It looks like we're in for a few weeks of stagnation.

We have been in a flat triangle since June 1st.  The trend was strongly bullish as we entered.  I expect us to leave this triangle within the next 6 hours or so.  We should break out to the upside and head up to at least the 750 area before taking a break or continuing up.

From your description, those fees seem better than what Coinbase has been providing.  Coinbase is 1% to buy BTC and 1% to sell.  Plus $.15 per transaction. 

Coinbase's prices are also usually within a few dollars of the Bitstamp price, and frequently, it seems impossible to take advantage, exactly, of the most extreme BTC price fluctuations of Bitstamp b/c of the seemingly delayed responsiveness of Coinbase's pricing.

I am looking forward to receiving an invitation from Circle.com, and to see how that plays out.  Since they are proclaiming to have zero transactional fees, it will be interesting to see what kinds of restrictions that they are going to put in place in order to disincentivize China-type high volume and frequent trading.

I think you're absolutely wrong. Many high net worth individuals have come out to say they own bitcoin. We also have funds like second market, and more in the works. These people do not nor would they buy bitcoins on any of the exchanges that exist today. They would again IMO go to the major holders of today's Bitcoin and secure OTC purchases. They might even go to the major mining pools and buy direct. It wouldn't surprise me if a mining pool has already secured contracts to sell so many bitcoins at a set price over a period of mining to some key players. Everyone has an eye and a toe dipped into bitcoin, it's to risky not to, and when the time is right we will see what they want to do with it. One thing I can promise is you and I have no control, all we can do is sit back and enjoy whatever ride we are on.

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duh!

in the u.s., hold everything in a roth vehicle.  requires foresight.

Official inflation numbers are problematic because the indexes are constantly re-adjusted. If you use the official indexes of 1980 or 1990, you see inflation is much larger (applying these indexes in 2014). If you want to lower inflation these days, all you have to do is increase the percentage of technological products and services in the index and say "see? the prices are going down because you can get a mobile phone for less, a better laptop for less, a telecommunications contract for less etc etc".

Growth = increase in GDP minus inflation. So it "pays" when you under-report and hide* your inflation, as you can show a larger "real" increase in GDP. Additionally no-one complains because if you give people 3% interest and they have 5% low inflation, they'll rise up and go to PMs.

So instead of trying to convince people that they are "gaining" money by leaving their money at the bank, they undereport the inflation to make it "obvious" that people will "gain". Inflation 2% (instead of 5% actual), interest 3%, so 1% "profit" instead of 2% loss. Much easier to sell it in this way.

The larger the inflation, the more visible this under-reporting is. In some countries inflation is running at 20-25% and the government is reporting like half of it. That's visible and people complain because they can see that their money are running out FAST. 3-5-7% isn't so much and people at this level are under the influence of the Al Gore frog analogy... the frog is boiling at a rate too slow to notice. By the time the frog "gets it" (after a decade of depreciated bank deposits) it'll be too late because the interest doesn't cover the losses. So it has to be some other asset that protects people from inflation. Whether gold, silver, BTC etc etc - things that either inflate to a lower degree than fiat, or that have an increase in demand which is larger than their inflation.

* There are things you can hide, and things you can't... In US coinage, right now, pre1982 copper pennies cost more than 2cents in copper value compared to the 1cent face value.

Nickels (5c coins) are also very marginal as the metal costs 99% of the coin's face value. As it crosses over 100-110-120%, hoarding of nickels for melting, or as a way to counter inflation, will start to occur.

In Europe it's extremely "fascinating" that our 1c, 2c and 5c coins have a copper look, but in fact are made of dirt-cheap iron with a copper plating. You can't make this stuff up... copper is used for plating! They want to give people the impression of "value" and that nothing changed relative to the past (abundance of copper coins for small denominations in most european countries) because if people saw the iron they would immediately understand these are "cheap" coins... But they can't afford to go copper. The money's face value cannot afford to buy the metal it's minted on.

hey guys / sorry about that but ST6 is testing some stuff and needs to leave 'em up for a bit longer for testing

IMO sort by players at tables. 

Circle told me that I am approved for an invite and that they will be contacting me shortly.  I'll let you know when it happens.

I never send 0.01 BTC without twice checking if there was some error in the copy and paste process

Anybody get a circle.com invite yet? 

From my understanding, you have to go to their website to request an invite, and I made such an invitation request about a week ago. 

However, I have received No invite from them, so far.

I would also be curious whether anyone has used their service(s) to purchase and/or sell bitcoin, yet.

omg i missed this soo much

we should do this ever sunday

I LOVE YOU GUYS


who need a beer?

post your BTC address

Capital controls actually make bitcoin more attractive to wealthy chinese than to wealthy people living in free capital countries. People in free capital countries know they can enjoy their money wherever they go in the world. People in China not. What is better for them than to hold some of their wealth in BTC ?

I'd like to take a moment to remind everyone that the future is not written in stone and we are not all destined to be the super mega wealthy elite for doing nothing.

Hold your bitcoins until they are worth what you consider a fortune and you need the money to buy something useful

We can ban all players and all IP addresses very easily.  Also our anti-collusion alerts let us know when there is even the slightest bit of collusion or fraud.  We are in the process of setting up a great schedule and testing a variety of things.  Just because you see them playing those tournaments doesn't mean they have the ability to cash out or offer other options.  Additionally, 50 credit tournaments are nothing to us for the test even if they were able to cash out.  Our main concern is protecting our valued players and these players have all actually played in ring games that have worked well.  Additionally, allowing us to test several functions before banning them and understanding these type of players is also important.  They are not scamming us, however only making the website stronger in the long run and we have full control over it.  All the suspect players have been banned to various levels at this point. 

We do thank everyone for there feedback and input and will continue to work very hard to make this an exceptional poker destination. 

I've seen the future. The price will bounce around 500-700 for the next couple of weeks and then a positive Bit-License thing from Lawsky will be the rocket fuel to make Bitcoin go batshit insane again. Mark my words, $2000 by July