Yeah was just about to mention this new thing called 'bitcoin' when the mention of burying gold in the woods came up.  

Wow had no idea hobonickels had such a good pos rate of return.

I just can't wrap my head around the success  of this coin.

Not that there is anything wrong that. Good on the community for their success.

But wow, I guess I'll never underestimate the power of good marketing ever again.

I don't think history will repeat itself and I don't think the third bubble was a bubble at all. It was a popularity boom, brought on by China.  Also, the role Gox had in the first two bubbles can not be understated.

I don't think BTC's market cap will go down by 20% or 30% at all this year.

In this third-not-a-bubble period we have a much greater popularity for bitcoin worldwide which has changed the market dynamics a great deal. The first two bubbles did have a lot in common, but I don't think the third-not-a-bubble is the same beast at all.

Don't agree.  My pet theory is that we had the first two bubbles which were bubbles, and this last so-called-bubble wasn't a bubble or a crash. I think of it more of a popularity boom, with big thanks to China.

Main reason I don't describe it as a bubble:  the first and second bubbles the price rose too fast too soon, and also, Gox had a big part to play in both.  This third not-bubble, I don't think the ATH price was unwarranted, I think it is was only supply and demand working well.

I did not see a crash happen and I don't see us going lower than $600, which is not a crash imho. 

Further predictions (really out of a hat)  : I think we will a bubble this summer, that will be a bubble (the 3rd god damnit!) with an ATH of $2400 falling to a then stable for another year price of $1600 - $1800.  That will probably be seen as bearish.... truth be told each ATH blows my mind so I'll never doubt any numbers other folks have, like us going to $10,000 in 2016 or what not.

Oh my god, the SKY IS FALLING!

Save yourself!!!!
Throw the kittens and the seniors overboard, it is an emergency!!!

What billyjoeallen said.  Pretty much same believes here.

After looking at our current monetary system since I started to get really into bitcoin 1.5 years ago, I have come to the same conclusions.  We should have had more larger, severe market corrections to fix many of the markets over the last few decades. But these were not allowed. There is no escape I see now but a collapse.  I hate how pessimistic that sounds but I really don't see any other way it is going to work out. There is WAY too much funny money out there. It is like our global monetary policy stopped reflecting reality and is now almost a complete fabrication. At the best, it is a house of cards.

This year I am going to put 1/3rd to half of my day job income into bitcoin and bitcoin investments.  It is not that I see bitcoin raising so fast in the future, it is more that I see the print-storms of fiat currency losing value against bitcoin, which is a limited something with a growing demand.

If anyone wants to talk bubbles and crashes I think USD should be on the top of the list. You can only kick a can so many times down the road before it falls into a ditch.

There is a lot of talk about suing, but I imagine it is mostly ineffective.  

You'd have to have A LOT of money on an exchange for it to be worthwhile to sue.  I dunno, I'd say off the top of my head at least $75,000 USD, probably more like $200,000.  Suing is mentioned a lot around these parts, but a:) it is really expensive    b:) you have to pony up a lot of money that you are likely not going to get back [in a bitcoin related lawsuit)    c:) Suing an exchange would be a nightmare, as it is probably based in foreign country for you. Like the idea of suing a guy in Belarus who runs a bitcoin exchange who claims he got hacked, is sort of laughable to me....good luck with that hypothetical premise.    d:) Guy being sued can just go bankrupt and you'll not get your money back anyways.

I don't know much about the process but imagine it would be almost a long shot to sue and get your money back from an exchange, even if you knew who it was.

When you are against something because you see at as a threat to your power, you paint the opponent in terms of
a) protecting the children (often bringing child porn production into the mix somehow)
b) terrorists (everyone /anyone can now legally be considered a terrorist for no reason, if you have a lot of power, so this the go-to PR campaign)
c) playing on nationalism or racism (if things get really bad)

That's sort of how governments work in modern times. Hopefully after all the baby boomers retire it'll change a bit, but I doubt it, it will probably get worse.

It's really funny to read many of the hit pieces against bitcoin.  Because they have so little to work with they have to get inventive.

