Bitcoin Forum

There are a lot of unwarranted claims posted about the Bitcoin economy here every day. In response I will post one thing which I think is misrepresented by BTC investors.
You can then as this thread goes on try to pick the argument apart.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/96/Grumpy_Bear.jpg/250px-Grumpy_Bear.jpg

For today:

The Bitcoin market cap is usually quoted as every BTC currently in existence times the current market price. This is not true because the majority of BTC were never traded for currency. Even worse during a rally the supply dries up because people do not want to risk having the price surpass their ask significantly.

Well that's a definition of market cap. Of course you can't sell 10 million bitcoins at $27, it would go a "little bit" lower in such case. the same would happen with any stock or currency though, see Soros/pound story :)

And how is this different than stocks?

This is of course right, but I look at it another way. It shows how little fiats(for a real investor) is needed to push the price in either direction, which is why I kept on saying if a few manipulators want to push the price to a certain point, they are fully capable of doing that, and I believe they are doing that.

On the other hand, the good news is that if bitcoin price ever falls into the quagmire of $2-$4 again, only about 500k dollars is required to salvage it, and that's definitely not a lot.

@oakpacific: What do you mean, 500k to salvage it?

@ElectricMucus: Nice to see a few bearish users around.

A simple calculation would show that $500k buy translates to about 150k-250K BTC volume at $2-$4, up volume of this size I think would be enough to pull BTC out of the quagmire. This amount of money should just be a small fraction of what bulls could make off this bull run.

And I don't think it is possible any longer. If internet infrastructure stays intact, we will never see $2 again. To prove this, I'll be ready to buy out any amount of coins at $5 per one, and I'm sure I'll have to wait in line.

Let's stay on topic and not turning this thread into a bullish one :)

But to make that money on that bull run, those bulls would have to be the first one to turn bearish before others do. And the others might be out of money and all wanting to sell. =/

Agreed, if we see $2 again its a glitch or a market or a buyers opportunity of a life time, one that would have an extremely short shelf life.

It would be interesting to see what happened if say satoshi dumped his supposed 1 million btc on mtgox. In the shot term I believe The price drop significantly but stabilize, because bitcoin is useful. There would of course be a lot of hurt investors but we feel the economy would stabilize and then recover to an even stronger position thanks to a more even distribution of bitcoins per user.

That's the very difference between this rally and that one in June 2011, which caught many by surprise. This rally lasted more than a year, which gave a healthy number of people chances to buy at relatively low prices, once the crash comes, they would have enough time to react and take profits and buy back later, the crash would certainly be massive and painful, but I doubt it will penetrate as deep as last time, and since we have lived through $2 winter, it is certainly not going to be insufferable this time.

I don't think it will reach 2$ again either but if we keep raising faster and faster like that, we might well crash to 10 USD/BTC before recovering in the 10-20 USD/BTC range. (approximated based on average growth)

I mostly agree, I think it's still entirely possible, although not probable that we will fall to $7.22, but, as long as our bottom is higher than last time, overall our long term trend is still bullish, then I am happy. ;)

You can't really compare it with stocks. Owners of a company's stocks or other securities, actually have a claim on the company's assets, some of which are always physical (larger percentage for an airline as an example, smaller percentage for a software firm, and so on). Even if stock goes to zero, there is always some recoverable value. This is why, when companies have substantial physical assets (plants, equipment, inventory, etc.) their stock cannot go to zero. Someone will buy them before that. Debt changes the variables, but even if the company defaults, some debt is recoverable.

"Market capitalization" in that context is a useful metric when compared to the actual asset base of the balance sheet, to gauge whether a stock is richly or poorly priced (and in the case of things like FB as an example, to try and justify it  ;D).

Owning bitcoins (which is a very vague term anyway, the "owning" part I mean) does not represent a claim on anything of value. If their price ever goes to zero, we probably won't even talk about it with anyone anymore.

So, terms like "market cap" have no meaning when talking about BTC, but for a different reason, IMO, than what the OP suggested. There are many more differences between bitcoins and securities, such as what happens if the grid shuts down for a while...

And BTW, Spiff, nice to see you here :-). KAFA 4 ever ;-).

Glad that my point was so well understood.  ;)


As for today I'll try to tackle yet another myth:
The claim that bullish market participants can drive the price up infinitely, arguably because they can keep their coins forever without ever selling them back.
In an ideal world where everybody only invests the money they can afford to lose this would be true, but in RL that is not the case...

Because of relatively low interest rates in the fiat money economy there is a substantial amount of people who buy Bitcoin on credit. This tendency increases with greed and bullishness, the more somebody thinks the price will go up shortly and the higher the longing to get rich quick the higher the risk for somebody to fall into this trap.
And because many people either have other loans for more essential assets (like housing) or use these assets as collateral to get the loan in the first place they have no other alternative to sell their BTC down the road, either by taking profit or worse to cut losses.

I actually bought bitcoins on credit... after the last crash (2011 one) =P

A decision I have yet to regret. I've been selling some recently. I wouldn't be buying right now.

I'm bullish but I agree with this. Infinitely? Doesn't sound realistic anyway. The truth is a lot of people will cash out of bitcoin and that will cause the bubble to pop...... but that is the price bitcoin has to pay to become an elite currency. Over and over people will suck money out of the bitcoin circulation and prices will rise and fall but eventually it will still be worth more than it is now. I only say I'm bullish because I don't think the price will drop that far. There are lines of people waiting to buy at 15........ so that means I doubt it will drop that low if the price does crash.

Yes, it was cypherdoc one of the most prominent bulls here who brought that to my attention.
What you do must understand is that essentially this behavior can lead to a debt trap for speculators who weren't careful enough and depending on the entrance price of the people who did this it can lead to a very deep drop potentially. In a way the positive feedback we have seen in the past weeks would reverse and work against them.
I think if it gets that far we would drop very deep, potentially close to the 2011 crash.

As for now...


The topic of Wordpress and Reddit "accepting" bitcoin.
They do not. They accept USD from third parties, which in turn sell the bitcoins to obtain the currency or take the equivalent loan for the payment (which has been confirmed at least for bitpay). That this has become the common settlement for accepting bitcoin is irrelevant. Only a complete economic cycle constitutes real economic growth.
In this state Bitcoin acts not as a currency and is essentially a trading game with the possibility to cash out into certain goods and services. The missing essential part are cases where business are paying their expenses to other business as well as re-investing their profits for expansion using bitcoin. Payment processors negate this effect to the extent that it could already be happening, so in a economic sense they hindering development.

The effect this has is that investors get even more entrenched in the idea that all Bitcoin needs is more publicity, think that sites dealing with payment processors will supply it and enlarge their position.


