+1

And I don't think it will be that long.

The small swings are getting a little wilder - faster and somewhat jittery. Does it mean anything? What's cooking? I hope it isn't the mammoths stirring.

I closed my long time short w/decent profit and reopened it, a smaller position at a somewhat lower (worse) level.
I also opened a long ladder, 2J's style (JJG and JB), at a much lower (better) level.
Who knows why, on the short term it's the long position that's worrying me more.
Call me paranoid.

Besides, it's much easier to read на русском than, say, Tolstoy. And way shorter.

(Respect to Hairy!)

(Wouldn't that be Pulpo Gallego?)

I suggest you reconsider. You love lobster, right? Chances are pretty high you'll also like the humbler but sophisticated (working-classy  ) Galician style octopus. Try it.

Since you also seem to like quality wines, I would suggest a slightly tart white wine to wash the tentacles down - like a German Riesling, or a decent Sauvignon blanc, or a working-classy vinho verde (branco) from neighboring Portugal.

Eating? Who talked about eating??

Huge or not, it all depends on how they manage transparency on the delicate re-hypothecation issue. That would entail devising some half-clever multisig protocol where, for example, the original owner's consent is needed for moving collateral outside of a predetermined set of addresses. Some of us (including me) are still skeptical on the sidelines, waiting for more details.

(30-40 pages further down the road... working my way slowly, I know, but life is keeping me away)

Oh, now I see. The mainstream definition of "tentacle porn" didn't give me a hint about the delicacy found by Last of the V8s. A gem, as usual. Well, I'll have raw octopus too, please.

Still haven't got that far, but I can't wait!

And thanks for the merit - to Bob too! It makes for a warming welcome feeling on return <3

Allright I'm reviving old posts, but I just saw it now.


Women in urban Turkey (I mean Istanbul or Izmir) aren't generally covered with burqas. At least they weren't last time I was there - a few years back, but already under Erdogan rule. The ones I met were of surprisingly, hm, liberal customs. Maybe it's because they're used to men who are arrogant and take them for granted? A decent attitude, a little wit and a vague hint of gentleness (gentle as in "gentleman") got me much more than I was expecting, in both quantity and quality.

Maybe it's different in places like Antalya, though.

I've been far from bitcoin for a while. It's necessary for me once in a while - to keep some sanity.
Now I'm catching up with the posts, and I'm still 100+ pages behind, around August 8-9.

I know what happened later - yes, on coming back to the WO I've taken a good look at the charts. It's kind of entertaining to see the developments reflected in the posts here. Except for Rosewater's breakdown, I mean.

An important difference between stocks and crypto is that with blockchain tokens it's possible to design a multisig protocol to avoid multiple uses of the same tokens. Of course, it remains to be seen if they will go to such great lengths to make sure all paper coins are "bakkt". But that could be a way to add "trust" to the system, as someone of them was blabbering.

If it's really "bakkt" by verifiable crypto collateral, bad banking practices have no hope.

I will take the 85% drop from 250k to 37.5k like a man. No whining, I promise!

Granted, Microsoft has been able to "embrace and extend" (corrupt) several things in the past, but I think this time is different. It's not bloated/dangerous HTML mail, or an inferior browser, or a nosy operating system. It's something that looks very much like money. The user's own money. As long as bitcoin works as money, the users will be able to see through all the corporate nonsense - in the worst case, via some smarter friend's eyes.

- So you can't spend your Starbucks bitcoins at Amazon? Ah, it's your Microsoft wallet that won't let you. You know, I always instantly redeem all my credit through my own LN node, directly connected to Starbucks. Not my keys, not my money, that's what the geeks taught me...

How long before this awareness invades mainstream channels such as Facebook, and everyone and their dogs can see the light? How long can such a scam survive? The hypothetic MS/Starbucks/whatever cartel had better compete by adding real value to their service, like an advantage on exchange rate for funds kept/spent with them, or some kind of fidelity bonus for people who comply with their centralized agenda. That's why I think they could ultimately help more than hinder.

I share this view wholeheartedly. What we don't know right now is the "when", or what happens before that, or other details such as when the exponential long term curve will start to flatten down into a more or less constant horizontal slope. But whatever happens next to the current phase, it sure is going to be epic. Imagine just a couple of runs in the same league as the latest one to 19k. I suspect ater such an event, a bitcoin stash in the double digits will be enough to be among the wealthy, if not among the rich.

Mine hasn't yet

I've taken the test a few times, and I consistently come out as ENTP-A. Only once I had a different result, but I can't remember what it was. I must have been under the influence

You are always on the pessimist (realist?) side, Bones!

Not all soccer moms are that dumb. Let some of them have their "starbucks bucks" hindered from movement once, and some of them at least will see - and spread the word. When it's about our own money, I think it's much easier to spend the necessary mental energy to make ourselves more educated. I trust human nature about this at least.

As for Microsoft pushing you to leave Electrum for Microsoft SafeLocker, it's an unavoidable part of the deal, but relatively harmless in my opinion. It could even force Microsoft to provide better software to face competition. As a parallel, consider Internet Explorer: it had an easy game at the start, with all the apes adopting it out of sheer ignorance, but it was eventually pushed into irrelevance by the likes of Mozilla and Google, to the point where they recently had to rebrand it with a new name - while improving it at least a little along the way.

I remain optimistic about this issue, if it actually goes on without breaking.

I agree with Hairy on this (as is often the case). This is a derivative backed by real btc reserves - maybe that's why it has such a short expiry (daily). I guess it will have optional automatic rollover.

Starbucks, Microsoft and others backing the project won't win any popularity with older bitcoiners, such as the people participating in this discussion, but they could do much for those who know little or nothing about cryptocurrencies. Adoption can only increase.

And once the cat is out of the bag, it won't take long for some of the smarter ones to wise up and understand the simple concept "private keys in my own hands or it's not my own money". Which in turn will debunk the greasy talk about "necessary trust" spread by some of those weasels.

It's all for the best.

... and the next one?