Sorry, it's actually not in a joy at misery kind of way. It's more in a morbid fascination sort of way. It's the gall that some people have that captures my attention more than anything.

A lot of these things have gone on in the Scam Accusations sub-forum. May need to do some digging, but there are some gems of a story in there; including some who dox/investigate thieves.

In full disclosure, a "guilty pleasure" of mine when things were quieter was looking at all of the drama that happened there, along with a bunch of the results.

I'm assuming you are speaking in terms of BTC/USD. If so, then $1B per BTC would be pretty damn crazy.

I mean, this implies that the overall market cap would be $21 quadrillion. Not even the entire world's M3 supply comes remotely close to just $1 quadrillion. So, we'd be in insane hysteria land at that point. Not sure if that's a good thing, but at this point in time, it doesn't.

Very true that social networks are significantly larger and in vastly more use. But there has been quite a number of studies involving bitcoin in academia already too (just dig through the pressers in the sub-forums). I remember a psychological study based on the whole pirateat40 ponzi scheme, and I've seen multiple economic analyses of bitcoins in relation to economies and financial markets. Plus there is the whole Austrian school of economics ideals versus capitalistic systems or free market ideals.

There are a lot of things that have been found and that could be expounded on in regards to bitcoin. The trick is having someone hunker down and write it all in a polished format.

I agree and yet disagree with the idea that there are any experts in the realm of bitcoin.

From the technical side, the amount of expertise that has been put into the protocol (whether through contribution/development or vetting) is quite significant. The same can also be said about bitcoin from a market perspective with major investment firms studying bitcoin and its market.

At the same time, I do understand the argument that bitcoin hasn't been around long enough to make quality content, but the same could be said about social networking and yet there was a plethora of content created during its early years.

I have a few critiques regarding this article.

I don't think merchant adoption will hit 100k businesses by December 2014; the plateauing tail at the end of the graph says otherwise to me, but at least 60-70k seems reasonable to me. And I would like to see the investment trend stacked up against the pre-".com" bubble (i.e. 1997-1998) rather than 1995; in my eyes, bitcoin is not in its infancy anymore so it needs a more comparable fit to get a stronger feel for "historical" baseline growth.

Nonetheless, I agree with the general spirit of this article; the future for bitcoin is much brighter (in a not-so-crazy fervor sort of way) than it has ever been.

You're actually right that Dell is no longer as prevalent in the home computing scene; that's the primary detractor of this story (if there really is one). I wonder if they would transfer the usage of bitcoins over to their commercial sector (where most of their portfolio is currently located). That'd actually be quite an interesting development.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the first Fortune 100 company to accept transactions in bitcoin isn't it? Next stop, top 50! Anyone thinks this has any impact on possible retail acceptance?

By the way, can someone clarify if we're able to buy stuff from Dell's subsidiaries in BTC?

Seriously, you can't remember the answer to your security question and you expect them to hand you over the keys to some funds? If you can't prove that you own the account, why should they give you access to that account? For all they know you could just be trying to break in to someone else's account.

If anything, it is disappointing to see them give you a hint to the security question (unless it is something you would have usually seen).

No one stole anything; nothing to see here.

I do agree with needing a catalyst, but I think his thoughts on a catalyst along with his assumptions on development is flawed. Developments in infrastructure is just as beneficial (if not more so) than updates to underlying code.

I actually thing the whole media explosion as being the primary catalyst is somewhat of a farce. To me, mainstream media attention actually comes more toward the end of the upswing. But it does provide the useful addition of allowing the "prop" to stay there longer (assuming that the growth is unsustainable).

It's definitely a fine line between sticking to the core values and gaining some sort of legal footing (i.e. draconian legitimacy). I don't necessarily think we've crossed that line since this is only dealing with processors and exchangers (the way I interpret it, it doesn't affect "bartering" with bitcoins); however, with a few tweaks we'll be perilously close to that line and could very easily cross it.

Like most people here, I also think that BTC will hit $1000 within the next three months. But frankly, the more important question is whether the price will be sustained and if not, for how long will it be?

Do we really want more rallies with crashes? Is that really good long-term?

Convoy of Hope. There one.

But here are a few others: Direct Relief, Young Life, Samaritan's Purse

Don't get me wrong, Red Cross is a very solid charity (although financials tend to hover around the second quartile rather than the top quartile). When I say worthwhile, it's more implying that there are charities that would benefit much more from an organized transactor gateway in bitcoin.

I feel that setting up the Red Cross for this would lose some of its worth because of the size of the red cross. Focusing on smaller gateways that can serve multiple charities would be significantly stronger in my opinion.

Frankly, I'm trying to find the incentive for the dev to buy back coins or anything. If someone just netted $60k for doing a few weeks of work at the most, I can't really see the incentive of throwing it back.

Sure it'd be nice, but does anyone think that the dev feels it'd be worthwhile to use the acquired funds to the 0.00008 mark? [As a note, your post is missing one 0.]

Heck, at least you have a goal in mind. That's better than a lot of others out there. Especially at the point when bitcoin becomes the de facto transactor. 1 millionth of any major currency is definitely a substantial amount of money.

I can definitely tell that there is a significant amount of impatience; but I think there is enough funds the other way around to either prevent or capitalize on a severe downturn. I know that a lot of this impatience comes from people buying indeterminately discrete sets of bitcoins (i.e. one full coin at a time). So unlike the past rallies, a 50% loss this time around yields losses of hundreds rather than tens of dollars (compounded the amount of discrete sets).

Let's be honest though, we really shouldn't be expecting rallies every 6-8 months like the last two run-ups. That sort of time frame is just unsustainable.

There was a somwhat solid plan, but I think the duration and amounts of both the ICO and PoW phases worked to the detriment of this coin. We'll see where this goes though.

There could be more life, but it's hard to see it with the coin already dropping over 80% of its ICO price. Was that because the coin was overvalued or is it the market just being honest? In either case, it was a novel approach using the NIST5 algorithm.

Someone mentioned doing your due diligence and looking for coins with both an active dev and an active community. Those are sound pieces of advice. Also coins that have been around longer tend to have more stability (although a chunk of the time it has a link to a direct market trend, usually downward).

Here is one piece of advice though: just like any game, there are gonna be winners and losers. Be prepared to take losses at times, and be careful to not get burned too badly.

Uh...Fascinating?

Go keep on working on making that dream to the moon happen. I'll be watching from the sidelines. Actually, to be honest, I'll be pretty far from the sidelines, but you get what I mean.

You shouldn't really be all too surprised with sudden market actions in the scene. And let's be honest, it's not happening for "no real reason." There's always a catalyst that initiates action. And there is always a catalyst that causes the action to stay around for bursts of time.

Anyhow, it's been a bit more quiet around here but it looks like a good amount of work is happening behind the scenes. I'm intrigued to see how this transition  goes.