I dont know why people are so singular minded, if dollars can be saved and also used, spent and earnt all at the same time.   Why would anyone describe BTC as too precious to use, keep some back if you like but its supposed to be spent.       I use BTC when its available instead of cash, think of it as supporting the company you buy from because it should be lower cost then credit cards.   So you are giving profit to companies which have taken the bother to use BTC and you have avoided VISA and ultimately the whole big bank leveraged up house of cards which is going to collapse one day, sooner we start on alternatives the better

All it takes is a Electromagnetic pulse and you'd find out why just one store of wealth is not happening.   Or a really bad solar flare, feasible events.  

Its very easy for gold to be digital, what is less likely is the distributed network that btc has.    Dollars can be backed by gold and so value can be transmitted without chopping up bits of gold



Dont you think we could replace gold a long time before 1972.   If it needed to be replaced it would have, its been there thousands of years because the one constant is human nature; such as every generation believing they have surpassed the mistakes of the last and then right after repeating those same mistakes

It covers Chicago futures but I will venture Chicago is not the determiner but on the end of the bull-whip that is the world gold market.     We got China as the largest gold producer in the world, a communist nation also they are likely the worlds largest buyer of gold.   China exports no gold, they do import gold however they declared no increase in gold holdings in years.
How can they justify no gold purchases, I would guess they have citizens close to the government doing the buying of gold or are just lying of course    China holds 1% of its foreign reserves in gold, far less then Italy or many established nations so there is very good reason why they are the greatest determiner of the gold price yet none of this information is on that chart really.

Why would a nation that holds trillions in dollar debt, lacks gold reserves want to hide their gold buying.   These are again fundamental reasons behind the price, its less clear then technical charts unfortunately

Someone work this out in excel then, buy bitcoin every day this year and what would the worth be now.      Just pointing out to us that btc peaked and fell isnt useful as every asset does this and we cant say it wont go higher in future.
Thats where BTC is useful, I can buy it a hundred times.   A house I have to buy once usually, gold you got to buy at least an ounce but really theres no reason for people to go all in on btc and hope for the best.   The exchanges let people buy tiny amounts if they want, if you really dream of the long term story why not buy every day for a year.   Makes more sense to me as most people have most wealth in gradual earnings

Why arent we saying over the last year because in that case btc rose.   YTD is one way to frame it but it is just one of many and right now that comes close to the peak

I think taper is a reference to the current process.    So they call it reduction or taper to each month reduce the amount they add every month.   So if I start off after every meal by eating 10 donuts, I declare myself to be on a diet and I taper my calories intake.  Next month I eat 9 donuts after every meal, so on.    Its silly to say Im dieting, of course the word diet is misnomer also.   Its just another point about shaped perceptions in markets right now, every day more debt is added and that is the plan for a long time ahead so far as I know, all their speeches just frame that positively


This quote is the reason to buy gold even with its apparent weakness.   Gold will rise fastest when they are actually raising interest rates and the total failure to recognise that possibility is why the market prices wont give a clue right now.   There is no trend upwards for gold, unfortunately it will rely on people finding a purpose for gold fundamentally (not speculatively).   Thats not a definite because theres many alternatives such as bitcoin or just normal national currency, any country which exports is fine to hold longterm I guess.   The problem there might be who they export to and consistency of that, but anything is safer then dollars in that respect which held by exporters without an actual need to, so its strength is false as might gold weakness also be false.

If gov had to pay higher rates it would cause them great problems with their budget.   After not very long, the interest paid would exceed the defence budget and all other spending.    Also with QE it causes problems, debt worth relies on rates payable vs market rates.
The effect from debt worth less is selling in treasuries.   In effect less debt, more dollars would exist unless QE was increased again.   More dollars circulated is very likely more inflation meaning interest rates are exceeded by greater inflation.  

  TL;dr  Higher interest rates will occur alongside much higher inflation, gold will be worth most when rates are far higher then now.  BTC and gold were once equal in price, this is quite possible at $10,000 also

All good things come to an end.  I will keep the sig on till month end.
I would guess the referral scheme will continue ?

Diamonds are not fungible as the quality varies, its harder to ascertain the value in bulk exactly.  That causes more dramatic value shifts and they are high up the speculative value scale apparently, much like sub prime (or even normal commercial) debt altered as the general market shifted so they were never suitable as a core asset.

https://i.imgur.com/ZkqDr0B.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/d00teMO.jpg
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/redrawing-exter-pyramid-paul-mylchreests-latest-observations-flow-funds-and-more

I would rate bitcoin as speculative still unless it became invaluable to emerging market consumers like dollar is used now, not sure on that one but its not true yet imo

If you had bought all available I dont think we'd be using btc.   All these posts of losing out also means alot of btc was circulated / used which helped spread the value about and increase the market in btc ?    I think it had to be dirt cheap and rise fall a few times to raise awareness and give opportunity to get involved.     Right now BTC is falling and again it might mean more people buy who would have skipped it altogether at 1000

Gold has limited use in the world and its often more expensive then alternatives.  I think its used anyway because it retains its practical non rusting properties in a pinch or in a ton of the stuff, its equally divisible; so there is always a wealthy buyer somewhere

its not practical in small amounts or really as accurate and a non pure gold coin can be faked more easily.  So the benefits of gold break down for tiny transactions, I agree which is where bitcoin could be most useful.  Its cheaper to use, far more accurate and irrefutable in its record of the transaction.

