Also, don't forget that even if I am honest, there's still the chance that armed bandits (freelance or the kind with badges) turn up at my door and demand the bankroll.  So don't risk more than you can afford to lose, and I'll do my best to take good care of it.

woooo king of the trolls is back

I traded BEK for DIME.  I just want to withdraw to my DIME wallet, but I can't even do that without a Chinese phone number because it requires phone verification to save the wallet address.  I'm glad it is not a large amount, because at this point it's not really worth the trouble.

Thanks for the update! And I suppose that you guys have made some little background work about the LK Group Ltd. before you sent that 108 BTC to them, right? At least their website raises more questions than answers about the company itself...

Edit: there seems to be an another company too in China with exactly the same name but doing slightly bigger machines: http://www.lktechnology.com/?page=product

Great news! Pay-to-PubKeyHash Functionality Added
https://www.counterparty.co/pay-to-pubkeyhash-functionality-added/

I saw. I made a few comments (though one of my coindesk comment's is missing idk why?) -

Overall I think this issue has brought out a lot about Bitcoin development and the environment around it, and I'd hate the for the serious discussion to be lost among those misinformed 'those whiny guys want to store their data' comments. I don't think that moves anything forward, and unfortunately I think the Coindesk article being poorly researched inclines people towards that kind of shallow point of view.
Then again maybe my expectations of redditors are far too high.

Actually what should be done that would - in theory - please both sides of the issue would be to do a patch that makes embedding data in OP_RETURN transactions as expensive as doing so by creating unspendable outputs. Basically what the OP_RETURN payload is just made unlimited (up to the max size of a transaction) but you bump the min fee by the same amount that would have been simply burned in the unspendable output. I'd further recommend that the cost be set slightly less than that amount, to always incentivize using prunable blockchain space rather than unprunable UTXO space. (a legit concern in the current design, although my TXO commitments scheme probably reduces the problem greatly)

I'll do up a pull-req for this.

From the perspective of counterparty and the overall bitcoin community,

• The criticism is not against counterparty, but just One Flaw in the system
• There was zero consultation on the design with the wider community before the "on" switch was flipped
• This flaw --network-critical database used for raw data storage-- was well known before Counterparty began life. You could have avoided this problem with communication.
• Existing designs are known to be less abusive to the network, and do not store data in that key database

It is perfectly possible to run counterparty without this flaw.

what is the outcome for the protocol?

explain to me like I am five

Since we are behind schedule... why not use some of those reinvestment bitcoins and buy some more hash from a supplier going bankrupt? not sure if the contract rate for the mining equipment is lower (most likely is) but more hash now would help reach ROI. Just throwing it out there.
http://www.coindesk.com/bankrupt-bitcoin-mining-company-alydian-sell-218ths-mining-power/

This is a problem   

Anybody for a 1000 quark side bet? In 30 Days above or below 5000?
I'll take Above

I like the "security" of Cryptsy. Cryptsy is one major exchange and according to cryptocoincharts.info it is the 6th biggest exchange. That seems somewhat "secure" to me. I guess I'll buy more stocks but I wonder how low it will get. Seems that there is no limit down atm.

Is NXT as good as dead?

No outsiders care about it all anymore, development has halted, frustrated discussions without any results, prices are going to the bottom and everyone except the initial IPO holders have lost a large amount of their invested money --- is it as good as dead?

Thanks! Interesting list.

Cryptsy is at the moment the place to be for alts and it's making nice money right now. It's located in US, however and Vern is looking to start fiat USD trading, which would put Cryptsy in the crosshair of regulators. As many learned so far the hard way, US is not mostly Bitcoin friendly place to do business. I'd be cautious because of this.

CryptX - I haven't looked into it. Sounds like a mining operation. I have studied, however, many mining operations such as ASICminer and others and best and most reliable I could find, is BuyAHash by far. Has most honest and proven management, very reliable. It survived few exchange going under. You not only get profits from their ongoing mining operations focused on most profitable alt coins of the day but you also get a cut from their hardware sales which are booming like crazy. They are highly transparent and recently got incorporated in Hong Kong, even though they are US based. This stock is one juicy morsel, growing like mad at the moment, unlike ASIC miner where owner is anonymous, that offers little to no transparency.

Counterparty XCP - Was just having a debate on Counterparty in another thread. Counterparty is basically a Mastercoin clone that came pretty late to the party that doesn't have the money or the team and support Mastercoin has. They've pretty much replicated Mastercoin, the code, using the bitcoin blockchain, even the creation model to some extent. I'd pick the best of breed, which is Mastercoin.

NXT - this one I find interesting. It's also a 2.0 crypto (via Colored Coins) that uses 100% proof of work, which is environmentally friendly. This could be an advantage. They have some of the best promotion team and are very good at hype, some of the best actually. Their "swarm" teams are pretty effective at doing cheap marketing and spreading the word. I haven't touched NXT yet because I feel it has very much glazing on the surface without much substance underneath all the nice glamor they've managed to project. Their decentralized exchange is yet to be released, not even sure they have any ETA on that http://www.nxtcrypto.org/nxt-coin/nxt-decentralized-exchange while Mastercoin already has theirs out and ready to use.