Addendum to yesterdays post: Worse as I mentioned above there is a strong possibility that the payment processors do not sell a large portion of their Bitcoin in order to not impact the market which requires them to get in debt in the fiat economy. Essentially it means that core infrastructure might be affected by the same kind of debt trap some of the private speculators are in. Of course the extent of this happening is all speculative but I am fairly confident that this happens.

We can't jump from here to there.  Payment processors will make bitcoin usable to those who aren't willing to take on unnecessary risk.  This will lead to more comfort with the idea of bitcoin and eventually to holding part of the income in bitcoin.  The processors allow you to set what percentage you want to keep in bitcoin, so merchants can start with 100% USD and adjust is as they wish.

I was mainly referring to the price discovery mechanism being the same.  Whether the asset in question is of a different nature is not that important imho.

I am afraid you have mistaken me with one of my alter egos.  I don't know what KAFA is.

I beg to differ here. I think the number of "healthy investors" could match that of reckless investors who would be deeply in debt and panic sell to cut losses, so the healthy guys could easily stop the price from falling that low by buying off at a higher, though still quite low bottom price(e.g. $7.22),  if the reckless investors were such a  dominant force here, their collective buying power would already have pushed the price way higher than it's now, like in June 2011, when the price jumped 20 dollars in just one week.

[emphasis added]

No alternative? How about default on the fiat, but keep the btc? For the set of people buying btc on credit with no ability to repay if they get squeezed, I contend that there's a large demographic crossover with the sort that simply defaults on credit-cards.

Good luck with that, don't drop the soap but if you do you can always think about your bitcoins.  :D

Todays bear post is about the so called uniqueness of Bitcoin.

There is not much to write about it, for all practical purposes Bitcoin is innovative but certainly not unique.
Take a look around at the Digital Currency Wiki (http://wiki.dgcmagazine.com/index.php?title=Main_Page) and tell me why you think Bitcoin is destined for greatness and all those other solutions are not.

When doing that keep in mind that the rest of the world doesn't necessarily agree with libertarian ideology.

Started looking through, seemed a quite a few were centralized (not all however).
"While Bitcoin’s critics are wary of it lack of commodity backing, its main advantage is its decentralized model. This decentralization makes it arguably the most resilient digital currency currently available."

Well yes, it's an advantage but it doesn't tell the whole story. For once I have yet to see a completely decentralized system of any kind, I would appreciate if if it were to exist some day.
Bitcoin is centralized at the source code and it is centralized in terms of wealth distribution, other system may be more centralized in more different kinds however that is not the only issue:

Many people do not want to use a decentralized system, for whatever reason. We live in the world we live in all we can do is try to change it while many people simply do not want that change.
I am an Anarchist myself (not a Libertarian though) and would very much like to live in a society where power isn't arbitrarily. I realize this is a chicken and egg problem but that's perhaps the topic for another day.

and don't forget the mountain of gox!

It's exactly because you are living in the first world, that you may not understand why the rest of the world needs it, and its uniqueness.

Ohh that's gonna be interesting. Please tell me how the 3rd world population is supposed to benefit from BTC in any way because I cannot think of any.

I'm serious. :-\


true dat.

http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/pay-another-way-bitcoin/

The Wordpress guy pretty much got it actually, the status quo is if folks in my nation, and many other third world nations wanna pay for, let's say a wordpress or megaupload subscription, or just simply buying goods in a U.S online store, soon they will find many of the times their only option is to ask people like me(oversea students/workers) to help them out, all current payment methods would not work for one reason or another. Credit cards issued in many nations are not accepted, you can't blame the merchants for this, the issuing banks most likely would not give a shit once you are frauded, let alone pay for your losses, and even if you could locate the fraudster, the chance of a successful prosecution is superslim.  Paypal does not do business with perhaps more than half of the world's population, and is not allowed to process foreign currency transactions in China, even in those nations it operates, there are very often draconian restrictions, see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal#Local_restrictions , the chance that other online payment business/digital currency issuers could operate where Paypal could not is, of course, even slimmer. And don't get me started on the wire transfer, even if the merchant accepts it and you are fine with the exorbitant fees, your fund could be intercepted anytime by an intermediary bank if the amount is slightly large, on the pretext of financial crime prevention of course, and you are left to find out yourself why your fund has not arrived, no one is going to inform you, i had personal experience with that.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, could prove to be very useful, I don't know about other nations, but in China, it's a piece of cake to buy bitcoins with existing domestic online payment system like Alipay, even if the government decides to crack down on the exchanges, the online shops could still sell them under all kinds of pretenses, it is nearly impossible the authority would find out what is the good really being delivered. On the oversea merchants side, all they have to do is to use a payment processor, which adds very little cost. Of course, whether bitcoin could really succeed will have to depend on the size and liquidity of the market, in the end.

Bitcoin, it seems to me, is basically a digital version of hawala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala, except that hawala is nowhere near as versatile as bitcoin is. The decentralization aspect is not just libertarian ideology, it's very tangible in nations where financial barriers are real.

So what you are basically saying is that 3rd would population being able to buy services from 1st world companies operating on high margins would help them?
If so how are they supposed to get their Bitcoins anyway? Oh they should issue T/T to mtgox paying premium transaction fees to western banks in the process?

This is brilliant!  :D

No that's ripple.

What high margins? It's not about "helping" them, it's about a need that is already there. You do realize that oversea shopping, online or offline, is an enormous business in many developing nations right? A lot of things are way cheaper in developed nations, many are not even purchasable locally. I am not going to tell you the number of payment requests people like me are going to receive the year around, but suffice to say it is staggering. ;) One of my friends runs a business just by doing oversea shopping for several skincare brands, and even he sometimes has problems with payments.

What I meant by "hawala", is that a wide variety of people could get in the money sending business, even yourself, as long as you can get hold of some bitcoins.

And yeah, as I have said, we don't need to rely on Mt.Gox.

+1 Holliday


How does uniqueness determine chances of success? I'd think that the LESS unique something is, the more likely it is to succeed...
Given that bitcoin is hands down the most popular crypto currency, I'd say it has a good chance of success based on INERTIA.

The other things you need to take into account are CONTEXT and TIMING. The worlds' middle class just got royally screwed by
financial elites - billions in financial wealth evaporated and billions more went into offshore hedge fund accounts.

Anyone with half a brain is looking to exit the fraudulent system the MOTU have created... enter bitcoin...

I would also like to add that an inherent risk of using centralized digital currency is the possibility of insolvency/bankruptcy of the issuer.

