What now?  Be happy that you got so much in such a messed up scene? I think that’s a good start. 10 BTC isn’t chumps change you know? Sure it could be more, but let’s be honest, it could also be much less or even in the negative.

That said, I think the obfuscation in this scene will continue for a while so there’s likely to be more opportunity for early cash-ins for a while.

I'd be up for this battle. Sounds like it'd be quite fun. Clash of two titans ushering a new wave of cryptocurrency use and providing the much needed backing and interest to make cryptocurrencies significantly more viable.

Sure there are business and technology advancement impacts, but I still feel it'd be worthwhile.

But a lot of the time, relationships deteriorate very quickly; so it's hard to slowly siphon away money. And the more money that is moved quickly, the harder it can be to obfuscate all those tracks. Also, the amount owed is not necessarily based on traceable assets but also by income (and sometimes by backlogged income) which adds to the trickiness.

Anyhow, the quick and easy solution naturally is to just get a pre-nup.

I agree, the infrastructure needs to exist first to allow retailers and grocers to quickly and seamlessly transact with Bitcoin. And the best place to get that done is through the Point of Sale systems used.

As it stands now, it's only "convenient" for smaller businesses because the amount of overhaul that has to be done is fairly minimal when compared to all the Logistics of rolling it out in retail.

If I became "filthy rich" from Bitcoin, I'd definitely leave my job. But I would probably let it be a long transitional period while I figured out what the heck to do with the rest of my life.

Frankly, Noblecoin is in quite the precarious situation. Unlike a lot of coins with “low” network hashrates, Noblecoin actually has a lot of infrastructure. It sounds like it is time to further the security of the network, but it’s a tricky thing because you can’t really trust a lot of the things in this scene. One of the biggest issues is how to entrust mining security to random miners who are usually in this for profit. With the advent of ASICs, it’ll keep being harder and harder unless there are key supporters that can carry the “burden” of mining (after all, one farm of ASICs can easily cause a lot of issues). There are so many other intricacies with regards to this situation, but the path forward is quite unclear. However, once you decide on the path forward regarding solving this security issue, it’s paramount that the team and the community stick with it.

As a note (assuming you haven’t already done so; after all, the team usually seems to be on top of things), you may want to look at how Terracoin (TRC) dealt with the ASIC issue when SHA-256 ASICs (i.e. Avalons) first started coming out. Although, the issue was for something quite different (abuse of the highly adaptive difficulty algorithm), they took steps to further their network security while maintaining their listing on BTC-e with minimal impact in the long run. The team might be able to glean something worthwhile by looking at TRC as a case study.

$750

Not if the buyer and seller is the same person. Expounding on BugSpirit's post, the person would also need to have a viable equivalent of funding on the opposite end of the market (i.e. buys). Providing enough funding would essentially create a pressure that is the equivalent of a sold collar. Of course though, depending on the market cap, this could easily grow to unrealistic values (but theoretically any coin, or stock for that, is susceptible to this).

Clearly the Belgian government wants to straddle their citizens by not allowing them to straddle Bitcoins...

If you have to pay these bills, maybe you should cash out some to mitigate the risk of it not rising any further. But this is the first “major” action that has been seen in a while so there are good chances that it can go up a bit more. Whether or not we are in another run-up, that’s a completely different matter. I’m personally not convinced.

I have a quick thought regarding giveaways to help mitigate the whole quick dump issue (this could also be applied to the linked coins that are given based on the amount of NOBL someone holds); and it kinda aligns with the ideas already hashed out. You could approach the distribution of coins as an increasing annuity (and possibly link the rate of increase to the amount of supply you want out versus the amount of mintage). Although, I’m not sure how the staking and claiming implementation would work out in this case. If you would like more clarification on the math on how this would work, please let me know.

If all of those things are happening, then things have frankly gotten out of hand.

With the double-spend issue, unless it's reconciled in some fashion, it's hard to make a case for continuing on.

As for the prison issue, the moment that owning BTC becomes a more severe crime than killing a family of 5 due to intoxication, something is terribly wrong with the system and likely all hell has broken loose.

Admittedly, the death of Satoshi shouldn't factor too much into the decision. After all, like I said the prison thing kinda implies a canon of zeal and possibly anarchy.

