@Everyone,

The "don't feed the troll" crap is immature, stupid, and reflects a hypocrisy in community mindset akin to, "We need to help everyone understand why this is the greatest technological development since the Internet...except you, because you don't understand it." 

Are there people who troll intentionally?  Yes, of course.  Is it easy to distinguish at face value who is and who is not just a troll?  NO.  Bitcoin is foreign to people.  When I first heard about it, I immediately had all kinds of red flags in mind.  Now, four years later, the knowledge I've gained has eliminated many of those red flags.  But I'm still aware that red flags most certainly do exist, that points of attack and weakness also still exist, and there are numerous, realistic scenarios which still exist that threaten BTC's existence on a daily basis.  To this extent, many devout community members still maintain a form of Mt. Gox Syndrome, but they'll never be aware of it unless/until something happens to change it.  Hindsight is 20/20, and foresight is apparently underrated.

There are people here who block others for the sole reason that they believe Bitcoin will ultimately fail.  Yeah...that really helps adoption 

People can hack it 

EDIT : Some additional arguments since it was initially a troll (...)

the stabilization will help those that are poor in bitcoin to accumulate more for the time being

Wow that dampened spring pattern is uncannily similar to the recent price action, except on like a 10x slower timescale.

I love these necros. Great for perspective.

You wanna cut out the middleman? Don't use Bitcoin then.

Bitcoin: Bob → Bank → Bitcoin exchange → Bitcoin exchange → Bank → Alice

Bank transfer: Bob → Bank → Bank → Alice

Cash: Bob → Alice

6000 btc or so in shorts closed on bitfinex. Longs up about $1mil.

Patrick Byrne bought $500k worth of Overstock cryptobonds, issued using the open assets protocol.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/worlds-first-cryptobond-has-first-buyer-2015-06-08

Winklevii have an announcement scheduled for the 11th, probably Gemini launch.

Blockstream Unveils Much-Awaited First Sidechain Prototype!



After eight months developing its much-anticipated “sidechains” project, which aims to turn bitcoin’s technology into a more versatile platform for innovative decentralizing applications, the cryptography team at Blockstream has unveiled its first prototype sidechain.

...

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/06/08/bitbeat-blockstream-unveils-much-awaited-first-sidechain-prototype/

Timestamp this tweet. This is the beginning of the march back to $1,000 #bitcoin by the end of 2015. #sidechains @blockstream

https://twitter.com/twobitidiot/status/608088070517366784

World's First Cryptobond Has First Buyer

Published: June 8, 2015 8:00 a.m. ET

Overstock.com CEO Makes Historic Purchase of a Digital Bond Issued on Bitcoin's Blockchain

SALT LAKE CITY, Jun 08, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE via COMTEX) --

Overstock.com, Inc. OSTK, +2.27% announced its CEO Patrick M. Byrne today made the first purchase of the world's first cryptobond for $500,000. Working with other qualified institutional buyers, the company intends to sell a total of $25 million in digital bonds to trade on a cryptographically-protected distributed ledger – the same technology that underlies cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.

"It's not exactly Jonas Salk injecting himself with his polio vaccine, but I wanted to own the first cryptosecurity ever issued," stated Byrne. "I intend to demonstrate my belief not just in Overstock, but in the TØ.com platform that we built and, indeed, in the cryptorevolution itself."

...

TØ.com is powered by the blockchain and the Open Assets protocol. Those who purchase cryptobonds through TØ.com will be able to track their ownership on the bitcoin blockchain. Trades on TØ.com securely settle same day, as opposed to the customary three day settlement on Wall Street (referred to as "T+3"). According to Byrne, issuing the TIGRcub bonds on the TØ.com platform proves that cryptotechnology can facilitate transparent and secure access to capital by emerging companies.

...

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/worlds-first-cryptobond-has-first-buyer-2015-06-08

The bond market (also debt market or credit market) is a financial market where participants can issue new debt, known as the primary market, or buy and sell debt securities, known as the secondary market. This is usually in the form of bonds, but it may include notes, bills, and so on.

