each link in the chain needing to pay the previous link in hard coin (which is strictly limited in supply and can't expand/contract according to the current behavior of the marketplace), the person who will sell at the end passes a "real bill" denominated in hard coin up the chain, so that the increasingly ready-for-market good can then pass down the chain to the final buyer. Then, once the sale has occurred, everyone can cash in their real bills in exchange for their share of the hard coin that the buyer paid.

Obviously, in most cases, a real bill would be issued for a period other than 90 days - typically, just the amount of time needed to bring the good to market. But it's important that the period be short - at the very most one season - because real bills are only real bills if they represent the final steps to bringing a good to market, and furthermore they're only real bills if it's the kind of good which is certain to sell basically as soon as it gets there. It's too hard to have that kind of certainty when looking more than a couple months out (especially given that many of the goods financed by real bills are seasonal goods, which means if they don't sell in a couple months you'll have a whole year's worth of changing consumer sentiment before they get another chance).

(In case you couldn't tell, rpietila, I've had a chance to read some more of Fekete's "lecture notes" ;D)

Okay, for use case then say I'm a buyer of oil.

1) i want to take delivery of oil in 30 days time
2) i issue a real bill, denominated in bitcoins that I can prove exist via the blockchain, to the producer(?) for the agreed quantity of oil
3) the producer takes the real bill and can sit on it or trade it for something else because basically it is as good as bitcoins
4) whoever is holding the real bill (are they generally a bearer certificate that can circulate?) show up on bill expiry date and takes delivery of bitcoins from the oil buyer account

Is that the essence of it or are there other subtleties?

If that is it, I'm pretty sure we can do this with a fairly simple extension to Open Transactions software with a new asset class and use things like multi-sig or locktimes, escrow or smart contracts to ensure that the real bill is a bearer redeemable instrument and etc. I.e. we can cryptographically remove the trust required of the real bill issuer by the bearers. Basically the real bill becomes a cryptographically secured token of exchange, with a provable backing of bitcoins, that will be released to the bearer on/after a fixed date in the future.

You're close, but there's one thing you're missing: the whole point of real bills is to cover the non-existence or unavailability of the hard coin until it arrives (and the structure of the bill is such that everyone can be sure it'll arrive).

Let's take your oil example. You sell oil to people in London, but it's manufactured in Russia. There are plenty of people in London who want to buy oil, so even to someone on the opposite side of the world, it's pretty clear that if only you had some oil you could sell it right away. So you call someone in Russia and ask them how long it'd take for them to ship you some oil, and how much it'd cost. Now, let's say they say "okay, it's 1BTC a barrel and it'll take a week to get to you", but you don't want to dip into your cold wallet just to buy a barrel of oil that you'll immediately resell anyway. So instead, you write them a real bill for 1BTC "from sale of a barrel of oil" payable eight days hence. They receive the bill, and send the oil, which arrives in one week as scheduled, and you sell it all in a day, earning the 1BTC promised on the bill (plus whatever your profit might be). Meanwhile, as the barrel of oil makes its way to London, your real bill might be circulating who-knows-where. On the eighth day, as you sit in your shop with all the oil sold and your profits taken, someone in Brazil cashes in your real bill and you pay them the promised 1BTC.

The problem with cryptographically "proving" real bills is that their whole point is to keep people from having to tie up hard coin (gold in Fekete's examples, bitcoins in this discussion) to fund each step of bringing a fast-selling good to market. The ancient example he gave was a clothier - someone grows the cotton, someone spins it into thread, someone weaves it into fabric, someone tailors it into pants. If the pants cost 250 miniBTC, you'd need to tie up nearly a whole bitcoin to pay for the production of each pair of pants - the spinner pays the farmer for the cotton, then the weaver pays the spinner for the fabric, then the tailor pays the weaver for the cloth, and finally the customer pays the tailor for the pants. Without a way to give everyone in the supply chain an explicit cut of the final store price, goods in an industrialized economy (which tread many, many steps on the way to market) put an undue burden on the money supply as they travel down the path of production.

Okay, I thought that might be the case. So basically the issuers of the real bills need to be trusted to make good on their promises to deliver the bitcoins/gold on the allotted date.

Open Transactions can easily be accommodated to produce these instruments, in fact it is ideally suited to it, since anybody can be an issuer of any asset. Adding a component of time to expiry is probably not a big extension since it is already done for the untraceable cash instruments.

Having a provably-backed instrument is another level of sophistication that is not needed generally for real bills then.

I think we can get something started here ...

I have never seen him in real life. Many years back I wanted to have him come over to Finland to give a speech, and we had some contact concerning the plan. I was affiliated with a university back then. I think the visit would not have been the best return for his effort, so I don't regret that it never happened. Also I always wanted to go to his academy, but did not have the time. Well, since he is still alive, perhaps we'll have a chance to meet soon... Do you know, what does he think about Bitcoin, and does he realize that his theories can be applied to it?

The public articles have been duly digested also here  ;D

So, I can vouch for you, for speaking the pure and unadulterated truth concerning real bills. It will be a kickass financial application when we get there!

you'd be about 100 years too early.

the Real Bills Doctrine necessitates that there be a fixed money supply that is functioning as a stable store of value.  Bitcoin, as you know, is nowhere near that right now as we climb the asymptotic issuance curve and experience waves of price instability.  it also necessitates a freely flowing money supply; not one that is hoarded.

Real Bills also depend on lex mercatoria btwn merchants and is enforced in special customized courts.  Bitcoin is a long way from that.  lex mercatoria also assumes that underlying law and order exists within the traditional legal system; something that can hardly be used to describe what we have today in our financial system.  

stability is required for Reals Bills to function.

he's very tall.  he must be getting up there in age, though.  at the time he was travelling around with that little Indian guy whose name i've been racking my brain trying to remember.  their big thing at the time was the gold basis.  as i said earlier, the Indian guy pissed off the Mises Institute last year with some critical comments against Mises.

stopped reading him for the most part the last couple of years since i've been into Bitcoin but also b/c he cut back significantly on the frequency of his writings for whatever reason (got tired of cruising by his website and not seeing anything new).  but he appears to be writing a bit more frequently in 2013, so that is good.  i'm trying to catch up on that right now.

the key concept i learned from Fekete was his theory on UST's and how they are causing a deflationary spiral.  i did a long post about this last summer somewhere here on the forum.  it's really key to understanding what's happening to the world today.  all i can think of when i ruminate over this concept is a huge black hole.

I'm glad you found my explanation clear. :)

To be honest there were a couple times I also couldn't wrap my head around a particular point in his Econ 101 notes until I reread it a couple times. His choice of terminology is sometimes confusing - for instance, calling trussing up bonds as real bills "illicit arbitrage" when the real issue (as far as I can tell) is that they're disguising risky paper as risk-free paper.

Here (http://professorfekete.com/articles%5CAEFMonEcon101Lecture5.pdf)'s the relevant PDF - the example is used as a fable about how real bills might have been invented.

If Bitcoin continues its exponential trend of 26% value appreciation per month, it will reach the marketcap of gold sometime in 2016. Actually, 2012 was an aberration of the exponential trend (too slow). If we leave it out (it was ridden with scams and hacks, in addition to quiet accumulation by the by-now bitcoin richest people), we will be at $300 in less than 2 years.

For the bitcoin real economy, 30% or more per month is a little bit of a stretch. We were already experiencing the stretch 2 weeks ago: some people including me, got totally stunned because of the rapid value appreciation, and gave up working on the infrastructure that is required to keep up the growth. But Bitcoin corrects itself with unbelievable speed. I think we have a chance to resume the trend and take the old ATH sometime in May.

The infrastructure is also getting better at a speed of perhaps 20% per month, and picking up. I will have a fully functional (people, software, hardware, legal, financial) command center a month from now. Then the bitcoin network can no more be destroyed, since I alone can dev and run it, if all the others fail in the entire world (<- which, of course, I don't regard as probable, LOL). Expect more such supernodes to pop up at breathtaking speed in the weeks and months from now.

It is a far cry to believe that the current legal system can somehow adopt Bitcoin. A more probable scenario would be a complete dismantling of huge current power structures, such as the U.S. Administration.

It is helpful to think, the Soviet Union also dismantled itself 22 years ago. Now, that one was followed by a period of looting, but this time I do not expect such to happen. The information density in the world has grown exponentially ever since then - now we are heading towards a period of unbelievable personal freedom, liberty and prosperity, coupled with decreasing pollution and resource usage, if the command structures that hold sway over most of the world, just decide to end themselves.

If bitcoiners will be let to form their own legal systems, the real bills question can very well be settled in the next 2 years, before the currency stabilizes anyway. (As long as we are in the value appreciation phase, the real bills will have no chance to function.) If the P-T-B act to prevent this, the price of 1 bitcoin will easily overshoot to $millions range, as civilized trade will be difficult, and hoarding will be the main function of bitcoins.

I will be arranging a conference dedicated to this, probably in June. Admission will be limited, so keep an eye on this.

Julian Assange confirms my views (http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt?nocache) (no, in fact I confirm his, and act on them...):


You will soon have an opportunity to buy bitcoins for 1/100 of their reasonable long term value!

But why wait, as you will be able to buy them for <1/1000 now?  ???

Some of my thoughts on gold and silver manipulation:

If the following poster quoted your comment in its entirety, I typically prune the conversation by deleting all the comments that were included in the quote.

I have deleted about 90% of all comments, including my own, if they were nicely quoted by someone else, whose comment I wanted to remain in the thread. [EDIT: IF this is hijacked so that the poster deletes his comment, which includes the only surviving part of some discussion, I will need to alter the method. Please don't delete your own comments from this thread, unless you are sure they would be deleted anyway by me.]

If the comment is not developed by anyone in about 24-48 hours, I typically delete it, unless there is great value.

If the comment is stupid, I instantly delete it.

Please continue posting, I appreciate the discussion between you, cypher & Qoheleth.

First Class Bitcoin Supernode

- Sovereign ability to run, manage and develop the Bitcoin network in absence of any other entities.
- 24/7 monitoring, technical, and trading ability, connections with most relevant Bitcoin power centers, accounts in all relevant exchanges
- Global operation, capacity to set up activities in most jurisdictions with minimum lead times, access to all specialists (bankers, lawyers, tech) globally
- Able to generate its own funding indefinitely regardless of bitcoin exchange value, or backed by an entity wealthy enough to support the operations indefinitely in absence of cash flow from operations
- Minimum full-time staff in command&control structure: 5-10

Second Class Bitcoin Supernode

- Able to run, although probably not effectively develop, the Bitcoin network in absence of other entities. The end user of Bitcoin will notice if the service level falls to the second class. This will lead to delays and blackouts of important services.
- Real-time alerts in place to activate the relevant parts of the organization if something worth their effort happens in Bitcoinworld. Position management in multiple trading platforms, good connections to several other supernodes.
- Can project force to other jurisdictions, albeit with considerable effort and lead time
- Can function independently of external funding as long as Bitcoin's price does not totally collapse, (or has enough external funding to not care)
- Minimum number of dedicated permanent staff: 2-3

Third Class Bitcoin Supernode

- May or may not run a Bitcoin node, cannot likely summon the resources to fix the protocol if need be, may be entirely non-tech
- Actively follows what happens in Bitcoinworld. Reasonably well connected to at least some other supernodes.
- Mainly a local operation.
- Owns enough bitcoins, income-generating bitcoin or other businesses, or other assets, to continue operations at the desired level infinitely (note - the marginal cost of operation on this level is essentially zero)
- Minimum number of people: 1 part-time
- In order to be classified as a supernode, there either needs to be a good number of bitcoins in possession, mining capacity, bitcoin tradership, dealership or other business or publishing organisation.

Capability of a Supernode

The capability of a Bitcoin supernode can be expressed in a pseudologarithmic scale from 0.0 to 5.0., where
- 1.0 is an essentially perfect small operation
- 3.0 is the threshold of being classified as a supernode
- 5.0 is an interested newbie smart enough to understand the basics.

I have been trying to explain the transition of Bitcoin from the alpha/beta stage to the mainstream. I developed the supernode framework to give the reader some understanding of the magnitude of the change that we are undergoing. As I see it, any of the public power centers of Bitcoinworld, do not currently even qualify to the first class. This can be readily observed by the number of scams and hacks, and inadequate organizational and financial resources of most of the actors.

There are currently hundreds of organizations in the world, capable of developing a 1.0 supernode in 3-6 months, if they decide to enter in. None of the current (public) players possesses such an ability now, and even though many may be interested, their rate of capability increase (the time in days, to move one decimal in the supernode capability scale) is behind that of the potential new entrants.

2013 will be an interesting year, for the mainstream adoption and price appreciation of course, but also for some serious behind-the-scenes action. I realize that most people have a difficulty of understanding that bitcoin's price does not have a stable value between $0 and $300k (in fact I only myself realized it a week ago!), and because of this new understanding how the bitcoin power network functions, the probability of it going to zero is rather slim indeed. Seeing $115 ever again seems unlikely to me.

Don't be silly, if there's ONE thing a democratic government is great at, its jumping on the train not standing it its way.


I'm just looking for the "real bills" definition now, but so far from your descriptions it sounds like essentially a bearer-owned futures instrument secured by raw materials.  Or in other words a publicly-issued currency backed by commodities (oil, energy, etc) and some concept of how much those commodities "reworked" into a product might be worth.  Essentially it is the creation of transient currencies because of issues and inefficiencies with the availability, portability, or quantity of the "standard" gold based currency.  
In that context, bitcoin ought to render it unnecessary, due to its transferability and divisibility.

On the other hand, real bills also act as a swing loan.  In this context they may be useful (to pair with bitcoin), but at the same time they increases risk and imply a trust relationship between the merchants.  So if a merchant or his customers do not NEED a swing loan, it is better to avoid them -- historically it seemed to be impossible to avoid both due to the scarcity of gold (it really isn't that divisible in practice) and the transportation risk/inefficiencies.

Note a "color coin" could work very well to represent a "real bill"...

I see the supernode classification as an interesting theoretical exercise. What has been holding back the investments of many of my wealthy clients, has been the insecurity concerning the negative "black swan" events. The prospective investors have no clue, how the bitcoin network functions; therefore they think, there is some probability that it may just "fall apart", resulting in the loss of the value of their bitcoins. What I am presenting to larger audience now, is an easy-to-understand (for the less technically oriented) structure of the network.

There is no way for your bitcoins to become worth $0, as long as there is one entity capable of operating the network. A vague "consensus" of 4237 bitcoin nodes is not needed. If bitcoin suddenly becomes vulnerable, in an extreme case, if the whole devteam gets kidnapped or something as unlikely - the miners and the holders of bitcoins will just give their quiet permission for a less-capable shadow devteam, which the 1 class supernodes will host as a backup. This is not a power grab or anything, bitcoin is an open source software, and the best devteam will any way win in the long run.

Actually I believe Gavin sleeps his nights better when he knows that there are 3-10 fully functional backup teams hosted by the same number of supernodes in about 6-12 months of time. Since he is no longer a single-point-of-failure, there will be no incentive to harm him, as there is no gain for doing so.

Let me rephrase so the context is clear:  When the choice is between dismantling the entire government and bitcoin, they'll choose bitcoin.  Especially because 90% of the representatives will already own lots of coins! 

If you think I'm crazy think on these:
No sales tax in the USA for internet purchases (essentially no VAT tax)...
NH state reps were the first politicians to accept bitcoin...
Gold legal tender in Utah and soon arizona http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/20/arizona-set-to-ok-gold-silver-currency/2100039/ (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/20/arizona-set-to-ok-gold-silver-currency/2100039/)
Shire Silver
FinCen implicitly recognizing the legality of bitcoin
Eventually somebody will realize that it is a great way (excuses inflation) to get out of US dollar denominated debt obligations.

