Bitcoin Forum

I'm going to keep this thread updated with the most important fundamental reasons (not technical) which will in the long term, move the price. Hopefully over the long term this reduces the number of "OMG?! why is the price going X??" I will be limiting the updates I make to this thread to only those items which have the power to significantly affect adoption/ move the market. I'm sure I missed a few things, so feel free to post and remind me.

Bitcoin charts on bloomberg for employees, coming soon to everyone
http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/09/bitcoin-ticker-available-on-bloomberg-terminal/
TLDR Bitcoin now officially mainstream

Bitpay partners with 3dcart
http://btcbible.com/bitpay-partners-with-3dcart/
TLDR Bitcoin now available as a payment option to 16,000 new merchants

Bitcoin finally coming to Africa
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1hn0ue/kipochi_launches_first_bitcoin_wallet_in_africa/
TLDR A SMS/ web hybrid system is being developed now which will reach the place where bitcoin has the most potential for organic growth.

Bitcoin ETF (once approved by the SEC) coming soon
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2043473/winklevoss-twins-will-secure-bitcoins-like-gold-in-vaults.html
TLDR You might soon be able to purchase bitcoin derivatives from your stock broker

Webmoney (Russian Paypal with 11 million users) is now an exchange and wallet servicing p2p and merchants
http://www.thegenesisblock.com/bitcoin-access-expanded-to-over-11-million-users-of-webmoney/
TLDR Big pressure was just put on Paypal to integrate sooner rather than later.

Okcupid is now accepting bitcoin (7 million users)
http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/04/okcupid-says-it-will-accept-bitcoin-as-currency-falls-to-recent-low/

Hedge fund looking to inject 1 billion € into bitcoin for large investors
https://exante.eu/press/news/266/
TLDR Big €€€ starting to move into Bitcoin

Western Union looking to integrate bitcoin into services
http://mobile.blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/04/01/western-union-eyes-digital-currency-services/
TLDR Bitcoin is on the verge of worldwide physical exchange infrastructure

Expensify Brings Bitcoin to Main Street
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-29/expensify-brings-bitcoin-to-main-street
TLDR App with 200,000 business users is leveraging bitcoins strengths

New zealand, Cyprus & other Mediterranean countries considering/ have decided to confiscate "one time" X% of depositor funds
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/world/europe/russian-ties-put-cyprus-banking-crisis-on-east-west-fault-line.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
TLDR The money you thought was safe from theft in your bank account is not safe (especially if you live in an at risk country in the euro zone).

FINCEN releases guidance for virtual currencies (bitcoin)
http://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/guidance/pdf/FIN-2013-G001.pdf
TLDR Small exchanges based in the USA will likely have a tough time due to this, but by making the grey legal area black & white, it will make larger players willing to step forward. In other words, bitcoin is now legal.

Blockchain forked, but problem solved
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1a51xx/now_that_its_over_the_blockchain_fork_explained/
TLDR Double spend issue has been fixed in the short term and long term with the new roll out plan

Amazon fulfillment integrates with Bitpay
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bitpay-integrates-bitcoin-with-fulfillment-by-amazoncom-2013-03-06
TLDR There is now a convenient way for anyone (registered business @ Amazon) to sell anything with bitcoins through Amazon

Bitspend.net
https://bitspend.net/
TLDR You can now buy ANYTHING on the net with bitcoins (under $100 during beta and under $1000 after beta ends)

Coinlab Bringing Bitcoin to Wall Street with MtGox Deal -
http://bitcoinmagazine.com/coinlab-bringing-bitcoin-to-wall-street-with-mtgox-deal
TLDR - Details are sketchy at this point, but it seems that there may be a deal coming up which will bring bitcoin into the forex market. I'm including this here because of the absolutely insane effect this would have on the price if this were in fact happening.

Mega - https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/302844443223023616
TLDR - The service formerly known as Megaupload (which was the top non-torrent based file sharing service on the net) is now accepting Bitcoins

Reddit - http://blog.reddit.com/2013/02/new-gold-payment-options-bitcoin-and.html
TLDR - One of the largest sites on the internet is now accepting bitcoin for their premium service!

Bitpay - http://blog.bitpay.com/search?updated-max=2012-12-06T10:13:00-05:00&max-results=7
TLDR - Merchants are signing up in droves with Bitpay's (and other payment processors) payment system

Wordpress - http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/pay-another-way-bitcoin/
TLDR - The largest blog network on the internet is now accepting bitcoins. This paves the way for wider, mainstream bitcoin adoption

Coinbase - http://blog.coinbase.com/post/42587245753/coinbase-is-now-selling-over-1m-usd-of-bitcoin-per
TLDR - It just got alot easier for users in the largest bitcoin market in the world (USA) to acquire bitcoins and it is showing up in the numbers.

