Bitcoin Forum

http://www.followthecoin.com/tim-draper-press-conference-winning-silk-road-auction/ (http://www.followthecoin.com/tim-draper-press-conference-winning-silk-road-auction/)

Gentlemen, start your engines...

Hmmm, sounds like a pretty good pump opportunity. Could take a little bit to get baked into the price, though. Do you think he will disclose the bid price? Can he?

fasten your seat belts...  :o

Interesting! Is he going to tell everyone how much he paid for the 30,000 coins?  ;)

I hope he will, but it doesn't matter anymore. We all know it is not low, above market rate at the time and he is not dumping them on the exchange.

omg this guy is a total whackjob

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhcPcBxI-vI

Does anyone have another link where the stream actually works?

http://pando.com/2014/07/02/awww-no-one-else-has-shown-up-to-tim-drapers-press-conference-about-his-bitcoin-win/

6 Californias?  WTF??  

His firm invested & built the executive team of Angies List (ANGI).  One of the most notorious pump & dump on wall street.  LOL

Vaurum is a startup w 2 guys.  I bet his plan is to IPO and do a pump & dump

unwarranted self importance also happens to affect billionaires.

Can anyone summarize as this is the worst stream i have ever seen. Plays for 5 seconds and then blocked for a few minutes and then plays 5 seconds.

lmao ;D

"Safer" is perhaps the wrong word, but I would rather make 10x on my money every year than lose 3% (2.5% once I get interest from my bank).

I joined late, he bigged up bitcoin then they went to questions. Currently talking about how to grow out bitcoin network

Cyprus. Also my local bank gives me exactly 0% interest. Used to be 0.0025% but they changed that. And they take a fee for letting me get my money out (except through the atm, thats still free).

started on 3rd world money transfer audience. Building out local exchange/gateways.

Same here.  I have to refresh every 10 seconds, not worth watching.  So far Draper didn't look knowledgeable to be honest.  Guess he just looks at the macroscale and depends on other people to figure out how bitcoin works.

Next Q: "Bitcoin is unstable why would other countries adopt it"

Draper: "Inflationary fiat vs deflationary bitcoin answer"

Draper: "Anecdote about 2 iranians, who built business in Iran but left during a revolution, had to start over. Bitcoin allows people like that to avoid repercussions of revolutions. BTC is safer than fiat."

Draper Jr: "Instability of bitcoin is US centric view. Stability is relative. In other countries it could be considered more stable than local currency"

Million dollar question: "How much did you pay?"

agree, as far as i understand, his son is the real bitcoin believer, tim darper got this idea from his son

"Refuses to answer"

Q: "How much did you pay"

A: "more than the other bidders"

Thanks sgbett, I appreciate the running commentary :)

Opens floor to Q from press...

Mumbled question - probably which countries you targeting?

A: "Argentina, Turkey, Isreal"

He won't say what he paid at this auction.  "More than anyone else at the auction."

The should ask WHY he refuses to disclose that.

Draper: "Talking about retail businesses that take cash suffering from hyper inflation being a primary target, as they can avoid instant devaluation of cash they are taking. Hotels being a main target"

Chris C from pando: Further pressure to reveal price paid.

Draper: More avoiding issue. They were keen to get a big piece of coin so bid high. Speculates on it being worth much more or much less then price today in 5 years.

Its a long term investment, he is "putting BTC to good use" suggesting that he is increasing penetration of BTC around world

Investment based on ideas 6 months ago

Q: "Are you looking for more BTC"

A: "Probably not at this time, they have enough for this use, but aren't ruling it out"

Easy solution.  Keep some money in USD in US bank account

Q: "Have you used BTC personally"

A: "Yes via bitcoin ATM I bought the 'old money' with it. Promotion of Snap Card / Atlas Card"

Would you trust a US bank?

Have you tried getting a US bank account? I have I'm not a US citizen I'm in UK, they won't touch me. I hardly think they are going to welcome iranians with open arms.