A strong top-down government has to have a hard stance, then do a complete turn-around, hoping that that's the correct decision.  That's how governments are "dismantled".  A democracy runs in 10 directions at once potentially indefinitely and is stronger; its like P2P governing, only not quite so much.  Think about this: if the USD tanks tomorrow because all the international holders decide to exchange their holdings for something else, the only thing that will keep imports/exports flowing are US citizens with bitcoin and PM holdings.  Can you imagine that that hasn't occurred to them?

No matter how you slice or dice it - bitcoins will go to the moon. This is common knowledge to everyone here.

The new information is, nobody can stop it. (supernode model is just a way to tell it to non-techies like me)

Expect l a r g e buys from wealthy people, as they wake up to the latter.. ;D

Lol, I did not even say I would :) What made you think so... ::)

I don't need to do it. The fact that A) there are certain power centers in the world + B) Bitcoin is interesting, guarantees that several entities will do it in the coming weeks and months. I can readily monitor the situation in Helsinki - it's full of this kind of organizing going on, just this thread (https://forum.bittiraha.fi/index.php?topic=642.0) has invited 10+ people to develop their ideas. Title: "Are you interested in a Bitcoin enterprise of your own + the business ideas".

For every 2.0 operation currently, there are dozens of 3.0's.

No, I called quite many dealers, since that was my job.. ::) I could have charged 20% premium on top of everything I was quoted, you just don't forget these things. No reason to downplay this. I think it was October 15. There were small scale "bank runs" (depositors queuing to withdraw for no apparent consumption demand), since the G20 meeting or whatever was scheduled for the weekend, and some in the know considered that the banks all over might not open on Monday.

I had already been confiscated of all of my inventory for bogus charges (which were dropped later), I had withdrawn my meager money from the bank (I have only twice in my life minimized my bank balances in anticipation of a bank run, the latter started March 20, this year, and is still in effect), and made just-in-case contingency plans in case I would not be found. The PM of Finland revealed a year after, that "we were hours away from financial meltdown".

If you run for your life, you just don't forget it. This time it's different, everybody knows what I know. It's all here in this thread.


They can play with physical gold, but as they do it, the dimwit margin traders in COMEX think, that silver should also crash as it's also a pm. So they sell paper silver short, causing the very crash they anticipated. Paper silver is very thin as the physical longs generally don't bother, it's like Mt.Gox really, just a pathetic manipulation joke, I don't even have the account there, lol. The public runs to buy the cheapened physical, causing a run on coin shops, and now they've mostly been out of silver (or with very low inventory) for 3 months already. They need to pretend they don't have silver, since if they tell they do, but just won't sell it because manipulation, it causes an outcry and the feds raid their shops.

That was why they did not sell to me in 10/2008. I was offering to pay too high a premium, I was already on the feds blacklist (my standing inventory was already confiscated), and they did not want to risk their business since they knew I was in trouble because of my internet trolling. Funny that they all knew it..  ::)

It was one day, yes, but you just don't forget it.

Today I couldn't care less. The leverage is in bitcoin now.

A day in my life. After a late-night flight from London, I slept a 3.5 hours, and woke up to my small daughter climbing on me.

At work, the shop was open, so from the top of my head, I traded the following
-32oz silver +850€
-18,400mBTC +40g gold +20oz silver +100€
-$18,000 +148,100mBTC
-110,700mBTC +324g gold
-324g gold +11,400€

This evaluates to:
--------------------------------------------
-12oz silver +12,250€ -$18,000 +40g gold +19,000mBTC
--------------------------------------------
-1,500€ -12oz silver +40g gold +19,000mBTC
--------------------------------------------
-12oz silver +40g gold +3,200mBTC
--------------------------------------------
+14,600mBTC

It is good to have a small and steady profit every day. This one was small, but honestly I did not need to work much for it. Perhaps about 1 hour of work + 1 hour of backend. The rest of the time I spent with my 2 associates telling them about the current and future postings in this thread, honing our trading strategy, walking barefoot on ice, drinking wine and having generally some nice time. I got home after 9 hours in the office.

There is plenty in the Internet that is available for bitcoins, even only for bitcoins. Sometimes I employ people from my own pocket just to cut the red tape. I have so many bitcoins, to not care that I cannot deduct it from my corporate profits.

Traditional salaries, rents etc in fiat currently.

You wanted to know if I can become a supernode. Yes, at least for some time. Before moving on to other things (I have already been suggested this, even though I have hardly been playing this level enough yet..). I can easily pay the $50k monthly burnrate of 1.5 class supernode in 1-2 months. That long I estimate it takes to gear up the systems. My weakness is tech, I am too stingy to employ a shadow devteam myself. The guys of that level are expensive.

Tomorrow I have some work in Tallinn. Wednesday await for something cool to be revealed  8)

Why not have a weekend seminar in some skying resort and actually explain to them how bitcoin works? A huge network of crappy nodes so much more trustworthy and powerful than a "supernode". (btw: this one guy in Bratislava showed his java re-implementation of bitcoin called "supernode", made with "institutional users" in mind). Or is the black swan == switch off interent?

rpietila is a mega-bull. Has been as long as I've been paying attention.

You are obviously not rpietila, as you don't understand exponential function. If it grows 2.375% per day, it will reach $56k in January 2014. Which I think is realistic.

Another fail in your reasoning was this "Bitcoin end up in the oblivion" part, which just does not happen, since there is at least one supernode operating (me) regardless of what others do or think. qed.

In 1980 there was a glut of physical in all forms coming to the market. But I think it was perhaps 1-2Boz nationally (U.S.), and it was not accompanied with international movements. So the large holders in India did not sell their silver to the U.S., afaik.

We have to remember that the silver price rose by a factor of 35x (10-15x sustained), to effect this move.

The silver price would have to rise by a factor of 10x from its current level, before the scrap sales would see a large increase. It would be accompanied with large investor interest, so the total silver flows would remain anemic any way.

There is only 1-2B investable silver in the world, regardless of the price.

Seems that this was a self-fulfilling prophecy:


I had a morning meeting with Roni, explaining to him, that there is no resistance left anywhere in the price going up. No level above $0.15 saw any large volume action. So if you think:

A) bitcoin is a bubble, sell to the strength. I would suggest selling with a predetermined schedule, such as 1% of the remaining holdings per month, or 10-25% every time it doubles.

B) bitcoin is going to $300/mBTC, hold.

C) what is bitcoin??, buy with all your funds that you can afford to lose.

+1

I wrote simple Excell, based on your great idea. "You have an AMOUNT of btc. When price DOUBLE, SELL 25%"

In Excell, you can configure (4 parameters) and can see your wealth based on USD/BTC price

1. btc AMOUNT you wish to spend.
2. parameter "when price (DOUBLE=200%)"  you can configure e.g. 5%, 10% 100% ... 1000% as you wish
3. (SELL=%25) change this setting (1%, 2%, 5%, 10%, ... %20, %30)
4. starting selling price  e.g.  $160

Again GREAT IDEA. Now it is EASY, how much and when to sell. As easy as bot can do it. I'll add few REINVEST parameter  "When price HALVES invest 10% from your profit" :-)   Perpetuum mobile

 

I have reserved this (http://www.haikko.fi/en/home.php) for 9.-12.May 2013.

The parameters are:
- I think it is a great place to have a meetup.
- I have some ideas, many have suggested ideas. There is plenty of time to discuss them even before the event.
- I have sold 3 tickets, the last was for BTC3, incl. full board.
- I have promised that I will always increase the price of ticket, to preserve the early adaptor advantage. Otherwise the bitcoin's volatility will cause people to delay their decision, which will make organising difficult. Only way out is to credibly state that a newcomer will have to always pay more bitcoins than the previous. This will lead to some people signing up rather quickly, which eases my organizing challenges.
- My current thinking is that 30 people would be the maximum, I am fully content with 6 (the current number of guests + 3 hosts) though.
- Howto allocate the admissions, is my problem.

No need to post your ideas, I have been thinking of all possibilities, it is just that I have to make my decision. I cannot alter it afterwards, since that would be unfair. You better be careful when money is involved. This is the reason that my official invitation has been delayed.

Depends on what you're measuring against.

I bought my bitcoins at $5, so technically I would have been richer had I just bought-and-held. But if you look at any two points in time when the price was the same, it's definitely profitable, especially in times when volatility is high. For instance, compared to April 6th, when the price was about the same as today, I've made over 10% gains.

Again you are leaking out sensitive PM info you swedish bastard.. ;D

Yes, trading the tickets is allowed, just for the lulz to manifest to the late adopters that a "conference" ticket can actually go to $10,000s when we just send bitcoins to each other.

I am considering, for an additional BTC10 over the ticket, you can send a short wishlist that will be granted to you subject to availability (of the services, not of money, the latter is not limited) For BTC50, you can send a long wishlist.

The last week that I have actively done what I wanted, regardless of price, I have spent perhaps $1,500 in personal expenses, given out $200,000+ of bitcoins, made $30k in trading and fees (this is the most demotivating part right now) and the purchasing power of my bitcoins has increased.

When you have it all, you tend to need very little. Yesterday I spent 60 minutes trying to find water according to my taste. Still it wasn't perfect, but we are getting there... I would pay more for 5 liters of the best water in the world, than for the best champagne. But money cannot buy you good water (for champagne, it does).

Yeah, that is for the lazy one.. I also advocated it previously. But now I think the best strategy is to sell on/after the tipping point of an intraday move, and buy back at a flat rate which is set at the 61% fibonacci retracement point of the previous upmove. Increase this limit bid by a faster hourly rate than usd/btc growth (the latter is 0.50% per hour over the last 8 days, so a 0.7-1.0% should do fine).

Yesterday I sold to strength, rather than after the top, and still made money (=more btc in the evening) with this.

Sniffing the top is the difficult part, buyback is automatic.

By short I mean that you hold fiat, after having the bitcoins. It is not short in a traditional meaning of the word, but it is willingly giving up the bitcoins that you could have held instead.

In general I think that buying/owning anything, in anticipation that you can buy more bitcoins with it later, is shorting bitcoin. While this may be a good strategy, we are yet to see the emergence of commodities that can appreciate in value in bitcoin terms. (Casascius coins is the only example that I know of so far.)

We cornered not only the available supply of Casascius coins in Finland, but also the available supply of suites in Hotel Kämp, the premier in Finland:

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Qc-li1Iok0k/UXkyUbktwoI/AAAAAAAABMA/Iremo8Kf6gk/w842-h632/IMG_20130425_163809.jpg

I think Mircea Popescu does not behave well towards people that are not as smart as he is, and that he should grow up.

However, his understanding concerning the role of money in summer 2013 (http://polimedia.us/trilema/2013/regarding-money/) is correct, as far as I can see it.

I am fine with these prices if visa service can be included in the wishlist :D, this is my only problem. :( :P

I will have another meeting in 10 minutes, I am eager to tell you what I have been doin (after all - the topic of this thread!)

But I want to drop a few figures.

I have currently increased the size of my organisation, and reserved some prime resources (such as the most expensive by far hotel suite in Finland) for my exclusive use. My burn rate is currently about $200,000 per month if I continue at this level. It may sound like much, but measured hourly, it is a more understandable $278 (about 2,000mBTC). Since most of the resources are contracted at a daily rate (such as the hotel) or even hourly (most of the staff, taxi, etc.), I can adjust the burn rate in quick order if need be. I plan on spending at this rate until midnight (8.5 more hours), and keep the room till noon, tomorrow. After that my organisation will be readjusted at about $25 per hour (about 200mBTC).

Bitcoin has appreciated 900% since January 1st. ($135/$13.5). This may likewise sound like much, but the growth is actually a meager 0.08% per hour.

So in absence of any trading operations or other cash flow (absence of which is not the case, since I am a businessman), I am able to burn this much money on my high court, indefinitely, if I have 2,400,000mBTC. Which I do.

i doubt you have that many bitcoins,

prove it
give me a generous amount, if bitcoins are a grain of rice to you

 1BPuhna5A19Te8ZuXzhiQgBC3qnF6CMcKt

nope, i doubt i'll be expecting anything in my wallet

HOLY CAMOLY RPTELIA JUST SENT ME 13 BITCOINS !

He is useful, since he acts as a living proof that

A) I have bitcoins, since I can just throw them away at will

B) He has yet to realize, what I say here is true, and anyone who reads it can just buy bitcoins with his spare cash and be rich, no need to beg to have them.

The most juicy early adoptership window is right now, and it closes, when 2% of the world's population has bought in. At that point we will be at $300/mBTC, my tip to this guy could have bought him 10 houses [NOTE: I kindly asked him to give it back, since it was just the proof anyway - he can invest his own money and be happier LOL], and we are entering in a dangerous bubble territory. Buy now, or refrain from buying above $300k, like I refrained from buying bitcoins during its runup and crash in 2011.

What about "because I can"?

And yes, he is doing us a favor, if this noob doesn't send back, then he shouldn't expect to show up and talk shit again without his ears being grabbed.

Quoted for the future generations, since it seems that the address was in Easywallet (which I also use for petty cash), and there is no blockchain transaction associated with it. Jeremias (Easywallet's operator etc.), was here whole evening with me yesterday. Justin Bieber lives next door, but he unfortunately has to work, which I also do for 4 more hours.

thanks rptelia, i'm a fully fledged bull now
im never going to sell those bitcoins, just keep them
thanks again

Dude, you need to go and knock on Biebers door today, give him a handful of free Casascius coins.

Or hand them out to his entourage. If no one opens the door, you shove them under the door. Do it!

No it wasn't. But I have a hard time proving it, since I paid from Easywallet, and the recipient also had his account in the same service (which is revealed to me after the fact, by a different confirmation message, instant transfer, not needing to pay fee, and the fact that blockchain was not affected).

Since I already told that I personally know Jeremias, the operator, and how the service is structured, I have no way of proving to you whether it was legit  :-\

Tough luck on that. Anyway, I don't think that account will come back online anymore - he's probably one of the trolls we constantly ban here. We'll see much more trolls like him going around to ask people prove their amount of bitcoins now.

Srsly goat, wtf are you smoking..? I was quietly minding my own business, not about to prove anything, this bloke shows up and want me to send some BTC to prove that I am something. Well, since I am, and I felt like that, I sent him 13,370mBTC. Then I wanted it back since he did not say he intended to keep them. (So far no show tho.)

If what I just did was somehow out-of-place wtf you still lamenting over your supposed 5,000,000mBTC bet with Matthew. Give me a break, read my posts and realize you can live 10x more comfortably than I, even this day. You have one of the largest BTC stash on this planet, spend it like a man and don't question the others who do likewise!  8)

Get a life, Goat, rpietila is our token bull.

This is the internet, nobody gives a crap about your "truth". If it is on the Internet it, everything is true. Entertainment (especially when combined with educational) value is what ultimately matters.

I think rpietila is very close to establishing cult of personality. What MP achieves with mental coercion, rpietila does using humour, and with ease.

An easy way to show that you are the owner of a bitcoin address (and hence, it's balance) is with a signed message, a function supported by many bitcoin clients.

Read here: http://peculium.net/2013/03/29/bitcoin-message-signing-and-verification/

This will allow you to demonstrate your wealth without sending money to trolls.

You are right, that it doesn't matter. The only people who think it does would be someone attempting to discredit what he says or contributes to the forums. I've been following this thread since the beginning and have been enjoying it. I posted the bit about how to use a signed message purely because I want rptietila to have the coins that he earned, and certainly not reward the users who pollute this forum everyday. If he wants to give out this information (or anyone for that matter) they should know that bitcoin is designed in a way that allows this without the risk associated with transfering coins to a 3rd party.

I got a phone call from upper echelon that I should not troll in such an epic fashion. So sorry - I will not even mention to you that I have a clandestine door leading directly to the premises occupied by Justin Bieber currently, so no need even to go to the public area of the hotel. This wing does not really have more rooms than the ones that we are occupying, and it is closed from the "public" ie other hotel guests.