SatoshiDice/gambling potential: http://calvinayre.com/2013/02/01/business/why-bitcoin-can-no-longer-be-ignored/
TLDR - While its not possible to gamble with dollars in the US, it is possible with bitcoins. The big players are starting to take notice of this fact and over the next few months its likely that we will see one emerge onto the scene

Blockchain: https://blockchain.info/charts/my-wallet-n-users?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=
https://i.imgur.com/2885sqa.png
TLDL - The best online wallet is experiencing exponential growth of new users

https://i.imgur.com/lFnqPY9.png

source: http://www.runtogold.com/bitcoin-price/

reserved

Updated with Reddit announcement

Reddit - http://blog.reddit.com/2013/02/new-gold-payment-options-bitcoin-and.html

No bad news whatsoever? At least developers' words of caution?  I just spent 10 minutes trying to come up with something serious, but failed.

this is a good idea...

I think the ECB paper was a huge bullish event since journalists can now quote from a "trusted source" (lol, can't believe I said that) about bitcoin:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/11/03/ecb-roots-of-bitcoin-can-be-found-in-the-austrian-school-of-economics/

Do you also accept more general fundamental properties of bitcoin as bull-reasons? Here are a few for starters I wont back up with articles:

• Bitcoin is sound free market money with known supply for the people against authoritarian
• Bitcoin has low barrier to entry and can be used anonymously
• The network effect: bitcoin is viral interenet money

I agree Mol that the ECB paper was big for the reputation of the currency & knowledge among the "elites", but I won't include it here because I really want to limit it to only those events which will affect the price directly.

I don't think a background on the properties of bitcoin is possible/ desirable for within the confines of this thread. Most people get to this subforum because they already understand these things anyway.

Maybe you should consider slightly renaming this thread then, because I was thinking exactly of that (fundamental properties) when I read the title. Maybe something like: "fundamental events", I don't know...

Good call - I changed it to fundamental analysis

Bearish data: Scalability?
I'm not a technie but the whole scalability issue concerns me a bit. I don't know whether to believe Hearn et al. or Kaminsky.
All I do know is that it takes a long time to sync Bitcoin-qt on my laptop and Bitcoin hasn't yet been entered the mainstream.  What happens when the number of transactions per day increases 10,000 fold?

They use a wallet like blockchain.info. Most end users will never deal with a wallet on their computer, nor should they.

It only makes sense to have the full blockchain if you are actively mining (and even then, can just have unspent inputs, full chain can be stored for archival purposes on several machines only). So thin clients should obviously be promoted on the bitcoin main site, when devs consider it is ready for wide adoption.

Does the presence of the full blockchain on only a few machines make the Bitcoin network more vulnerable to fraudulent transactions?

+ Mega & BitVoucher:

https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/302844443223023616

Just days after the Reddit announcement. Things are starting to unroll.

Thanks, I was lazy yesterday =P

Updated

Long time fundamental forward outlook:

The value of a bitcoin will rise with adoption, until some optimal adoption level is achieved. On the way up, speculators who correctly foresee this level, will put an upward pressure to the value earlier.

If speculators erroneusly predict the optimal adoption level, the value may overshoot, and we will have a period with lower value.

When the optimal level of adoption is reached, a bitcoin hoard can no longer be regarded as an entrepreneural investment, so bitcoin will slowly move from the hoards to profit making investments in the real economy. That is a slow downwards pressure on the value of a bitcoin.

Additionally, economic events will happen around the world, creating volatility for bitcoin as it does for other currencies.

You will have to fill in the metrics for yourself, it is not really possible to predict.

That's about right, the long term fundamental outlook. Right now I have a hard time believing that there is a single opportunity in all of the financial industry that has more visible potential than BTC. The viability of a level headed investment on BTC comes from the visible risk of BTC being orders of magnityde lower than you would expect for something that has this much potential. Sugar on top, the risks have diminished considerably in the past year.

That this possibility exists is only possible because BTC is such a novel concept that it requires a considerable amount of expertise to assess not only the potential but much more importantly the risks.

I totally agree. This is unprecedented, rewart/risk is higher than any other investment. A once in a lifetime opportunity.

