One reason for Canadians to purchase ETF shares is because of something called the TFSA (Tax Free Savings Account). It's a government registered account in which you are allowed to invest a certain amount ($5k roughly) per year. It's been around for a few years and if you haven't contributed in the past then your cumulative total since 2009 would be $41,000.

The name is kind of misleading. A TFSA can be a savings account, but it can also be a brokerage account to hold Stocks, etc. So in this case you'd be able to purchase Bitcoin ETF shares and hold them in your TFSA and cash them out later tax free! For people holding BTC directly it might actually be worth selling some and repurchasing as ETF so that some of your gains will be non-taxable.

my pt was that the construction of the relay network might have been a knee jerk reaction to the same "large miner large block attack" FUD that has been spread around by the Cripplecoiners.  it's author is a BS employee after all. it's only been around since Sept 2014.  i'm not saying that the relay network has been bad for Bitcoin; it may even have been good.  except that it is encouraging this non-verification scheme for tx's which as you say, may be gamed and has contributed to quite a perversion in analyzing this particular attack and was never visualized in Satoshi's original ideas.  perhaps it is not necessary to exist.  that is not to deny that it does exist and we need to adapt to it's presence.

Kathleen Moriarty is still helping the Winklevoss twins, but Moriarty left Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP and joined Kaye Scholer LLP.

So the twins are now working with Kaye Scholer LLP.

http://www.kayescholer.com/in-the-market/news/firm_news/20150630-evan-l-greebel-and-kathleen-h-moriarty-join-kaye-scholers-corporate-practice-as-partners

You can see this on Moriarty's Linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/kathleen-h-moriarty-aka-%22spdrwoman%22/b/236/15b


Although, the good news is that it looks like this new firm they are working with is more interested in the Bitcoin space. From LinkedIn:

Financial Transactions Lawyer: focusing on:
--regulatory, structural, operational, trading, cross-listing and compliance issues related to ETFs, registered investment companies, other liquid alts, derivative securities, commodities and non-investment company exchange traded vehicles such as ETCs and ETPs;
--licensing of financial indexes and services for use with such products;
--BITCOIN : regulatory, structural, operational, trading, and compliance issues

But before they need to scale, they just might need some help convincing potential users they are even necessary at all.

So let's say the ETF comes out and is successful. Would it be more profitable to hold shares of the ETF or bitcoins themselves?

I think what he is saying is that he doesn't think the [2] people want bitcoin to fail, they want to leverage the artificial fee market to push the adoption of their preferred alternative technology.

I used "logic" to sound arrogant, it is a bad habit. Anyway, there is absolutely no higher risk with 1.1 MB than 1.0 MB. I don't want to repeat all the other arguments either way.

i'll be spending more time here:  https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoin_uncensored/

That post you included above is utter nonsense as a reply. Thermos being downvoted into the ground is valid to point out because it demonstrates just how much the community disagrees.

And that is the thing you don't seem to understand, bitcoin is a community defined construct, it is whatever its users want it to be. Is is not defined by a FOMC like entity.

Thermos has been down voted into the ground on reddit for his behavior.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3gdad5/meta_on_hardforking_if_bitcoin_is_so_vulnerable/ctx6rgs

In another post he claims that consensus has not been achieved simply because Greg Peter and luke Jr do not agree and that is enough to out vote Gavin and mike. How seriously fucked up is that view.

I say XT should do away with waiting for 75% now, and simply fork at some block 3 months out and let people pick the vision they want to support. In the end the ecosystem will gravitate to one winner.

I would love to see the current definition of "consensus" for Bitcoin changes because if that means 100% support for doing something then the whole project is royally screwed. There has been no endeavor of importance in human history where unanimity was required on all decisions.

Satoshi is a pragmatist because he has >50% majority baked into deciding how the blockchain grows. That is the consensus he came up with and anything better is a "nice-to-have".

You of all people would idolize Luke jr

Just did a quick search, but my Google seems to be on the blink at the moment.  Mind giving me a link to their mining gear?  Pics of their chips?  Farm?  A mining address?
Thanks.

The document suggests 21 had sought to build 20,000-server, 26-megawatt datacenters to serve as the center of a mining pool that could ensure block rewards.

As an example of the potential power of its pool, 21's mining operations generated approximately 5,700 BTC in 2013 and 69,000 BTC the following year, according to the document.

Intel factories, the documents suggested, were responsible for at least two generations of 21 bitcoin mining chips, a 0.57 w/GH 22nm FinFET chip (codenamed CyrusOne) and a 0.22 w/GH 22nm chip (codenamed Brownfield).

"A chip in every toaster" people?

There are two ways of making money with bitcoin mining.  One is to mine (risky, often disastrously unprofitable), the other is selling dreams to starry-eyed bitcoiners (easy, fun, works 99% of the time, no tech/con experience required).

Don't think 21inc is planning to do much mining.

http://bitcoinprbuzz.com/bitcoin-blockchain-provider-hashingspace-secures-services-from-an-industry-leading-contracting-firm-to-build-fortress-one-data-center/ 

These guys are going big... They have ATMs, exchange, wallet, cloud mining.

To allay these suspicions and to harness to its cart the strongest of all political motives - the craving for freedom - socialism began increasingly to make use of the promise of a "new freedom". (...) It was to bring "economic freedom" without which the political freedom already gained was "not worth having." (...)

To the great apostles of political freedom the word had mean freedom from coercion, freedom from the arbitrary power of other men, release from the ties which left the individual no choice but obedience to the orders of a superior to whom he was attached. The new freedom promised however, was to be freedom from necessity, release from the compulsion of the circumstances which inevitably limit the range of choice of all of us, although for some very much more than for others. Before man could be truly free, the "despotism of physical want" had to be broken, the "restraints of the economic system" relaxed. (...)

What the promise really amounted to was that the great existing disparities in the range of choice of different people were to disappear. The demand for the new freedom was thus only another name for the old demand for an equal distribution of wealth.