OK, I don't know what is going on. Currently mtgox.com is showing me a buy price of 6.0ish and a sell around 5.7. I think it's time to just sit by and wait to see what is what.

Sorry guys, I think this may be an API bug. Try refreshing your chart. The sell price at gox is at 5.67ish as far as I can tell, and I tested that by setting a small order at 5.56, which went through.

I wouldn't be so quick to rejoice. This looks pretty strange to me. The back and forth is crazy on the charts, and mtgox.com seems utterly oblivious to any of it. My orderbook is stuck th eway it was several minutes ago. Something seems to be bugging out, but what, I can't say.

What is going on with Gox? The charts (clarkmoody, mtgoxlive), show spikes up and down on the order of 20,000 BTC, close to 6 USD/BTC at the peak... I had an ask at 6.68 or so which, if I'm to believe my orderbook at mtgox.com didn't get fulfilled. Also the prices on mtgox.com arent' beoing updated.

edit: meant to say I had an ask at 5.68 or so.

I'd expect a lot of the cost is wages and bonuses paid, some of which may be tied to performance. The cost doesn't tell us much. Anyway, it seems they would be getting a lot more revenue now than they were a year ago, and are probably betting on that trend continuing.

If only it were true that Bitcoinica trades didn't influence prices. Essentially that would even out a lot of speculative bubbles and crashes. I don't think that's the case, though. The moves just happen in larger spikes when Bitcoinica has to buy or sell USD to cover their positions as  people liquidate or get force liquidated.

Whoops, I forgot to update yesterday. It was another hold day.

Today, however, I'm liquidating my long position, at a loss.

My position just before liquidation:
BTCUSD   18.0   $5.6715   -$1.60   -1.563%

My account status currently:
USD   $102.38714

My gut reaction was: no way is this going to happen, mainly because people who mine usually want the Bitcoins for themselves. On further reflection, I think this isn't quite impossible to get working - maybe in the TOR userbase there are people who'd be willing to part with some GPU cycles to support the system, even if they wouldn't be interested in mining as such. I think you'd have to make it voluntary, though, with the TOR installer / executable asking the user if they're willing to mine, and my feeling is people tend to say no when they're asked to do something extra.

In other words, there may well be a bunch of people who'd go for this, but whether it's big enough to justify the effort, I don't know. The biggest problem is, you'd probably have to get it included into the TOR client, which is likely to be an uphill battle as it would probably seem somewhat tangential to their actual focus.

Interesting. I seem to recall Goomboo posting the results of backtesting they'd done for the 10/21 EMA crossover method, with rather phenomenal profits. Have to go take a look to see why the difference is so huge to your test.

Today I do nothing!
Here's where we're at currently:

BTCUSD   18.0   $5.6715   -$2.27   -2.224%

1. I guess I always want to have the option of having an even lower opinion of something.

Actually I'm pretty neutral about it. No trust sums it up, but I think you can go lower than that, into active distrust. There is a difference...

Maybe the scale should be more like:

5: implicit trust.

0: no trust.

-5: It's a scam.

Hmm. Would this end up looking more or less like the spikes we've been seeing lately? (such as the several pushes to 5.4 in the last day or so)

Aand I'm in again!

BTCUSD    18.0    $5.6715    -$1.79    -1.752%

Long! Going up guys!

Or maybe the powers of randomness are displeased with me. We shall see! I'll now go do something random to gain favour.

I fully expect, if somehow "the state" as it is referred to here were to be done away with, anyone with sufficient resources would simply set up their own. What kind, I can't say, probably something closer to a dictatorship, maybe a feodal system. It's pretty theoretical, of course. The point is, the state is simply a mechanism for portioning out power. There's nothing magical about it. Power will always be distributed one way or the other, and will, in my opinion, tend to concentrate until the system reaches a breaking point of some kind. Power is profitable, therefore people will try to gain it, and the more power you have, the better your chances of getting more.

Personally, I've found reading ancient history quite enlightening in this regard. The single theme that seems to arise from my reading of human history is that people will do just about anything for power. Strip away the morals and rhetoric, and you're left with ruthless economics. The powerful will make subjects of others as best they can, and those subjects become resources to be used for further conquest. There's definitely a profit to be made there, not to mention some major ego massaging.

Which time zone?

As long as wealth is a meaningful concept, you will have people with more power and, correspondigly, people with less of it. Wealth enables you to get people to do things for you, or to other people. Bitcoin won't do away with that.


Of course they can. You think with sufficient funds one can't hire thugs to rob and kidnap someone?

You don't get it, proudhon. We're going so high so fast, the spike will rip a hole in the space/time continuum and all our buys will get executed in 2009, retroactively skyrocketing the price to infinity.

Just popped in to say "nice work!"

I don't have the time to look through the whole thread right now, but I'll be sure to do it when I can.

And the third 2 in a row! Maybe I should start taking bets on the results of the flip...

And again, I am doing nothing today, as much as my fingers itch to press a button... Not that I know which one I'd press, but fortunately I don't have to worry about that kind of thing!

I guess this means the price will go down. Or up. Or maybe it'll stay about the same for the next 24 hours.