No, it really doesn't. It rose last year, and in 2011 and 2012. It fell in 2013 and 2014. Nobody can be correct when discussing the future, but it's entirely possible to be correct when discussing the past.

Huh? He received those 648BTC for his house. He didn't "pay" anything - he sold his house for BTC.


The BTC/USD rate on Bitstamp was around $630 on the Friday the house was sold.

Why? What makes you believe that?

I think that's Kwukduck's hope. Unfortunately Kwuk's become something of an institution as a contrarian indicator, and the usual response to Kwuk's dire pronouncements of impending doom is to assume that price will rise - which, of course, it has.

Well, yeah. That's why my advice to the OP was to record their friend's frustrations. But we do need to communicate that, not simply our annoyance that someone doesn't find the GUI as intuitive as we do. I've got to be honest, if I was in the OP's position I'd hesitate before raising it on BCT - the OP should be applauded IMO.

"BTC will rise over Christmas" is an interesting variant on the "BTC will fall" theory that did the rounds last Christmas. Back then we had 2 Christmas rises (2011 and 2012) and 2 Christmas falls (2013 and 2014). Christmas 2015 saw a ~20% rise.

People sell BTC for fiat to buy Christmas presents, people use fiat to buy BTC to give as Christmas presents, and many people don't celebrate Christmas and continue about their daily routines, buying and selling BTC as usual. Historically Christmas provides no clear direction - price could go up, or it could go down.

I don't know. I guess I think - probably from the noise on BCT! - that a lot of people bought around the last ATH, and that we'll see a lot of selling once $1000 is reached. I think if we get above the current ATH then 2k-3k is certainly realistic, but I'm anticipating a battle around $1000 (I hope I'm wrong - it's possible that the number of people who actually bought around $1000 last time are a small but very vocal minority).

How many users do we have now (and how are you measuring the number of users)?

@make: Agreed, but people often want "the official" version - I've tried to recommend Mycellium before, only to be told "I don't want some third-party app, I want the official app". That seems silly to me (I use paper wallets, Armory and Mycellium) but does make sense - they're potentially risking a substantial sum on a piece of unknown software - using the "official" version isn't that silly in that context. (And it means we can focus on convincing them that Bitcoin is awesome instead of trying to convince them that ${UNOFFICIAL_BTC_CLIENT} is awesome).

@Amph: pretty simple for you and me. Other posters in the thread have pointed out why this isn't relevant: you and I are completely unqualified as newbie users

For ETH/USD and LTC/USD there's Bitfinex, Kraken and Poloniex. Poloniex does other USD currency pairs as well.

Have thought about it. Apart from casual racism, what's the actual problem with this? We've had (non-Chinese) mining pools approaching 51% before (I can't remember, but I think ghash.io may even have passed the 51% mark?) and miners responded by moving to other pools. This Sinophobia only seems to work if we suspend disbelief and assume that the vast majority of miners are (a) also Chinese, and (b) will put national identity ahead of rational self-interest. (Incidentally, you seem to be conflating "miner" and "pool" - I assume that was just an accident).

PS. Not sold on the idea that "professional manipulators" are a new phenomenon - or even a serious one, though I realise that a lack of belief in the mystical powers of cetacea marks me as an iconoclast on BCT.

Ahem! "...a GUI to simplify things for non-computer literate users".

Our opinions aren't really what's needed here - we've (presumably) been using Bitcoin-core since forever, and there's a sporting chance we're not non-computer literate. What's needed is input from not-us - from the non-computer literate user who finds the GUI frustrating. Telling them that we don't find it frustrating isn't going to change their user-experience at all, and isn't likely to endear them to Bitcoin.

I think it is a good question, though I'm not convinced I have a good answer. Open source projects seem to be a lot better at attracting developers than designers and UI testers - I can only think of a handful of open source projects with decent GUIs. I'm sure part of this is that developers tend to lead projects, and the focus is naturally on code, and that can be quite off-putting for less technical people wanting to participate in projects.

What you could do is get your friend to use the existing GUI in front of you, talking you through what it is they're trying to do, and you write down or record all their frustrations. If you're able to recommend UI improvements, so much the better, but even if it's just a list of GUI-frustrations - that should be useful to the project.

It's important that your friend does this - not you (or me, or anyone else familiar with Core's GUI), because what's frustrating to non-computer literate users is probably going to be something that we've long since forgotten, overcome, or found a work-around for.

Edit: obviously I should have said "acquaintance", not "friend", but I'm sure you get what I meant!

Keep an eye on Bitcoin Blockhalf - it changes frequently and jumps around a lot. When I looked earlier today it was only 2 days from Bitcoin clock, but it's been a couple of weeks either side within the past few weeks.

Thank you! (a) for handling the reports, and (b) for banning the accounts!

User #1, user #2 - 2 posters I spotted today, both posted today, prior to that they both last posted on March 9, and before that they both posted on February 17. Today's posts, and the posts from March 9, are variations on the "we all hope" theme; however, the posts from February seem "real".

Well, they thought that price would "stabilize around $150-$200 for the next 8 months to a year." The price might not have reached $150, but it sure seemed pretty stable for the 8 months after their post: volatility was low, and price was range-bound from late January 2015 to October.

Try refreshing the page throughout the day - its estimate changes frequently, and sometimes quite dramatically - the other site I mentioned in the OP has been slowly drifting back from late July, but Bitcoin Blockhalf has been jumping around from late July to late June.