On a fundamental basis, I see the freedom that bitcoin offers as being a huge inducement. I'd also like to see us move away from edge-exchanges when trying to 'value' bitcoin. The redeemable quality of bitcoin is an attraction right now, but I'd like to have just BTC to BTC transfers happening than any BTC --> Sovereign Currency trades.

You can't put a price on freedom, so fundamentally I see a bright future for bitcoin and its successors (if any).

I agree. When adoption is completed, there is still tons of reasons both to use and to save bitcoins.

The value proposition for libertarians is indeed/literally unbelievable: "So yeah, you just put in a few grand, lie low for 5-10 years, and wake up fabulously wealthy in a technologically advanced libertopia."

While "hoarding" bitcoins will no longer be an income generating investment, keeping "savings" in bitcoin will still be a way to avoid inflation. As the bitcoin economy matures, the volatility will decrease, which will make such a method of savings more secure as well. People using bitcoins as a savings vehicle will help maintain the price value over the long run.

Yes, still good for saving. To the advantage of widows and the fatherless.

Updated with "Coinlab Bringing Bitcoin to Wall Street with MtGox Deal"

Updated with Bitspend.net

Take a mark, good info.

Namecheap

I thought about it - but meh. I had never heard of them before the announcement.

Meh?

You should go look them up. You won't be meh'ing afterwards.

"They claim to have over 3 million domain names under management."

Cool. Is that bigger than godaddy et. al? I'm not doubting its big, but want to reserve the updates in this list for only the most significant impacts on the market (of which there are already plenty lately).

GoDaddy has 52 million domains, so... no.

Updated with:

Amazon fulfillment integrates with Bitpay

https://twitter.com/SilkRoadDrugs/status/309238128097517568

While not everybody might approve of this, it does strengthen Bitcoin's fundamentals

https://i.imgur.com/i3ZWA.gif

updated  :-X

edit: updated again because that was a fake.

http://pokerfuse.com/features/in-depth/winpoker-bitcoin-comes-worlds-largest-online-poker-network-ipoker-06-03/

Too bad the money is converted to a traditional currency upon depositing, but still good news nevertheless.

Haven't heard this news yet... how big is WinPoker?  Are they the company that Gambling911 was talking about?

Haven't heard about WinPoker before, I think it's rather small. Still, the iPoker network is huge, so there should be plenty of action. Not sure if I trust this WinPoker with my money though.

don't forget about bitcoin store, it's a biggie with big backers.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/networks/bitcoin-gives-an-edge-to-amazon-competitors

"Roger Ver, the founder of the site, launched it to serve as a high-level demonstration for companies like Amazon and NewEgg, a lesson in the benefits of Bitcoin. If any of these companies begin taking payments in Bitcoin, representatives at BitcoinStore say they will close shop in triumph."

supplying 500,000+ items from Ingram Micro, which is a massive company and certainly good press for bitcoin
http://www.bitcoinstore.com/

Yep, it is great - but I havent heard anything about volume yet. I think its still a question mark whether or not this site will take off or not.

Updated with market cap:

https://i.imgur.com/lFnqPY9.png

source: http://www.runtogold.com/bitcoin-price/

Keep in mind that domain registration is extremely competitive and commoditized. Godaddy has greatly angered the Internet by (1) supporting SOPA/PIPA and (2) having a really painful checkout process. Many domainers have accounts at all the major registrars but keep most of their domains at Godaddy because they are slightly cheaper and have extremely attractive women in their advertisements.

Namecheap offered discount codes to everyone who transferred domains from Godaddy during the SOPA/PIPA mess. Although many domainers hate Godaddy and ideologically support Namecheap's SOPA/PIPA/EFF stand they still did not move merely because of being lazy and the inconvenience. Namecheap understands this and is why they emailed their entire customer list to inform them about Bitcoin and Namecheap has now featured Bitcoin promimently on their homepage. Also, notice the EFF notice; in effect pleading to the domainers and not just completely freeride on Internet freedom to save a few cents per year by going with Godaddy.

It is clear that Namecheap is attempting to distinguish itself in this commoditized space by being the safe and Internet freedom oriented domain registrar.

But now with Bitcoin I know many that are starting the long-needed migration. It will be interesting to see how well Namecheap's gambit plays out. For example, I have a lazy friend who is in the process of moving 20,000 domains from GoDaddy to Namecheap. That is about $200,000 per year in gross fees.

I sure hope that friend is paying in BTC!

Updated with the fork issue

Blockchain forked, problem solved in the short term
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1a51xx/now_that_its_over_the_blockchain_fork_explained/

Updated with FINCEN releases guidance for virtual currencies (bitcoin)
http://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/guidance/pdf/FIN-2013-G001.pdf

p.s. if you find this helpful - please ask a mod for it to be stickied.

