I'm sure they were more diligent than that, but it's small fry for VC spending. Quite often hundreds of millions disappear down black holes that never made a penny back.

1.3 million is comparative peanuts in the VC world. You can burn through that in a few days spending on offices, branding, schmoozing.

Businesses fail constantly everywhere because they're not attractive to customers. At least it didn't steal anything from anyone. If they wanted to survive they should've been as appealing as existing options. For whatever reasons, they're not.

Bitcoiners feel a little bit like arsehole yuppy parents sometimes, screeching when their special snowflake acquires a chipped fingernail. I don't scrap my car when the nearest fuel station closes down.

I wonder how many people out there have gotten as far as wondering where money comes from and who's running it. I would've thought it's just 'there' for many of them.

Excitement among tech startup people is a lot higher than the regular people out there who might use their products. I think they're overestimating how many crypto users there are right now. Netagio was another that closed due to lack of interest from actual customers.

Exchanges must be a bitch to run and make money from. Only a small hard core would use it multiple times a week. The rest might make one trade on occasion and that's only a fraction of a per cent for the owners. You gotta spend vast amounts on security and pleasing The Man let alone gain the trust of your customers.

It would be a worry if an established exchange shut down for lack of interest. This is another example of VC money going up in smoke without having gained traction.

 

I simply do not get the lending section. At. All.

If you're giving alts as collateral why not, er, sell them for BTC instead?

If you're taking the collateral, why expose yourself to alt markets that are far tinier with a much higher risk of death in return for a piffling BTC gain?

It's a section that feels like it was created long before I came along and runs by rules that everyone else seems to understand and accept bar me.

I guess the primary sell is that it makes bitcoin safely accessible and that opens up a huge amount of extra possible investment.

There are a ton of professional financiers who would be bound by rules to only invest in properly approved funds. It also means private investors can put money in through brokers and tax free channels, the ones they're already comfortable using.

If you're intrigued by the idea, you might throw half a per cent of your stash at it through a fund. The idea of dicking around with wallets and cold storage is definitely not going to turn most people on.

I think that's the most valid theory so far. I often wonder what happens to all those keystrokes that never go anywhere. Perhaps a collective unconscious consisting of millions of minds coded and created Bitcoin in the course of a fraction of a second.

It's well proven but the stories about non support when you have a problem and the monstrous fees if fiat's involved tend to turn me off.

They could probably sell their bags with a couple of well placed phone calls. They could also save themselves millions of dollars in legal fees and years of their lives by not bothering with the ETF.

Ergo they are committed to making it an ongoing success.

It might really go places once people are bright enough to separate the scum from the technology. That'll be a slow and steady process which may well never happen, but you never know.

Can I join in?

Fucky fucky fucky fucky fucky







That was fun.

Human nature is the same whichever little pocket it spreads into. You can have the greatest tech ever but collective dumbness and greed will quickly piss all over it.

That's why it has to moulded and shepherded by people with more of a clue than the majority. Most are not equipped to be their own bank and never will be.

But the shit news like Gox, China's endless ban etc directly affected people holding coins right now. Most of the 'good' news is laying foundations for the future, not really doing much in the here and now.

However there's no denying that the market absolutely adores a good panic.

I have encrypted paper wallets with the password elsewhere. By the time I'm dead they'll either be worthless or everyone'll know how to make use of them. Ideally they'd all be spent in the run up to croaking anyway.

None of the above.

I don't trust authenticator apps. My phone has repeatedly fucked up despite fiddling with the time sync. Every time I use it I fully expect to be locked out.

I'll go for one time codes written on paper.

There'd be so much vitriol, trolling and despair at that price level that I truly believe this forum's servers would become white hot, melt a hole through the earth and fall away into space.

I think it'll blow our tits off.

I doubt finance professionals care remotely about the currency aspect, it's all about BTC as an asset class and there's nothing else quite like it out there.

If it arrives then it might well start a tidal wave of others looking to enter.

Not the original intention at all, probably an active perversion, but a very possible outcome.

It's a classic tale that'll repeat forever. The techno weenies create and seed something. When they try to excite an average personage the automatic reaction will be to glaze over and run away.

It takes a different breed to understand and package the benefits for wider consumption.

Android would not have gotten anywhere if you had to go to a Linux forum, ask a bunch of questions and then download a tar.gz from a .edu mirror. That's where Bitcoin is right now.

The pros took android and gave it back to the rest of us in an easily swallowed form. That's what thousands of companies and people are working on for BTC right now.

Why not write to the Bitcoin Foundation and ask to be paid to spread happiness and joy? There must be some money in being jolly or this world is not worth living in.

If you take 'woodcollector', take away some letters, add some new ones, do it a few more times, you end up with 'David Hockney'.

Just sayin'.