My sentiments exactly.

It would be great for BTC if either Paypal or Ebay decided to accept it as payment (natch) but the more I think about it, I feel they have the resources to create their own crypto-currency. I wouldnt doubt they are already looking at such a project. The problem with THEIR cryptocurrency would be... it wouldnt be decentralized. Corporate entities such as PP or ebay absolutely reject the idea of putting control of anything in their customers hands. The worst problem with a Ebay-coin or a Paypaldollar would be, they would do about a million times better a job of making their system userfriendly. I really hope it doesn't happen, but the community should consider this. A superior cryptocurrency would effectively shelf the entire BTC economy.

IF BFL is a scam...which they are starting to look A LOT like... not only are quite a few of you OUT significant monies.... BUT bitcoin gets a major BLACK EYE. You will notice there is a little press around BTC... it is a novelty...a curiosity (as far as the mainstream press is concerned) not hugely newsworthy... UNTIL something goes wrong. And I'm not talking about technical bugs that are only understood by geeks, I mean human interest news stories like "Bitcoin Fraudsters bunk users of millions in Fake BTC mining scam" which grabs the interest of many many news readers. Not to mention the schadenfraud (sp?) or sadistic pleasure that non-investors get when they see us early adopters get stung.

If BFL is full of shit, it will hurt BTC's overall credibility and could prevent it from gaining widespread adoption. If they aren't its business as usual, but IF they are scamming... WE, the honest BTC community, should do something about it. Aren't most of you guys knowledgable about hacking? couldn't you "punish" josh and co.? if they prove to be bullshit?

just sayin....

That's a good basic article. I cant stress enough how BTC needs major PR. Newbs need to understand and feel comfortable with this new currency or it will never become ubiquitous. "Keep it simple, stupid" is a good way to go.
I like the breakdown in numbers you give for BTC potential value, and your straight ahead approach. Please continue...

I'm taking pre-orders on my own home-made ASICs (which also double as a finger-box) they run at all manner of THs and will guarantee huge returns of bitcoins for a paltry investment of only 17k per unit.

place orders in brown paper bag and hide behind the 2nd toilet in the men's room of the Chevron station at highway 7 and 16th. delivery sometime next leap-year.

totally legit...dude just sent me 31.07 CAD worth of BTC!!!
Thanks mucho Arvicco, you da man.

what up with ripples, doe?

just conjecture my friend, like these type of forums are used for. (that and petty criticisms)

this is how it's going to go...
btc will be ~$10 by next friday.
Every hungry speculator out there who has been watching BTC this last month will see a huge bargain. They all invest HEAVILY. Small spike in price of BTC but no higher than 17 tops. BTC wavers around 12-15$ for a few weeks.
crashes to under 5$ due to the fact no-one buying or selling.
Since the ONLY market for BTC is speculative trading, the market stalls.
BTC economy is represented mostly by purchases of goods and services, meaning very, very small.
BTC drops off the face of the earth. "early adopters" i.e. stoshi and the 20 odd friends he got to start this scam have already made out like thieves and left the building. Fools are left watching their money go with them.
News outlets report heavily on "File this under Epic Troll" and "never believe anything you see on the internet" everyone laughs.
The only thing I regret in this BTC experiment is; I wish I had thought of it first.

consumers that actually spend it, and merchants that actually accept it. in short, ubiquity.
I have heard BTC being referred to like a "store of value" currency such as gold, but gold is tangible. king tut's mask is made of gold, it is malleable, beautiful, a good conductor. it has intrinsic value. BTC needs to be used for it to evolve out of the geek-hobbyist thing it is now, despite the recent crazy performance it has seen. I really feel strongly that unless BTC is used widely, it will ultimately fail. but ofc it is an experiment, so fail is maybe the wrong word. If you don't use it you will lose it, that's my belief.

What it needs is a third party service that goes between the merchant and the consumer and manages all aspects of monetary transactions. I know this is unnecessary for BTC oldfags who understand how it works, but the reason fiat works as well as it does in terms of user trust and loyalty is, you don't have to know nothing to use it. I guess BTC for dummies is already taken, I would call it "BTC for ignorant, lazy, assholes" but thats why I dont work in PR.

but do you see what I mean, though? Paypal..I pay with the click of the mouse once i have my account. Mastercard...just about as simple... if some genius simply makes a website that is simple to use, easy to integrate into websites, easy to link to bank accounts etc...give it a snappy name, brand it to reek of trust and security and ease of use... they will be the next PayPal and BTC will flourish. If it just remains a store of value thingy for geeks who got tired of playing with Lindens or WoW gold...I can't really see the current interest in it being sustained. People are generally cynical about new ideas, and while novelty can get you so far out of the gate, you can not and should not rely on novelty to win you the race.