Updated with:

Cyprus, New Zealand & other Mediterranean countries considering/ have decided to confiscate "one time" X% of depositor funds
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/world/europe/russian-ties-put-cyprus-banking-crisis-on-east-west-fault-line.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
TLDR The money you thought was safe from theft in your bank account is not safe (especially if you live in an at risk country in the euro zone).

"IF THE MARKET MANIPULATOR WANTS TO DISTRIBUTE (DUMP) HIS SHARES, HE WILL START A GOOD NEWS PROMOTIONAL CAMPAIGN."

Is this why this thread was started?

I don't think so. Also: Bitcoin is not a stock.

Perhaps you are new to the thread, but when the fork issue occured I updated the thread with the information from it immediately (and subsequently updated it again once it was fixed). Also, if you have any fundamentally bad news, I'm all eyes. I will certainly add it to the main page if its warranted.

Bitcoin - BBC Newsnight - 26/03/2013 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaOsM3RUNG8&feature=youtu.be

Updated with:

 Expensify Brings Bitcoin to Main Street
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-29/expensify-brings-bitcoin-to-main-street

Updated with:

Western Union looking to leverage bitcoin
http://mobile.blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/04/01/western-union-eyes-digital-currency-services/

April Fool's ;D

Yeah I thought that too, but it looks legit...

Eh we both failed, its not working with them, its mimicking the system (yeah good luck western union).

I hope they realize how stupid it would be trying to reinvent the wheel, in a half-ass way. Creating their own digital currency is only going to cost them rather than making them money, if they can try to build a system upon Bitcoin then it's going to be a win-win situation.

Ok, i've re-read it again about 5 times now and I don't see clearly one way or the other what their relationship might be with bitcoin. For now I'll just leave it out until we get another confirmation. And yeah I agree. If they are going to try and compete, their lunch is going to get eaten even faster. It would be a brilliant move by them to integrate their services with bitcoin however, it would at the very least provide them another 5-10 years to try and come up with other ways to provide value.

It doesn't matter so much if they actually do implement it. If the article is legit, this is tremendously stupendously huge news.

Ok, just got confirmation from multiple sources via email and twitter. They are looking to develop partnerships, so its a go. I'll update the thread again  :D

Depending on the details this could be mind-bogglingly huge.

Perhaps the right people should be informed (Tony Galippi, ??), so that WU is professionally presented with workable use cases that they can see will increase profits, before they find anything that might scare them away or get any bright ideas about making their own WUcoins, though surely they will be soon.

Yeah, I'm sure it comes from the fact that so many people were using them to access bitinstant. They want to take that business and expand it, im sure.

Updated with:

Hedge fund looking to inject 1 billion € into bitcoin for large investors
https://exante.eu/press/news/266/
TLDR Big €€€ starting to move into Bitcoin

How about we change the rules so only actions that actually happened or are ongoing are considered fundamentals, instead of announcements about supposed future actions?

But, but, BitInstant Debit Card :-\

Speaking of fundamentals, any idea why Google Trends is stuck showing Monday's search stats for "bitcoin" and hasn't moved on to show Tuesday as well?

whens that happening?

exactly his point, 420. it was announced... what, back in september 2012? maybe october, and no sign yet.

int64 overflow detection

- OK Cupid (7 million users)
- MetArt and sister sites (top-tier porn purveyor in terms of quality)
- A bunch of smaller stuff

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/04/okcupid-says-it-will-accept-bitcoin-as-currency-falls-to-recent-low/

Updated with Okcupid, thanks for the reminder  :)

Not going to update the main post with this (yet), but the fact that paypal is considering Bitcoin as a funding option... http://www.bloomberg.com/video/paypal-sees-20-billion-in-mobile-transactions-WlokACTBRterdjHAJGNB6w.html

This underlines the rising tension between them and Western Union which is building. It might turn into a race which will which rapidly expand the infrastructure for bitcoin in a very short time period (and hence push the price to astronomical levels in an equally short time period).

Interesting, he actually mentioned that they are considering it as a funding option.

PayPal could jump onto the Bitcoin bandwagon and allow people an easy way to spend their hordes of BTC.

This could be massive for both Bitcoin and Paypal.

Bitcoin + Paypal could completely disrupt Visa and Mastercard in this way.

Yep, looks like western union and paypal are looking at this new technology as a potential ally - and viewing it as a race to see who can utilize it the most effectively. This is great news (unless you are a bear).

