Bitcoin is backed up by Math ^^

If Japanese people are smart , they can bring the arbitrage gap down significantly:

Buying BTC at bitstamp, bitfinex or other exchanges , then sell BTC at MtGox in JPY, and finally withdraw  JPY within Japan

I don't know how smart this is for DPR to do.

Think about it....

We already know the "State" is freaking pissed that people can buy/sell anything through SR....now you throw this in a national magazine, its like spitting in their faces, kicking the hornets nest, etc....

Just saying.

It'll be a while before SR isn't the defining characteristic of the bitcoin "economy".

Mutter, mutter - it really is DPR but why the heck would he want to draw attention to BTC like that if it's his "secret ingredient"? Something still seems weird.

<snip> Bitstamp is only used for withdrawals  No man invested money there. No one.

Among the many weird possibilities with this weird story is that Forbes just made the whole thing up. I don't think there would be any letters to the editor from DPR pointing out errata, and if there were one could never know if they were genuine.

Did the host really keep calling him Gavin "Anderson" not "Andresen" ??

Based on an energetic/entropic difference, either organic or imposed.

We talk about arb channels and how they will close once there is enough volume. We talk about Gox expiring as its market share erodes. But for now we really have two very different kind of agents sharing a top spot. It is not as though Bitstamp is a homogeneous version of Gox nipping at its heels. No, the account holders on Bitstamp are there because they have made some very different decisions from those still on Gox. The makeup is different, and far beyond the amount of volume available for arbitrage is a mutually heterodox view of the market.

In my view we are already seeing a mini version of the kind of ultimate market bifurcation that I have reasoned previously to be inevitable. And really, Bitcoin does not care, it still works just fine. It will work just as well in parts of the world where the weather is hot and electricity is expensive as it will where the weather is cool and electricity is cheap. But the market does not look the same to someone who is primarily a miner and someone else who is primarily a consumer. And there is no real reason, other than a deeply entrenched view of market economics, that Bitcoin should have to be valued the same across these markets. Again, different kinds of people making different decisions, not just a small handful of traders agreeing on a value for a homogeneous global market.

But, upon observing recent events, I am going to have to move up my timetable for an expectation of such a bifurcation. It will not happen all at once, and it will be more-or-less regional. As volumes of trade in native currencies reach a friction point the exchange rate will begin to drift away, and eventually more-or-less decouple from larger markets. While there may be a long term correlation between these local Bitcoin markets the short term correlations will begin to break down. And each will have its characteristic response to events such as block reward halving. This difference will be most pronounced as block reward halving gets priced in because that is when the highest exchange volumes will occur. So with each halving valuation will drift farther apart and drive decorrelation.  Besides geographic regions there will likely even be regions with boundaries dictated by other factors. Such as between purely crypto markets and those which deal primarily in exchange with native, government issued currencies.

So, when trying to figure out how to analyse the market for price speculation the picture becomes increasingly complex. My expectation is that a market index will evolve; realy, several market indexes, which will communicate what the larger correlations are. And of course there will be derivative instruments, both 'conventional' and crypto.

Approved for a merger

The ASIC world is imploding on itself.  The more ASICs out there, the higher the difficulty, the less profit each unit makes, so people buy more ASICs, which raises the difficulty, so they again get less profit, etc.....

A self defeating spiral downwards in profitability.

There is a button under "auto-renew" that activates the "auto-lend" function.
Any amount kept in the lending wallet will automatically be offered for lending if this function is enabled

Just disable the auto-lend function and/or move your USD out of your Lending Wallet into either the Trading or the Exchange ones.

Only if the value is derived from fiat like Bitcoins do.