Not that the above wasn't true, it is just that not all understand that it is marketing. Public relations expense. I am almost sober (I will post pictures if you want) and we're soon going to sauna after the public lulz is over. The n00b can take his 13,370mBTC LOL, as if I did not do it on purpose.

Expect me to announce the Bitcoin Supernode Summit soon (after this mess is cleared). The participants will learn from me and each other, the coolest guys in Bitcoin Universe, how to effectively manage their wealth, instead of just guarding their paper wallet with a gun. Life is meant to be interesting, thank you for tonight.

<rpietila has left the study, and will join his guests in the other parts of the suite>

Admire your moves (and diary, btw) but not your choice of recipient.  I haven't seen anything intelligent coming out of that account for the entire month its been around... please don't feed the animals.

But do you really think the world is your oyster with just 2.4M mBTC?   I don't know.  I agree with the feasibility if not the likelihood of your 300USD/mBTC projection... but I think its quite possible we'll all be dead by then.  :)

I'm not so sure. While it doesn't even prove he has 2.4k coins, it says something about his character in relation to money and PR. Maybe it just says something about his state of intoxication.

I can relate to his actions since I've done similarly seemingly stupid irrational things to prove points. It usually works well enough while also making huge waves for additional effect.

Will this become a new equivalent to the 10,000 BTC pizza when bitcoins are worth $100,000...

"Yeah so this guy sent 13 bitcoins to an anonymous user because he got called out. Wow that is $1.3 million dollars"  :o :o :o

http://polimedia.us/dtng/c/src/136706164156.jpg

Stop taking pictures with your webcam, noob. Only camwhores do.

"de·leet, 'de-leet'. /v. to erase all non-leet content from the thread"; ah thank you cypher. This made my day.

All I need is a moderator. Is there any way to appoint someone to clear your self-moderated thread? Did smoothie already document the non-leet part so that it can be deleeted? As usual, the level of discourse only starts to rise after I have been silent for 4 hours.. The good part is that after going to sleep thinking you're the hairiest troll out there, every morning presents new opportunities to show off.

And since it is public knowledge that I cannot even make a photo from my iPhone to appear here, won't someone who was there, please post a pic to counter the sad forever alone mpoe troll. The marble bathtub throne was nice, pixelated version of course.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to hearing more about your daily business, Mr. Pietila. This and the Wall Observer are about the only two threads I read anymore. I for one don't care if you like to throw money around for fun. I'd probably do the same if I had as much as you or Goat or BitcoinBillionaire.

Wish granted:

https://i.imgur.com/h1w6615.jpg

rpietila,
You seem to be quite the established businessman from what I have seen while perusing your thread. It would seem that you are doing a lot for BTC and for that I respect you. Unfortunately, I am a business school student at the moment and am much too low on funds to throw anything significant into bit coin, however I do toss in whatever I can. I do hope your predictions come to fruition and we're all swimming in gold in the future. If the media catches wind of the stunt you pulled with JB I anticipate the popularity this would evoke upon BTC would definitely push us much closer to this goal. Although I cannot participate in your conference I will continue to look forward to entries within your diary as I have found these to be much more insightful than anything else I've read on the forum.

Regards,
hubba

My personal opinion is people are free to do what they like as long as they aren't harming anyone, "live and let live" like they say the golden words of freedom and liberty. If rpietila wishes to talk about or display his good fortune, it's absolutely fine i don't really agree about criticizing him.

Infact i found positive insightful information by reading this thread/diary. There is so much potential in Bitcoin and I do hope the dreamers are rewarded.

http://www.haikko.fi/media/ylakuvat/kevat2013/etusivu_kevat01.jpg
The summit venue, Haikko Manor house as seen from the south, the direction of the sea, in June.


I Bitcoin Supernode Summit Finland 9.-12. May 2013


Bitcoin meetup for the ones most deeply interested in it.

The Bitcoin Supernode Summit will be organized first time in May, 2013. It is based on the understanding that Bitcoin is a revolutionary technology as pervasive as the Internet. What tells them apart, is the fact that adopting Bitcoin among the first 100 million people in the world, not only gives you the edge when doing anything related to economy in the future, but also increases the value of your share of the monetary stock (bitcoins) in existence, by 1-6 orders of magnitude, depending how early you got in. The ones holding the largest stashes of bitcoins - and the means to use them for the public benefit - now, are quickly emerging as new socioeconomic power centers, Bitcoin Supernodes. The Summit develops these concepts in an atmosphere of pristine natural beauty combined with impeccable luxury.


Venue

Haikko Manor (http://www.haikko.fi/en/home.php), near Porvoo, Finland. Porvoo is about 30 minutes from Helsinki and the Helsinki-Vantaa Airport. Haikko Manor is established 1362. The current Manor House, was designed in 1911 to be able to accommodate the most prestigious occasion that was imaginable that time - King of England visiting by sea. The Manor House was such a large project that it was only finished and inaugurated in the 1960s. Since that time, there has been no King in England. The pretender of Russia has visited it though. Haikko boasts of a 35 acre park and shoreline to the Gulf of Finland.


Hosts

The Summit is organized by rpietila, who currently runs an approximately 1.5 class Bitcoin Supernode based in Helsinki, Finland. Members from his organization will act as hosts. Currently the named hosts are Risto Pietilä (rpietila) and Roni Blomberg (rontus).
 

Staff

There will be enough staff available for the typical needs of the delegates, and the number of staff assigned to serve you, increases exponentially with your ticket class. If you want to bring your own staff, family members, or the like, do organize their stay yourself. Non-participating spouses of Senior Delegates or higher, can stay in the same room at no extra cost. Currently there are available rooms in the hotel compound, also the hotels in Helsinki are only 30 minutes away.


Speakers

There will be no paid speakers. Whole group sessions will be avoided. The workgroups will be based on considerations of the previous work of the delegates, and the interests they currently have. We are likely already aware of your contributions to the Bitcoin economy; if your knowledge is world class, you will be appointed as a workgroup facilitator upon your request. Most of the time during the summit is intentionally left available for self-organized work. Details will be based upon the wishes of the delegates, and updated below.


Schedule


Wednesday, May 8th

19:00 CXV (115th) Club Evening in Silverclub, Helsinki (upon separate invitation only)

Thursday, May 9th

10:00 Conference backend operational. Shuttle service between the Airport, Helsinki, Haikko and Porvoo starts. If you arrive earlier, please reserve for yourself a room in airport hotel and have a good sleep and breakfast; we will pick the early birds up at 10, and transfer to Haikko.

Friday, May 10th

18:00 Opening Gala in Haikko

Saturday, May 11th


Sunday, May 12th

16:00 Conference backend closes operations. Shuttle service between the Airport, Helsinki, Haikko and Porvoo ends. If your flight is later, we will be able to book your airport transfer.


Workshops

DEALER NETWORK (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174620.msg1978520#msg1978520)
BITCOIN SUPERNODE (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174620.msg1978520#msg1978520)
REAL BILLS AND CLEARINGHOUSE (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174620.msg1978520#msg1978520)

(will be expanded soon, also the 7 non-rpietila delegates can start posting their ideas to the thread, no need to ask my permission, you can be sure we do exactly what we want in the summit, so if your idea is good, we will develop it and the converse).

NEW: Please somebody set up a private forum for just the participants, unless this forum grants us a private section before 1st May noon UTC.


Admissions & Fees

Maximum 50 admissions available worldwide, of which currently 7 are taken.

Admission Fee is 50,000mBTC, payable to 15X968JjsbT9LBKK9kFsAeAnKwi5G6LoUp (https://blockchain.info/address/15X968JjsbT9LBKK9kFsAeAnKwi5G6LoUp).

All (delegate&up) admission fees will be sent to this address, regardless of the method that was used in purchasing the ticket (the tickets are for sale outside of bitcointalk also). This is to preserve the order of registrations for the 98%...2% early adopter discount. This means that the admission fee for the first entrant is 1,000mBTC, for the second 2,000mBTC, and so on, until the registration window ends on Sunday, May 5th, 23:59 UTC, or the maximum limit of 50 participants is reached. You may reserve a ticket only by prepayment, and the order of payments after 20 confirmations is the final arbiter of the discount. In cases where two legitimate payments of equal amount are included in the same block, both will get discounted the same amount, resulting in a 500mBTC additional payment due from both. Send PM with your details after sending your admission fee.

You may transfer your title to an admission to another. Send PM indicating the details, and pay 500mBTC transfer fee to 18BGLrjetpWjmP4PjQfTpeLXn1gSQx2Erv.

NEW: In case of no show, we will not be able to refund your ticket, unless you convert it to "virtual delegate" latest Sunday 5th. If you do this, we will be able to refund you 5,000mBTC (regardless of how much you paid for it).


Ticket Classes

2.5th class ticket = Delegate

(no additional cost)
- 2pax room, full board, and shuttle rides from and to the airport or city centre

2.0nd class ticket = Senior Delegate

(an additional 3,000mBTC)
- Single Room

1.5th class ticket = Donator

(an additional 10,000mBTC)
- Butler service

1.0st class ticket = VIP

(an additional 50,000mBTC)
- You may post a reasonable wishlist of maximum 3 sheets, and it will be granted upon availability

Details of what the higher classes get, will be added later.
A higher class gets first choice of suites, transportation, workgroups, etc. limited resources.
A higher class accumulates all benefits of the lower classes. (The costs are not accumulated though.)
Do not pay these to the Admission Fee address. We will charge them separately.

NEW_APR_29: All technical means will be available to attend to the summit virtually. If a delegate plans to do this, (s)he is expected to contact me, and start preparations from his/her part. This will entitle to a 5,000mBTC refund.

In addition there will be:
Hosts (participating staff of the rpietila supernode)
Staff (non-participating from rpietila and hotel)
Guests (paid speakers who are not bitcoiners yet)
Visitors (short term tickets issued to mainly local non-bitcoiners for specific events during the summit)


Pledges

If certain threshold numbers of admissions are reached, there will be some improvements in our living conditions, plus the overall feel of the summit:

- At least 10 admissions
Airport/city transfer upgraded to black German cars (E/5/6 class or larger).

- At least 20 admissions
Everything inside the compound will be free of charge, including spa treatments.

- At least 30 admissions
A Summit Secretariat will be organized, who will provide 24h backend services for the delegates, including snacks and drinks, taxis/limo, excursions to sights and clubs etc., completely according to your request, completely for free, for the duration of the summit. This will operate from two permanent bases, both in Haikko Manor and Hotel Kämp (http://www.hotelkamp.com/rooms/executive_suite), Helsinki.

- At least 40 admissions
An opening gala dinner in the Romanov suite of the Manor House, with real silver tableware, engraved with the name of the delegate and the occasion, and gifted to the delegate. Afterparty in Helsinki, transfer in white limos (subject to availability).

- Sold out! (50 admissions)
We will employ the total of 30 girls to dole out free bitcoins to bystanders in 10 selected European cities for the duration of the summit. I will pledge 500,000mB of my private funds towards this free distribution.

Welcome to I Bitcoin Supernode Summit 2013!

[All info is subject to be updated.]

Good idea https://twitter.com/Cam4BTC/status/328265148722712576

Doubt I'll get a reply though :)

I am sure you will but if not just wanted to say, please do keep us informed of the number of admissions; I am looking forward to the sold out pledge. ;)
P.S This is by a long way the most fascinating/interesting/entertaining topic on the whole forum, in more than a BTC sense.

So finally we got to the official invitation phase! I am excited. The summit was conceived in one of our regular Finnish bitcoin scene meetings, and 3 tickets were sold outright. Since I have not posted any binding info before today, there has not been an opportunity to reserve admissions.

Many things have happened meanwhile, though. We tried our organizing ability by blitz-reserving the premier hotel suite in Finland for two nights, with all the associated activities. The decision was based on our new theories about the rise of bitcoin's exchange value, and how this trend can be used to gauge the operative potential of the supernodes.

The fresh result from my excel-wizardry, the relation between hourly creep of USD/BTC, and the hourly burn rate of your organization, was published (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174620.msg1950796#msg1950796).

This lead to the unpremeditated leet donation, since a newbie mistakenly believed that my intention was to publicize my wealth of 2,400,000mBTC. No, the idea was still in the process of being expressed in a conscise fashion. That if bitcoin's value rises on average, by a certain hourly rate, which is very modest (0.08% per hour since Jan 1), this will lead to very great price appreciation if it continues ($19/mBTC by Dec 31, my long-term target of $300/mBTC by May 2014).

The appreciation is so rapid, you can cash out prematurely by calculating your hourly average gain by the exchange rate, and deciding your spending based on this figure. I was operating at a peak $200k per month burnrate at that moment, so just out of curiosity I calculated, how large a stash of bitcoins would be needed, to keep up such a spending permanently. The answer turned out to be 2.4MmBTC, which I published. Most of the people I actively interact with, do have such a stash. My intention was to kindly prod them to this direction, encouraging them to spend, since it is not at all excessive to spend up to the amount that you make - which can be estimated from the secular exponential trend multiplied by the number of bitcoins. Provided that you derive benefit or pleasure from spending, of course.

It is blatantly obvious I paid the transactions myself after generating the address, that is not even the question here. Three tickets were sold to the team who deviced the idea and are going to pay me. The money is put there to make it easy to see if anyone is actually coming. (I am very fine with having another meeting with the same team that has met every two weeks many times now...)

So that the thread will not suffer the fate of the Finnish original (pages upon pages of rant from people who are not interested in coming anyway), let me remind you that I want comments mainly from the people who actually belong to the top 400 of bitcoiners, the Vladimir Club, and as such would be warmly welcomed to the summit, to make it a worthwhile experience for everyone attending. Trolls will be deleted as usual.

The pricing model serves the following purposes:
- Gently limiting the number of entrants, since it is a stressful experience to organize a large conference in the timespan of 1.5 weeks, but also don't want to select people, which is elitism
- (Hopefully) Ensuring that people who are interested, do sign up quickly, even if bitcoin goes up, the tickets also can only go up
- Enable lower average ticket price for all, if the summit turns out to be small. It is an incentive for me to give out more info, since at the current level of interest I am making a loss. The tickets issued so far don't cover even the variable cost per head.

I would like to ask you to post here only once per day, howabout?


Even if you actually pay 50,000mBTC, it is only one block reward from 2010! Or about $100 of money invested 1.5 years ago. As should be obvious, this is not for the newbies, who are only now accumulating their coins. A certain experience is required, to have a chance to benefit the summit by participating.


The "Bitcoin consciousness" is expanding so quickly, it is utterly pointless to try to divine an agenda beforehand for anything that is claimed to represent the top research on the subject. If you want to hear from others, please continue reading this thread for free, or go to other conferences. If you want to contribute, while enjoying some quality time, come to Finland!


"Is your eye evil, because I am good?" I try to rake in more money every week, than I spend. The rake does not even include USDBTC exchange rate appreciation. My ignore button is not glowing red, since I actually think before posting, and try to sometimes post intelligent new research.


The 50,000mBTC is given to me, so, yes  ;D

You are free to allocate your limited bitcoins however you want; I can live in hotels and develop my businesses simultaneously, since I make more every week. The summit is for those who have the means, and just want to learn, how to do it.

In this thread, I see

1) Someone organizing a ritzy conference so that people with large amounts of bitcoin can talk about how best to use that stash of bitcoins to (1) better their own lives, and (2) better the bitcoin community and economy/infrastructure via economic development.

2) Smoothie complaining about how ritzy the conference is.