This is truly astonishing. Part of me says: "hey, it was a mistake to consider WU and PayPal our enemies, they could be allies". Another part says: "watch out, this might be a trick of some sort".

Big companies like to make lots of money and look for untapped revenue streams.

Bitcoin is a massive untapped revenue stream.

Who will open the floodgates first, that's the only question ?

Well were going to have to find some sort of a use for it, because thus far as a "money", it's little more than a glorified "virtual toilet" who's sole "value" depends entirely upon how the last guy might leave the toilet seat, an hour from now.

@OP: Suggestion: Lock this thread besides you updating it. Make a single post about it each time so everybody is notified.

I like the idea and it should be separate from discussion. If you like make a separate fundamental analysis discussion thread and link to it from the original post.

People can still pm you with fundamental news. An alternative might be a self moderated thread so that you can delete all off topic posts.

Thanks for the suggestion - for now I think it's working just fine. People rarely comment here anyway. I will create a new thread if at some point that changes however.

Updated with:

Webmoney (Russian Paypal) is now an exchange and wallet servicing p2p and merchants
http://www.thegenesisblock.com/bitcoin-access-expanded-to-over-11-million-users-of-webmoney/

http://uptweet.com/viewStory?id=1263

http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/14/liberty-city-ventures-digital-currency-fund/

The OP has a strongly bullish bias. Is this intentional?

As mentioned elsewhere in the thread I'm open to including all change which have the potential to fundamentally affect the price (I included the fork). If you have something you'd like to include, just post it here.

It's not just the lack of bearish fundamentals, it's the very bullish spin on the fundamentals that are shown.

Thing is, much as I approve of balanced evidence, I'm not sure I'd want you to change it because I'm a bull and your list is awesome. ;D

Maybe a bear could volunteer to do a bearish version, and this could be the Bull's fundamental analysis thread? It's much easier to get two opposing biased views to compare against each-other than one unbiased view.

To be honest I would love it if someone would put together a decent bearish fundamental list. Problem is that I've been trying for over a year now to see indicators which fundamentally point towards downwards price movement and almost without exception have failed.

I'll ask on the wall tracker.  ;D

[Edit: Done - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178336.msg2267269#msg2267269 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178336.msg2267269#msg2267269)]

U rang?

Here is a bunch, I stopped updating it though but most of it should still be somewhat relevant.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=144170.0

Bearish price indicator: (You may want to dig deeper to get actual statistical data)

As Ripple gains wider acceptance and usage, it will increase the M2 monetary base of bitcoins (that is, M1 is what is on the blockchain, M2 is M1 + all credit accounts denominated in bitcoins (Not sure if I am using the right M#s, somebody could check that?)), the rising money supply will decrease the price.

While in theory thats possible, I'm far from convinced that Ripple will be widely used.

Whatever the case may be, this thread is about what is, not what might/could/should happen. I've been trying hard, but cannot come up with bearish facts. I see no reason for Bitcoin not to continue growing. It works, and it is (and could be) useful in many ways to many people. Most of them haven't even realized that yet.

My top bearish contender is still BFL, they are the largest concentrated pile of incompetence and still kickin. People (and neither myself) don't pay any attention to them any more but they are continuing to piss people off.

Why are you not placing bad news on the list? If price falls I'm looking for information why and nothing is on your list (it makes me suspicious that it's biased and not trustworthy because of that).

OK Fundamentalists - riddle me this one:

https://blockchain.info/charts/my-wallet-n-users?showDataPoints=false&timespan=&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7&scale=0&address=

https://blockchain.info/charts/my-wallet-n-tx?showDataPoints=false&timespan=&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7&scale=0&address=

Two related pieces of fundamental data seemingly at variance. Any suggestions why?

Read the rest of the thread (jesus, just read this page) to understand why there isnt more bearish info there.

If you are looking for info on why the fall happened yesterday, you just need to know that manipulators are going to manipulate (and sometimes get burned because they failed... like yesterday).

One piece of data is cumulative, the other is recalculated daily. No surprise that the numbers of transactions fell after the crash of 2013. Expect them to bottom soon and flatline for a few months before heading back up.

Wallet number of users isn't as bullish as it looks. If the there were no new wallets at all, the line would go flat, not down. The slope pointing up isn't bullish unless the slope angle is also increasing.

I don't get it
Why freezing mtgox bank account is less important than rumors that maybe some unknown hedge will give possibility to hold bitcoins.
Or if there is good news about Coinlab deal why it is not followed by news that it didn't work out and there will be no Coinlab but lawsuit instead. At least be consequent.

