The decision was life in prison after all saw it on Al Jazeera
It is likely just a matter of time until a few documentaries are made on this.
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/5/29/silk-road-ross-ulbricht.html

Someone didn't get to have a cake and eat it
They got muffins instead not a big deal.
On the bright side the proceeds are going to charity.

That would be the continuation of the Iphone hack
In recent news we discovered X celebrities also used AdultFriendfinder

Well just a matter of time there might be a few in there or a bunch of fake profiles that used a celeb photo / name for their profile account.

That said if the hacker was the same one that did the Iphone hack they have the data to compile fingerprints that can be used to determine what celebrities frequented both sites

If a malicious party obtained identifiable access logs for just one of the websites that know your name, and view logs for just one of the adult websites you’ve visited, it could infer with very high probability - beyond plausible deniability - a list of porn you've viewed. At any time, somebody could post a website that allows you to search anybody by email or facebook username and view their porn browsing history. All that's needed are two nominal data breaches and an enterprising teenager that wants to create havoc.

For the curious minds here wondering how it would be proven

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/your-porn-is-watching-you?trk_source=popular
http://brettpthomas.com/online-porn-could-be-the-next-big-privacy-scandal.html
https://panopticlick.eff.org/
https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-uniqueness.pdf

Not all celebrities heck very few users in general address Unique ID footprints so its possible if there is two sets to remove/reduce plausible deniability.
(Speaking of got to do some minor edits to my fonts whistle lol)

Perhaps someday we would be better off knowing who the creator is
That said the mythos the creator possesses is quite large in the entity known as Satoshi but it is a mystery that I would also like to know the answer to someday.

Had to backsource that one since I just picked the picture
But to answer your question her name is Risa Yoshiki
http://japaneseavgirls.biz/tag/risa-yoshiki/ (There are a bunch ^^)

Throws in a few more

The discussion on retirement coin is a valid point in the thread
It's nice to be liquid but at the same time have something that grows in value so its a complex question of whether it is a safe means to store wealth if the exchange rate changes rapidly.
It could work but best to not bank all in on it.

Goolge only bothers to research if they actually had a decent amount of revenue worth looking up or just by chance.
It's small change for them and faucets are tiny by nature

Only half the userbase, the better question is how many are active at the site at any one time.
Strangly enough I was looking up something on that site and read the memo we have been hacked no data has been lost only to come here and see this press article.

In his most recent post, ROR[RG] also offered to “break into any company or site” for 750 Bitcoin (around $180,000) in less than a week.
(Bitcointalk the second time)
Then again a Theymos bounty probally pays more.

Since I didn't see it mentioned and you dedicated a thread to it.

Ink Toner, Insulation and stuff that I would not usually find in a local store top my list such as Blacksmith tools or handmade tools.
Local Art from where you are would fit into that list as well since that would invlove unique items
Or specialty goods they sell in your area that seem to be of good quality as well as Unique Board Games that aren't in many stores (Novelty items)

Of the same opinion but in regards to household products factoring in shipping cost might be the biggest challenge so bulk deals would be attractive.
I guess it would depend on what you can get from your supplier at a price that is competitive with prices in other countries with shipping factored in, kind of like a Liquidation world.

Perhaps it could be a way to boost traffic to the website to justify the $10,000 a month price agreement he had with OKCoin to future buyers nothing like proof the domain is a premier investment.


That is interesting since yesterday it was redirecting to creating a new blockchain wallet, well if he really got bored he could sell it as a rotator site with it redirecting to a new site every week for a fee.

As norrisK said the currency would drop relative to the amount of people willing to buy and exchange it for something of value.

The US dollar has a strong reserve currency status and would be able to print that $1b dollars and see the exchange rate drop less than the GBP we saw this when they initiated Quantative Easing to their benefit, while a country like Portugal, Greece or Argentina in the same situation  would see the currencies value drop relative to the amount printed and investors would move towards what they consider a more safe and stable currency such as the US dollar or the Pound.

In a sense that is what is considered the American privilege in international markets that allows them to borrow at lower rates while running large defecits to their national debt.

The degree of flexibility is the difference between a small open economy and a large economy in the amount of power they have in printing currency, it's why people like Swiss Franks as a currency but the Frank can't circulate too much because their is less demand to store it as a currency for trading compared to other currencies.