  Gold can be digital as can dollars but from what Ive seen the fees to transmit gold value exceed BTC so BTC wins for pinch of salt type buys (and maybe much more) and hopefully this is why both will succeed alongside each other not really in competition imo   [ in theory you can buy via a credit card scheme backed 100% by gold so you could really buy a few candy bars and charge it alongside your monthly shopping bills, however at least 10k of gold on deposit would be minimum I think + fees etc].
   In 1971 people were effectively buying soda with a gold proxy which was the dollar but they had value hijacked and inflation of 1970's occurred thereafter.  The point of failure there was a centralised system not the gold itself to be fair

I only have various small amounts left, I presume anything left in the account is put towards the site running costs if not withdrawn before the final request so thats ok with me

I dont think most citizens would allow them to screw over the internet that badly.    It would cause alot of trouble to stop btc, it was hard also to stop peer to peer file sharing and I believe that is still going.  It was only the centralised parts of programs like napster which were targeted, clones and various infrastructure carried on anyway.
   There was a clone coin this year based on the image of a rap star, he brought in lawyers and sure he won, caused trouble but all the same that network is still going I think though its not popular to use

Some BTC companies will pay out in BTC and so thats probably the easiest way, a form of savings.  OF course you must risk that the company will not do enough business or the market will decline.   If BTC market gets smaller its a double effect in that currency and the stock price declines and vice versa if the business is useful and its market increases you can 'make' btc just holding onto a share of the company while they profit from BTC popularity increase.   I prefer that to holding plain btc as you can more easily judge a business and its revenue, I cant really tell how well BTC is doing in china however
Richard Branson invested in a BTC company so thats good company to keep, that got him to billionaire status looking for easiest ways to make money?

Someone in China is going to know better then us when BTC will rise or fall as they hold so much productive capacity and spare savings?     Speculation alone wont determine a market long term, both 300 and 1300 is possible but I dont think USA or Europe will be why it moves alot

I spend BTC when I need something and it does something more useful then keeping cash based on hope.   I hold some 'stock' which pay btc and I'd buy more if I thought their business would increase.  People have to look at both expenditure and earnings as it depends why people are putting cash in BTC.  
I expect that would result in a bull run and when its that common, the standard advice is to sell.   I'd swap some to gold probably and anything unpopular.     When your cab driver starts giving you advice on something, its overdone and the trend is likely soon to end

Not sure you should mention who called quite so specifically 


Even BTC has transaction fees and lots of people expect to make a profit on operating the network, depends how efficient each system is.   We could assume BTC is better as its open and competitive and APPLE has a history of high profit margins but maybe the volume of money they exchange actually works out cheaper, its possible.  Self reinforcement, people have more confidence in a brand name and so applepay ends up cheaper.   
I still think btc is more likely to take off for people with no bank account where as apple has to accommodate government bureaucracy costs and so it raises the minimum cost most probably

Dollars can go up in value too though and have recently.   The swiss have a law soon to pass where 20% of their notes will be backed by gold, so should none of their population spend till they know the results.   In Norway the currency is backed by about 200k per person I think, because of their oil.  So their currency could also double, certainly vs Dollar and its endless trillions of debt.

The husband should try to earn some cash in btc not just hold it, that would be the best thing.   Till people really demand to be given BTC in exchange for their labour, skills or commodities we wont see the real economic picture for crypto play out.  Its a bit of a chicken and egg situation

That argument can apply to the internet itself.  Its decentralised but easy to argue it can be attacked, it is on a daily basis by various collectives ?    Does it fail easily, or would BTC collapse;  I think in both cases it would reform and redistribute more thinly, processing times would suffer and difficulty would have to change

It hasnt failed in its purpose.   The chain integrity is intact.   Not really a good reason to say its a fail, even mainstream press havent tried this headline (yet)

BTC has failed if you bought in December hoping to get richer ?    The counter to that is BTC is not designed to make anyone richer, its sole purpose is to transmit worth globally and securely in less then an hour, it continues to do that.    
I could buy a Porsche and expect to get richer, some do this with new models.   Some of them make money, mostly its the manufacturers who make money from selling cars not the speculators.   Porsche hasnt failed because you lost money, variation in price of anything is reasonable and according to free market usually.  Considering BTC is just a mostly interlectual idea of some clever folk not copyrighted, its price even now is amazing imo

I do think its about people moving money, as that need to increases and across borders especially then btc utility rises, in turn so then does value
Depends how its measured, a bear market call is issued when a 20% drop from peak is achieved and we had that.  However this is not stock but currency.
Overall we are higher then a year ago and so I still rate that as high, just going sideways would be nice as it can lead to rises later

Yes, the main thing to look at is how widely used is BTC.   If people starting to use btc increases, there is less currency between those people.  Supply and demand, we can expect higher.  Its hard to judge but more people is an optimistic sign

It shouldnt correlate on a daily basis anyway.  Its a basic technical analysis rule that the longer time frames are more accurate and easier to predict then one off occurances like daily trading.   The minimum really is weekly bars due to the weekend forcing day traders to flush their positions (every short is a buy eventually )  Obviously there are bigger fisher and most options are quarterly but I take weekly as minimum for proper comparison personally


Shouldnt we expect a distributed network to eventually become commonplace not a tendency towards specialisation as bitcoin mining has currently lent towards

I could not speak at age 2    but I know of some who when kids could both read and write when aged 2 as well as easily hold adult length conversations.    Some adults I know cant do those things, enviroment, education and encouragement count for alot.     I dont think its a negative so long as its not too forced