 ::)

Rich people gonna be rich, don't hate. Sure, a set of silver dining utensils with your name engraved as a gift is a little ridiculous for a conference, along with butler service and white limos. On the other hand, your 1995 geo metro and your iPhone can also be compared to "starving kids in Africa" with the result of questioning how much is really necessary.
If there's anything we need more of, it's the bitcoin economy getting serious, developing projects, developing serious infrastructure so bitcoin will be well underway to defeating Fiat, which is the goal of nearly all of us (except for those ideologues hanging onto socialism and fiat debt/tax slavery for dear life). Complaining about a conference because of its butler service is missing the forest for the trees. What we have here is people with lots of bitcoins talking about what to do with them. It could be worse... they could be sitting around on MtGox figuring out the right moment to dump in order to tank the price and buy lower... that's what SOME people with lots of coins like to do.

If Reptilia wants to organize a ritzy conference with his coins rather than DDoSing Gox and initiating panic sells via huge sell-offs, more power to him, and I'm not going to complain. IMO it's a better use of his time anyways  ;D

We are talking about the delegates of the I Supernode Summit (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174620.msg1962101#msg1962101). The link is the "OP" of the summit, and will be updated soon with more and more details and links.

zeroday
oakpacific
molecular
lebing
John

theymos
sirius
MoonShadow
cypherdoc
Vladimir

casascius
AnonyMint
Goat
MP
satoshi

DeathAndTaxes
MagicalTux
tysat

vescudero
DeaDTerra
unclescrooge

loaded
myrkul
JoelKatz
Technomage
kangasbros

evoorhees
Gavin Andresen
jgarzik
Sergio_Demian_Lerner
gmaxwell

Hal
psy
Timo Y
Qoheleth

(List was randomized, since I did not know how to auto-arrange alphabetically.)

Some of the above will probably visit pseudonymously if they do. If you belong to this level, you know it without my mention and are welcome, this is not a Bitcoin Top38 list, LOL. Everybody is welcome actually, but I would be delighted to have at least 3 of the abovementioned guys/gals (or people with similar status) around to help with the organizing and lead the workgroups. I purposely omitted people not in this forum from the list.

There is no need to pay anyone to speak in the summit. The cool guys want to speak, when they realize that the audience is able and willing to listen. (This will be the best bitcoin audience ever, by a wide margin.) I will not pay any oldtimer (2012 or before) any bitcoins so that he can come and speak. Because he has many, he can as well pay me. It is funny money anyway after you have enough.

Non-bitcoiner and newb (2013) speakers, if any, may be compensated. They will not be "delegates" but "guests". Delegates may propose who they want to have around, let's see what I(we) can do.

The coolness of the summit does not depend on the pledges.

The reason there are pledges, which cost more and more when the # of participants is increasing, is that otherwise I would benefit too much from the tickets. The ticket income increases quadratically with the number of admissions, the costs go up perhaps in the 1.5th power. This leaves me excess money that I don't need or want. Original intention was to refund it equally to all the participants. Then I realized that was uncool. So better spend it on vanities, since at least there will be a major ripple effect. Nobody is forced to drive in the limos, we have used cars available too.

You can easily buy money with coolness. You can hardly buy coolness with money. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174620.msg1958660#msg1958660) So the cool guys (in Bitcoin economy at least), have no shortage of money (bitcoins). The only thing they need to take care of, is that they stay cool.

Connect the dots:


We had the study of the hotel room dedicated to our dealing desk, which included precision scales, and storage containers for all kinds of valuables. EUR 50 (and below) notes will be weighted as well as the gold and silver, 100-500 notes are counted.

The trading desk with computers and monitors was in the main bedroom, which was in rontus' command. I don't remember if we traded any, though. We hedged the bitcoin sales of Friday, by buying back at Gox when it dipped to $0.12. (Pls somebody sell us more Goxmoney, we are out, we can pay intl wire in 2 days, spot-3%!!)

Reception room (see my pic with the stiff upper lip (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174620.msg1940876#msg1940876)) was my favorite.

Conference room acted as a venue for hourly command meetings, and later as a restaurant etc.

Sauna was also nice.

I mean - really, even I never thought prior to last month that I could make so much money just by staying in expensive hotels  :o

I have been playing with DVC/BTC on Vircurex, and found simple tunnel-vision sets in. Basically I do not care what dollars happen to be worth or not worth, I only care that both my BTC holdings and my DVC holdings are increasing.

If LTC/BTC traders feel the same way, then as long as they are getting more bitcoin for their litecoins and more litecoins for their bitcoins as they trade it would require some third party arbitrageur to bother to notice whether dollars are going up or down relative to the LTC or the BTC or both.

This might well not be at all similar to the silver/gold markets because, well are there even any actual XAG/XAU markets at all or are there only XAG/fiat and XAU/fiat markets?

By XAG/XAU markets I mean markets where people are trading gold for silver and silver for gold and basically need not pay attention at all to whether all fiat or any fiat goes up or down since either way they are getting themselves more silver and more gold and those are afterall the things they are interested in. I have not noticed any major markets structured in such a way but maybe that is because I do not hang out in the back rooms of coin-and-bullion dealers?

-MarkM-

I am writing in here to inform the community that I plan to attend the rpietila's Supernode meeting in Porvoo outside Helsinki this May.

I plan to use the meeting to establish more connections in the bitcoin community. I first heard about bitcoins in the summer of 2011 and I have owned bitcoins since March 2012. I have been doing business in bitcoins for only a couple of months. It was originally macro economics that attracted me to bitcoins, i.e. the belief that an ultra-loose monetary policy is one of the biggest problems facing the Western world and is the reason for the continued financial crisis - inflation is taxation without representation and it reduces savings to an unsustainable level. To me bitcoin is not (only) a get rich quick scheme but one of the biggest inventions in all of humanity's history and certainly the biggest invention so far in this century imo. I have several business plans which I would like to discuss with the community and I would also like to hear tips from the larger players in the community.

When I view many of the sectors in the world economy, I often get the feeling that they somehow are at an equilibrium, that the current technology is being utilized fully. I get the exact opposite feeling when I look at the bitcoin economy and consider what kind of technological solutions that are possible here. What kind of government regulation and power of the banking sector that could be rendered irrelevant by this technology. I feel very lucky to be part of this technology. Whether it ends up being bitcoins or some other cryptographic currency that prevails is to me an open question and I therefore believe that "bitcoin" businesses should expose themselves to cryptocurrencies in general and not only the current market leader, bitcoins.

This is my payment for the summit:
https://blockchain.info/tx/73aefd99cb5e9734c4ecfc94426313822278fbe9ce7a8fa538a17d411d618c4e (https://blockchain.info/tx/73aefd99cb5e9734c4ecfc94426313822278fbe9ce7a8fa538a17d411d618c4e)

Workshop: DEALER NETWORK

This workshop will be held in I Bitcoin Supernode Summit Finland 9.-12. May 2013 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174620.msg1962101#msg1962101).

MISSION STATEMENT:

We believe that setting up a decentralized, enormously liquid way of determining the USD/BTC rate, is beneficial for the continued increase of the rate. We believe that it is possible to gather together the owners of 3,000,000,000mBTC (about 30% of all the bitcoins aboveground) to regularly post their willingness to sell a part of their stash to the rising prices. The ultimate counterparty would be a new bitcoin user who buys these coins. The intermediary would be a Bitcoin Supernode dealership. We believe that this operation can be set up in 3 months, and it will be the ultimate stabilizer of the price, even though we expect that the actual number of coins traded by this mechanism would likely not exceed the aggregate turnover of the exchanges, even after the 3 months.

TECHNICAL:

1. We set up a Bitcoin Dealers' Association, which will accept members upon very strict scrutiny. The number of members will be limited to about 200, and it is not mandatory to have more than 10 for it to work properly.

2. We set up an order matching software, which will process the net dealer orderbooks of the BDA members, every 8 hours. I propose this happens at 00:00UTC, 08:00UTC and 16:00UTC, continually, every day. There will not be continuous trading at all in the first stage; it can be added later if found beneficial. I don't think it will add anything, since we already have the exchanges for play.

3. Net dealer orderbooks will be sent encrypted to the software, it will find the market clearing price, and send the details to the counterparties of the actual trades. The software cannot (ie. it is mathematically impossible to) cheat. If all of the participants see their net position fulfilled at the fixing price, the software has worked properly.

4. It does not cost anything for a member to send their orderbook, also there is no fee for the trades matched. The fees are a fixed membership fee and a one-time registration fee. In addition, members can buy the stock of the association (stockholders decide the directors etc.) and they will have to post a significant bail, which will cover the maximum of outstanding trades by the member, and is held in a 3-out-of-5 escrow perpetually during their membership.

5. The trades are settled T+4, which means that the trade contracted will have to clear in the other end in 96 hours from the fixing. Eg. fixing on Monday at 00:00, will have to be paid and cleared in the receiving end by Friday at 00:00.

6. If there is a delay in settlement, a penalty will be imposed + all the expenses of the counterparty will need to be covered. If this is due to negligence, a warning is issued. If there is further negligence or an outright default of the payment, the bail will be used to cover the damages and the member is expelled. If (which can not happen unless the scamming party can also hack the blackbox software to give him a larger outstanding orders limit than his bail covers) the damages exceed the bail, all other members pay prorated, and the scammer is expelled and criminally prosecuted.

7. The software will publish the fixing price automatically and immediately to the public. The volumes and counterparties of the trades will not be published.

8. Later on, the settlement can be extended to futures contracts, and options on futures can be written.

There are now 6 paid admissions to the summit, and all of them are for a physical stay. I am sorry to not have got back to you, I would be delighted if most of you would post something here, and would ask the general questions in public, so that me or a member of our staff can answer. I have been busy with a certain unforeseen deal today, but intend to not work at all during the rest of the week, except for this, which will receive my undivided attention.

The next ticket will go for 7,000mBTC. There is a new opportunity of a virtual admission, which entitles to everything except the actual coming to the summit, for a discount of 5,000mBTC. This means that you will still have to pay the 7,000 (or more) to the address (https://blockchain.info/address/15X968JjsbT9LBKK9kFsAeAnKwi5G6LoUp), but will get 5,000 back at the instant that I am available to send it.

If you require practical assistance with getting a visa or anything, I want to help you by PM.

I encourage both the big potatoes and the disciples to sign up. The current balance is a bit of both, and we can easily accommodate more of either. I am sorry that I do not currently have the permission to disclose the identities, I hope I will do it for most of the delegates soon, or you can speak up for yourselves!

If you want to register, please read and understand the invitation (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174620.msg1962101#msg1962101).

This is an ingenious mechanism, which achieves the following objectives:

- No central point of failure; the central software cannot mathematically cheat, since if it clears the market according to the orders of each of the members, it will have been cleared it according to all of them.

- About 30% of the bitcoins of the world will be able to be part of the price finding mechanism without need to physically move them or even know the exact owners and whereabouts of them. Quite many of them will be owned by the members at that point, and some non-members will certainly know of the members who act as their brokers. Dealers do not need to divulge their local order book (amounts, personal info) to anyone, the amounts will be sent to the blackbox encrypted, the customer info stored locally.

- Any local dealer can serve any Prince Harry who wants to purchase 10 million worth of bitcoins, which is impossible in the current exchange model (prepayment) and the Web-Of-Mistrust model (nobody would trust you for more than you have been doing before, which is childish if we are talking about actual business).

- Yes, as the end-user customer, there is no need to store your cash or bitcoins anywhere in particular. Only the dealers will need to abide by the following conditions->

If the following conditions are met:

- All (= every one of) the members are professionals, to make it smooth enough to have a delayed 84 hour settlement with an assigned counterparty.

- Members post a bail to cover their total outstanding orders limit, or any lesser amount if it is considered stupid enough to scam all the other members of the network prorated.

I think that it was because of smoothie's presence. But now he has his own un-selfmoderated parody thread, and he is not welcome to spam this one any more.

I asked this to be moved back to speculation, or anywhere else than off-topic for that matter. Well, that's the moderators' call now.

Ahh, oldie but goodie. I want to relay to you my first post in this forum:


Edited for mBTC.

Would you come if he comes?  ;)

I've just paid for virtual admission. See you at the Summit   :)

Workshop: REAL BILLS AND CLEARINGHOUSE

This workshop will be held in I Bitcoin Supernode Summit Finland 9.-12. May 2013 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174620.msg1962101#msg1962101).

MISSION STATEMENT:

[tbd]


TECHNICAL:

[tbd]

I would come without him coming if I could.

I will not participate online, either, btw.

I appreciate the invitation.  I'd love to go to Finland.  One day I will make it.  I can't make it on such short notice.

The immodest emphasis on conspicuous luxury is something I find alienating and leads me to question the premise of the gathering.  If I'm going to be invited to spend a $7,000 fee to attend a meeting, I'm accustomed to high-quality well-thought-out appeals for me to attend, which concentrate on the business development case for attendance more so than the exclusivity of the gathering and the luxurious luxuries that will be enjoyed there, the blackness of the German car I'll be picked up in, and the hotness of the 30 girls that will be passing out bitcoins.  The way that this is presented, I feel like by going I'd be starring in a Bitcoin version of "Oppan Gang-nam Style" and that has a negative appeal to me.  THis is not why I am involved in Bitcoin.  This sort of meeting Should Not Take Place at a venue that requires an outlay like that per participant, with one exception: if the money were going to fund some well-defined and well-planned project to fund the common good.

Thank you for your reply, I appreciate it.

I realize that astute bitcoin people are very busy, and therefore cannot easily read the fine print, which in this case says that the tickets will be sold at progressively higher prices. The first one was BTC1, and currently you would be able to reserve yours at BTC8, which, despite the fact that it is $1000+, will still net me a loss and cannot be considered excessive.

The level of people, targeted with this summit, is so high, that their opportunity cost of time easily runs in $thousands per day, so this is why I care about their physical well-being (and not so much care how much it will cost to me or them). It is realistically a $5-$10k investment for you or anyone from the U.S. to attend this (ticket+flight+time), so you don't want to have substandard living conditions. There is already another conference targeting a wider audience, and there is no point for me to reinvent the wheel.

As for the workshops, I have currently outlined three most critical developments in the bitcoinworld, which do need to be accomplished with the utmost speed and determination, namely:

- The Dealer Network, to stabilize the price during its appreciation phase and remove the single point of failure (Mt.Gox)
- The Supernode, to strengthen the socio-economic network, develop local power centers, and tie Bitcoin to the real world existing networks
- The Real Bill, to enable such a stable price in the long run that bitcoin can be used as a unit of account in production of goods and services

If you think there is anything more urgent and important to be done in this world than these, please post it here. Since I am pretty serious with this conference and consider it the culmination of my short career in bitcoin.

If you just see the blackness of the cars and hotness of the girls, you are myopic. This all needs to be there but the real content is in the workshops.

Thank you for the Casascius coins, they are beautiful, and a lasting testimony to your foresight.

I am not saying the gathering doesn't have merit.  It probably does.

Here is how the mental evaluation process worked for me:  I got an invitation with 2 links, one is "1st Bitcoin Supernode Summit (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174620.msg1962101#msg1962101)"., and the other is "The theory behind the urgent need for meetup (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174620) (self-moderated 30 minute read)".

I clicked the second one first, and saw an incoherent thread speculating about "crashes" and the BTC price, arbitrage, you broadcasting how much money you have made, and, well, instantly concluded "tl;dr - this meeting is probably not within my sphere of interest"

It's not that I can't read the fine print, and it's not that I don't have 30 minutes to read the theory.  And it's not that I haven't made money being involved in Bitcoin, and it's not that I think it's wrong to share.  It's that I won't read the fine print, and won't spend 30 minutes to read the theory to form my initial assessment of interest.  Rather, I depend on a fairly reliable heuristic that goes something like this: someone willing to put this much effort into organizing a sophisticated meeting like this and who would potentially accept a fee like this should be able to communicate the gist of the business case for going in 30 seconds.  In 30 seconds of skimming, I was only able to gather absolute-luxury, German cars, girls passing out bitcoins, a meeting for people with the means to go.  Oh, and a conference planned on such short notice so as to leave very little room for preparation for the real content I'd be going to such a meeting for.  Gut conclusion - oppan gangnam style!