Q: "How do you feel about transaction fees"

A: "Great because they are so much lower. This transaction went with zero fees! (his words!)"

Q: "How do you feel about chargebacks / consumer protection"

A: "Suggests consumer protection currently worse because of chargebacks. BTC is liberating the consumer. There are lots of companies (crowdcurity mentioned twice) working on consumer protection. Lots of room for startups in this area. Looking for applicants. Atlas Card pushed again"

Just use HSBC  they have branches everywhere

I'm American and I have a Japanese bank account

But they won't allow you to have a USD account without paying high fees. Anyway, every country's currency sucks so it doesn't help much anyway.

Q from livestream: "How much is sale of BTC from US govt a factor in its future regulatory outcome"

A: "positive. if they wanted to get rid of btc they would have buried these coins. They are counting it as an asset. Its a true vote of confidence from the govt. Still great uses for dollar, but there are also now great uses for bitcoin. Increases tax base. Leads other goats to follow"

Follow on Q: "Govt doeastn auction confiscated cocaine. So auction legitimises it"

Soon this will attract other millionaires too as they are already competing with each other in various metrics for "dick length". Bitcoin will be just another metrics for that :P

This Draper dude is the first locust to arrive to the crop field. It can easily grow into Tulip mania or dot-com analogue. Interesting times ahead. There will be losers and I just love to see the world burn. I'm already planning on building a fallout shelter.

Oh yeah, f*** those altcoins  ;D ;D

such Q: "Will dogecoin also playa part in your crypto strategy"

many A: "doesn't really think that alts are serious yet. bitcoin has to succeed first for anything else to ride on the coat tails"

Q (paraphrased): "how are you going to go about doing what you plan to do"

A: "setting up exchanges. business model is arbitrage."

And yet the market price seems to react negatively to this press conference  :D

So cool. This man has a plan. I don't really think he needs the 30k BTC though but if he bought them privately this is just his investment and will make him profit from his work of making Bitcoin overall more valuable.

He wants people to transact.  So why the hell is he holding bit coin as an investment?  LOL

more Qs from floor...

weird question that didn't make a great deal of sense about bitcoin representing assets. vague answer saying yes they could

Q: about hoarding

A: its probably not a great idea all the time because it goes up and down.
A: general market rule is 80% hold 20% trade. feel btc is true to this. everyone should just use bitcoin and it will become a thing.
A: probably weighted towards holders whilst people wait for ecosystem to develop. we're gonna take that development forward.

He isn't. He's using it for his business to transact bitcoins to emerging markets.

Was pretty lol that he didn't understand the inflationary/deflationary question and answered as if the guy was asking about volatility.

q: "will the block chain ever get too big"

a: "doesn't think so. its all just computer stuff. entrepreneurs solve these kinds of problems all the time, and are doing so"
a: "its just data. compression helps. its all opportunities for companies"

q: "will prevalence of cellphones in emerging markets, and increase in micro transactions cause a problem in terms of network speed, can you bring BTC to 'sms' style transactions"

a: "yes there are companies will not name competitor. names glyph as an option. names other company as 37coins"

q: "where do you see BTC in next 10 years"
a: "will be prevalent in far fewer years than 10. well known throughout world. big op for lesser developed companies. its snowballing right now. its not going away. adoption is increasing. 10 years it will be such you might not even know you are using it but you will be"
anecdote: "his great aunt who is 90 yo asked him about it, which made him realise it was real"

q: "will LTC grow faster"
a: "herp (we just answered that)"

edit:

anecdote about history of finance:
first we traded shells
shiny rocks
gold
promises of gold
promises
btc

He's a VC he's buying it so he can sell it for a profit in the future.  He didn't buy it to shop on new egg.  Totally contradictory to tell other people to spend their bit coins when you plan to hoard them yourself

he;s bought it to arbitrage. a few q's back. its a pretty good strategy - ask risto! ;)

Didn't he quote Pareto (the 80/20 rule?) hold 80% and transact 20.