(I knew price was going to fall now, either in triangle or zigzag scenario, but it was quite fast, like some news showed up.)

I make about 1 blockchain.info wallet every 4 or so weeks for various temporary purposes. Maybe I should change that practice.

Does this count every wallet ever created or are there some criteria to be fulfilled?
[/quote]

Translate it, I'm too lazy (just lazy...)

Whatever that means...

Yes. I got the same garbage. "Lost in Translation" has never been more true than with this one...

 :D
Okay, I'll help you. The meaning is "to soberly assess the situation and expect a dramatic move bold major player - a bear. Who was the first to throw a stone into the den of the bear? Pressing the loot from ASIC-builders and investors throughout the "third wave" ? (the reallocation of funds). Remove coins from "third wave" investors. Coins have to go to speculators, big players in the market. Otherwise, the game does not have feelings. (meaning). The chain reaction of bankruptcies mining companies will benefit bears. Would also benefit the network, it will distribute power evenly hashes on the network, rigs will be sold for a penny, dumped on the market at bargain prices and are not in demand.

sounds pleasant... what has this got to do with fundamentals?

It is most relevant to fundamental analysis. That's the whole point of the system: the creators is assigned fiat currency  in exchange for a promise of anonymity, independence from banks, lower commission payments, easy income from trade, from mining. This is a game with only one goal (a zero-sum game) :-\

For currency, supply and demand do not affect its value, it is mostly decided by the historical consensus

For bitcoin, there is a consensus of continuous appreciation due to limited supply, and that appreciation speed is largely related to the difficulty of the network

During 2012, most of the time the difficulty changed very slow, so does the exchange rate, but now when ASIC devices are being deployed, difficulty will rise at least 10-20 times, so does the exchange rate. I think current exchange rate already priced in the batch of ASIC chips that are going to hit the network during summer, unless there is a forecast of large increase of future difficulty, the exchange rate will be stable for a while

in case you're saying mining cost is the floor of bitcoin value you're making a bold claim. As bold as the claim of the goldbugs that golds inherent value stems from the energy that was used to mine it. At least logically that doesn't follow.

The relationship between exchange rate and difficulty exists, but it's more complex than what you imply it to be.

Price (combined with the $/hash of current top of the line mining hardware) puts a floor on difficulty.  That is the only relationship that is real.

Yes, that's the stronges one.

However there is a subtle one that does go the other way: A non-profitable miner might continue to mine and hold the coins, however irrational this may be. This puts (albeit slight) resistance to a falling price. I know, it's not a hard "difficulty is rising therefore price must rise" (a view I've been fighting for years now), but it's a real effect.

People who want to get coin have 2 choices, either mine or buy. When the difficulty is too high, they will buy, otherwise they will mine. If they mine they will increase the difficulty until a point that mining become unprofitable then they will buy again

Miners could still mine when not profitable, because they believe that price will rise in the future, but that just increase the difficulty for all the miners and eventually someone will just buy (If price will rise in the future anyway, buying now is the most simple decision)

You forgot the other ways to get bitcoins: work for them or scam other people for them.

Did I hear a request for bearish news?  Here you go: http://forexmagnates.com/coinlab-files-75-million-lawsuit-against-mtgox/

Welcome to a month ago ::)

There's not much to eat in the hibernation den, so we've got to subsist on something these days. 

That seems like bullish news to me: any publicity is good publicity, and it is one step in getting rid of MtGox as the top exchange.

It all depends on your time frame.  Short term, getting rid of MtGox (or lessening their influence) would probably make the price of bitcoin plummet.  Long term, if a better exchange rises to the top, it could become much more stable and better / more liquid.

Their influence has already been dramatically lessened (just look at trade volume).  Why aren't bitcoins cheap yet?

The price would only plummet if something happened to MtGox suddenly, either a complete shutdown or some kind of very damaging restriction or abrupt moves in that direction. Since the build up of pressure on MtGox has been gradual and on the fringes, and since for the most part there remains a clean line between the services that are getting shut down (noncompliant, questionable operations) and MtGox (about as compliant as they come, except for the US Dwolla incident, which so far seems contained).

The recent gradual shift away from MtGox as the central exchange is just what the doctor ordered and paves the way for further price gains. This is also a textbook example of anti-fragility, with Bitcoin (the Bitcoin ecosystem/community) immediately starting to repair its own most exposed weak point as soon as it was identified.