+1 to this thread. Thank you for starting it. I believe one of the largest obstacles to major bitcoin adoption is helping the rest of the world "get it". There are so many people on this forum alone spreading disinformation and lies it's astounding; and the majority of us (myself included) do not yet fully understand bitcoin enough to rebuttal. The more we focus on why and how bitcoin is the answer, the more we learn ourselves and the more we pass that knowledge on to others.

The wheels are already in motion. A few big adopters are already in (most recently Reddit, Mega) making sure the word will spread, and there are plenty of forward looking entrepreneurs having a go at bitcoin (only a matter of time before online poker with bitcoin hits big, and other harder to foresee big hits). It's just a matter of time now, and it's completely out of the hands of us single individuals.

The hard work has already been done. Time to reap the rewards and enjoy the ride. All you need is patience.

people "get it" but they don't Believe it, last Sat Night i was playing poker, ( i was pretty drunk ... and high   :D) anyway at one point someone asked "what is bitcoin?" and i told her, we talked about... Government! ...  Fake Dollars! ... Real Bitcoins! i had blurted out so much info so fast one of them lol'd at me and said " you going to sign us a song now" so i got up and starting signing "Mr. BITCOIN Bring me money, give me a chance out of this economy!" LMAO!

gr8 publicity right?

sure, but they will never buy in, because they don't believe and they never will.... they like their bank notes, they like their bank accounts. to them this is money, and just cuz some kid can cough out tons of "BS" about "Dollars" and thinks "bitcoin" is better, wont change their mind. nothing will!

Honestly I believe it scares them, they don't really understand it, they hear me say thing like " everyone fights over a VERY LIMITED SUPPLY, and that's what gives it value!"
and as they start to understand it scares them! they don't want to hear about why the dollars we all use are really just FAKE money, it scares them.

As it should. This is hell of a scary thing going on with bitcoin. It does take guts to take in all the information, take bitcoin to the logical conclusions and accept that there's a lot to be afraid of. Two other options is to deny its viability or to be blind to the dark side and be a blue-eyed ideologic as most here.

I might not think it's all roses, but there's no point denying the potential of BTC and would be stupid not to hop along for the ride.

I would be very very surprised if BTC/USD ratio gets under 20$ ever !

yes i keep trying to tell them, "your stupid! just give me your money!"  but they don't listen...  ;D

I would be very very surprised if BTC/USD ratio doesn't gets under 20$ ever...

This very much nails it except for the fact that there is a very significant proportion of the population in many first world nations such as the United States and Canada who cannot use Paypal, and do not have Credit Cards or even bank accounts. This is mainly because of two reasons:
1) Too young teens and tweens
2) Too poor, no credit or bad credit.

It is not just the third world. This problem and its Bitcoin solution applies to many in the first world also.

I would be very very surprised if BTC/USD ratio gets to 20$ sharp and stays there. Other than that, no idea.

I've struggled a little on whenever to bring that up here or create another thread about it, (which I might do some day nevertheless some day if the situation doesn't improve).

The issue of concern is what I call Bitcoinism. Many people in this community preach it and it is toxic.
It is basically greed, coupled with ignorance, group think and the inability to comprehend issues raised by people outside this little cult.

This has to do with the belief that Bitcoin is supposed to take over the world through recursive "early adoption". People are almost exclusively concerned with increasing publicity or "astroturfing" if you will.
The situation is supposed to improve by attracting more people which are expected to take care of the problems. While the only people this strategy attracts are the ones prone to the same thought process.

It is the main reason people make fun of us (read SA) and it doesn't look like it is gonna go away any time soon.
One good example was the Bitcoin stand at CES, while this could have been a great opportunity the main story was about BFL vs. Micon which none of the people outside understood.
Another one is this forum, you might not even want to look too far even in this thread there are plenty of examples of it. Oakpacific is probably the biggest offender ITT along with the people who followed after his lead.

You started this thread by saying you want to rebuff some unwarranted claims in this community, now instead of offering rebuttals to other people's stated reasons for belief in bitcoin's usefulness, you have decided to settle with surmising other people's ulterior motives, and called it all about greed and ignorance, very good for you. I guess there is nothing more I need to add.

Don't worry this is nothing against you, it could have been (almost) anybody else here.
In detail you praised BTC as a tool to help people in the third world, and after I argued against it you brushed away my arguments and continued on with your rhetoric.

The reason I call it ignorance is the way Bitcoin is alleviated to some silver bulled using "magical thinking", it is supposed to solve problems it was never meant to be addressing and which it cannot addresses on a fundamental level.

I offered my explanation why your concern is not a concern, it's not rhetoric, there's a market there, and no appropriate payment method exists to satisfy the need of this market, it's a fact, just a fact many people are not aware of.

I have said there are big bitcoin exchanges traded in CNY, and people could pay for their bitcoins with domestic payment system easily, either purchasing through the exchange or the online merchants. I could talk a little bit more about the supply side, for one thing in a populous developing nation there would be many citizens working overseas, and they would often have business/personal issues to deal with in their home country, which would require them to keep a cash reserve of local currency, selling bitcoins is one way to obtain such currency without going through the hurdle of forex exchange(there is actually one filippino guy offering such remittance service on this forum), For another, again in a populous developing nation, there would be a significant number of miners, who would be more than happy to sell their coins they mined locally, even at a slightly reduced rate, to avoid the trouble of withdrawing from Gox.

Hi ElectricMucus, long time no chat.


According to my tea leaves, there is a good chance the price will peak soon around $40 and drop to the August price range, perhaps in the teens. After climbing above $20 again, I think you are right, it will never drop below $20 again. Or so says the good oolong.

Bear disclosure: as of $27:90 o'clock today I own no bitcoins.

translation: i think bitcoin is over priced right now and should be in the teens... But it will go up Up UP b4 the market crashes down down down!

I say no.
everyone can see what you see... bitcoin is over priced because the market went a bit nutty... No it will not go any higher... the market might go crazy from time to time, but MOST of the time it does want it does best, and that is to find the true value.

 :D

 :D  ok NOW it will not go any higher  ;)

I usually only talk about positive things, but since this is a post of Bear, let's bring out some bearish facts

There is a possible hard fork in the near future, where user might be forced to switch blockchain. If you use original software, you will stay with original protocol, and if you use a new software published by btc foundation, you will use the new protocol. Both protocol do not accept the block on another chain, so coin generated on one chain become invalid in another chain (not sure if old coins will  be affected)

I don't really understand the necessity of such a hard fork, but anyway core developers said there are this this and this reason that we should/should not raise the transaction size limit, the debate has been going on for one year

The debate splited into two different political view regarding how BTC will perform in the future, I think this revealed a potential weakness in BTC: Currently there is no good decision making process established in btc community, if some developer with big influence decided to make a change in protocol, while some others do not agree, they might go ahead and make this fork, and we will get a split after the hard fork, so that some group of user stay with the original, and some other group goes with the new protocol, if that split is 50-50, that will almost immediately cut the BTC price by half. It is not about the technology itself, it is about people's trust of blockchain

I had a poll for this, have a mixed result without any majority:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=140516.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=140516.0)

Everybody can use their prefork coins on each chain.