Like I mentioned, I"m not saying the gathering doesn't have merit.  I have no objection to spending $7,000 or $17,000 to attend a good meeting, but I need to be persuaded that there's some possible serious value and planning behind it, and that persuasion needs to begin within the first 30 seconds of my attention span.  I simply can't fathom being asked to spend 30 minutes to determine that, all while being bombarded with references to lavish living that another subconscious "heuristic" of mine strongly associates with manipulative MLM (multi-level-marketing) recruitment efforts targeted at the demographic of those with a poor understanding of finance.

So if anything... I would be highly interested if a) it were not ~10 days from now, and b) I could make a clear, fast correlation as to whether my potential interest in going is compatible with what I can expect to find there.  tl;dr: more planning, less emphasis on luxury (it can be luxurious, just let it be a pleasant surprise for when we get there)

First, thank you for the personal invitation. I'm flattered.

For all that I post here about Bitcoin, my own activities about it, and where I see it going in the future, at the moment I am still truly small potatoes. 50k minicoins - the theoretical price of one ticket if I take too long to decide - is a large portion of my total Bitcoin holdings.

What's more, I've got no passport at the moment; even if my personal situation was such that I could drop a six-day journey into it on ten days' notice, the ponderous weight of the Department of State simply can't issue me my papers on a timetable short enough for me to leave the country.

If I attend at all, it would have to be via teleconference, and I shall have to do some thinking as to what it's worth to me to attend. I have serious thoughts on the topics of the three proposed workshops, but even the current 3k minicoin price to attend virtually is, in real terms, half a ton of rice and beans - it's a price I can afford, but large enough that I must consider seriously the upsides and downsides.

I'll carefully consider, and hopefully, come to a quick decision.

No, I realize that. "Milli-bitcoins" is certainly the right thing to call 10^5 Satoshis from an SI point of view. I just use "minicoins" out of a personal impression that "milli" in currency is too associated with "million" (the wrong direction) for "milli-bitcoins" to catch on in everyday usage.

For any other unit - kilocoins, microcoins, nanocoins (if we ever expand divisibility), I'd happily use the SI prefix.

Thank you all for the curious interest. This is truly like running a race in front of the world :) More criticism than praise, although I think I am doing pretty good considering that I only do this 24/7, and also earn my living in the process.

Today I did the following:

- Some summit members have taken on tasks to practically organize matters. Expect zeroday to start a new thread and keep it in even better order than this one is. We will also have a private forum in 48 hours max, for the delegates and people in the process.

- I scoured the city for new and ritzier offices for my supernode. So far did not find anything of interest. My problem is that I want quite large (200+ sqm), best location (only a few blocks are good enough for me), good condition (4 meter ceiling is the target, <3 disqualified), and available (so that we can move in now and not in 2 months)

- We will go to Haikko on Thursday with a 4-ppl delegation, to discuss the practicalities of the Summit with the staff of the Manor House

- Chatted over skype with a Greek delegate

- Some people want to order Casascius coins from me, I have quoted 1,800mBTC / 2,200mBTC / 5,500mBTC for 2013/2012/2011 BTC1 coins incl dlwy.

- Goat sold me 700,000mBTC for 2.65M THB yesterday. I have now spent about 4 hours with the bank, and currently they have promised to send the money to him on Thursday. I need to pay anything between $1k-$3k in different fees to the bank (closer to $1k now since I phoned directly to the currency broker desk to exchange EUR->THB; but I have happily paid 1.55% fees on USD->EUR automatic conversion just because I did not specify the sender to use my USD account). LOL when Goat sees the money clear, his part is done in 15 seconds. [Do you realistically think that BTC will not go to $300/mBTC, just because of the fact that using banks for anything is such a pain?]

- We are celebrating the 3rd most important annual festival in Finland, only Midsummer and Christmas (in this order) are more important

- I have almost contracted a team of 3 bright and beautiful young women to help with the organising of the summit (+ being The Summit Secretariat during the event, if ever we reach 30 participants - which I doubt but will employ them anyway)


All delegates - If you need something very important before Thursday May 2nd, 16:00 UTC, PM me. Otherwise I will have the staff and the rooms etc. ready by then and will contact everyone personally.

Since the best rooms are in short supply, please decide for yourself now, if you would like to have:

A) a suite (Manor House 2nd and highest floor apartment with bedroom, living area, bath, and large balcony facing the sea - visible in the photo in the summit invitation (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174620.msg1962101#msg1962101)) with butler service for 10,000mBTC; OR

B) a single room in Manor House 1st floor with bath / single room in the conference wing (same price) for 3,000mBTC; OR

C) shared room with another delegate with bath (included).

So you're telling me that the goal here is that there will be 3M BTC (30% of all bitcoins!) deposited to an account which you control? Man if this happens i'm getting out of this game.

Curiosity question: what's the purpose of this particular criterion? I understand wanting your premises to be in "good conditiohn", but >10ft clearance seems like a non sequitur.

+1

What's the "elevator pitch"?

To make the discussion more convenient, I've created a separate topic dedicated solely to Bitcoin Supernode Summit.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=192008

I ask everyone to share their ideas relating the summit on the new thread linked above.

Please correct me if I am putting inaccurate words in anyone's mouth.Bitcoin is growing. Bitcoin is becoming better-known, and the price is going up, and it seems these sorts of growth are dramatically outpacing growth and maturation of the infrastructure. I speak here, not of development of the software itself (issues such as block size, UTXO pruning, &c), but rather of the ecosystem, the stuff that makes it usable as a real replacement for the currencies in which people transact.

We need to talk about the future of this infrastructure, the future of the vital organs of the Bitcoin economy (just as the blockchain is its bones). We need to talk about what infrastructure needs to be in place for Bitcoin to become honest-to-goodness current money, and moreover, how to implement these things quickly and well. It is especially important, as much as it's feasible, for the big stakeholders - the people who are already doing a lot of stuff in Bitcoin and are invested in its success - to be parties to this conversation.

As far as I can tell, that's the point of this conference.

Edit: Elevator pitches of the problems that the three proposed "workshops" seem to be trying to address.

There is time to brag and there is time to speak plain words. Now, some of the latter kind:


To the "PTB of bitcoin":

You understand that what I am talking is true, but are afraid that it will somehow ruin your plans. It won't. The most important thing for you to understand is that you cannot destroy bitcoin, and I cannot destroy it. Therefore it will not be destroyed. Either of us can keep it going indefinitely. Any supernode can do it. MP can do it, alone, if you and I both fail.

You currently have a lot of bitcoins and there is nothing in this world that can take them away from you. Taking them from you is not even my intention. I have rather few bitcoins actually, compared to many of you. But even I have enough, the bulk of my bitcoins I plan to never spend. There is hardly a day, when I don't make more bitcoins, despite the great level of spending that I have.

This is because of the fact that I am cool, and most of you are not. If I spend bitcoins, the universe is busy giving them back to me. If you spend, they are gone. Or at least you are afraid that they would be (try it - you may be wrong ;) ).

I don't believe it needs to stay this way - coolness is a trait that one can develop. One of the ways to develop it, is to spend time with cool people, such as me. I personally invited many of you to my summit, and I plan to have a good time there. If you would send 2-3 delegates, I believe the reality would hit you not nearly as hard, as it will, if none of the big names is present to relay the information to the current powers.

TL; DR: You will continue to have the bulk of the bitcoins, but it does not do much if you cannot spend them in a way that it brings good to all of mankind + replenishes your stack. The word "miser" is derived from "misery" for a reason.



To MP:

I cannot understand why you continue to bully your inferiors and not speak kindly (as I do), towards all who want to understand. You only posted me a proof this week that you actually have a PR lady, until that I had thought you are a schizophrenic. Your PR is not doing a good job, if I were you I would think again how to present yourself to the world. I do not believe your business is worth 700,000,000mBTC and mine is only 400,000mBTC. As I speak the truth in kindness, and you don't, the valuation of your business will decline and mine will increase. You understand all this (http://polimedia.us/trilema/2013/regarding-money/), so I await for a change in strategy or the continued decline of your importance.


To the enthusiastic public:

Buy bitcoins with all the spare cash that you have, NOW, and continue reading this thread. It is more important to buy now, than it is to buy with a lot of cash. If you have $1, go to work and earn $10, and then buy bitcoins. If you have $100, do not go to work but buy bitcoins now. Then go to work, earn $1000 and buy bitcoins with that.

Before the year is over, wonderful things will have happened. In 1998 I was in senior high school, and we started the school year with two people in my class having a mobile phone. They called each other and the rest were quietly ridiculing them. After 9 short months, everybody except two (of the class of 36 people) had bought theirs, and only two were still considering. Bitcoin will do the same, and since there are certain things in the universe that cannot be altered, it will develop a price bubble:

When the actual adoption of Bitcoin (which is currently between 1-5 million users) hits 100 million users, bitcoin price will have risen a lot, and by "a lot" I mean that it goes to several million dollars per bitcoin. It will happen before Christmas, this year. No, not in 2016. The rate of the adoption of new ideas has constantly shortened, and bitcoin has a trait that most of the cool new stuff don't have, it makes everyone who enters in, before the mass adoption threshold of about 2% of the active population, stinking rich. This alone would fulfill the phophecy to its brim - and it is just a bonus, since the bitcoin technology is a world class invention even without that property.

Do not buy any bitcoins over and above your immediate transactional needs, after it hits its long-term sustainable value of $300/mBTC in current dollars. Or prepare to sell them at the bubble top at least.


To the doubters:

Read what I wrote to the "enthusiastic public" and decide accordingly.


To the bears:

You may think it is cool to spread FUD, trying to delay the mass adoption and enrich yourself in the process. You are wrong. It is not cool, but the opposite (lame). Also you are not really getting richer, and you know it. The ones, who are now actually getting richer by lying, are competent enough to get richer while speaking the truth, and they have enough bitcoins, and time in their hands to come to my summit and learn how to do it.


To the delegates:

After this post, I will concentrate on developing your capabilities on running a supernode of your own, and not so much talk in public or troll in this forum. Expect a change in my priorities, effective some time during the next 96 hours. And decide your service level according to my previous post, I will soon get back regarding that.


To the potential delegates:

I can easily imagine that the summit is worth your time and ticket price. If you don't, then don't attend! A certain level of imagination is required, and if you don't have it, you're wasting your time.

If you do, the tickets are still available below cost, and we are going to have a good time there*, so why wait! :)

*) Actually "here" since I moved my presence to Haikko already today. The Manor House (pictured) is undergoing the largest renovation in its history, and we will be the first guests there when it opens next week with its butler service. I am currently staying in the conference wing suite, which satisfies all my conditions except the height of the ceiling.)


Thank you for your time :)

Thank you for the invitation, I am honored.
I would love to go unfortunately, it is a bit to close to San Jose for me.
As I have already booked everything for San Jose and I quite busy at the moment, I have to decline.
I could possible connect virtually, but that is probably sub optimal.
//DeaDTerra

MPOE-PR did reply with insult, so I deleted it and acknowledge the fact here.

(Almost) every time I read Trilema, I think, "wow, this guy is up to something".

(Without almost a single exception) every time I read MPOE-PR, I think, "but he cannot be, if he actually pays for this shit to be posted in his name".

The part about mobile phones kind of proves it. There are some techs, such as Twitter, which did not reach more than 2% of the population, yet continue to be current for that subset. Yet, Bitcoin is now used by about 0.01%-0.1% of world's population. Even if it never makes big, it is hard to comprehend that someone who actually used Bitcoin, would cease to use it.

Everything I see, is now pointing to a rapid mass adoption in 2013, which means that the price will overshoot to $millions range in a speculative bubble, coupled with hoarding, and no easy means yet available to augment the supply with instruments with limited monetary privileges (i.e. "real bills" and the like).

Even if I am wrong, $5000 by Christmas is hardly improbable. $100, never. That would mean that Bitcoin's usage would stall in 0.01% of the world's population, and nothing is pointing to that direction. It is growing right now, I estimate anything between 10-30% per week, and we leave the math to the reader.

So yes, I believe all "legit" bears have sold their coins for a fiat profit, and are now minding their own business somewhere else. This forum is frequented by professionals and their sockpuppets, where the professionals speak mildly bullish statements, and the bears that they employ, speak FUD. All this is just to mask the fact that the pros want to accumulate as many coins as possible. Mathematically and psychologically, bitcoin can never stall in any value short of $100k at least.

I am not a very big potato in the grand scheme of things, but even I can see this much. Seeing it is just the beginning, the next level is realizing that we are all going to be so very rich; now what do we want to do with the money? This is why I am posting. There was this thing called "integrity" in the 1800s, and not much of it could be found in bitcoinworld in 2012. It is coming back, thank you for your time. :)

Accepted.

This conference was originally thought to be organized in early-mid June in Greece. We had already some planning going on. But things develop quickly, and these things (Dealer Network, Supernode, Real Bills) are very important for bitcoin to reach 6 digits by Christmas. They just need to be done, otherwise the infrastructure won't be there. (Can you imagine $100 billion dollars deposited in MtGox, I can't :) ) Therefore,

I am the sole culprit for the following:
- Inordinately short lead time (of 2 weeks(!)) from invitation to meetup
- Undercutting the San Jose conference by a week - yes, that was intentional, since the same week was off-limits, and one week after nobody would have attended, etc.
- Because of the above reasons, I retained it here in Finland to make sure it will succeed despite of the risks associated with shooting from the hip.

August is too warm, therefore the week of 3.-7. July or the one before, would be my preference.

As this Finland gig is organized now, there is naturally no need to have another one in 3 weeks; 7-8 weeks between meetups is just fine.

You mean, all three of them? (Finland, CA, Greece)

I thought it was a given that I will be attending the one in Greece; yes, all 3 most probably.

Thank you. Now I want to ask you (esp. delegates), which workshop should I expand first, the Supernode or Real Bills?

I'd suggest that you build both of them up in tandem (so they can form a base for further discussion before/during the meeting, including the community's input). They both present diametrically different (albeit intertwined) concerns of the ecology/economy, and noteworthy efforts have been/are being made on both topics.

I'm flattered that I wasn't invited.  I like your thread too.

This is what I think you should really do.  You have demonstrated a great deal of motivation and drive to organize such a conference, something that is clearly an essential element.  Every conference needs somebody like you.  On the other hand, you've also demonstrated some highly questionable judgment with respect to some of the elements that it would take to completely put such a thing together.  There is nothing wrong with this, as long as you recognize your limitations and plan around them.  I probably would not attend any conference if you were the only organizer, just based on what I've seen of you, your main fault being that I counted you, and there is only 1 of you, and the conference you want to organize and the one I want to attend will require the help of many more than 1 talented people to put togheter! =)  Please resist the urge to be offended and put my advice in context, I am really trying to influence you toward helping channel your abilities and drive toward the planning of an event that others, along with me, will really want to attend.

What you really need to do is find somebody else who can worry about the things where you don't excel, and team up with them.  Get on the same page with somebody else who can do a better job of putting together the plans of what ought to be in a conference that will attract attendees, who perhaps doesn't quite have the same drive and motivation to organize the conference as you do, and start splitting up the responsibilities so that everyone is doing what they're good at, and avoiding things they are not.  Find someone who is adept at communicating those in the "30 second elevator pitch" so you are attracting the right audience.  Listen to those who are criticizing your plans, they are not trying to attack you, they are giving you opportunities to identify what help you need to look for.  And if the business case makes sense, absolutely make it a nice event and pick people up in style and ensure they enjoy it.  Just remember they are paying for the totality of the experience, and not any one single aspect of it, and not very many people can produce that experience all by themselves, you need them and they need you.