Ha, if someone sells into both walls, that'd be something. Plus you'd be getting an awesome amount of coins on the cheap. Having that many coins, just imagine how awesome that'd be in a year!

I’m glad you enjoy the back and forth discussion. I enjoy it quite a bit too!

Merged mining is tricky because it functions as a double-edged sword in a way. Merged mining brings in the all so valuable boon of network security (at least in the perspective of a single hashing algorithm) at the cost of financial dilution due to the relative lack of “competition.” The way the various markets work, it’s kinda like watching a weird combination of ForEx and Stock Market trading (although the level of financial sophistication is not quite the same). Part of me strongly believes that it’s the competition (whether or not they are in same hashing space), that drive a lot of the price at times; although I can’t prove this is the case since there aren’t too many merged mined coins. The other issue is how many chains would be reasonable to merge mine with? That inherently brings the question of which coins should get to merge mine and what the parent chain is (although, it’s likely going to be Litecoin).

That said, I still like the prospect of merged mining Noblecoin down the road, even it is means a hit due to dilution. I think the infrastructure that has already been built and continues to be built around Noblecoin will go very far in negating the effects that would likely come with merged mining.

Speaking of dilution, as noted, the spread of coins would also be diluted. This actually can act as a financial boon since it would generally cause an influx of market activity for various reasons (making gains from “free” coins being one of the primary impetuses; whether that means going long or short is another story), and the well-established infrastructure would actually help foster the market impact in the right direction. Dilution also, as noted, provides further awareness to proponents of the parent chain which can generally be looked at positively.

Regarding which algorithm to merge mine on, the idea of sticking to a chain with a lot of POW (i.e. sCrypt in this case) is usually a good idea, especially with the added security benefit of ASICs (we could get into all of the financial implications of them, but that’s a whole other can of worms). I like the idea of pool loyalty (especially when merged mining occurs), as long as the threats of 51% can be reconciled.

Since he is avoiding it like the plague, does that mean he is avoiding it unsuccessfully and that all of his attempts is just a try to get more coins for cheap before the next run-up? Maybe, he’s speaking in code and telling all of his drug overlord friends of the next step.

I know he’s like every other mouthy business spokesperson (i.e. stupid, ill-informed, and incapable of critical thought), but heck it’s fun to make up hidden meaning out of nothing.

Heck, it's a great attempt with pushing a site. Nothing like nuanced promotion huh? (I'll be honest it gave me a chuckle.)

It would be nice though if pool operators provided responsible requests for people to mine on another reputable pool (but then you get into the whole thing about possible collusion and so forth).

I'm inclined to think it is the various multipools that cause this network variation; ASIC testing would push it up much much higher than that (especially since KNC would be in the mix of this round of ASICs). Knowing how the tape out process works, if ASICs were testing the markets hashrate spikes would be much higher than that. Since you would have to batch a non-trivial amount at a time, the amount of push would easily number in the 20-30 GH/s range.

As for markets, one of the things to note is that if the BTC market is actually turning into a sustained bull market again, then a lot of things are ready to change again. After all, Noblecoin has only existed in a BTC bear market thus far.

The thing is that your reference point is the rally from December. BTC capped at the end of November 2013. There was no BTC rally in December; in fact during December, we already saw signs of the BTC downtrend. To see what I’m talking about regarding BTC-Alt oscilation, reference the exchange charts in mid-October 2013 and also reference the exchange charts in late-February 2013.

Actually, I make that assumption based on market volumes in comparison to growth values during the last two rallies. During the last two rallies, one of the really interesting fits was that the growth and pace factors being a function of mintage over a moving average.

But yes, it seems more and more that the money for the next rally has to actually come from actual business investment rather than speculators.

Frankly, a lot people are converting to fiat and this is impacting a lot of the alt-currencies out there.

Regarding what you said, I think a little bit more elaboration needs to be made regarding growth of alts in regards to fiat. When BTC goes up, alts tend to sit at the current fiat price (some will take a slight dip though). This causes the ALT/BTC price to dip accordingly, then once BTC "stabilization" occurs, alts tend to grow in fiat value also (markets tend to even out), so accordingly the ALT/BTC price rises accordingly.

Because of this, there are some willing to take the risk to deviate from sound market strategy to capitalize on the dip and rise. It actually functions as a type of prolonged arbitrage strategy, although there is significant risk involved.