Reputable my arse. They've pumped utter junk and promoted screamingly obvious scams. Surface gloss does not make somewhere worthwhile.

I was hanging out with a few youngsters in my proximity the other day and realised after a short while that they'd spent somewhere around 80-90% of their time on their phones taking selfies, tweeting, snapchatting and whatever else younglings got up to via the internet.

It brought me to the realisation that most social media has passed me by. I'm not on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and usually have never heard of the latest $200 trillion company that allows you to draw moustaches on selfies of your anus or whatever. This forum is of course a similar thing but not quite of the same ilk. I have a smartphone but most of the time it's turned off as I don't want to talk anyone and it's only really used for navigation and retrieving some information via searches.

Is social media the cornerstone of your own life? Is it where you pick up most of your news and organise your days or is it something you can take or leave? I'm starting to get the feeling that not having a social media presence will soon be akin to having bad or no credit at which point I'll start unabombing.

Someone taking up internet usage has absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Bitcoin on the other hand carries risk and the need to radically brush up on your security and be fully aware of things you might otherwise have never paid any attention to. It also calls into question the nature of money which is something very few people can be arsed to think about. None of those factors are remotely attractive to a regular personage.

It's far too soon to be making pronouncements but my feeling is that the average human won't go anywhere near it until/unless it's spoon fed, nicely packaged and there's actually a compelling reason to use it. Right now there isn't.

In the meantime more people on the fringes will be coming up with those use cases.

There's little point in deciding anything based on an order book. It can and will be pulled in seconds if there's a change of sentiment.

Well, if they can identify me by my burger shots then I certainly am in trouble.

There are millions of publicly rich people who get around just fine. If it really does meet the stratosphere I'll either have blown it long before then or will be enjoying my gains by living in constant transit so the baying hordes won't be able to afford to catch up with me.

Not so. Certain Bitcoin selling sites have fallen afoul of existing financial legislation there. Other than that Germany's a pretty nifty place to be a Bitcoiner. There's no capital gains if you hang on to it for over a year for instance. The government has also declared it private money. 

I can live with that. However I can't quite see the global elite choosing to enrich a bunch of nasty brats who took a break from COD to do a little mining back in the day.

It's a v interesting question. If you can persuade enough people to fork and enough people to follow that fork then anything is possible.

Humans traditionally aren't very good at looking at long term rewards versus short term gain. Right now enough coins are arriving to keep miners happy. In 15-20 years unless the values are way higher it's conceivable that miners could agitate enough to raise the possibility.

It depends on whether everyone else would fold at the prospect of them abandoning mining en masse. Others may take up the gig. If and when scaling is dealt with perhaps this might be the next future shitstorm. I'll probably be back in nappies by then.

Are you checking your email? A confirmation goes there. And if I remember rightly it asks you to add a message to XEM transactions.

I'm being facetious of course, but here's a quote from the article 

'Cryptocurrencies – digital assets which exist entirely online but are exchangeable for goods or services – have grown in popularity in recent years, in part because they grant a degree of user anonymity. Coinbase is the largest bitcoin exchange and its best-known brand.

But user confidentiality has also caused headaches for governments, who worry the currencies are being used for drug dealing, money laundering or tax evasion. Digital currencies are currently taxed as an asset like gold, with capital gains tax due when there is an appreciation in value.'

It appears to imply that Coinbase is the first port of call for drug dealers and people of a similar ilk. As the real users know, you can't send 1 satoshi to CrappyDice without being told to go away and not come back.

I don't have much of a clue about US taxation, but in the UK it's treated like forex and all forex profits are subject to capital gains tax. I don't really see how it could be treated any other way. They're not going to wilfully ignore a publicised revenue stream.

I wonder how many users have bothered to calculate their gains and losses. I'm sure the IRS will be interested in my £37 of Circle expenditure. I'll be tooled up and waiting for them.

Anyone using Coinbase for their money laundering and assassination business really needs to go away and reflect on their stupidity for a lengthy while.

All the information is unreliable but at least that measure lists individual and verified humans interacting with Bitcoin. Not much else does.

Yup. That's one of the few reliable ways of telling. Transactions don't mean a great deal. Free to open wallets don't mean anything at all. And really not that many people ever get anywhere near an exchange either, but it is something. I'd put Localbitcoins volume in there too even though much of the trading on there probably takes place away from the site too.

I think sentiment is bullish and positive, but nowhere near manic enough for a surge. It could of course develop fairly rapidly but perhaps it's better that it doesn't.

There doesn't need to be a reason why and Segwit and friends may be months or years away from initiating, if ever.

Hmm. It kind of does in comparison. You can take possession of it via jewellery, physical lumps, you can buy some fictional paper gold if that turns you on, transfer vault ownership or even mine it yourself.

With Bitcoin its absolute certainty of transfer puts it miles ahead of gold. You know what you have instantly, it arrives fully verified and no one can take it away from you. At the same time that act of transfer is both the most vital part of the whole thing and the bottleneck. It can't be handed over in any other 100% trustable way.

In a world where people are fully aware of what Facebook and friends are doing to their privacy, and indeed their users actively aid in shredding it, I think that's more of a don't care than a don't know.

Personal problems? Lack of places to spend it. There are a handful in the UK but nothing like the options Americans have.

Wider issues? Scaling and the strife it has stirred up.

Worrying about adoption is premature. If the entire world did suddenly decide it all wanted in at once it would be a total disaster.

As a standalone visual happening I think it's definitely up there in terms of appeal. The connotations are less palatable.

Why are so many flags so utterly dull? Three stripes of colour hanging limply off a pole. I'd happily burn one just because it offends me. Flags should be telling stories and reflecting histories. Most of them look like they were knocked up just as the designer was running out the door to meet the king.



Yup. I'd rather die early and free as would almost everyone else. If you have the right of self determination you have the chance to make your own future happen no matter where you are.

I don't even know how a radio continues to work when you shut the window so I'll leave things like this to those with greater knowledge.

Are there agendas at work? You bet. How informed are those agendas by technical worries versus ideology? I do not have a bleedin' clue.

Indeed. That's bonkers. I still get the feeling a bell goes off and metres of silly string shoot from the walls in the Bitpay office every time a sale takes place.