When it comes to shorting bitcoin pirateat40 immediately comes to mind. Things did not end up very well when this bear defaulted on his obligations.  

Hard but not impossible which is why floppy disks particularly the older 5.25in type can be an excellent way to back up bitcoins in certain situations. The idea in is to slow down an attacker long enough in order to empty the wallet of bitcoins. Consider the following situation. One has one's BTC in a brain wallet; however one also wants to ensure that ones estate can access one's BTC after one's death but only after one's death.  One possible solution may be to place the private keys on a paper wallet in a bank safety deposit box. Then when the owner of the bitcoins dies, the executor of the estate will have after probate access to the safety deposit box and the bitcoin keys. But what happens if the bank safety deposit box is compromised, an attacker will also have immediate access to the bitcoin keys.  Now instead save the bitcoin keys in clear text on a file in a 5.25in floppy disk and place the 5.25in floppy disk in the bank safety deposit box.  In this case the attacker has to first be able to read the 5.25in floppy disk, and this gives the owner of the bitcoins plenty of time to empty the wallet. On the other hand the executor of the estate is also slowed down; however in this case it does not really matter since it can take months to probate an estate in any event.

I posted on another thread a possible scenario


Single digits to be followed by six digits is actually possible with Bitcoin.

Here are some of my favourites:

1) Floppy disks both the 3.5in and 5.25in variety. I have not tried it with 8in floppies yet    Wallet.dat will easily fit on a 3.5in or 5.25 in floppy disk even the old 360 KB 5.25in floppies. With 8in floppies in principle it could be done with a carefully constructed wallet.dat small enough to fit on an 8in floppy. The more the better. Rename the file extension to something innocuous such as an obscure propriety Windows word processing program. Also consider changing the last changed date on the file to a date before Gavin was born.
2) USB 3.0 external hard drives. Ironically I have not used USB 2.0 devices to back up my BTC.
3) Encrypt the file with Truecrypt or some other encryption program. Then store the cypher-text file on multiple cloud services such as Google, Live / Hotmail, Ubuntu One, MEGA etc. The more the better. Diversify across multiple jurisdictions Rename the file extension to something innocuous such as an obscure propriety Windows word processing program.
4) (1) and (2) with the floppy and / or USB external drive stored away from your home, such as bank safety deposit box, car, friend or relative, workplace etc.
5) Back up the encrypted cypher-text file across multiple computers, laptops tablets, smart-phones  etc. Include all computers and devices you regularly use. If malware is a concern for example a Microsoft Windows computer, do not decrypt the file on that computer or transfer the file back to a computer where the coins can be spent except as a last resort where all other backups have failed.  Also include old and vintage computers if you have them, these are an excellent for this purpose. How many current bitcoin stealing malware applications run on a 286 processor or on an old Windows 3.1 computer?

The idea is to be able to access your BTC in all sorts of scenarios ranging from a simple hard disk failure to having to flee your home, city and even country with nothing but the shirt on your back.


*** Very Important ***

Last but not least ensure that your loved ones / and or executors of your estate can access your BTC after your demise in all sorts of scenarios ranging from a simple hard disk failure to having to flee their homes, cities and even countries with nothing but their shirts on their backs.

Ben Bernanke over at the US Federal Reserve should take a look a this. Using his DNA as a way to ensure the US currency cannot be counterfeited does have merit you know.

There should be an option for negative numbers here; namely for those who bought BTC, sold a portion during the bull run for way over the total USD (or other fiat) invested and still have a substantial amount of BTC left.

I voted same as now, but would add with much more volatility. Has anyone considered that both the ultra bears and ultra bulls could be right here? One possible scenario a brutal bear market into the low double digits or even the single digits to be followed by a mega bull market into the six digits.

Wave (1) of [III] just completed at the recent high followed wave (2) of [III] (brutal bear) followed by wave (3) of [III] (mega bull).

BTC withdrawals from MTGox work just fine during the trading closure. I know because I have withdrawn BTC from MTGox about 3 hours ago.

... and the panic moved form Tokyo to Moscow https://btc-e.com/.  Calgary seems to be holding for a while https://www.cavirtex.com/

One suggestion here is to have an option in the GUI to add the dust created by a transaction to the transaction fee.

Of course but after  each bear market comes a bull market and after each bull market comes a bear market so both kind of pigs get slaughterd.

+1

When it comes to Bitcoin there are two kinds of pigs:  Bearpigs and bullpigs.  Both kinds get slaughterd.

... but you forgot that 5.25 in floppy disk with a backup of wallet.dat 

+1 Yes this is huge and a natural application for Western Union.  Let us keep in mind that this is a company with a very long history of reinventing itself in order to remain relevant. They were originally in the telegraph business in the mid 19th century.

A far better candidate that RMS for the following reasons:
1) He would develop on Windows
2) He would refer to FLOSS as "Open Source"
3) He would not use a copyleft license such as the GPL, but has no problem at all using an open source license such as the MIT license

I actually consider 1 BTC = 1000 USD and 1 BTC =10000 USD and even higher only a matter of time. The more interesting question is will the road to 10000 USD for example take a detour via 90 USD, 70 USD, 50 USD, 20 USD, or even below 10 USD?

PS: I mean constant 2013 USD here, not a Zimbabwe occurring in the United States.

I find the concept of having debt denominated in Bitcoin (otherwise called being short Bitcoin) really really scary. When it comes to borrowing I will stick to fiat currencies. Thank you.

I would appear so and he also used the term "open source" both of which would eliminate RMS as Satoshi.

Bitcoins

If is a classic case of where Bitcoin is at its best. Making relatively small payments to individuals across international borders. By the way this is huge, since among other things the companies paying these expenses are for the most part large multinational corporations.