Bitcoins are cheap! Snatch them now before the rest of the world realizes they want them and the price dectuples a couple more times :D

(My 7 year old daughter was asking the other day "so you have double for two, and triple for three, so what do you say if you have four times?" So I have been looking for places to use words like quadruple and quintuple and dectuple :))

i still think that anyone getting in now IS an early adopter...

True, but sad. It shows that not much has happened since ~2010 to realize the potential of this new technology. Once this thread has been updated (if at all) with a wave of major merchants accepting BTC, and things like bitcoin card actually in people's hands - it will be too late to be an early adopter.

I sense an evil grin.

I would not say nothing has happened since 2010. There seems to be much better infrastructure around bitcoins now than when I started using it in 2011, they are more useful and easier to use now.

I agree, that is why I said "not much" - exchanges and merchants come, but most of them go away. Some stay. BitPay is certainly doing a great service to us all, and earning a buck along the way. Great. Paysius and other competitors appear dormant. Not good. Few donation-accepting entities have done quite well.  There are more open-source clients to choose from now than in ~2010. Great. But there have been no breakthroughs, just many small steps. Are we going to outpace the inevitable disasters, by growing strong and diverse enough so they don't do much damage?  Right now, politics of development are one such potential disaster, with lots of ugly and boneheaded disagreements regarding block size, for example.
I'd say we've been moving too slowly, with lots of amateurish and naive mistakes and empty promises. In this technological era, four years is a long time. It's time to grow up.

American Drug Enforcement Administration arrested a drug dealer and seized - among other stuff - 11 bitcoins. Thus, bitcoins are treated by the government agents much like any other valuable asset.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/26/4468302/drug-enforcement-agency-seizes-11-bitcoins-in-south-carolina-bust-silk-road

==============

Government of Germany declares capital gains from bitcoins tax-free if bitcoins were held for more than a year.
http://www.coindesk.com/german-government-relieves-capital-gains-tax-on-bitcoin-positions/

It may seem slow now looking forward, but I'd say going from a brand new currency four years ago to a $1.1 billion dollar market today is pretty damn impressive.  Yes, some bitcoin businesses are succeeding, others are failing.  That's totally normal.  Remember that something like 90% of businesses that are started fail, so this isn't any different than any different market.

Sort of irrelevant from your point, but from my entrepreneurship class the idea that an overwhelming majority of new business fail is actually a myth

It all depends on time frame, eventually all businesses "fail"...

Interesting, thanks for correcting my misconception.  I'm curious about this now.  Some cursory googling shows mixed results, a few sites back up what I thought, while a few agree with what you said about most succeeding.

I thought the statistic was that 9 out of 10 first businesses fail. Entrepreneurs' second and third businesses seem to do a lot better, maybe because the first failure disabused them of their initial naïve notions.

Either way, it's a hard statistic to perfectly quantify. I think we can agree on that :)

Staffing site "Outbounders" adds Bitcoin option:

http://www.finextra.com/News/Announcement.aspx?pressreleaseid=50521&topic=retail

Wishful thinking on the gov't's part, that anyone would declare such sales in under a year . . .

This is great.  I did not see this in the press release forum.  I am going to add it there if you don't mind.

figured I'd repost here for relevance :)

Making false statements that involve Bitcoin is rather tricky due to the public ledger. It won't be long before your Revenue Agency learns this, and from that point on your strategy will depend on luck, unless you exchange for cash or spend coins directly.  Even then you need to count on your trading partner not reporting the transaction.

There is one sticking point, though: bitcoins are fungible. Thus, you could always claim to have sold at least some of the "old" coins, as long as you've been trading for over a year.

^ exactly :)

this has been discussed at length in the german forums. It seems we have to do fifo accounting (first in first out). You always sell the oldest coins. You can't choose which coins you sell when you make a sell on some exchange. You always sell the coins you bought earliest (and calculate your gain from the price difference), even if the coins are in a paper wallet. This is a huge probelm for daytraders who have trading volume per year greater than their overall holdings. In other words: it seems you can't put some of the bitcoins into a safe and trade with the rest on an exchange, then later (after 1 year in the safe) sell those bitcoins from the safe with no tax.

Thank you for mentioning this.

But if you buy and sell on an exchange, then those coins are not in the public ledger, they are just on the internal database of the exchange. And if you do some bitcoin mixing between exchanges, then it could be rather tricky for the government to pin down what you did and whether it is different than you claim.