[originally written 18 hours ago, posted now due to unavailability of the forum]

I have been taking it easy the last 2 days.. kind of premeditation for the upcoming Summit. I had a three-hour lunch meeting with the staff of the hotel, the MD (of the hotel) paid a visit, hotel paid the food and I paid the wines. Sun has been shining and it is just fine here:
http://www.haikko.fi/media/ylakuvat/kevat2013/etusivu_kevat01.jpg

Really relaxing. I acknowledge that there is blood on the streets of bitcoinworld, but everybody is entitled to create their own reality. Mine is: "I have been wrong with my calls concerning $.14, $.121, $.115, $.1, $.095 and $.091. According to my theory, it should visit sub-.08 before heading back up. Perhaps I am wrong with that also. The fibonacci levels are now so close to each other that it does not practically matter. I will be buying as much as I can sub-.1, but I never hold excess fiat so I cannot likely buy that much. If I get to sell the 10,000oz of silver that I listed is for sale (for bitcoin payment only, PM me!), my bitcoin stash goes up by another 2-3 million mBTC, but that does not really matter as silver is also incredibly undervalued, and some diversification is good."

If somebody else meditates according to following lines: "I invested half my life earnings into bitcoin @.167 last week, so now I have lost half of everything I have ever earned, I better sell it now and buy a rope with the proceeds", he is entitled to it. It is pointless to argue, who is "correct". Since I do not feel I have lost by buying silver over $40 and holding it until now, I must have gained. And it is not only me, most of my senior partners feel the same way, and they are still happily buying more silver and bitcoins. (Although some are selling silver for bitcoins, anyway it is good - I get margin both ways.)

This is the curse of bitcoin: everyone who knows shit about bitcoin is nearly 100% all in nearly all the time, and consequently cannot buy much more, no matter how good opportunities present themselves. The ones who don't know shit, are joining the manipulative selling, cutting their fiat gains significantly short of their potential, or even making a loss. The large fish that only ponder about whether to enter into bitcoin or not, don't send their million$ to a place like Mt.Gox, and there is not yet a dealer network that could sell bitcoins for immediate lock-in, delayed payment. So nobody can easily lift the price up despite the ridiculousness of the undershoot. Next week bulls again make money, the following week bears make money, but the pigs get slaughtered every week.

The curse will be lifted, effective days, weeks and months from now as we have the Summit, and we establish the dealer network. Then anyone who wants bitcoins, I mean any number of them, will just need to call the friendly local dealer, and lock in the price expressed in percentage over fix, and at the following fixing, which will be executed every 8 hours perpetually, the dealer can buy the bitcoins, hedging his position, pocket the fee, and nobody is in risk of losing significant amounts of fiat or bitcoins due to unethical middlemen, or substandard trading practices.

I still sport with 12-14% over spot fees even today, but that will be a distant memory as my dealer network will relentlessly crush the fees to sub-1% range during the remainder of the year. The recent event are only solidifying my conviction that this is the most important thing bitcoinworld needs here and now, and it is just logical that I will concentrate my efforts into it. Thank you for your time :)

Originally in Wall Observer, which is a good thread to follow if you want to spend about 25% of your waking hours following it. (Well, some people still watch TV and such, you decide...)

Thank you for your thoughts,

Bitcoin can change in a heartbeat. Superficially it may look that you can easily buy bitcoins sub-0.1, as it has spent several hours under it and the wall observer shows a wall at 0.1.

Don't fall on the trap: Everything can be fake, until you receive the bitcoins.

I have been a full-time silver dealer for 7 years, I know. Until you get the silver, you can imagine what you want and rant endlessly about the fiat price and its supposed crash. All the fiat in the world cannot buy you 10% of the world's silver, and neither it does buy 10% of physical bitcoins.

There was a day in October 2008, I could not buy silver in this world for any price.

There was a day in March 2013, there was no bitcoins for sale in Bitstamp.

I advice you to buy right now, as I have been doing all the way. The only official selling suggestion I have ever issued for bitcoin, was the following (http://blogit.tietokone.fi/ossi/2013/04/bitcoin-kupla-joka-puhkesi/) [translation from Finnish mine]:

Thursday April 11th, 12:52 UTC (http://www.bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60zczsg2013-04-12zeg2013-04-13ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv):


Translation of my own text:

I would, however, like to know, if you are now in the process of buying bitcoins, since due to the crash they are cheap?

I dare to stick to my argument that the February blog post of mine (http://hopeapankki.wordpress.com/2013/02/14/omaisuusluokkakatsaus/) (in which I urged to buy bitcoins for EUR 15) is, and will remain, a more important piece of advice than anything that you have instructed the people to do.

Especially now, as I officially exhort people to sell 20% of their position, to repatriate double the amount of fiat they invested, and ride the freebies "for the longest time" until you develop a desire to buy a private island or a penthouse.

Link to the blog added (original did not have the link, which was considered public knowledge in Finland). Note the added emphasis on the rare word "officially", since there are not so many things that I officially instruct people to do. I am not official ;)

There is only about 1.5 days left before the admission window to the I Bitcoin Supernode Summit closes.

I have stayed in the Haikko Manor for 3 days now, thinking how to best achieve the results that we want from the summit. I have decided the following:

- We will cease to sell virtual admissions separately for a 5,000mBTC refund. The 3 virtuals so far will be refunded.

- The admission window will be open until midnight Sunday UTC (about 37.5 hours from the timestamp of this post) as stated previously

- Only 4 more admissions will be sold, and they will be sold for 7,000mBTC, 8,000mBTC, 9,000mBTC and 10,000mBTC, respectively. No more tickets will be available for purchase after these ones are purchased. You can just pay to the address and send me PM afterwards, otherwise you risk losing out if somebody pays first. It does not matter whether you come personally or not, virtual admission costs the same now.

- I will set up the summit organization on Tuesday, and you can come if you want even then, I will host you the two extra nights at my expense. So practically the ticket includes full board for 6 days (5 nights) instead of 4 days (3 nights).

- The previous opening day of Thursday will see some increase in the organization such as the Secretariat will open then and we can register the letters of attorney. (If the delegates want to legally represent some persons or corporations, prepare the documents in the notarized way).

- The matters we discuss are quite important, as I don't know how operative the Bitcoin Foundation is in the middle of this lawsuit, MP is for some reason still ridiculing me despite my attempts to establish contact, also it should be obvious that the USD/BTC exchanges in their current form cannot support millibitcoin's price going much past $1, and therefore need to be overridden as soon as possible.

- We will provide real time and delayed audio, video, and transcript material of the meetings according to our discretion.

- The Bitcoin Dealers' Association and the Supernode Network will be established during the summit, or immediately following it. The clearinghouse will probably not be established yet, since to function properly, it needs that bitcoin price first go up, and then slowly down to its long-term stable value. This is not expected to happen in the following 3 months.

- All delegates please send PM to me, or skype "ristopietila" or send SMS +358503235950 in the next 36 hours, we will decide what forum we will use for practical arrangements, the delegates have already set up skype chats, fb forums, threads and all, but it is a little bit of a mess and we need to clear it to start functioning properly :)

I don't know every cool guy, sorry. Only the ones that frequent economics, speculation. Esp. technical I don't know.

You can buy yourself a ticket if you want to participate (real/virtual) there is 4 more available as of now.

Deleting a post from this thread is no offence from my part. I have just decided that the thread should be a 30-minute read. So I always keep it as maximum 10 pages long. I have deleted 95% of visitor content so far, and about 30% of my own posts also. Even an old post will be deleted when I no longer consider it relevant to the new readers. If you want to develop the idea in your post further, please do it in your own self-moderated thread. In my thread everything will be deleted eventually.

That's not paranoid, you should only disclose the hash of your public keys, to protect you against a quantum-computer equipped thief. ;)

Evidently, bitcoin is easy to sell.

The wonder of it all - is that what Risto says above is absolutely true, depending solely upon the degree to which bitcoin replaces the legacy fiat/PM financial structure. The three year exponential growth of bitcoin suggests that it will take a substantial portion of online payment transactions. And Risto could share rosy statistics about the growth of bitcoin as as store of value - achieving what I imagine to be a growing share of the market formerly served only by precious metals.
  

This thread is a fascinating read, but is getting crazier by the day! The quote above speaks volumes about relative prioritisation. I've traded billions of USD and managed to do so without being overly concerned with ceiling proximity  ;D

Wonder if SlipperySlope is joking, or do I now have the fifth person who understands Bitcoin  :o

Look at the adoption rate growth, of the 5 people who I know, who realize what I say is true:

Person A - Sep 2010
Person B - Mid-Apr 2013 (This was me :) )
Person C - Late-Apr 2013
Person D - Early-May 2013
Person E - Early-May 2013

What I see is a very rapid growth. Today is only 5th of May, after all. I'd say hundreds of people understand it in May, and millions in June. In July it is too late to buy bitcoins for investment probably.


Already have the money, now we're looking for some quality of life.

I assure you, you will feel the shortage of rental offices with 4+ meter ceiling, already this autumn. How could it not be, if the above is true?

If you consider a connection as being something binary (two persons involved) then the network value only grows as n^2, n*(n-1)/2 to be precise, not (n-1)!. This is Metcalfe's law: the value of a network grows quadratically with the number of users of the network. This also explains why there are many^2 presents christmas evening if many guests are attending - the number of presents grows quadratically with the number of people if all guests give all other guests one present each.

And btw, n*(n-1)/2=sum(x,x=1,x=n-1) (the sum of all natural numbers from 1 to n-1, not the product as (n-1)! indicates)

What Sword Smith says above, is true. I will correct it soon. Does not alter the conclusion, though, therefore I am not in a hurry.

Meanwhile in Wall Observer:

I have updated the conference schedule and announced a public event on Saturday (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=192008.msg2051199#msg2051199).

Is there anyone willing to receive the sourcedata of these 450 trades (http://1LvFmL4gRJaYto5aioM1rFNoM2Rn2DsRNr) by email, so that he can analyze them and publish the results.

I was the main contributor behind the crash from 119->108 in May 5, and one of the two wallmakers that drove the price from 111->97.52 in May 7. I net bought 176,000mBTC with no additional cash by this successful swing trade.

trust++

We sent a memo to all summit delegates about how to tip the staff of the hotel with bitcoin-denominated redeemable short-term bearer certificates (http://hopea.fi/bitcointip/).

The virtual delegates who want to participate, please skype chat to me at "ristopietila" and we organize the practicalities. Today is the main workgroups day and it is 8:30am here.

I went to the bitcoin summit and I do not regret going.

Regarding all the formal details, the hotel, food, surroundings, transportation etc., there was absolutely nothing to complain about - on the contrary.

As I saw it, one of the main purposes of the summit was to discuss the establishment of a dealer network and other technical solutions to facilitate an improvement of the liquidity in the otc (Over The Counter) market of bitcoin dealers. My personal motivation for going was to discuss bitcoin business ideas and expand my bitcoin network.

Both of these objectives were achieved but the latter to a larger degree than the former. I definitely got a good bang for my buck and we also discussed the technical details of the dealer network but this was mainly with Pietilä's employee and not so much Pietilä himself. There should have been more workshops if you ask me - this would have made it possible for us to reach a conclusion on all the details of this network and maybe also discuss some of the other subjects that have been presented in this thread, i.e., the "real bill" and the "supernode" concept.

I did not really experience any of the drama which some have been hinting at.

I look forward to conducting business with the people I have met at the summit in the future.

If anybody has any questions on the summit, you are welcome to pm me.

Translated text from Finnish original added in blue in front of original text (thank you rebuilder (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3772)):

Translator's notes in [brackets]. I've tried to keep the style to my best ability, to some degree at cost of legibility. Dates in DD.MM.YYYY format, or similar bigendian.

"Hi,

Thank you for the service during our Bitcoin-conference 9.-12.5. Unfortunately, Haikko manor did not entirely conduct the conference as agreed upon (Janne Sainio, e-mail "Confirmation Silverbank" 7.5. at 12:01, and discussions leading to the offer in question, especially the lunch meeting Pietilä-Blomberg-Keinänen-Sainio, for a time Mähönen 2.5. approx. 12-16 o'clock.)

Notable failings (list is exemplary [??] but not complete):

-Materials to be handed out in advance to hotel staff (Order of the day 9. May 2013), which had been promised to be delivered to the staff's attention before the beginning of the conference, had not been dealt out. We are under the impression the material was in accordance with what had been agreed upon with Sainio and that he had seen it before passing it on to the hotel. [The phrasings used here leaves me a bit unclear on whether the actual passing on of informational material is at issue here, or informing hotel staff that such material exists. I assume the former.] During hour 4-hour lunch (2.5) Sainio had time to gain the impression this was to be a so-called summit. [Lit. "top meeting".] Apparently it was for this reason that Mähönen had been asked to introduce himself. We requested, among other things, 24 hour guards at the log sauna, which indicated our view of the central importance of the sauna's security, although no promise was made to deliver guards.

-The staff of the hotel had entered the sauna space on at least 3 separate occasions in the first 24 hours alone, of a sauna reservation of 59 hours length in total, despite prior agreement to the contrary, it being clearly mentioned in the daily order [that the sauna is not to be entered at will, I presume] and repeated reminders of this. Some of the entries happened when we were not guarding the sauna since we had been asked to retire to our rooms by 24:00 at the latest, although the sauna was in our uninterrupted use from thursday 10:00 to saturday 23:00. Already on friday 10.5 between 00 and 12 o'clock personal items belonging to conference participants had gone missing from the sauna. Additionally the sauna had been cleaned, so that our ability to discover the full amount of lost/stolen property immediately as the conference was still ongoing was weakened.

The main host of the conference (Pietilä) ordered an internal preliminary investigation on the matter on fri. 10.5. at approx. 18 hours. He used as personnel mainly himself and acting host ["responsible/trustee host"] Roni Blomberg, a hotel employee by the name of "Butler Charlotta" and a representative of the maintenance company, "Mikke". By approximately 8 o'clock saturday morning, the preliminary investigation led to the understanding at least 1 bitcoin worth of property had been lost (repurchase value of identifiably lost items), but private keys possibly used to store bitcoins had been copied/destroyed to a greater extent. Among other things, Pietilä's Macbook Air computer was at the sauna for the entire night, thursday-friday 9.-10.5

Our estimate of the upper bound of damages is 100000 bitcoins (market value approx. 9,1 million euro, repurchase value with immediate market operation approx. 10,2 million euro). Damages are divided in two parts, copied and lost bitcoin private keys.

For copied private keys the situation can be sorted out by transferring all the bitcoins of all the participants to different addresses, at which point we weill see, whether they have in the meantime been unrightfully spent. Finding this out must happen a soon as possible (if private keys have been saved, no financial loss will be caused, unless they are unrightfully used before the legal owner transfers them to a new, safe address). Due to the extremely strict security requirements of handling private keys required to use large amounts of bitcoins, the operation is however labour-intensive and carrying it out must be done by each participant such, that most of the work can not be delegated. For example an inventory of bitcoins of Pietilä and the companies he owns/leads requires about 16 hors of work to complete. Pietilä's own consulting fees (list price http://hopea.fi/bitcoin-kurssihistoria/) in April have varied between 600-2400 euro. This is one of the most urgent tasks, which will override most other markings in Pietilä's calendar for the week 13.-19.5.

The sum of money lost due to loss of private keys can not be reliably found out, but we believe the participants will notice if the sum rises to the thousands of bitcoins. This will be found out in about a week (a week is also our ETA for finding out the sum total of stolen bitcoins).

