The lack of transparency is pretty embarrassing.  Every single individual in that room probably contained the means to record the entire thing in his/her pocket.  
I would have stood up and held up my phone and asked the regulators "what do you guys prefer?  That this be recorded and published on the internet or that we keep it casual?"  

And when they chose casual, I would have said "Why?  We aren't going to be breaking any laws here.  But I think i know why.  You just don't want to be seen by the world asking stupid questions.  And you don't want to seem for or against this technology before making an informed determination."

And then I would say, "That's called reasonable privacy and THAT's why we use bitcoin."

I don't think anyone is seriously afraid of clandestine code in an open source project, or at least I'm not.  What I'm talking about are forks; FOSS is forked all the time for a variety of reasons, and community <> developer disconnects or big business getting too involved (controlling) are a big motivator.  What I'm saying is if the majority or all of the code commits to master are influenced by a foundation without adequate community input or transparent operations, the decreased trust is more likely to cause a situation where we could see two versions of the blockchain with a hard fork between BF supporters and non-BF supporters, in this example.  The code can be immaculate, pristine, and still see a fork caused by politics, bickering, or fighting amongst user groups.  Any sufficiently large group that feels under-represented by what could be seen as controlling interests can lead to this behavior.

The 80%/20% wealth distribution is another example; if you have a continued accumulation and concentration of wealth, and use that wealth to unduly influence the markets, code, whatever - if the richest quintile loses a majority of the lower 4 quintiles to a chain fork, the same problem occurs, fragmenting something you probably don't want to fragment if you are in that upper quintile.  All I'm saying is that billing an Industry or trade organization as the 'main body' could be problematic for a variety of reasons that should be considered.  I'm also not saying the the foundation has to become a industry lobby group, just that it seems the most likely course given their actions to date.

Damn -- Avalon -- biggest scam ever.

I pretty much agree - guns are just inanimate objects (with only one purpose: to kill),

What will happen if US starts the proxy war against Russia & China?

Big movement but in what direction. Some possible implications?:

Possible gold & bitcoin running up?
Possible massive selloff of $ by the chinese state?
ASICMINER (China) consequences for western customers?
BTC-e consequences for western customers?
Bitstamp & MtGox consequences for Russia & China customers?

Huge movements i guess.

Any opinions?

This is a BIG problem, something I've been watching for awhile now to see which way the foundation turns.  So far, it looks like an industry insider group intent on preserving their own interests, while work with the larger community has been limited.  If their meetings and actions are kept under a veil of secrecy, I would expect we'll be trading one corrupt banking system for another.  This should inform any community member decisions to back the BF, or not.  The U.S. government already has a monumental trust issue; I don't see any compelling reason that cancer should spread to the foundation as well.  Very troubling, these past few days of relative silence have been...

As everyone keeps saying: gold + precious metals have intrinsic value, which turns out to mean that they are more valuable for their physical properties than they are for their value storage properties.

The number: $564,600

I appreciate this response and I think your metaphor was well placed and apt.

I suppose my stance is one where I don't see the business folk needing to comply with regulation at all. I think we have the tools and ability available to us to say "This is our sandbox you need to lobby us."

I think it's a better strategy. Let them come to us and beat on the door. We should respond to their regulation by out-innovating them. "Oh now it's illegal to transfer money to an exchange. OK, it's a set back. Let's create our own way to do this without them." I think bitcoin ATMs and localbitcoins and onion sites are great ways to achieve this, for example.

I always see regulation as an excuse for a lack of innovation. It's a slipper slope. I would rather push the mindset of "We're better than them" than "We need to work with them"

Once again the only person(s) committing fraud here is coinbase.

I still don't like what you are doing and do not understand why this is needed.

While you may be experiencing these "successes" in the meetings all you're doing is helping bring the enemy up to speed. Government is going to government. It's hubris to think that anything any of us do is going to change how they approach/regulate bitcoin. The only thing you are doing is bringing that regulation about faster. Additionally you are making it possible for them add a level of precision to their legislation that would not have been there had you not educated them, or you cut down on the time it would take them to get to that level of precision.

In all, I cannot justify or support what you are doing. In fact I would say that it is harmful, regardless of where your intentions are. In the end, I believe that all the foundation will have accomplished is solidifying it's members as lobbyist/shills for regulators.

No Thank You.

+1 for me  

Okay, I listened to it.  It's an interview with Scott Cleland.  It's a pretty interesting interview if you'd like to listen.  They talk about how google controls everything, they mention Snowden a little, and net neutrality.  They talk about bitcoin in the last 2 minutes.  It's pretty pathetic.  He calls it an "app."  So retarded.  Peter didn't really challenge it.  I think Peter needs to have a real bitcoin expert on his show.  Who could be on his show that really knows about it and can speak in terms of Austrian economics?

Link here:  Is 20:30 long, skip to 19:00 for bitcoin discussion.  Warning: Really lame!
ScottCleland_082713.mp3

A good birthday article.

The one with 40 kBTC(5M$ buy this week) can sell today, drop price to 100 (plus all others who will follow - so maybe to 70$). Average sell price for him let's say 110, so he lost 1M$. At the same time he opens leverege 1:5 sell order at 130 with another 5M$ (sell 38kBTC*5) and close it at 70$. This is 11M$ profit - 1M$ loss = 10M$ pure profit.

So he can duble his money in matter of minutes. He can sell BTC with loss, he can do it in both directions, he even don't need others to participate.