Now if we were talking about whether countries would rather park their money in something other than the US dollar we would see a different pattern emerging with developing countries wanting a better rate of return than a US Treasury bond but that moves into another topic about what makes a reserve currency start to lose its power and ignites a shift towards another currency reserve gaining more power on the global stage.

The IMF publishes articles on these areas now and then the economist does as well so this link will help give you a better understanding on the topic.
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2014/03/prasad.htm

So it was raining Bitcoin
I never considered that application use it as a social media application and as a way to read the weather that seems more fun that just having a normal weather tracker you get fun rain events as well.
Kudos to IBM for trying something new and making it fun.

If the actual e-mail address aka alias e-mail was redirected towards a Bitcoin e-mail address then that would be a bit interesting
Not sure it would really add a layer of security having a name layer easy to remember address to give out then a Bitcoin address to forward to and read messages from it but it would be amusing to forward e-mails to it and see hackers break the wrong e-mail account if you constantly delete the alias addresses messages.

Bitcoin works but the technical expertise an average user has does not match with the technical level of an average bitcoin user.

For now the process must be simplified and stupidified in a way that the end user doesn't need to think about coin security and the underlying structure, instead they need a point and click, tap and swipe and be done process with an easy way to reload at least in finance compatible with mobiles, PC's and whatever tech device they want to use.

Then a simple program for merchants to accept it and vendors who are willing to provice cash for BTC the mechanics is what is needed if this can be considered a first gen crytocurrency then subsequent upgrades and revisions will be needed to push it forward to address as many uses as possible.

On the bright side their is still capital and groups trying to do this so we will see how it goes.

The question is a bit hard to understand, but to answer your question the main advantage of the US dollar is that most countries are willing to trade with it and use it for business with other countries if that other country does not want a large amount of the other countries currency, example trade is mainly in one direction and the benefits of holding more of that countries cash is minimal.

The US can print money but the real power is in the IMF and other organizations that can turn loans and money (paper) into real commodities and goods when loaning it out to others, the US just happens to be well represented by these groups and is a recognized and accepted means of trade so they can push that power more than other countries to their benefit.

That does seem like a reasonable correlation, reduce posts and go and trade a few coins instead.
A variety of factors could determine it but if I was going by the results of a study in the economics section of the forum it would be because more people go to wikipedia to check what Bitcoin is and twitter posts increasing related to Bitcoin that causes a marginal blip in prices whenever the forums go down due to short term correlations well at least they used some calculations to back their arguments.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1071585.msg11460797#msg11460797

Using Time-Series and Sentiment Analysis to Detect the Determinants of Bitcoin Prices

See http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=2607167

Abstract:      

This paper uses time-series analysis to study the relationship between Bitcoin prices and fundamental economic variables, technological factors and measurements of collective mood derived from Twitter feeds.

Sentiment analysis has been performed on a daily basis through the utilization of a state-of-the-art machine learning algorithm, namely Support Vector Machines (SVMs).

A series of short-run regressions shows that the Twitter sentiment ratio is positively correlated with Bitcoin prices. The short-run analysis also reveals that the number of Wikipedia search queries (showing the degree of public interest in Bitcoins) and the hash rate (measuring the mining difficulty) have a positive effect on the price of Bitcoins. On the contrary, the value of Bitcoins is negatively affected by the exchange rate between the USD and the euro (which represents the general level of prices). A vector error-correction model is used to investigate the existence of long-term relationships between cointegrated variables. This kind of long-run analysis reveals that the Bitcoin price is positively associated with the number of Bitcoins in circulation (representing the total stock of money supply) and negatively associated with the Standard and Poor's 500 stock market index (which indicates the general state of the global economy).

Gave it a try didn't win but it was fun to play a few hands


That's about right plus/minus the exchange rate but its more to play for fun than anything else try new strategies etc.

Reading through the thread in my opinion the burden of proof is on the operator to prove they have reserves not on the users regardless of the percentage of funds held by users if the funds are all mainly held in a cold wallet the deposits would be in one address keeping the individual user balances relatively anonymous, and they can still prove their own reserves.
An absence of that does seem concerning and based on the timeline disabling investments was the logical choice next would be to prove they can cover large bets.

This is a classic question its a tough call, some money should be held in a bank for a rainy day in a fairly secure mechanism that way its easy to access, the less liquid capital like real estate and gold are also reasonable investments.
That said debt is a pain so its best to remove that if the interest rate you pay is higher than any return then to invest accordingly to risk preference and need for liquidity.