At least he's planning on building the infrastructure. I think he deserves to profit from that.

END OF PRESS RELEASE!

Okay Sgbett, thank you once again :)

for the people who couldnt watch, heres the link to the vod:

http://new.livestream.com/draperuniversity/bitcoin-auction/videos/55528302

Thanks sgbett!  I was tied up in a meeting and couldn't watch.

thank you!

Also, it's good to see people investing big money into Bitcoin as it makes them obviously responsible for protecting their investment for the years to come. Soon Bitcoin will be too big to fail :D (if it already isn't).

why?
Has gox been rescued yet?

gox has nothing to do with it because Mark did not use his own money to buy a lot of bitcoins. He basically just stole the coins, it's a different thing.

What I mean is the mindset of "too big to fail" assuming large holders would be pumping more money in to stay in the green. The same could have happened with gox, somebody jumping in bailing everybody out (buying the missing coins elsewhere) and overtaking the exchange. So hoping large holders will bail everybody else out with more money in general is too much to expect.

bitcoin is far from "too big to fail".  If bitcoin crashed, I doubt anyone will care to extend an emergency loan to any of these startups.  More like rats jumping off a sinking ship

And what I mean is that once you have made an investment you must start protecting your investment. This comes from the common sense of a good investor -- it's pretty much the most important rule of investing. Incoming protection from wealthy entities is thus a very good thing for the whole Bitcoin economy. The protection itself can manifest in many ways. For example, if a powerful politician's cousin had a lot of bitcoins, the politician is less likely to sign some anti bitcoin act.

Bitcoin isn't too big to fail because someone would save it lol. The government really screwed you up  :D

Bitcoin is peanuts.   Its not too big to do anything

Investors won't dump their other investments and pour into bitcoin if bitcoin should crash.  If anything they'll jump ship and take a loss

No company is too big to fail whatever the government might tell you. No nation is too big too fail.

At that rate Bitcoin is not too big to fail either, YET. It is moving in the right direction (and that isn't directly due to investors buying it): https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate?showDataPoints=false&show_header=true&daysAverageString=1&timespan=all&scale=1&address=

"Too big to fail" doesnt mean what you think it means

No, I'm trying to explain to you that it doesn't mean what you think it means.

Hence my first reply:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_big_to_fail (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_big_to_fail)

This was a nice and useful thread.  Thanks.  While it's clear we are not going to find out what he paid, I think this is a pretty good sign for bitcoin.

To say bitcoin is too big to fail is akin to saying the internet or file sharing or computing is too big to fail... that does not make sense at all. bitcoin is (simply, but ingeniously) a decentralised public ledger that tracks every single transaction that's ever happened with everyone agreeing it happened. Like P2P, once it came into existence, it's there. It's up to people to use P2P or not, for whatever usage or reason, but it's not something that can or can't 'fail'. Most think bitcoin is a new kind of money but while it is (it fulfills all requirements and characteristics to be considered as money) it's really more than just new money, it's a new protocol, a new way to do things trustlessly. It's something that totally removes the middleman out of the picture, and that is probably the most significant thing about bitcoin. The price of bitcoin in itself, no matter whether it's in the pennies or in the tens of thousands, is really quite irrelevant, but that's what most people see only in, the price.

You sir just win the best post i ever read about bitcoin in speculation
Failling makes no sense for bitcoin. At least As long as i live this fantastic idea will be arround. In that sense it already "win".

Failing makes little sense due to the high hash rate.

Just FYI

https://i.imgur.com/9bSfHil.png

yes it is what it looks like.

There is no attempt to discredit anybody, I just find the far-out political spectrum hilarious, somebody else might get a chuckle out of it too, that's why I posted it.