Okay let's compare things to the U.S dollar.  It is used for the majority of the world's drug deals and laundering, and 90% of it estimated to have traces of cocaine on the actual bills (lol!)  So it would be much more reasonable to ban it.  Of course, I'm not serious, but logically, that should be as a ridiculous idea to ban bitcoin for the same reasons, should it not?


http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2009/august/new-study-up-to-90-percent-of-us-paper-money-contains-traces-of-cocaine.html

As for money laundering... for bitcoin is also a bad idea because the block chain is public!   But anyways. Logic and rational thoughts are not what policy is based on. Policy is generally based on expanding and reinforcing your power.

USD is a big bubble. Because it is actually pretty worthless.  So ya, you shouldn't use it, because it is bubble 

Or: something goes from $200 to $1200 in a very short time period, then stabilizes at $800.  Yes, that is a bubble  followed by a crash 

Paypal is a terrible company. They ruled for a while because they had a monopoly.  The monopoly is finally coming to an end, thank goodness. It can't come fast enough.

I remember when I first had a paypal account.  I had some problem, they double charged me or something.  At that time they did not even have a customer support phone number, or any phone number at all to call, anywhere.  And no matter what email you sent them about issues, they would send a form letter that didn't even address your issue. In short the company always sucked, they just could get away with it.

It's likely that scammers, or folks like Matthew N Wright, are clinically psychopaths. It would explain much of their behaviour.  Most scammers have no empathy or qualms about stealing other peoples' money, but they get just as mad when they lose their own.   

After losing money to Jon Montroll Bitfunder fiasco, where it looks like he treated all deposits as his personal wallet, I'm just not leaving any money in any exchange for a second longer than needed. I recommend you do the same.  Sort a hard if you are a trader, but ya, any exchange can go down at anytime, don't keep a balance their if you can at all avoid it.

Bitcoin mining hardware must be the most cut-throat of any hardware or software business thus far.  I mean just a one month set back and you could lose everything. Pretty high stakes.

I'm still wondering where the hell Antminer came from    

I feel for the guy.

Like HSBC, he should just be given the option of paying a $250 million dollar fine for the building of schools and roads and then let free.

At 7-11  Wow that is huge.

Western Union should be shitting itself right about now. And if they aren't , they should be. Their (...20, 30 year?) golden goose is about to get cooked. 

Okay thanks.

The 'legal reason' he can't tell us what happened is because if he told us, we'd be able to use that information against him in court.  There is no known NDA or government info lock down that could possibly prevent him from telling us what happened to the coins, that just is not feasible.  Government agents are not going to swoop and demand that he not allow people to withdraw the money they deposited, at the same time not allowing the owner to tell people that the government is involved.

If you believe that there is some sort of NDA or entity preventing from telling us anything, why would Jon hope to sell his Active Mining shares to give partial refunds to users? That makes just about 0 sense. It would have to be public knowledge if the exchange was shut down by the government.  And if it was a private NDA, how could that possibly be valid that he holds millions of dollars of BTC and then not be able to tell anyone about what happened to them? Like really. Why would any NDA from a company exist that would lead directly to legal actions from hundreds of users that had coins stolen? Can you think of one reason? Can you really believe that?  

Note this is my best guess. And since Ukyo is not saying anything, this is all we have.  Just look at the facts and make your own judgements.

[I apologize if I'm spamming these threads. Thankfully it seems at least finally some of you are coming around to the idea that something isn't right here.]

Ok switched to the 0.4.4.6. Deleted my Novacoin %appdata% directory (after backing up my wallet of course).  Started novacoin-qt to d/l block chain and still getting the message about there being a sync issue and to downgrade to 0.4.4.6.

I'm using the recommended version (I think)  v0.4.4.6-nvc-dirty-beta .

Guys the market is too big for all the whales to be planning some sort of concentrated effort at manipulating the price so particularly around the world.

The bitcoin economy is not like the Federal Reserve fiat economy where this actually does happen, where you have a few dozen people setting the monetary policy for the world based on their own personal believes.  No, thank Satoshi, we have an actual free money market!

Any 'manipulation' in a free market like this is good manipulation.  Because.....any one is free to manipulate it, it is not run by a few rich bastards. It's not a monopoly like fiat currencies all pegged to the USD which is created with no backing by two companies passing IOU bonds to one another.

There is no secret cabal of old-bit miners setting any agenda.  Too many people are playing in this market, and it is too global for that. Maybe back in the days when Gox was king, there could have been some effective manipulation . But I can not believe there would be any way to effectively do this now, unless you owned like, I dunno, a quarter of all bitcoin or something.