You could double spend them on each chain, just like BTC supply increased by 100%, so value will cut by half immediately

Even worse, central banks inflate money slowly, 10% per year is called hyperinflation. But in this case bitcoin is inflated by 100% overnight, then all the people's trust to this limited supply property (which is most important IMO) will vanish, it might worth nothing the day after

You're assuming that bitcoin and bitcoin-classic will be valued equally.

That's in case of 50-50 split, but other split is the same, it is not about the valuation, it is about people now do not believe that this thing can not be inflated, and double spend is also possible through a hard fork, promises are broken

most people use blockchain, most people would not notice there's been a fork.

@johnyj as I cross posted, is a fork serious chatter or purely hypothetical?

they will notice a 10% drop in value and ask questions....

Check this list
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Hardfork_Wishlist (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Hardfork_Wishlist)

they seem like improvements to me...

what they should do is start a new experiment (read: start a brand new fork) why a hard fork?? why???

From what I can tell it's fear from completion from alternative cryptocurrencies that's driving this debate.

Due to popular demand todays bear post will address the current ongoing debate about the block size limit.
(Thanks for bringing that up guys!)

As a quick background each block has a hardcoded limit of 1MB. This is the done the same way as the block reward for instance, just a value in the code.
Recently a lot of voices raised their concern that the block size will not be enough in the future, (currently we only even come in the same magnitude because of satoshi dice and clones.)

I am strongly against this change since it is against the original intent, and I wouldn't consider it bitcoin anymore. Now the proponents of this change argue that the blocksize limit will compromise the usefulness of bitcoin.
Now the big question is usefulness for what?

After reading between the lines the answer becomes obvious: They are concerned that bitcoin would not be viewed as valuable anymore once the transaction costs aren't as cheap anymore and they may be right. But only from a theoretical not a practical perspective. For any realistic usage of bitcoin the block size limit is good enough, current estimations by gavin are 7 transactions per second.
This is imo a desperate reaction to the imminent bubble collapse, in theory to attract "big money" to bitcoin. On the other hand realistically, it will make people realize that Bitcoin is already near it's speculative value cap and exceeded it for the current time period.
But the bubble is in full gear so you might forgive them, look at this post in about a month and have a good laugh :)

That's not a good reason. If anything, it simply borders on religious.



Micro-transactions, and more generally, lots of transactions. You obviously see this...



What?! How is 7 transactions per second in any way acceptable? Even in the scenario where bitcoin doesn't do micro-transactions well, 7 transactions per second represents awfully small thinking about the potential for bitcoin.


This has nothing to do with bubble or no bubble.

For the record, I've only recently educated myself on the block-size debate, so if I'm missing some finer (or even obvious) points, please fill me in!

Are the primary concerns with block size just that transactions will take longer? If yes, I'd be curious to know what percentage of the current transactions are services like Satoshi dice? If it is a large number, what makes those fearful of reaching the cap think those services will still have the same viability if it takes forever for the transactions? It seems like it's a self-correcting system, but I might just be un-informed on this particular topic.

I mean, the block size needs to be low so that a cap is indeed reachable in order to make the maintaining the network a profitable endeavor, right?

Yes, it's a balance. I contend that it shouldn't be absurdly low, which 1MB will soon become.

Okay, can I get your opinion on Satoshi Dice? Good or bad for bitcoin? How do you think the current cap will affect their business model?

The main reason why I am against this change I have not mentioned. (It is not directly related to speculation about the bitcoin price itself and would belong to the mining subforum but in the spirit of rigor here it is)
Another concern about raising the block size limit is that it is unfair towards miners. If the block size is increased every time it comes close to the limit there won't be ever a real transaction market since it would mean practically unlimited supply. It's a classical bait and switch game.
If the block size limit is allowed to be reached zero fee transactions will be squeezed out which is a good thing for a sustainable mining economy.

Problem is most investors don't want sustainability, they just want to get rich quick....

I'm finding myself agreeing with what ElectricMucus is saying, which pretty much never happens. This makes me feel like I should probably get better educated on the topic before I can really contribute in a meaningful way.

While I think the blocksize current limit is acceptable for the foreseeable future, I believe if Bitcoin gets any kind of adoption, the increased value of BTC coupled with the transaction volume will require higher limits if we are not to limit Bitcoins to large transactions only, that is, if Bitcoin ever makes it to that point.

For now, it should be sufficient as is for a few years at minimum.

Eventually you'll be right.  Even a broken clock is right twice a day  ;)

Good for bitcoin. It forces treatment of scaling issues sooner than otherwise would've happened, which is good. It also enables a completely new type of product (provably fair gambling), which I hope is the first in a long line of never-before-possible products.

This is certainly a valid concern. I agree that the blocksize shouldn't be raised such that *all* transactions can be included and fees go to zero. As I noted above, it's a balance... I think keeping it at 1MB forever, though, tilts things way in the other direction. Fees would be high enough that they'd kill some of the key innovative utility that bitcoin theoretically offers.

This is somewhat arbitrary, but what about doubling the blocksize every time the block-reward is halved? This would be slower than keeping pace with Moore's law, but that's probably ok. This seems like one of the simplest dynamic ways to treat the issue, while trying to maintain a balance. (sidenote: I'm sure plenty of other people have suggested this; like I said above, I've by no means read through all the discussion yet).

I might be willing to accept some of a compromise but this is too much. At first moores law and related laws will end. Once they do the balance deteriorates exponentially. You would be increasing the slope one exponent basically. from n^2 to n^3 for ex and would exeed moores law.
Also this would make a ever growing economy necessary which is the fundamental flaw in current inflationary environments. Bitcoin is in it's design a steady state model and the fixed block size is there to ensure that bitcoin evolves into a steady state economy. If you ask me this was done on purpose.