What's that? He wants to split up California in sub-states? I hold no opinion on that either way.

Well, yeah but he's so enthusiastic about his idea, in a funny and naive way it is worth to watch him talk about it.

When some technology reaches a critical threshold of adoption, it becomes too big to fail. Internet is too big to fail and potentially the same can be said for Bitcoin.

This is how terms are coined. Idiot once meant a person with a neutral opinion on something but not any more because someone like me decided to start using it in other context. There are no patents for coined terms and their meanings. I am free to mutate any term I want if I find the new definition more proper. "Too big to fail" should be a much broader term and without the stench of government bailouts.

Many people, especially uptight "scientists", would hate me for that but the feelings are mutual as some branches of science are grotesquely inbreeding themselves. Informally speaking, I'd ask them: "Do you guys fuck all your cousins or just the ones you find attractive?"

nothing physical is too big to fail, including bitcoin network.
internet as an idea of connecting and sharing will never fail, but alot of internet companies were replaced for better ones, and just as easy, bitcoin idea could live on on some new platform under a new name, and bitcoin itself could die.

That's so obvious I wonder why you even cared to say it out.  If you want to take that route, I'd suggest you contact the authors of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_big_to_fail and keep saying them the same you just told me (nothing physical is too big to fail). I hope you see the parallel.

I'm sure this won't be a particularly popular take, but I thought the press conference was pretty weak.  I don't think he presented well and he didn't really come off as a competent man with a serious plan and serious ideas to share on that unique pulpit.

So it goes.  I think there was an opportunity there that was not fully maximized.

That is not to say anything about what he ends up accomplishing or the ultimate value of bitcoin.  It's not to say anything about him as a person.  But I wish he had taken more advantage of the opportunity to really educate the financial community and the world (hell, I saw a pretty long article on USA Today, of all places, about the presser) about his plan, his reasoning, and the logic behind his investment.

That absolutely does not apply to Bitcoin.
If all miners switched off tomorrow, no more transactions were processed, and the BTC/USD price fell to zero, would it have any noticeable affect on the economy, let alone a disastrous one? No, it wouldn't.

Although I personally have already lost track on what we are arguing about, I'd point out that "too big to fail" is a state after the vertical stage of the technology's adoption S-curve. Of course a black swan event can wipe out the whole population after it has met its upper limit but early-day threats no longer apply.

That's not the metric as no-one has an economic incentive to do so. The metric is: can anyone force us to? The answer is probably already no, and if not will be in the near future.

Dude, everyone who uses the term "too big too fail" means "too big to be allowed to fail" NOT "its so big that it can't possibly fail"

If you don't like it then too bad

Honestly, "too big to fail" probably really means something more like "too connected to the oligopoly power structure for the elites to allow to fail". 

Frankly, it was capricious of them to save some organizations while letting others go bye bye.  If Geithner had more of his buddies employed in Bitcoin-dependent industries and if elected officials had more constituents more invested with more dire consequences, maybe somebody would save Bitcoin in the event of an unforeseeable disaster.

As it stands, NO FREAKING WAY.  This is an outsiders game. 

Not true. Only people with the proper background knowledge will see too big to fail as something that will be bailed out by governments. Most people don't have the proper background and they will rely on the literal meaning of the term. Literal meaning of too big to fail has nothing to do with bailouts.

No indeed, they should have let them fail. Every. Single. One. The free market will always be more efficient than some centralized government.

Iceland was the only country to do this right (good thing they did something right ;))

Since we are not going to get the price he paid out of him. Have any of the other bidders in the auction disclosed their losing bids? That would still give us a reasonable idea what was paid.

Steve

Nobody thinks that if they watched TV in the past 8 years.  So many stories on Nightline, 20/20, 60 mins, PBS, etc.. about "too big to fail"

2008 crisis is the biggest financial event of the 21st century so far

You guys sure like to wage wars but you haven't annexed every country on the globe just yet ;)