Well folks,
This looks like the end of the road for AM.  Friedcat has abandoned it.  I secretly hope this nudges him out, but all indications are that he has left the building.  Another one bites the dust.

With as many people predicting a stock crash, I wouldn't be surprised to see another QE appear just in time to screw everyone who is sensibly short.

HSBC bosses apologise for 'unacceptable' practices

Ukraine Enters Hyperinflation: Currency Trading Halted, "Soon We Will Walk Around With Suitcases For Cash"

A long list of almost superhuman technical feats illustrate Equation Group's extraordinary skill, painstaking work, and unlimited resources. They include:

    The use of virtual file systems, a feature also found in the highly sophisticated Regin malware. Recently published documents provided by Ed Snowden indicate that the NSA used Regin to infect the partly state-owned Belgian firm Belgacom.
    The stashing of malicious files in multiple branches of an infected computer's registry. By encrypting all malicious files and storing them in multiple branches of a computer's Windows registry, the infection was impossible to detect using antivirus software.
    Redirects that sent iPhone users to unique exploit Web pages. In addition, infected machines reporting to Equation Group command servers identified themselves as Macs, an indication that the group successfully compromised both iOS and OS X devices.
    The use of more than 300 Internet domains and 100 servers to host a sprawling command and control infrastructure.
    USB stick-based reconnaissance malware to map air-gapped networks, which are so sensitive that they aren't connected to the Internet. Both Stuxnet and the related Flame malware platform also had the ability to bridge airgaps.
    An unusual if not truly novel way of bypassing code-signing restrictions in modern versions of Windows, which require that all third-party software interfacing with the operating system kernel be digitally signed by a recognized certificate authority. To circumvent this restriction, Equation Group malware exploited a known vulnerability in an already signed driver for CloneCD to achieve kernel-level code execution.

Taken together, the accomplishments led Kaspersky researchers to conclude that Equation Group is probably the most sophisticated computer attack group in the world, with technical skill and resources that rival the groups that developed Stuxnet and the Flame espionage malware.

Nailed it. Another thing is that abandoning personal responsibility for the supposed safety of the "experts" or authorities makes you incapable of critical thought and independence. You can see the same effect in pretty much every area where government is heavily involved. Nowadays people can't even educate their own children, care for their own health, plan their own retirement or handle their own money. A pretty sad state of affairs which can imo be only remedied by relocating responsibility where it belongs and where it is most effective: with the individual.

well, but there is a difference between losing money of government/bank-backed fiat kind and losing decentralised BTCs, right?
In the first case, there are certain guarantees to protect you from a loss, even if that means 'let's print some more money', in the latter case, once the money is gone it is gone for good. Unless the receiving party will send it back to you. I just can't find the reason for doing so.

While in theory that is the most sensible idea, in practice, adding other changes will only slow down the implementation of what already has proved to be very contentious (yet shouldn't have been).

Depending on how this works, there's plenty of reason to buy after people are done dumping.
At the very least, we should expect price to go up once dividends start up again - if you buy at bottom price, you win.
But there might be an even more compelling reason: Lets assume that on March 1st (or whenever) there will be a huge dividend payout for the previous 20 or so days: roughly 0.0001 BTC per 1 unit which currently costs under 0.0008 BTC to buy. That one dividend alone is worth 12.5%. And I'll assume it will be paid in full to whomever owns the shares on March 1st (not split over who owned them in previous days). So it becomes really profitable to buy on that day before dividends. Since many people will expect the huge payout we might see a big buy order queue and a little price bubble that will burst as soon as dividends are paid. Of course it's all speculation, but if it happens like this there's plenty of great opportunities - all of which involve buying/holding in this break period.

Does that only sound crazy to me or anyone else?  I've already accepted the ECB's negative interest (i. e., fees) when banks park money at it.  But at least a loan is still at positive 0.05%.  So if I'm a Swedish bank, I'll just get a billion in cash, put it in my vault, pay back less and profit?  How's that ever going to work out?

Greek bank shares fall sharply as fears over exit grow

Testing sidechains before the soft-fork

After explaining how this federated, demo version of sidechains would work, Maxwell went on to explain what happens after this version of sidechains has been tested in the wild:

“Beyond [federated sidechains], we have to see where it goes from there. It’ll take some time for the initial system to mature and for people to gain confidence enough to start saying, ‘OK. Well where can we start introducing the soft-forking, additional scrypt opcodes to make it so you can do it without the functionaries — without the federation.”

I was hired as cryptocurency engineer in September, for which I left my job at BitPay. I was won-over by the then-CEO Yishan, who had an awesome vision for the future of reddit, including cryptocurrency as the financial system of the internet city that is reddit. However, Yishan suddenly and unexpectedly resigned his position a month or two later, probably due to exhaustion. This was in the midst of great existing turmoil at the company, such as moving the entire, formerly-remote company to SF, raising a new round of $50 million

honkies from the east coast, most likely dyed in the wool conservatives.
These type of American Upper Class people, when they go into business, tend to donate $$$ to BOTH democrat and republican incumbents. Its called hedging their bets. Which ever party wins, they are golden.

Their politics are "Always back the winner"