Its primary goal is to provide long-term funding for public and private expenditures. The bond market has largely been dominated by the United States, which accounts for about 44% of the market.[1]

As of 2009, the size of the worldwide bond market (total debt outstanding) is an estimated at $82.2 trillion,[2]
of which the size of the outstanding U.S. bond market debt was $31.2 trillion according to Bank for International Settlements (BIS),
or alternatively $35.2 trillion as of Q2 2011 according to Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA).[2]

Nearly all of the average daily trading in the U.S. bond market takes place between broker-dealers and large institutions in a decentralized over-the-counter (OTC) market.[3]
However, a small number of bonds, primarily corporate ones, are listed on exchanges.

Bitcoin’s value is at an all-time high again. Following the hype peak and crash in 2011, many seemed to have thought it was just another dotcom fluke. But bitcoin was much more than that, and it has returned with a vengeance – its market cap is now twice what it was in the 2011 peak, and it is nowhere near its potential, which is four orders of magnitude above today’s value.

In this, a lot of people are confused at the fact that bitcoin has climbed 200% since the start of this year alone, and wonder what to make of it. It is currently at $41.50 and climbing fast, and I see a lot of people just looking at the numbers and guessing from charts how things will pan out.

I am seeing guesses of $50, $100, $150, even $1,000. These numbers seem pulled out of thin air from just looking at the charts – nobody seems to have done due diligence from the other direction, from the most fundamental observation of all:

Bitcoin is a transactional currency. As such, it is competing for market share on the transactional currency market.

Talking about bitcoin value is not about happily watching numbers go up and down while having popcorn. This is about identifying a global market, looking at its size and estimating a target market share based on the strengths and weaknesses of the competing product or service under analysis.

When you know the size of the target market, and have an estimate for your projected market share, you can estimate the value of your product or service as a percentage of the value of the total market. I haven’t seen anybody do that for bitcoin.

https://falkvinge.net/2013/03/06/the-target-value-for-bitcoin-is-not-some-50-or-100-it-is-100000-to-1000000/

Money Isn’t Free, but Moving It Is Now Cheaper

Payment startups disrupt traditional cash-transfer firms by offering nearly instantaneous, zero-cost services

By CHRISTOPHER MIMS
June 7, 2015 6:23 p.m. ET

One day last year, at the height of the Ukrainian revolution, Mark Howard spotted something interesting on television. In the background, a protester was holding up a poster with an instantly recognizable logo: A “B” with two vertical bars, the symbol for the digital currency bitcoin.

Mr. Howard is an American IT specialist and a self-described bitcoin enthusiast. He surmised that the poster’s QR code, which is a kind of square bar code, must contain the address of a bitcoin wallet belonging to the protesters. On a whim, he froze the frame, scanned the code with an app on his phone, and sent $10 worth of bitcoin to a country whose banks were paralyzed but whose protesters needed money to continue their fight. It happened instantly, and the total cost of the transaction was $0.02.

If using unregulated cryptocurrency to crowd-fund foreign revolutions sounds like a quintessentially 21st-century edge case, here’s a thing you need to know: The same fundamental technologies that enabled Mr. Howard’s impromptu act of foreign aid are being used by hundreds of other companies, in many countries, to do something that has never happened in the history of money: Exchange it at any distance, nearly instantaneously and for near-zero transaction fees.

We are just at the start of understanding what this will mean. The safe bet is that the easier it is to exchange money, the more of it will be exchanged, with obvious implications for economies that successfully integrate these technologies.

(...)

http://www.wsj.com/articles/here-comes-almost-free-money-1433715790

Exactly other way around. Alts going mainstream and btc not so much. Just accept it, that's the reality.
People demand alts if you like it or not.
Your shilling doesn't create reality. Peoples' demand creates the reality in crypto. Doge has better chances of going mainstream than btc has just because people prefer that brand.

People are not interested in details. Not of bitcoin nor of agriculture. What they care is that apple taste good.

will rise when the demand for btc rises.
Not in the current horizon of events, but will happen sooner or later

How about bitcoin? will be 0$ before the end of 2015?

Bitlicense is here! No more uncertainty.

Headlines are starting to tick in:

• http://www.ft.com/intl/fastft/333531/ny-regulator-issues-digital-currency-framework
• http://www.wsj.com/articles/ny-financial-regulator-lawsky-releases-final-bitlicense-rules-for-bitcoin-firms-1433345396
• http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/06/03/bitcoin-bitlicense-lawsky-rules-final/28405317/
• http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/03/bitcoin-regulation-new-york-idUSL1N0YP1ES20150603

Love it or hate it. I figure Lawsky just cracked the door open for Big Money.