From what I've read... the "intended design" of the blocksize not being raised isn't true.  For those who want to keep it low......... they are probably mining litecoins as we speak because ultimately bitcoin will be relegated to very expensive transactions only (Like more than 20 dollars just for a transaction)or total failure . Bitcoin will become just a way to move huge amounts of money and that's it with the "hope" that bitcoin clearing houses(or the litecoins they are currently mining) step in and perform smaller transactions for us off the block chain. This is all argued because it will somehow prevent centralization. See how preposterous that is? Handicapping the bitcoin network and forcing people to use other methods for normal day to day transactions is going to "prevent centralization" . If by preventing centralization they mean preventing the use of bitcoin then sure. It's ridiculous. Thank god it's only a fringe minority of people that talk about it.

Uh hating on Litecoin again? This thread is about Bitcoin, please stay on topic kthx.

My bear post for the day.

"Ruawwwwar grrrahr"  :-*

Today we have the current state of ASIC:

BFL claims to have chips in the work, and had a visitor to inspect their boxes with fans. Probability of a total fuckup: high
AVALON, has 2 fully confirmed units shipped 2 others with a hint and several? in China of which they aren't telling us anything. Probability of a total fuckup: low
ASICMINER has raised a substantial hashrate, but nothing so out of the ordinary that they should be taken for granted, unloading of shares by IPO investors has begun. Probabilty of a total fuckup: unknown

I always was one of the harshest skeptics in regards to ASICs, right now the consensus is very optimistic on the forum. I will write more on this as it unfolds lets just say I smell something in the air.

What I am fairly certain of is that all ASIC companies have invested a large part of their preorder money in BTC upto the point where they are entirely invested in it. So even under the most optimistic scenario of no fuckups there will be serious profit taking along the way.

tl;dr this rally is an ASIC bubble.

Yeah, I don't know what the correct algorithm is, but ideally it would be simple. The reward halving every four years, and the difficulty adjusting every 2 weeks are both very easy to implement piecewise functions. Those could be done as more elaborate and technically "accurate" continuous functions, but that's much more of a pain from a software dev standpoint. So I like simple solutions.

That said, I don't know if a simple solution can nicely satisfy my assertion that the block size needs to be such that fees make sense but are not too high. To do that "perfectly", you'd have to assign some (arbitrary) target to what you think fees should be (or percentage of transactions that can be included for free), and then adjust accordingly. That's messy.

I'm sure people have some good ideas on this, but at least you and I are pretty much in agreement that we need to meet in the middle on this; blocksize needs to increase over time, but shouldn't increase geometrically forever.

Skeptical. ASIC buzz is certainly one of the positive contributors to the current state of the bitcoin ecosystem, but I don't consider it *the* driver. There are many things that have recently come together (which I explicitly enumerated (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=145315.msg1542003#msg1542003) in another thread). Also note that I originally consider BFL a likely scam, largely due to the awful lack of professionalism demonstrated by at least one of their reps. Given that other ASICs have been demonstrated, though, I'm not so critical of BFL anymore, but the verdict is still out until they ship in volume.

In short, I agree that massive ASIC disappointment is possible, and that it would kill the exchange rate for a while. That would not, however, modify my medium/long-term view of bitcoin.

We have to wait to find out anyway ;)

One thing I have not mentioned about asicminer is that they are supposed to pay out only till the IPO price, which makes this a highly questionable investment imo.
I cannot fathom why anybody would buy this considering they do nothing else than mining.

Only pay till IPO price? That's incorrect. They pay IPO price in full first. Then shares pay 1/400000 of profits each as supposed. They just guarantee to pay IPO price before taking any profit for themselves for the shares they've kept for themselves.

I've read something different, I may have overseen something though.
Problem with that is: How are they audited?

no look again

they pay don't pay dividends! not really, they pay IPO price in full...
after that your holding on the a stock that wont pay dividends...

I guess that's the same issue as everything else. Based on trust.

I mean, anyone who bought ASICMINER to start with only had some vague promise of ASICs for sending Bitcoins to China.

Seriously? Where did everyone take that info?

reading their thread....


your right they will need to slipt any "profit" they make
but they can take a salary and always choose to invest the profits back in and expand the company,
in which case their will never be any dividends.

Oh, that sort of concern. Many seems to have it for many things. I've never seen this occur at all however. The biggest concern would be why would the pay anything all all when they could have just ran away with all the funds? If you don't trust the party, don't buy.

I suspect this is not a concern for anyone who purchased.

It's myth debunking time again.

This time it's gonna be one of the most represented facts about Bitcoin, so misrepresented that it may even be fraudulent.
It's the "Bitcoin is modelled after Gold in it's initial distribution from the block reward." -myth

Bitcoin follows a mathematical progression which looks like this
http://mathfoolery.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/fermat_area1.png
Gold on the other hand follows a sigmoid function which looks like this.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1a/Logistic_cdf.svg/480px-Logistic_cdf.svg.png
That has to do with the fact that at the beginning of gold mining people hadn't had automated mining machines which can haul several tons out of the ground at once, initially not even shovels.
In contrast to Bitcoin the total capacity matters in terms of total production.
Gold like any resource follows the Hubbert Peak in terms of production capacity. Which looks like this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Hubbert-curve.png


So to turn up an analogy if Gold would have behaved like Bitcoin stone age people would have picked up watermelon sized nuggets with their bare hands at a rate you pluck a goose.
Long story short: Stop spreading this myth, not only is it totally wrong it is misleading and from the perspective of an uninformed user fraudulent since it tries to talk away the substantial early adopter benefit.

Since debunking myths and fallacies about the Bitcoin economy doesn't seem to be nearly as popular as simple rhetoric, I give you today one short fact:


The BitInstant Debit card was a proud example of the next big thing during the runup of this bull market. Yet we haven't heard a thing.
It seems to have hit a roadblock or even completely abandoned.

That's not how I remember it, it was spouted pretty loudly here all over the forum to the point of zomg! critical mass imminent!!1111
If it is that easy there would be plenty by now, there are none.

Uh right, the Captains of the Industry™ bing lazy (or incompetent) doesn't mean anything.  ::)



Keep it up, with that attitude your posts are actually more bearish than mine.  :D

cashing out 1000's of bitcoin is a full time job  ;) lol!

Then I suggest you go ahead and run with it, not any day you got to be Captain, this is the opportunity of a lifetime! Do it!11
Now surely you are neither lazy nor incompetent and not that occupied since you have time to post in that fashion. SO what's your excuse?

me?
I am not competent enough too lazy and don't even want to do it. :)

Anyhow, you apologizing for their failure doesn't shed the best light on them either. I know how it is when a project gets abandoned, forgotten and never spoken of again, since when it comes to procrastinating I am an expert. But then I am not trying to run "The paypal of bitcoin" or whatever... What I can do is attest first hand how a left behind project looks like.

