to put crypto currency market caps in some general context, the total average daily forex trade volumes  exceeded $5,000,000,000 (trillion) in 2013.

it may well happen today.

a target

why is Poloniex's trading volume consistently so much higher than a number of other established exchanges?

i don't see the slightest chance of any nation state adopting bitcoin in the medium term.

a smart investor would take a position in both bitcoin and ether.

the Chinese government could hurt bitcoin, but it would take a concerted international effort to "destroy" the ecosystem.

does the "consensus" solution hurt the Coinbase business model and road map?

i'm trying to get inside Brian's head to understand his behavior.

I assume the major US and European exchanges operate segregated client bank accounts, but do they?

Coinbase?
Itbit?
Kraken?
Poloniex?
Bitstamp?
...et.c.

others?

er, no. that was fractional reserve trading at an impossible ratio to sustain. MK dug his own grave

some say the halving accounts for the price rise we are now seeing, which is a self fulfilling prophesy thesis.
some say the price is just returning to the pre Hearn level.

what role might exchanges and their 'internal' trading be having on the price, and are there figures that show the percentage of trades that are entirely 'in-house'?

at the moment the single greatest point of weakness in the bitcoin ecosystem is the concentration of mining in China. bitcoin is vulnerable to the POV of the Chinese government.

i quite like the 'distributed' model of 21 as a possible solution.  

which is where it was pre Mike Hearn's communique. as this is a China gig i'll say there's been no Great Leap Forward here. the miners make the right signals to protect their halving revenue expectations.

a proposal is timed for July? how convenient. the day after halving? probably.

Is there a way of detecting the volume of OTC transactions off market?

the Treaty of Versailles worked well for a while and then the shit hit the fan.

all i see is a PR release designed to try to keep the market calm as the whales try to pump the price on the back of the halving expectations of the hopeful. Psychological operations.

presumptuous tweet

it's important. it changes the supply side number significantly. however, they are permanently dead coins. of greater importance is the % of live coins held by a small number of people. live coins have the power to move the market. concentrated in the hands of a few they can 'make' the market, and then 'decentalization' is a moot point.

i watched a bitcoin presentation last year based on academic research. the extrapolated figure given was 30%. much of that exists as small satoshi quantities marooned in long since abandoned accounts. too little money for account holders to care about, but in total a great deal of money at present prices.

even i have a small quantity sitting in an account that i can't be bothered to manage. at present prices it's probably worth about $5.