With the preliminary investigation having lasted throuhgh the entire night of 1.-11.5, it's traces (among them approx. 50 trash bags removed from a trash compactors, which had, by Pietilä and Mikke, been emptied in the trash area and thoroughly searched in hopes of bitcoin private keys or their parts having been destroyed among the trash, instead of stolen) were no longer possible to keep hidden from hotel management. Mähönen was informed of the matter on saturday morning, and he had a meeting with Pietilä between 10:30-11:30. It is believed both parties recorded the conversation with mobile devices. The conclusion of the meeting was, that Pietilä would not receive the right of direction he had requested over Charlotta and Mikke, and would not be allowed to otherwise continue the preliminary investigation in any overt way. Mähönen however gave permission to carry the conference out to its conclusion by the agreed ending time of 16 hours on 12.5.

The continuous failings in security and the increasingly hostile attitude of the staff led to Pietilä ordering the conference evacuated on 12.5 at 10 o'clock, and the evacuation was concluded by approx. 12 o'clock. Haikko manor was informed of the situation at 13 o'clock, by when all delegates had reached a safe area.

-Pietilä had reserved, for payment of the hotel bill, time on sunday between approx 9:30-10, which the hotel had been informed of (Butler Charlotta approx. 8:30). Payment was unsuccesful, because the bill had been drafted against PM-codes [?? Translator's education insufficient here.] and contained obvious errors. For example the 2400 euro rent of the Romanov hall had been added to the bill, contrary to the confirmation of reservation sent by Sainio. When Pietilä pointed this out to the receptionist called Anna-Lisa, she responded, that the addition was Mähönen's. Pietilä requested to be allowed to inspect the bill and pay the undisputed part. This was denied.

****

We want, from Vuoristo-yhtiöt OY, a bill fit for bookkeeping, itemized by the agreed PM-codes, with copies of receipts for room service and such services procured attached, so we can inspect the bill and pay the undisputed part.

We want, from Vuoristo-yhtiöt OY, the personal items left in rooms 26 and 30 during the evacuation, which we can pick up while we pay the undisputed part.

We hope Vuoristo-yhtiöt OY will appoint a contact with decision-making powers, who can discuss with Pietilä. If the company's attitude remains the same as during phone discussions had on monday 13.5 (e.g. Pietilä-Mähönen), our contact person will be an attorney's office.

Risto Pietilä can be reached at the number 050-3235950. He keeps a public diary in English at the address:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174620
and a copy of this e-mail has been sent there as clarification of events, which have caused concern in the Bitcoin community.

Risto Pietilä.



Hei,

Kiitos palvelusta Bitcoin-konferenssimme 9.-12.5. aikana. Valitettavasti konferenssia ei Haikon kartanon puolelta kaikilta osin toimitettu sovitun (Janne Sainio, email "Vahvistus Silverbank" 7.5. klo 12:01, sekä ko. tarjoukseen johtaneet keskustelut eritoten lounaspalaveri Pietilä-Blomberg-Keinänen-Sainio, osan aikaa Mähönen 2.5. n. klo 12-16) mukaisesti.

Merkittäviä puutteita (lista on esimerkinomainen mutta ei täydellinen):

- Hotellin henkilökunnalle etukäteen jaettua materiaalia (Order of the Day 9. May 2013), joka oli luvattu ennen konferenssin alkua saattaa henkilökunnalle tiedoksi, ei ollut jaettu. Olemme käsityksessä, että materiaali oli Sainion kanssa sovitun mukainen ja että hän on nähnyt sen ennen sen antamista tiedoksi hotellille. Sainio ehti 4 tunnin mittaisen lounaan (2.5.) aikana saada käsityksen, että kyseessä on nk. huippukokous. ilmeisesti Mähönen oli sen vuoksi pyydetty esittäytymään. Pyysimme mm. 24h vartiota hirsisaunalle, mikä viittasi käsitykseemme saunan turvallisuuden keskeisyydestä, vaikka vartiota ei luvattukaan toimittaa.

- Hotellin henkilökunta oli käynyt saunatilassa vähintään 3 erillistä kertaa pelkästään ensimmäisen 24 tunnin aikana yhteensä 59 tunnin mittaisesta saunavarauksesta, huolimatta siitä, että asiasta oli etukäteen toisin sovittu, siitä mainittiin selväsanaisesti päiväkäskyssä ja siitä huomautettiin toistuvasti. Osa käynneistä tapahtui silloin, kun me emme vartioineet saunaa koska meitä oli pyydetty siirtymään huoneisiimme viimeistään kello 24:00, vaikka sauna oli keskeytyksettä käytössämme to 10:00-la 23:00. Jo perjantain 10.5. 00-12 välisenä aikana saunasta oli kadonnut konferenssin osallistujille kuuluvia henkilökohtaisia tavaroita. Lisäksi sauna oli siivottu, siten, että mahdollisuutemme selvittää kadonneen/varastetun omaisuuden kokonaismäärä välittömästi konferenssin yhä kestäessä heikkenivät.

Konferenssin pääisäntä (Pietilä) määräsi asiasta sisäisen esitutkinnan pe 10.5. noin kello 18. Hän käytti henkilöstönä pääosin itseään sekä vastuuisäntä Roni Blombergia, hotellin työntekijää nimeltä "Butler Charlotta" sekä huoltoyhtiön edustajaa "Mikke". Esitutkinta johti lauantaiaamuun noin klo 8 mennessä siihen käsitykseen, että omaisuutta oli kadonnut vähintään 1 bitcoinin arvosta (tunnistettavasti kadonneiden esineiden jälleenhankinta-arvo), mutta mahdollisesti bitcoinien käyttöön vaadittavia yksityisavaimia on joutunut tallennetuksi/hävitetyksi enemmänkin. Mm. Pietilän Macbook Air -merkkinen tietokone oli saunalla koko yön to-pe 9.-10.5.

Arviomme vahingon maksimimäärästä on 100000 bitcoinia (markkina-arvo n. 9,1 miljoonaa euroa, jälleenhankinta-arvo välittömällä markkinaoperaatiolla noin 10,2 miljoonaa euroa). Vahinko jakautuu kahteen osaan, tallennettuihin ja kadotettuihin bitcoinien yksityisavaimiin.

Tallennettujen yksityisavaimien osalta voimme selvittää tilanteen siirtämällä kaikki kaikkien osallistujien bitcoinit eri osoitteisiin, jolloin käy ilmi, onko niitä sillä välin oikeudettomasti käytetty. Tämän selville saaminen tulee tapahtua mahdollisimman pian (mikäli yksityisavaimia on tallennettu, asiasta ei aiheudu rahallista tappiota, ellei niitä oikeudettomasti käytetä ennen kuin laillinen omistaja siirtää ne uuteen, turvalliseen osoitteeseen). Suurten bitcoin-määrien käyttöön vaadittavien yksityisavaimien säilytyksessä noudatettavien äärimmäisen tiukkojen turvallisuusvaatimusten johdosta operaatio on kuitenkin työläs ja sen suorittaminen on kunkin osallistujan tehtävä siten, että suurinta osaa työstä ei ole mahdollista delegoida. Esimerkiksi Pietilän ja hänen omistamiensa/johtamiensa yhtiöiden bitcoinien inventaari vaatii noin 16 tunnin työn. Pietilän oma konsultointilaskutus (listahinta http://hopea.fi/bitcoin-kurssihistoria/) huhtikuussa on vaihdellut 600-2400 euron välillä. Tämä on yksi kiireellisimpiä tehtäviä, joka tulee ohittamaan useimmat muut Pietilän kalenterissa viikolla 13.-19.5. olleet merkinnät.

Kadotettujen yksityisavaimien johdosta hävityn rahan kokonaismäärää ei ole mahdollista luotettavasti selvittää, mutta uskomme osallistujien huomaavan, mikäli summa nousee useisiin tuhansiin bitcoineihin. Tämä saadaan selville noin viikossa (viikko on arviomme myös varastettujen bitcoinien kokonaismäärän selville saamiseksi).

Kun esitutkinta oli kestänyt koko yön 10.-11.5., sen jäljet (mm. roskapuristimesta irrotetut n. 50 jätesäkkiä, jotka oli Pietilän ja Miken toimesta tyhjennetty roska-aitaukseen ja tongittu läpi perinpohjaisesti siinä toivossa, että bitcoinien yksityisavaimia tai niiden osia olisi hävitetty roskien joukossa, eikä varastettu) eivät enää olleet peitettävissä hotellin johdolta. Asia tehtiin lauantaiaamuna tiettäväksi Mähöselle, joka tapasi Pietilän palaverissa n. 10:30-11:30 välisenä aikana. Tiettävästi molemmat osapuolet lisäksi nauhoittivat keskustelun mobiililaitteella. Palaverin lopputuloksena oli, että Pietilä ei saa pyytämäänsä direktio-oikeutta Charlottaan ja Mikkeen, eikä saa jatkaa esitutkintaa muutenkaan näkyvällä tavalla. Mähönen kuitenkin antoi luvan saattaa konferenssin loppuun sovittuun päättymisaikaan 12.5. klo 16 mennessä.

Jatkuvat puutteet turvallisuudessa sekä henkilökunnan yhä vihamielisemmäksi käyvä suhtautuminen johtivat siihen, että Pietilä määräsi konferenssin evakuoitavaksi 12.5. kello 10, ja evakuointi saatettiin päätökseen noin kello 12 mennessä. Haikon kartanolle ilmoitettiin tilanteesta noin kello 13, jolloin kaikki delegaatit olivat päässeet turvalliselle alueelle.

- Pietilä oli varannut hotellilaskun maksamista varten aikaa sunnuntaina noin kello 9:30-10 välisen ajan, mikä oli annettu tiedoksi hotellille (Butler Charlotta n. 8:30). Maksaminen ei onnistunut, koska lasku oli laadittu vastoin sovittuja PM-koodeja ja sisälsi ilmeisiä virheitä. Esimerkiksi Romanov-salin tilavuokra 2400 euroa oli lisätty laskuun vastoin Sainion lähettämää varausvahvistusta. Kun Pietilä huomautti asiasta Anna-Lisa nimiselle vastaanottovirkailijalle, tämä vastasi, että lisäys oli Mähösen. Pietilä pyysi voida tarkastaa laskun ja maksaa riidattoman osuuden. Tämä evättiin.

****

Haluamme Vuoristo-yhtiöt Oy:ltä kirjanpitokelpoisen laskun, joka on eritelty sovittujen PM-koodien mukaisesti, liitteenä kopiot huonepalvelusta tms. hankittujen palveluiden kuiteista, jotta voimme tarkastaa laskun ja maksaa riidattoman osuuden.

Haluamme Vuoristo-yhtiöt Oy:ltä huoneisiin 26 ja 30 evakuoinnin yhteydessä jääneet henkilökohtaiset tavarat, jotka voimme hakea samalla kun maksamme riidattoman osuuden.

Toivomme, että Vuoristo-yhtiöt Oy nimittää asian hoitoa varten päätösvaltaisen yhteyshenkilön, joka voi keskustella Pietilän kanssa. Jos yhtiön suhtautuminen jatkuu maanantaina 13.5. käytyjen puhelinkeskustelujen (mm. Pietilä-Mähönen) kaltaisella tavalla, yhteyshenkilönämme toimii asianajotoimisto.

Risto Pietilän tavoittaa numerosta 050-3235950. Hän pitää julkista päiväkirjaa englanniksi osoitteessa:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174620
ja tämän sähköpostiviestin kopio on lähetetty sinne selvityksenä tapahtumista, jotka ovat herättäneet huolta Bitcoin-yhteisössä.

Risto Pietilä

This is a copy of the conference material, given to all delegates, hosts, guests, staff and families of the summit delegations, and supposedly given to all members of the hotel staff in Hotel Haikko Manor (http://www.haikko.fi/en/home.php), owned by Vuoristo-yhtiöt Oy (http://www.haikko.fi/posts/vuoristo-yhtioet-oyn-toimitusjohtaja-vaihtuu-419.php). It is partly censored for names of delegates, although dozens of physical copies featuring the names of the delegates were available during the summit. The names of virtual delegates have not been intentionally disclosed although some of them may have been compromised during the summit.

TRUE! I went trough both ...

I spent 8 days before the summit in Haikko preparing for it. Then during the 24 hours after it started (opening ceremony was Thursday 14:00, Finland time is used if no otherwise mention), something went seriously wrong so many times that I felt the probability of it having been a coincidence had increased to well above zero.

When I ordered an investigation on the events, I did not have the opportunity of taking adequate care of my summit, my family, my sleeping, my water or my food. After about 40 hours of rather intense events, after which I was fully content to die, since there is nothing in this life that I can think of, I would seriously have missed (and believe me I can think of things that most of you can not), I had also exhausted my available energy. I did not feel I would have been able to keep my posture for any more time. So I ordered a general evacuation of the summit and went fully offline for the time between Sunday 13:00 and roughly now. Since I don't have too much stress now, I think I can work approximately 16-18 hours per day indefinitely, provided that I take about 1 day off every 5 days.

Now I try hard to minimize the risk to the well-being of anyone, and to raise the stakes in the game described as follows: if someone actually copied the private keys there (I had access to over 6000 bitcoins unencrypted, open in my computer browser windows during the time it was compromised), he will have to suffer the fact becoming public in its entirety + all the details, if he spends the bitcoins before I have the time to spend them myself. Due to extensive precautions involved, it will take me approximately a week of calendar time + several thousand dollars, to fully ensure that the bitcoins are safe, by sending them to uncompromised addresses. I plan to concentrate on that during this week.

All this drama bothers me as a participant at the summit. None of the participants have had any security compromised, it is only the host(s) which may have had security related issues.

I see no reason for Pietilä to reimburse me. I had hoped for more serious work at the summit but some workshops were held and I did gain value from these workshops. Definitely.

Whether the network that I feel I have gained will become valuable for me is to early to tell. I feel that it will.

We participants were not involved in any of the drama but Pietilä hinted at some drama, the nature of which he did not want to fully disclose during the summit. There is no bad blood between me or any of the participants or the host but I feel that all this speculation and drama may reflect poorly on me. Therefore this clarification.

while i disagree with your overly bullish sentiment for the BTC->USD exchange rate, i am definitely unhappy to hear about your troubles at the event.

people like you are essential for the growth of bitcoins, not only to get the word out, but also to develop your crazy supernode ideas to help the stability of the network in general. next time, you may want to take casacius' advice and not be so extravagant in your preparations to prevent future problems like this.

i wish you all the best and hope that you recover anything that was stolen.

I unlocked the thread to tell you that I am fine, and this is happening in accordance with orders (as understood by me).

I am currently detained in a psychiatric institution in Helsinki, because I need rest. My physical well-being is taken care of.

For an extended period, I am unable to work. I have a sick leave. I will inform you when it ends. The following people have the authorization from me to act as my representatives in their specific fields, respectively:

Erki Selling. Estonian operations.

Matti Valtonen, attorney-at-law. Claims directed towards Melkisedek Oy or Hopeapankki Holding Oy (incorp. in Finland), including the aftermath of Haikko summit.

My wife. Matters concerning our only child, Hilla, 10mo.

Roni Blomberg (rontus). Ambassador-at-Large of rpietila supernode in San Jose (http://www.bitcoin2013.com/).

Lauri Keinänen. Operations manager in Finland, contact person in all matters related to my person.

You may PM me if you want but I will likely not answer.

Ok, I post it here, but remember that I am on a sick leave, and there is no one else to moderate the thread except me, and I have strict orders to sleep all night etc. This thread is now unlocked, but the well-known kids, socks and trolls can still spoil the fun for everyone.

Please, if I have ever told you not to post here, don't reply. Quality discussion about relevant topics welcome.

Checking in from San Jose. Got the tall beautiful lady with me as well.

Where are the best suites in this city?

BTW. We will not bother with the GigaOm Bitcoin Meetup, but PM me (or 415 825 2510) if you have something cool enough planned.

Ah, more drama - if you prefer to think that way. The meeting with the doctor ended in a mutual agreement that I am too manic to continue posting on this forum. As is obvious, harsh measures are needed to prevent me from doing it. For some reason they did not want to just prohibit it. I think it is a part of the care, though. The degrees of freedom must indeed be reduced, to achieve the calm submission to the realities of the outside world. Amen. I submit.