This is a great post, thank you

cavirtex offers such a service with payza or something

-get the payza card
-you sell your bitcoin
-send it to payza
-and then you can spend spend spend

thing is, i can spend spend spend with less fees if i just transfer the money into my account and use my VISA ( +1% bonus dollars! )
so their is no logical reason to use the fee infested payza card.

I am glad you like it. :)



Nice to see you got my argument after all.
What I am trying to do is to make a point here: Lots of developments get hyped so much that they distort the expectations to the point where the speculative value becomes the sole contributor.

In all fairness really bullish developments (which are there) then get overlooked, maybe shortly mentioned but do not get the attention falsely provided to other things. For example the decision of the Internet Archive to let their employees opt in to take some of their wages in Bitcoin.

Todays myth regards the usefulness of Bitcoin in the case of an economic collapse.

It is claimed that Bitcoins would be very useful in economic uproar because they cannot be counterfeit.
The problem with that is that it is problematic to use Bitcoins in such a scenario in the first place. It pretty much depends that the infrastructure continues to be operational through the crisis.
Once the power grid and the Internet are affected the usefulness is pretty much done for. Proposals to rely on things like solar panels and off-line wallets is pretty much irrational because the mining infrastructure would grind to a halt. Transaction times would be beyond a day and the risk of an attack by the establishment which brought up the crisis severe.
I'd take a silver coin over a bitcoin transaction the next day, and I guess you would too...

Only in a situation where the infrastructure continues to be operational along with a steady high inflation (no deflation) can Bitcoin shine. These are mostly periods of good economic growth, in real cases of economic crisis ppl wouldn't have enough cash to keep the bitcoin price up.

This post is dedicated to security and plausible deny-ability of Brain wallets.  :D

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/security.png

wouldn't it take a global economic collapse?

Well isn't that the scenario we ought to look out for? That's what the leprechauns told me.

If the collapse isn't global wouldn't there be the possibility to use foreign currency in affected countries like we historically have seen?

Whoa, what? Where is that myth? People (myself included) say all the time that bitcoin has properties similar to gold, but I don't recall anyone saying that the initial distribution follows the same pattern. Since you're quoting this specifically, I assume you can probably dig up some threads with people who said as much, but I have to say, hanging out mainly in the Spec forum, Economics forum, and the General forum, I've NEVER noticed anyone claiming similar initial distro.

Are you just trying to re-cast people's assertion that bitcoin is similar to gold into a different but specific statement that's obviously false?

You're keeping me busy tonight :-)

In the various discussion about bitcoin vs. gold, it's always acknowledged by both sides that gold is superior in the true disaster scenario, obviously because of bitcoin's required infrastructure. Again, bitcoin's requirement for functional infrastructure is NOT ignored in these discussions. I think you must be misunderstanding what people probably typically mean when they say "economic collapse" or "economic disaster". They're pretty much referring to a scenario a bit worse than 2008/09, where finance stops, people lose wealth, but the structure of day-to-day life largely stays the same (whether that would actually be the case is a different discussion). I hardly think people are arguing that bitcoin makes sense in one of the near apocalyptic scenarios. You may get a few folks claiming mesh-networks or something, but most understand the necessity of big infrastructure for the foreseeable future.

No i am saying it is fundamentally different not similar.They have totally different mathematical structures.
They converge to a certain value, that's all. What I am saying is that stating that bitcoin is similar to gold is deceptive because vital information is omitted purposefully.



That may be your interpretation but it is not what people tell the public. Bitcoin is a thing for an utopia/dystopia for which we have no historical pretext.
So then I read things like "Bitcoin: It's your best insurance against a diet of dog-food for the next decade." So yeah...


Sorry if my replies are a bit short, I have to get on with it today.

I see there are some negative elements:

Avalon and BFL are going to delay their delivery of ASIC devices due to low capacity of production, so for now the difficulty increase of network is only generated by ASICMINER and since all these ASIC devices are still not very mature, customer have a high possibility runing into hardware problems, the network difficulty increase will not be that dramatic as imagined by some people. I think we could possibly see a double of difficulty each month, and if the difficulty do not increase that fast, there won't be lot of people rushing to buy bitcoin

Todays post is about the distinction Technology vs. Proof of Concept.
special thanks goes to deeplink.

Bitcoin is commonly refereed as a new in technology, and is compared to the Internet in it's potential influence.
There is a subtle error in this assessment but it makes a huge difference.

Bitcoin combines several different technologies which existed before, (think hashcash,  digicash, FOSS) and is certainly innovative. Although it is not a technology as such. Not even a standard. What is important here is that Bitcoin in contrast to the Internet has a lock in feature, the ledger is packaged with the software. This distinguishes it from a) The Internet which is based upon open standards and b) from most free open source software, in particular p2p software.
No p2p software comes with a predetermined dataset which is supposed to be transmitted.


People often argue that Bitcoin is mature enough to be considered the real thing. I have a fundamental problem with that.
Bitcoin was not designed to serve a particular purpose, if satoshis use of the proof of concept term are accurate. It just happened to become what it is today. That it has been fairly successful doesn't change the initial premise.
Bitcoin sometimes is called an experiment which I agree on.... but this experiment is far from over.


Yes and no, we are in the same phase since 2011. The next phase will be for Bitcoin to act like a real currency. That is why I think the block size limit is so important. Any other currency, historically and currently has non-trial transaction fees. I think they provide a major influence on the stability of the exchange rate against other currencies.
The next phase is an operating transaction market where both supply and demand matter.
I take this even one step further and say if transactions stay as low as they are Bitcoin as an experiment has failed. I think satoshi put the block size limit in there on purpose as a test for the community (although there is no quote on that subject except a vague hint)

Another point of maturity I would see if there emerges a standard out of the existing work, containing RFC style data structures and methods to implement cryptocurrencies with the possibility of backwards compatibility, that means a hard fork would not be necessary to implement additional features.

The third part is way too esoteric, but I mention it nevertheless. I want to be citizen of a functional decentralized republic in my lifetime. No matter what it takes as long as it is possible.
So the ultimate point of Bitcoin's maturity is it's obsolesce.  :)

You're specifically asserting that people say bitcoin's distribution progression follows that of gold. I don't think people assert that. People assert that gold and bitcoin have a bunch of similar properties, but I don't recall anyone saying anything about similarity to HOW the limited supply gets distributed. Reread my response with that clarification. Or maybe I'm misinterpreting something?



Yup, my interpretation is that even most of the perma-bulls aren't stupid enough to contend that bitcoin is useful without infrastructure. Not sure how you're seeing otherwise, but our interpretation of other people's meaning is clearly pretty subjective.

Why shouldn't bitcoin should be compared to Gold supply since 1970, rather than since the beginning of time.