Updated with the winklevii info:

Bitcoin ETF coming soon
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2043473/winklevoss-twins-will-secure-bitcoins-like-gold-in-vaults.html
TLDR You will soon be able to purchase bitcoin derivatives from your stock broker

Updated with:


Bitcoin finally coming to Africa to compete with M-Pesa
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1hn0ue/kipochi_launches_first_bitcoin_wallet_in_africa/
TLDR A SMS/ web hybrid system is being developed now which will reach the place where bitcoin has the most potential for organic growth.

Info on M-Pesa:

M-PESA now Contributes 18% of Safaricom’s total revenue.
M-PESA revenue grew by 29.5% to 21.84 billion.
M-PESA now has 10.5 million active users.
There are 65,547 M-PESA agents. 26,000 M-PESA agents were added in the last financial year.
Kshs 522bn was transacted between customers within M-PESA.
Kshs 444bn was deposited into M-PESA via agents.
Kshs 390bn was withdrawn from M-PESA via agent.
32% of airtime top-ups were done directly through M-PESA.

On the Reddit link:

I think once people can start using it, even if they don't fully understand why or how it works, they will see the benefit of it.  I suppose it does not really matter if they understand why it is a safe and effective tool.  For that matter, how many of us have been using our countries fiat and not really understanding how that money is created and/or manipulated?

This is really great news for BTC and Africa. :)

Also on the reddit post:


Gotta love how the US will be left in the dust.  Why?  "Regulatory action."  Sigh.  Sometimes is sucks to be an American. ;)

Difference is 54 billion (something). I guess this consists of expansion of money supply and fees. This is the reason why god, king, nations, big companies and just about everyone else wants to start their own regulated money system.

Updated with:

Bitpay partners with 3dcart
http://btcbible.com/bitpay-partners-with-3dcart/
TLDR Bitcoin now available as a payment option to 16,000 new merchants

http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/08/06/Bitcoin.pdf

US federal court rules that bitcoins are money. As much as this sounds self-evident and trivial to us here, it sets an important precedent. The ramifications are many, some good and some bad for some of us. Personally, I am happy to see this.

I fail to see the connection between the two quotes you posted. The judge did rule that bitcoins are money, as explicitly written in the pdf I linked to. Perhaps you could clarify your point in this discusion? Thanks.

Him recognizing that bitcoin was a form of money just means that in that specific case. It's no different than how bitcoins were viewed before and doesn't really change anything on a monumental level. FinCEN still only has jurisdiction over the AML part of bitcoins, and the CFTC still doesn't have jurisdiction over its exchange.

One word: precedence.

Can't look up the links atm, but in at least one north-European country bitcoins were ruled a commodity, implying VAT or sales tax on all transactions. I would not dismiss the US ruling as insignificant. For example, cases of theft now have an important precedent set.

I know about Germany. You can actually sell bitcoins there after a year after purchase tax-free. We have yet to come up with anything on a similar level at the legal level. I'm curious to see what happens when different states decide different things on Bitcoin.

Updated with:

Bitcoin charts on bloomberg for employees, coming soon to everyone
http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/09/bitcoin-ticker-available-on-bloomberg-terminal/
TLDR Bitcoin now officially mainstream

Interesting fundamental analysis thread recently from reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1k9w3p/the_postbubble_recovery_has_begun/

Is thread abandoned now? Anyone else want to take up the mantle or has someone done so in another thread?

Sorry yes I have abandoned this baby for one IRL. Someone else please feel free to pick up the ball.

Thanks for the reply, I'll try to update it with the most important developments.

Really? 30T in tax haven bank accounts? That's a whole lot of money. Is that realiable information?

Imagine if just 1% of that money is switching to bitcoin. Or 5%, or 10%

That would be huge...

Never mind if they all decided to buy bitcoin

yes its reliable. Check out Trace mayer on youtube and how to vanish. He isnt as visible a figure in bitcoin as he was a few years ago but still recommend his stuff.

Expedia to accept Bitcoin payments for hotel bookings, initially US customers only, for hotels not flights (yet)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27810008 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27810008)
TLDR another very high-profile name to accept Bitcoin.

Just a thought:
If you are serious about future updates, i guess it would be best to open new thread, self moderated maybe, then copy all lebing's data and put all new entries also into the first post.

It's very convenient to show this info to someone if all the data is included in first few posts.

Yes indeed that would be best. I can manage it if I just post the most important developments.

Yes, that would be perfect.

Let us know our new link to watch : )

Done, here's the new thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=649453 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=649453)

Thanks for the original lebing, your thread was very helpful when I was still figuring Bitcoin out.

NP, thanks for picking it up  8)

Have fun with the new thread