They promised that I can continue wearing my own clothes, and will be able to sleep. The other basic necessities of my life, fresh air, spring water and my diet, were expressly denied to me in the form that I am accustomed of consuming them. However I will still be able to breathe inside the house, plus drink and eat reasonably well. So my lifestyle, which was originally fit for a king, is still fit for a travelling salesman.

I will have to eat medication, though. But all the time during my rise from a failed businessman in 2003 to what I am now in 2013, I did take my pills regularly. It did not prevent me from becoming what I am. As long as I do eat them, I will probably not be able to see the revelation of Bitcoin going to $300 per mBTC. But who cares, since my absence cannot in any way prevent it from doing just that, and I already had a difficult time with seeing so many truths where not many of the others saw them!

A small minus is that I still was not given the opportunity to sort out my bitcoins. So the owners of Haikko cannot know conclusively, how much I will ask from them in damages. It will probably be no more than 100,000 euros, since it does not seem that any intentional theft of bitcoins occurred. They will have the time to draft an explanation why my security was not delivered as promised. Then I will accept it and we will be friends. I will be honored to pay for every bottle of champagne that we uncorked, plus all the goose liver that we ate. The facility bill will probably have to adjusted; we did accept their tender for a summit with security, but that was not delivered.

So from 15:00 I will be denied communication, and the prevention is to take away my communication equipment. So you can continue sending me PM, skype, sms, and email. But I will not read them but perhaps earliest on Monday. I got the impression that I will be able to sort out my communication requests then if I behave reasonably well in the meantime.

The thread is locked, because it is too difficult to organize anyone to moderate it. I will establish different forums of communication anyway later on, the diary will not continue in its current form for several months, after all it is only 5 weeks old now.

If you want to visit me, you will have to reserve from the unit, +358-9-31063734. They will tell about the exact address. It is in the urban area of Helsinki. I am not allowed to talk over the phone, even fixed line.

I have given orders to all of my organization that I may be underground for up to 168 hours without any communication. After that I will have to activate as agreed. The total length of this communication blockade is anything between 3 and 30 days. I continue to be fine, and mind my own business with even greater determination now.

Bitcoin 2013: The Future of Payments May 17-19, 2013

San Jose, CA


O R D E R   O F   T H E   D A Y   1 7 .   M A Y   2 0 1 3


I want to thank my organization for the Haikko summit. Despite all the difficulties we had, the summit was an undeniable success in most counts. Bitcoins were compromised big time, but it was never all of the bitcoins. (With bitcoins, you can do almost the same with 1 million as you can do with 10 million.) My personal function was compromised due to my quest for security. I still do not know why it was not delivered according to the orders. Perhaps I will understand some day. Meanwhile we have other businesses to mind.

The delegation to the San Jose consists of two delegates, plus their local staff:

Roni Blomberg, Ambassador-at-Large. Roni is a full time Bitcoin broker in my organization and lives in a hotel of his choice (too busy to find out sorry). He is travelling single.

Annina Rusila, Personal Secretary. Annina is helping Roni to achieve the mission. She is travelling single. For the reason that she is in close cooperation with Roni, though, she is not allowed to smoke during the conference (except if/when Roni sends her to solitary mission).

They do not have a schedule, and will generally not do much if anything at all during the stay. If you want to be honored by their presence, book them via +1 415 825 2510. They also organize things. As a rule, they will contact and invite whomever they please, according to the orders given by me. I will not be reachable at all so their authority extends quite far, as you will see.


Their mission is to do the bolded part. Everything else I have proved already, and slim chance that I would be required to run the Bitcoin network alone ever, even though I could.

There is no limit to the spending they may authorise to succeed in the mission.

Roni will keep you posted in a separate thread.


In Helsinki,

Risto Pietilä
President etc. of Silverbank, EIH, Hopea.fi
1.5 class Bitcoin Supernode, pending 1.0

GENERAL ORDER N:O 357 CONCERNING THE ACTIVITIES OF RPIETILA SUPERNODE

HELSINKI 2013, MAY 20, 15:00; EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY


TO: Roni Blomberg (rontus)
CC: To whom it may concern


1. INTRODUCTION

2. SUSPENSION OF ALL ACTIVITIES OF THE RPIETILA SUPERNODE

Rpietila supernode will be dissolved effective immediately. "From now one, everybody smokes his own cigars". It is still possible to continue spending my money that I have given to your personal possession, according to my previous orders, but I will require the accounts later. There is a parable about this in the bible. Also all bitcoins, to which I have authorized access, may still be used.

As a rule, if you make money using my money, you may keep it. If you lose my money while trying to make more money, I will deal with it later.

Nobody is authorized to pay any bills (etc.) of Melkisedek Oy, any taxes (etc.) due to the government of Finland, or any claims from Haikko. I will attend to these personally when I return.


3. REACTIVATION OF RPIETILA SUPERNODE

Rpietila supernode may be reactivated as follows: Rpietila summons a general supernode meeting. The invitation must provably be sent to the following people 168 hours prior to the scheduled opening time of the meeting (number of votes in parentheses): Paul (9), Erki (8), Frank (7), Jaakko (7), Iiro (7), Vesa (7), Lauri (6), Mikko (5), Roni (5), Heikki (4), Jochen (3), Taimar (3). After the minimum of 72 hours of uninterrupted deliberation (no other people except rpietila's staff with his permission may enter the area designated as secure), the participants present may vote for the reactivation of the supernode. Rpietila has no vote, but can veto the affirmative decision of the others (and they may set up a supernode themselves). Rpietila may deny partial attendance to the summit, it is all or nothing. The participants receive no compensation whatsoever, except room and board. Minimum 3 people except rpietila must be present to activate the supernode.

If 30 days elapses from the moment that rpietila has last made personal physical contact to minimum 3 of the above people simultaneously, earlier orders are in force. It does not matter what rpietila's condition is, as long as the others may enter and exit at will.


4. THANKS

My fellow patients and nurses have been wonderful, also the staff in Haikko except the ones named in earlier messages. My organisation also does a good job.


5. APOLOGIES

To anyone to whom I have caused harm. Note: speaking truth is not considered harm, even if accompanied with a kind insult.


6. REBUKE

I am not in a position to rebuke anyone at the moment but believe me, I will do, after attending to some more urgent matters.


7. MISCELLANEA

Silver fixing in Silvervault will be suspended due to my inability to fix the fair and equitable price. If somebody wants to pick-up the silver, there are the terms and conditions that apply. I think this is temporary however and will be revoked in a short order.

Silverclub may be used for church meetings and Club evenings in Wednesday as previously.

MP's penance will be the the duration of his public insult + 20%. He knows the math.

Let this letter be distributed to all the concerned.


8. GENERAL ADMONITIONS

Read the bible, Watchman Nee, Witness Lee, Sun Tzu, biographies of great men, drink good water, eat organic food, etc. It does wonders to you.

Read everything written on or before 1913.


9. CONCERNING MY PERSONAL MATTERS

I was taken in custody by the police in Wednesday at about 18:30, now I am in a psych ward, being treated medically for acute mania. My communication blockade will last minimum until May 27th. Do not try to contact me during the time, and afterwards only according to the orders of the authorities. Only my wife may meet me, nobody may phone me.

Don't worry about me. This is normal (for me, at least). Finland is a good country as regards the treatment of nuts.


10. CONCLUSION

John 6:68 is speaking the truth. My speaking from now on, until I return, is akin to John 4:68.


SIGN

Risto Pietilä



EXHIBIT1: TECHNICAL

People mentioned know each other, for which reason first names only are used.

Finnish time is used.

Welcome back, it was getting boring without you!  I'm sure the break has done you good

Mr. R. Pietila is hardcore :)

BITCOIN DEALER NETWORK ASSOCIATION (BDNA) WORKING PAPER
(https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=233611.msg2465657#msg2465657)

This was moved to its proper location in another thread. Please move the comments also there. This thread will be diarylike. Readership has fallen due to time that many highly technical and economical issues have been discussed, and I have not been willing to write light stuff in the middle of heavy ones. Soon you'll hear about my conditions in the psych ward etc., I am sure that'll bring the readers back :)

I started a new thread for postings about the Supernode concept (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=232802.msg2453213#msg2453213). I am still resting but I made some contribution here during my communication lockup.

The diary resumes

Funny. I am in a mental ward, and now I can post freely. But there is not so much to post. My family came to see me. Astrid/they have come every single day during the communication lockup, as she knows how important it is to maintain contact. During the lockup I really did not have much to do. It is the whole idea of this treatment. The patient must be detached from everything he has done to effect a sufficient cooloff. It hurts. But it is required (the same can be accomplished with stronger medication, but Finland is not a place for that).

After I was sufficiently normal, about 2 days ago, they gave me the iphone and macbook back, and now I can go outside 2 times per day (which is pretty much enough, since I cannot go outside the compound anyway. There are 5 light meals per day, and during meals you cannot go out anyway. Also you must sleep in your room. There are as many people as stories. Some are quite horrendous, some are just sad and concern divorce court cases where there are unborn children involved. Most patients are here willingly, I was asked, whether it is OK that I am unwilling. (Read the sentence again and be surprised.)

I ate all the meals, saw my wife, and Hilla played on the bedrock that is visible in the middle of the compound. Was so hungry that ate 2 raw chocolate snack bars. Tried to smoke a cigar, but it kept on dying. I have smoked more cigars here than days, I think the maximum was 5 per day. And we are talking good 10+ euro stuff. Still don't know whether I will quit or continue the habit after they let me out.


 

Now this could become an interesting discussion. Two extreme personalities meet.

Thank you. I am more and more sure that I don't need to do so much. My greatest contribution to bitcoin economy was the calculation that 1 Bitcoin is worth $300,000 U.S. Dollars (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174620.msg1886147#msg1886147). Anything else I do is secondary. Especially now as I cannot think or do much due to my hospitalization. I just wait while the others' actions realize the $300k. I think Jeremias' Localbitcoins.com is currently the toughest thing going on in Bitcoin.

I mentioned in the Wall Observer that I had sold some bitcoins (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178336.msg2489925#msg2489925), and at least the following 5 pages are discussion of my mental illness.

Also needed to disclose some facts:

- I am currently located in a closed mental institution run by the City of Helsinki, with 1-2 weeks to get out hopefully. They took my communication things away for about 16 days when they found out that I was so public in the Internet. Now I am recovering and could take part in trolling (if there was any price action).

- I have more than 2,400,000mBTC, after selling some today because I feel medium-term (1-2 months) bearish. Otoh I have less than 35 million mBTC. I am a large player since at one time I manipulated the price from 117 to 97.52 with the help of only one other wallmaker. There is at least 100 richer people in the world though.

- I have a wife and a kid 11 months old.

- The picture with silver bowls in my head is taken from our Silvervault teaser video, and the guy is me about 3 years ago.

- I still own, manage or run about 4 companies that deal with gold, silver, bitcoins and currencies. They are incorporated in Finland and Estonia.

- The BDNA is a serious concept but I don't know whether it will gain any traction. The Supernode is a real-life action roleplay, and also is not immediately gaining traction.

- Soon I will expand Silvervault to fully accept incoming Bitcoin transfers, which would make bitcoin<->"physical investment silver"<->"physical gold" transactions easier than ever before. This will likely be my greatest contribution in the following 2 months (apart from me getting better that is).

The Supernode concept needs to be developed over time and marketed so that people can become aware. I don't believe it is something that most people understand the potential of. I think in time people can come to understand the benefit of a social organization such as the Supernode network.

It's somewhat similar to the Lions Club or Freemasonry. But potentially on a much bigger scale as since the network is based around bitcoin, it grows while bitcoin grows.

There is value in that. But I believe the idea is not obvious for many people in bitcoin. And it needs to be communicated in such a way so that people can have a better understanding.

Yeah. I already heard that paying 0.5% of your holdings as a registration fee is preposterous. If you are shy and do not like the social gatherings, you do not derive enough value of this.

Otoh, if there is no fee, people who like to be in high positions, will just register as Dukes, and the network will never function as intended.

Would you think, this is cool even if only 1% of the Bitcoiner population is doing it? 0.1%? I think the top of the pyramid is already well formed, and there are 200-400 people in Prince level or higher (3kBTC or more).

In the past, progress moved slower and people had more time to adapt.  Now it is very easy to overload oneself.

Interestingly enough, many libertarians flock to Bitcoin because they are sick of the "power hierarchy" involved in money. They're tired of the corruption, money shows, and power struggles that result.

It only took a few years though for bitcoin to become full of those who would seek to make it a miniature power struggle that real world doesn't even care about. You've got people creating pseudo "foundations" that charge bitcoins for the "right" to vote on something that you can easily vote on with your money instead. You've got people trying to create business investor groups to hold down competitors while preaching libertarianism in public (false prophets). And finally you've got those who seek to make bitcoin a pissing contest instead of just using bitcoin for what it's meant for.

If all it takes to be "important" or "in control" (mining) in bitcoin is to have lots of money, then bitcoin has already failed in its decentralized goals. I have never and will never respect someone for having more money because I understand the fragility of assets, especially bitcoin, which can be forked instantly whenever the people "in charge" start fucking it up for the rest of us. Makes it really hard to take power structures and ploys for rich men seriously when the bank's very foundation and backing can be ripped out overnight and new banks can pop up the next day with a different backing.

I see bitcoin's price as being backed by the trust of developers and the current ownership of mining power. If Hitler owned all the ASICs in the world, Bitcoin would fork to something else. If Gavin was bought by the NSA to do their bidding (and a dozen other developers were threatened or bought), Bitcoin would fork to something else. Why build power structures around such temporary and easily removable backings?

0.5% is perfectly reasonable. You're creating an elite club, not a new egalitarian society. Besides, if you make the entrance fee too low or zero, you will have lots of ppl with passing interest and no commitment. Lame result guaranteed.

I agree with this, keep it up! :)

Human society in almost all cases gravitates towards these types of power structures. Only difference here is that I think rpietila understands that inevitable fact of life and embraces it as opposed to rejecting it. As you can see in his design of the Supernode concept.

Even the purest anarchy is just a temporary transitional state. It's not something that is very likely to be sustained. Unless there is some sort of radical cultural change with regards to how people embrace social structure. But this is almost certainly not going to ever happen, seeing as how I think it's somewhat obvious that humanity embraces social structure.

I'm just interested in seeing some positive organization in bitcoin. I don't know anything about rpietila on a personal level. I've just followed his posts and support his organizational ideas. I think they are good ideas because they are type of thing that happen naturally regardless of who is the first to come up with the idea, or who actually steps forward to implement it. As you can see with what happened with rpietila's idea for the BDNA. Localbitoin ended up implementing a very similar network with the same fundamental goal. Similar enough that rpietila saw fit to pause his development of BDNA.

At least he is actually working to further bitcoin. Most people here seem to have an aversion to progress.

There is the class of Freemen, for people with some but less than 1,000mBTC. You did not likely ever consider the idea, or even see the OP (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=232802.msg2453213#msg2453213) :( This is a problem with forum communication, to weed out the noise, which prohibits the real talent from participating.

I also will close down. I will be back when we are 1/3 of the way there, I mean from $.11 to $300. The point is $1.4/mBTC, and then I will come back, this forum or something else. I think it reasonably demontrates that there is merit in my prediction, and also I have more than 10x the resources to carry it further.

So see you my friend, until probably further this year, or next, or never!  ;)

The General Supernode Meeting will be held in Tallinn, Estonia, starting 18.1.2014 at 12:00. The invitations have been sent.

The General Supernode Meeting dismissed after 75 hours of deliberation. The vote to reactivate the supernode was affirmative 16-7. The first tasks of the supernode: opening headquarters and bases, nominating officials and setting up communications.