It is harder than you think.  We have been in talks with a half dozen white label providers and they were all interested until ... Bitcoin.  HARD STOP.  EMERGENCY DIVE.  Financial companies are very conservative by nature.  Oh your good friends at Payoneer point blank told me (paraphrased) "they 100% know Bitcoin is a scam to con people out of money and will auto-freeze any account even suspected of participating in the Bitcoin scam".  Of all the contacts we had the absolute most paranoid and uninformed operators of the group.  Most other companies were interested in Bitcoin but their compliance/legal departments wouldn't allow the risk into an unknown/gray area.   There are a couple offshore banks willing but you wouldn't like the fees.  Trust me take whatever you think is utterly ripoff fees then double it and then add fees you never knew existed and then double it again.

So trust me it is harder than you think.  A LOT harder than you think.  It will eventually happen (by BitInstant or someone else), but thinking it is a couple hours of work, sign some papers, flip on the server and BLAMO BTC->VISA is kinda naive.  If you think it is that easy raise the hundred grand or so you need and make a couple million the first year without even trying.   Can I get my card from you next week or the week after?

Mmm... These "important" differences don't seem that important, if even correct. The "Internet" is obviously not a  technology or protocol either. Yet there are absolutely core protocols that it relies on. Sure, you can point out some differences between the evolution of bitcoin and early-internet, but I don't think the fact that it may not *exactly* fit the mold necessarily invalidates the thesis that bitcoin has similar disruptive potential.



So did the internet! Initially created and nurtured by a small group, and then slowly evolved and morphed into what it is today with no explicit direction from anyone. I have no problem calling bitcoin an experiment. Nor would I have had a problem calling the internet an experiment in 1985, 1990, 1995, whenever.



Kind of a different argument, but I don't see why bitcoin needs to inherit the negative properties (high transaction fees) of prior solutions (currencies) in order to be considered "real".



Huh? He thought the blocksize should be eventually raised. Here's the quote; read the thread (note: it's not vague):



Me too. :-)


Not seeing how you get to this conclusion...

Because the supply rate was still growing. And we have yet to encounter the peak, despite different estimations that we already passed it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_gold
Added to this gold mined since the beginning of time has already been distributed. This difference makes it impossible to compare gold with bitcoin except during the end of the race, for which we do no yet know what will happen. It is very possible that the initial distribution remains an influential part even then.

@Melbustus I respond to you this way since using chainquotes is painful in smf.


Bitcoin vs Internet, yes Bitcoin might have disruptive potential, but only if everybody on earth converts to Libertarianism. I doubt that will happen. ;)
The Internet hasn't had and strings attached to it, and if Bitcoin would have been delivered just as the software needed to run a cryptocurrency I would put it in the same category.

Transaction fees, satoshi, it also was intended to have transaction fees high enough so they can compensate for the missing block reward during it's decline. Currently one block can contain about 2000 transactions which would if they should account for BTC 25 in fees at BTC 0.0125 per transaction, or $0.375. That may be too high for satoshidice to operate but it is certainly lower than an intentional bank transfer.
I can't see how we could reach that when raising the block size, now or before transaction space is scarce enough to squeeze out any free transactions and transactions which are because the abundant space.


Decentralized republics, Bitcoins obsolesce, people told me here every time I brought up that possibility that they don't want to form such a structure and they don't think it is necessary to do so. If you agree that we should implement software that includes a database of contact data, ownership of resources like land and assets plus a system to facilitate voting and call it the Bitcoin Republic you are the first one. :)

For today I am just going to mention the increased interest in XRP and the rise of paranoia about it. There is not much to say about it imo, well it's due for a bubble.
I doubt it would eat into Bitcoins market share since it wasn't intended to in any way, but you never know with some of the get rich quick idiots.

I would expand on this further and say that in a true SHTF period in history, a person who has goods worth trading (food, etc) might be hesitant to trade those things for anything but either a) other useful objects or b)useful services. I always read that people want to have silver/gold/bitcoins/whatever for during a grid-down SHTF situation, when those things won't be valuable to have until after the chaos is over with and things settle down again. It is an argument I have never understood.

Libertarians love bitcoin for obvious reasons, but seeing the utility and potential of bitcoin spans quite a wide swath of political ideology. The long-term implications of blockchain-type distributed consensus systems are not understood. Nor were the implications of routing 1500 byte packets of data over a distributed system in the early 80s. The monetary side of bitcoin is just one aspect.



Agreed that free transactions should be squeezed out eventually. But I do not think that 1MB (with associated estimates of 7 transactions per second) is going to allow bitcoin to reach its potential. I believe we agreed in another thread that probably exists some gradual increase scheme that makes sense.



Yeah, as I touched on above, the potential of bitcoin-style technology to decentralize many aspects of society which currently require centralization is potentially the biggest societal implication (Mike Hearn's work on distributed markets and smart property come to mind). Maybe I'm being thick, but I still don't see how that makes the monetary aspect obsolete.

Yes in a true SHTF situation, historically things that are appreciated the most are the things of immediate concern. That is why most goldbugs say their gold isn't for the crisis but for after the crisis.
Bitcoin in this regard is very much a gamble, and I wouldn't gamble with such a situation, though everybody is different.

@Melbustus

Yes, the underlying technology Bitcoin uses has may different uses which reach far beyond what BTC currently does. What is of my concern is that a good part of the potential application would require a hard-fork just like increasing the block limit does. So that brings the potential innovator in the situation where rewriting the software from scratch to make it more extendible, versatile, or whatever becomes more and more attractive.
Some of those solutions could include a currency aspect, not directly competing with bitcoin but still making it obsolete in the context of which it is used.

We are seeing the first step in this direction with ripple, which is just a tiny one and there is a long way ahead. It is possible that Bitcoin remains relevant throughout this process, although I wouldn't bet on it.

Looks like "I'm saying nothing, but my words will be proven"

Looks like you got mad at me for some reason.

Please don't interfere in the debate.

No new bear post today, in appreciation of the ATH.

Yeah, I can see this argument to a degree. One of the few cases I see where bitcoin doesn't go "all or nothing" is if a competing crypto-currency is developed which offers some superior features, but which bitcoin can't directly incorporate for some reason. I think such possibility is limited, but still possible, of course. That'd relegate bitcoin to a niche within a niche.

To your point about bitcoin needing to be re-written from the ground up to serve other purposes; yeah, that indeed might happen. The only good reason for it to NOT happen (and for such things to piggy back on btc) is the huge hashrate lead that bitcoin has. It would tough to convince people to dedicate huge resources without financial incentive, which is, in turn, tough to do without having your use-case be a monetary system in and of itself. So, I suppose that comes right back my assertion above that I think it's unlikely a superior crypto-currency is developed whose features can't be absorbed into bitcoin. But who knows....it'll be interesting, for sure.

