Bitcoin Forum

I know it was released earlier tonight, but this article should be one of the more bullish adoption catalysts as more press outlets pick up the story and everyday  Main St. investors become more incentivized to participate in the Bitcoin market. Things like this really resonate with the common man.

It doesn't seem like he worked much, but he withdrew BTC5,000 from the market through good and bleak months, enabling a higher price, more interest, higher difficulty, more security, etc.

Now he is a true supporter given the fact that he sold only 20% after an unbelievable runup. Any man from the street would have sold all.

What is a 'man on the street'?

You don't consider people who use computers commonly a 'man on the street'?

Weird guy

That's really nice.  Would love to spend $27 to get $886,000 sometime.

Of course we hope so.  Have been in Bitcoin for a while now.

Im more surprised he still have the wallet after 3 years.

I reinstalling computers much sonner  :)

I used to play a lot of poker.  Even semi-professionally for a while.  I'll never forget the "boom switch" that was flipped on when an "average Joe" named Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker in 2003, for $2.5 million, on a $40 initial investment...

People eat that shit up.  Everyone wanted to get involved all of a sudden.

We could be priming for a huge bubble, which hopefully doesn't undermine Bitcoin's real value and innovation - not as a "get rich quick" scheme.  I suppose only time will tell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_Series_of_Poker_Main_Event_champions (notice entrants after 2003)

Yup, people are gonna look at the charts and when they see the 2 year chart and that it survived 2 "bubbles" already. Well brace yourself then.

Koch cashed in a fifth of his earnings to buy a three-bedroom apartment in Oslo.  ;D
http://now.msn.com/kristoffer-koch-norwegian-man-buys-apartment-with-bitcoin-profit (http://now.msn.com/kristoffer-koch-norwegian-man-buys-apartment-with-bitcoin-profit)

The difference is with poker people thought they might be able to do the same, but with the Bitcoin situation people will often think: "It's gone up so much, it can't possibly go up any further." This is a key difference so I don't think this will have much effect at all.

The point is it took that to grab people's attention, and get them interested.  This story would have been different right after the April crash, but climbing all the way back in 6 months makes it clear that we may be very, very far from the top.  I'm talking over a similar span of years...  <-- I have to mention this because people on Speculation seemed to have difficulty imagining a time period beyond 2 weeks from any particular date.  :)

House in Norway is that cheap? Only $180k for 3-bedroom apt?

Highly doubt it, just like claim someone bought one lottery ticket and won millions, but there is one problem: He did not pay tax  :D

i find your reasoning convincing. this will get a lot of people curious. more stories like this will pop up, the media will love it. much faster than the bitcoin protocol will be used mainstream, bitcoin as a speculative asset will hit the streets and become popular. that´s how new people get involved. love it or hate it, it is this crazyness about bitcoin gaining such incredible value in less than 5 years that will cause a boom, not its technological elegance. people may think that it can´t rise at the same rate, but even a slower rate would still dwarf what they get from classical investments in less than 5 years.

It's in one of the cheaper areas of Oslo (Tøyen), despite all the articles claiming it is in a wealthy area (it is not).
My guess would be that the aparatment cost him between $400-500k - so the rest would come from the bank.

I posted this in the main Economics forum the day before yesterday, but it went completely unnoticed. Here is a repost:

http://www.news.com.au/money/money-matters/norwegian-student-kristoffer-koch-buys-27-in-bitcoin-in-2009-now-he-owns-an-apartment/story-e6frfmd9-1226748159679

Reprint from the Norwegian source:

http://www.nrk.no/okonomi/kjopte-bolig-for-internettpenger-1.11314773

And and interesting and positive statement from Head of Taxation Department:




PS.: Can confirm that Tøyen is one of the cheapest areas of Oslo, almost ghetto-like.

Except that poker is fun. Buying Bitcoin is some complicated and boring shit.

Moneymaker was just a small part. The World Poker Tour was on air at the time and that took off like wildfire, as did online poker rooms. It was  perfect storm for the competitive U.S. egos. I was in the middle of it - actually opened a poker room in CR, which I later sold.

I would not call this comparable to Bitcoin.

Bitcoin could become as popular as poker on day, but it will be a much slower grind.

It's pretty common consensus that Chris Moneymaker's win was the catalyst.  WPT tour was very important as well, and, for many people, it's how they first heard of Moneymaker's win.
http://watch.betraisefoldmovie.com/ (watch Trailor)

The point was related to human psychology.  Not that it's exactly the same.  Obviously they're different.. 

Well his last name was Hollywoodmoviesque for sure.

But I still don't think bitcoin is comparable to poker.  And, personally, I dont think we want it to be. If Bitcoin is just a place where people come to gamble and speculate it will never get to "the moon."

Bitcoin needs two major things to grow. Real innovation with bitcoin related business eco-system and asset investment.

Poker didn't need anything but a coin and a chair and some exposure.

He surely is enjoying his profits at the moment.  ;D

Agreed.  I just wanted to point out the comparison in psychology, and what sparks people's interest and gets them involved.

** Agreed.  Increased market cap, though, does create more incentive for start ups to enter the space and businesses to start accepting Bitcoin.  If it unfolds from a bubble created by "the Moneymaker effect", so be it.  I would just hope the eventual crash wouldn't be too sharp.

lol, we have things in common about poker  ;)
your description about the perfect storm is correct
but it only attracted poker players
bitcoin attracts gamblers and many more. if it starts getting crazy like the poker wave, what do you think the price will be ? several k ? what signal would that send to the worlds 12 mio millionaires, to all institutional investors, to all deep pockets, to all those people that always resisted buying bitcoins ? let´s just hope the exchange infrastructure can cope with it. a larger chunk of the world economy will sooner or later migrate online via bitcoin price expansion.

I dont think it will gets much attention, but it shows how bitcoin grew in last 3 years. Much more than Apple, Microsoft and so on in its first 4 years

Well Bitcoin is evolving and if it continues to do so and doesn't have some massive technical or legislative setback, it will eventually reach a tipping point. I mean we only need Bitcoin to be appealing as a 1% of your investment type of portfolio addition. That alone would take it to the realm of $10k per BTC.

However, that tipping point is still quite a ways down the road in my opinion. But if we can have 2-3 more years of positive feedback and development loop, who knows.

Don't forget that without a hard fork, we are capped at about 7 transactions per second.  That will put a damper on things if we grow too much before it is resolved.

Okay, 28 tps, 35 if we count both chains.  Still nowhere near enough for PayPal level volume, and PayPal doesn't service much of the world.  Forget about Visa or MasterCard.

I did not know this. What is being done to fix this issue?

Nevermind - just read up about it.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability

It's cold.
Plus, terrible food.

First, transactions are expected to go "off the chain" (like Coinbase does).  It doesn't make sense to flood the block chain with every transaction if many can be done by companies of the chain.  It's also cheaper to keep it off the chain.

When is that going to happen to me ..... buying some lotto now ... heh

This news may have more people to hold their bitcoins instead of spending.