I like where your going with this bitcoindownfall, but the IRS is the least of my worries when it comes to the future of BTC. I am sure that BTC is being watched by the powers that be and I am sure they already have a plan of action in place in case BTC even begins to infringe on their monopoly over commerce and trade. I'm talking the credit companies and PayPal. They own commerce on the internet, end of story. BTC entire economy is paltry in comparison. However, should BTC manage to attain a foothold, move anywhere close to being on the same level of use and conveinience as PP or mastercard, the big corporations, the money lenders, the banks, they will easily put together the $ to buy out 51% and effectively wipe out BTC like brushing a fly off the back of their wrist. For now BTC is too puny for them to bother with, plus nobody actually uses it to buy anything so they aint threatened, but mark my words, as soon as it starts to see wider adoption and use...BOOM, goldman sachs and BoA or whoever will shut it down quick and for good. Every genius out there who has caught BTC fever and moved his granny into a "home" so he could sell her house and convert it into BTC will see a life savings fortune turn to pennies (and I'm from Canada where pennies are no longer worth the junk metal they are printed on) and there will be mass suicides ala 1929. Warren Buffet and Bloomberg will wring their hands and gloat over every ruined BTC highroller, congratulating themselves for teaching us all a harsh lesson, and to never again dare and pretend at their throne.

In a dogfight, only the winners eat.

did coinAd died?

I would buy the exact same stuff I buy with Creditcards and paypal as I would with BTC...IF only BTC was accepted by any of the vendors. I see a few small markets popping up, sites that look like auction houses similar to ebay, and thats good. but what BTC really needs is somehow to be as ubiquitous and conveinient as Paypal or mastercard, cuz I shop for all sorts of stuff online, but ultimately, the vendor who gets my $ offers not only the product at a reasonable rate, but also allows me to use one of the payment methods that I can use.

I can remember having trouble finding the stuff i wanted for sale from merchants who use PP only a few years back and now that has changed dramatically, mebby someone invested in BTC has some insight to PP's R&D over the last few years, cuz whatever they did, it worked.

But to answer your question, "would I buy a smoothie with BTC?"

probably not. It would spoil before UPS got it to my door ;-)

rMSaUrYFtNAjV4aGmNEBnEshuYYtttbMkB

I've been looking at my btc ticker for weeks now, going a little crazy like I know many are... it says $44.56 as I write!?!
I first learned about BTC when it was ~ four dollars... and at that time my gut told me this was going to rise, but I had no money to invest. in october I won a legal matter and was awarded a significant sum of money! at that time I would have sunk a significant portion into BTC, but I was obliged to wait for my funds to go through probate etc. Holy smokes... that feel when you picked the winning pony but made it to the mutual window too late! i.e.fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

on the more posative side, at least I have had time to observe, learn, and think. There is obviously LOTS of speculation and hoarding going on at present due to hype and hysteria. BTC fever! But that causes an obvious effect I don't see being discussed very much, if at all. If nobody is spending their BTC, if it is only used as an investment vehicle and never spent... wouldn't that eventually diminish its value? what monetary value is BTC if it is never used? I don't get it? My suspicion is that there will be a lot of btc for sale cheap within a month or two, and probably a few latecomer investors looking for a repeat performance, but the lesson the larger market will learn is that BTC fails unless it is widely adopted and I doubt buying reddit gold and wordpress templates is enough saturatoion to keep it viable.

now if ebay or amazon would accept it...different story. somehow I think ebay is in bed with paypal so that wont happen. Also the credit card companies...they have good reason to fear BTC. these guys might pool their resources to do the ol' 51% buyout.

As you can see, my mind has been reeling lately. My lawyer says I will get my settlement this week, but I remain "a day late and a dollar short", and I still aint buying no BTC.

Who knew? I'm thinking some insider knowledge has caused part of the rapid growth. Today is the first i have heard of it. though. I feel this news will just extend the rise in value, like , whoppie~! lol. I'm excite.
what does bitcointalk think?

just posted in "count to 21million w/ BTC knowledge" thread
pay me plox---
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good info about the effect of ASIC mining right here
http://organofcorti.blogspot.ca/2013/02/99-asic-choices-avalon-update-2-by.html

me gusta 50miner. they make mining super easy for the n00b. This is something the other pools should learn from.

seems like the old idea that says "you don't get anything for free" is alive and well here. Pessimistic attitudes demand we believe that as soon as technology improves, and more "labor saving devices" appear, rather than simply making things easier, space is freed up for new difficulties to arise. A "damned if you do and damned if you don't" situation.
All ASICs will do is force GPU mining into obsolescence and make the manufacturers a load of cash. That said, adopters of ASIC will have a corner on the mining market and the increase in difficulty and hash will be balanced by the changeover in numbers of actual miners as the people involved shifts from GPU to ASIC. that should take about a year or so.
It reminds me of the film industry when everything became digital back in the 90s. Some doors shut in the face of long time analogue technicians, many doors opened for both those adept at change and newbies to the biz. now everything is digital and things look more or less the same as before the changeover.
What I reiterate here is the long-term view that ASIC profitability and difficulty will simply level out until the next-gen technology comes out.
However, I do believe that making specialized and expensive equipment essential to mining of BTC may adversely affect its value. If I have to invest thousands to be in the game in any sort of substantial way, that alone could be enough for me to decide BTC is not a viable currency. Why should I participate in an economy that is dominated by the few who are in a position to invest heavily. Its techno-elitism, which is poisonous to non-geeks i.e. 95% of the population.

the guys at BFL have all the asic devices made and ready to ship, they are running them at the lab, full tilt, just waiting until the difficulty level spikes then they can let everybody else have them after they are more or less useless.