Ok todays post is concerning the current situation with mtgox vs coinbase.

There have been ideas that the extended services would provide a shorting possibility for entities with deep pockets and cause the price to collapse.
This is not true. Leveraging doesn't have an impact on the direction of the market, just the fundamentals do.

On the other hand we have the bull cheering for panic buying because the possibility of accounts getting under scrutiny of US tax collectors. This isn't true either, at least at this point of the bubble.
The risk of buying BTC at this point while not being able to get out within a 1hour window is just too much risk for anybody who isn't in for the thrills.

At last we have the real impact on the market which, since this is Bitcoin is the only thing that really matters in that regard. The possibility of a fuckup.
So far every price collapse was initiated by some sort of hack/scam/fuckup people loosing money and the market confidence in one way or the other. The possibility is there, it could happen with the coinbase takeover or or not in which case there will be another catalyst.

No, this is not true "since this is Bitcoin". You need to think.

Plenty of screwups began with a market crash, but certain people like to perpetuate the myth that it's the other way around. This is damaging to the community.

The real problem here is that we are not ready for "P2P finance". People who were never taught finance in school, now think they know all about money because they have been spending it all their life. Or something equally puerile, like "because Bitcoin". "Plenty of first-hand experience," or something like that.

Well, there is the general possibility of a long squeeze, or to say people having to choose between jail or selling the bitcoins they bought on debt. If the bubble doesn't burst soon this will be the ultimate end of it. That is difficult to quantize though.

Other than that market confidence isn't lost because of price movements but the other way around. There is no way you can talk me into thinking that price movements cause fuckups. That is basic logic, cause and effect there is nothing to dispute.
The term "this is bitcoin" refers to the cargo-cult mentality and herding behaviour of this community which is, quite frankly quite unique. But if you know something similar I'm all ears.  ::)

You know jail is not what happens to people who default these days, right? What happens is that they can't buy (another) house on credit for anywhere between 2 and 7 years. Default is often strategically correct (thinking only in net-worth terms here), and plenty of people do it when they have other options. They do not go to jail.

Are you speaking of some specific jurisdiction where people *do* go to jail for default? Where?

Everywhere, when it is done on malice.

That's just false. Anyone can intentionally run up a credit card bill and default, with pretty much no consequences other than a bad credit rating. Heck, people do that with houses! There's been a little bit of that happening in the past few years, if you haven't noticed...

No one audits you for "malice" when you don't pay your CC or even when you don't pay your mortgage. In the latter case, you may even be handed a principle reduction! At *worst*, you'll get rejected for a short-sale or, in some states, may be found responsible for the taxes on the loan deficiency since it can be treated as income. But if you're $200,000 underwater on your home, it's strategically correct to fork over the $60k in taxes to be able to just forget about the other $140,000 in debt. But like I said, that's the *worst* case. Most of the time, you just walk, and you're no longer on the hook for the $200k. Done. Your credit just gets nailed for a few years.

Where have you been, man? This is happening everywhere. Where did you get this idea of jail time and "malice"?

I guess that is for the curt to decide.  ::)

Protip: Any psychological condition, drug addiction or similar personal problems might be viewed as mitigating circumstances.
PS: Buying a house which you can't pay off isn't malice. Think about the word "strategic" default very carefully.
PPS: I really hope you aren't in this situation....

I don't know where you're getting this stuff. If you're not in the US, that makes more sense - things may be different elsewhere - but here in the states, this stuff doesn't even get to court very often. (Sidenote: Perhaps this is actually the way it should be, since the nature of a debt-based monetary system requires default; hence, it's not looked upon harshly by the law.)

Re: PS: Defaulting on your house when you have the means to not default is pretty ethically shady, and it happens all the time. Plenty of people also took out loans that they *knew* amounted to highly risky bets. If it worked out, great, they made money on asset appreciation. If it didn't work out, no problem, just default and walk away (after living in the place for free for a year, *and* with the possibility of being handed a principle reduction!).

Re: PPS: Heh, no, thanks for your concern, though. :-) I just live in one of the markets that was hardest hit by the real-estate collapse, so I see first-hand how people are handling things and thinking about these issues. I moved here *after* the collapse.

You are twisting the meaning of malice.


here: http://creditcardforum.com/blog/credit-card-default-consequences/

In case of Bitcoin there is no way to collect them, but there are ways to prove that Bitcoins were used on purpose to avoid seizing of assets in case of a default. (Mtgox bank statement for example)
This is financial fraud which is punishable by jail.

Anyway lets leave this topic behind us, we shall see and find out what happens.

Today we are at the publicly perceived value of bitcoin.


Apparently the people who write articles about it are selling.
http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/02/bitcoin-reaches-an-all-time-trading-high-of-over-33/

The rats are leaving the ship. But people partying on the decks probably won't notice...

Not really. It's unclear why you found that particular word relevant for the discussion anyway.




Did you think I wouldn't click the link? From the same section:


And:



Up to this point, I've generally respected your arguments, despite disagreeing with them. I have to say, though, that this last round suggests to me that you're really really reaching to make your points. If I felt like you had a different opinion but weren't willing to blow a very remote possibility way out of proportion in order to make your point, I'd be more inclined to continue to respect your arguments and respond. But this last exchange has made me consider this more a waste of my time than anything else.

I'll check back on this thread in a few weeks and see what I think then.

Ok, fine :)

I admit the law is actually more liberal than I assumed, that I have to grant you.
This page mainly is concerned with house mortgages and I have yet to find a suitable example.

Nevertheless this depends on the circumstances and I am certain that defaulting on a loan for a house is something different than choosing a non-seizable asset. And since I doubt people were granted a loan for speculating there is also the case of using the loan for other purposes as intended. In the case of Bank margins and credit card I am not certain, in that case when default occurs assets are seized. I say the interference with the seizing of assets is pushable not the default itself.

$49 was an exuberant surprise, but the rapid collapse was not. Indeed, I'm hoping for a little more deflation ('hope' in this context is reserved for threads titled "Bear post o'dae"). I don't suppose the Untiring Sceptic cares to see astrological charts that indicated the peak in the 40's, that expects further decline, followed by a huge long term up trend?

So people have been complaining that we bears try too hard, I've not been trying at all lately.
In my absence prices did rise tremendously.

Ok here you have it, definitely not a bubble:
https://i.imgur.com/G9l18ST.png

Disregard last weeks doji, I commend you!