Ok. Here's what I learned so far since I found bitcoin in it's beggining(sp): it was designed decentralized as a currency (a purpose) but being decentralized it gave the power to the mass and the mass chose to use it as a commodity. Also learned a lot about myself and how I cope with all those emotions. Learned some trading, some economy. Learned that I can make profit by going down too, not just by hoarding.

I am trying to find out now, if bitcoin will go above it's all-time high this year. We all believe that due to the limited supply of 21 million coins, price for one will be high. But can this happen soon?

shutdown.  I'm sure that is the next objective of the US govt.

The most positive thing I've seen lately is that www.wm-center.com in Russia is making a market in BTC.  Fortunately, Russia is not part of the US umbrella and seems to be our savior as BTC holders.

Any of you dialed-in folks know how antagonistic the Japanese govt is towards BTC?

Someone who has been convicted of fraud and evangelizes the sex trade is not a good spokesperson for Bitcoin.  That is what he wants to be, and even if he is a complete angel now, he will hurt the brand. 

He should be ostracized.

theres not much to learn when all I did was decide not to wait for 6 confirmations, and went to sleep instead. thats like saying I deserve to lose money if Im not holding it tightly with both hands, 24/7.

now fuck off trying to talk to me like if I dont know how this works. this was just simply another fuckup making people not want to do business in btc. in all likelihood, this is causing most people to not want to use btc.

To be perfectly honest, it's funny to watch the Speculation board after I run transactions on Mt. Gox.  Everyone thinks they know what happened and come up with these crazy ideas as to who is manipulating the market.  I guess that's why it's here.

The truth is, it's nothing more than trading.  We all try to get the best price for our USD/BTC trades.  Why it's called manipulation when I trade thousands at a time vs hundreds I don't know.  Maybe it's the fact that the market really isn't that big and feels like it's being "controlled" by these large transactions.  Should I not trade anymore? If you played with the same volume I do, you'd see that building a "wall" to add support allows you to pick up or sell more coins at a better price.  It's really that simple.

So tell me, is it REALLY manipulation?

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Correct me, if I am wrong regarding the statements about transparency and control, but WHY should we thrust this systems without any control and transparency? The system maybe is working that way, that Bitcoinica wants some one to win, as an example that the system is working and then other people would follow and invest their money.

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I sent them to the exchange but it takes approximately an hour for 6 confirmations. I had to go to sleep yesterday, you know, waiting for new blocks is not my hobby. not a programmer so I dont have any bot to do the work.

regarding what I needed the coins for, mind your own fucking business.

To be honest, he has a valid point - Bitcoin exchanges currently do hardly any advertising at all.
Of course he'll list his own show as example for an advertising platform, just as anyone in their right mind would do... I rather rarely hear Google talking about web search engines in a positive context while stating "i.e. Microsoft bing".

I don't think tradehill fainted (it's not dead yet!) because of not enough marketing though, as most other exchanges they probably even just lack the manpower to deal with a massive influx of customers.

Can someone explain this to me like I'm 5?

When you open a trade, you sell one currency and buy another. Since the currencies charge different interest rates, you can either collect interest (positive swap) or pay interest (negative swap).

If you borrow a low-rate currency to buy a high rate currency, you should earn interest. If you do the opposite, you pay.

Let's say you are trading USD/JPY. If you want to long USD/JPY what you are in fact doing is buying USD with your JPY. However, since you don't actually have any JPY, you need to borrow it first and use a part of your margin as collateral for that loan. Once you have borrowed the necessary amount of JPY, you can use it to buy USD and there is your trade. Now, since you actually borrowed the JPY, you have to pay interest on that loan at the prevailing rate until you have paid back the loan (closed your trade), and since you are holding USD, you are being paid interest on that sum for as long as you are holding it. The difference between what you are paying and what you are collecting in interest is what your swap will come out to be.

..i wonder how profitable bitcoinica is.

zhoutong has given a relatively good insight into how bitcoinicas services work, but there has never been informations about how much money is transfered from customer losses to bitcoinica.

since mtgox recently announced some intern financial information, i would really appreciate if bitcoinica could do the same. there are many reasons, why this could be of interest. e.g. bitcoinica grows bigger and bigger and there have been various issues regarding market interaction. further bitcoinicas mechanism strongly tends to dysfunction, making it impossible to use the service as anything other than a short selling instrument. yes, im talking about his holyness the starfish *

transparency appreciated - so please disclose some information regarding your businesses profitability zhoutong!

If you support the Gold Standard you are now officially an extremist according to FBI:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hVKX7ZUBjc

How this ended up in speculation subforum?

Our Interest Rates page shows the effective hourly swap points for BTC/USD positions. For example,

And that ladies and gentlemen is how you make the buy side available on Bitcoinca again. Will you go long?

First off, I have been a subscriber myself for a considerable time, and it hasn’t always been like this. Second, I do not want to attack S3052, but when I see the bullshit the public and subscribers get served, I just have to call it out.

Why I am no longer subscribed is that S3052’s analysis devolved 1) into a weekly newsletter with updated charts and more importantly, 2) almost pyramid-like zero sum CRASH or RALLY short-term updates.

The subscribers obviously have a disproportionate influence over the market, because they act all at once and the market is already small. Subscribers are also likely to have a bunch of BTC due to the cost of 5 BTC/month.

Now, what happens when he issues a short-term CRASH alert is that people race to sell WITHOUT REVIEWING THE ANALYSIS because they want to be first. So when his E-Mail hits, all subscribers try to sell before each other, creating what we have seen.

So, what is the problem?

The problem, or the - almost a kind of scam – is that a) subscribers only sell to buy back immediately at lower levels, so the last one loses out and b) the public gets spammed with suggestive manipulation AFTER the subscribers have sold.

I have already seen this multiple times as a subscriber myself, and it is despicable.

Solution: Either make your analysis completely public or completely private. If you share analysis to influence the public for your subscribers’ gains and make money off it, I see a huge moral issue.

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Usually, there is big move after the price has stagnated.
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Isn't it obvious that actually is the case? Why would you think he miscalculated? It's fairly simple to calculate odds and any programmer should be able to do that.
It seems only logical to me to put some random 100%+ payout in beta