I think it's safe to say the arrival of cryptocurrency has been well and truly announced. The ringing of the announcer's bell is reverberating around the world and as a consequence the odds are a lot higher than they were a month ago that those who are in most desperate need of what Bitcoin offers in terms of protection against tyrannical manipulative regimes will have heard of it by now. This is one of the reasons I am not too concerned about the feedback loop that seems to be going on with the continued boom resulting in more news coverage resulting in more interest resulting in the continued boom! Even if it does result (whether tomorrow, in a week, a month or even in a year's time) in a pretty substantial fall in price relative to fiat I would consider that a price worth paying for the news saturation we have seen in the last week or two. The likelihood is most people know somebody who knows somebody who has heard of Bitcoin and that may just be enough for it to emerge as a substantive tool in protecting those for whom access to it would make the biggest difference in their lives. The other advantage of it having happened so fast - especially if it continues on this trajectory for a month or two longer - is that governments simply don't act that fast other than when it comes to war. No government will want to be seen to be the first to take draconian measures - which could as many point out also backfire - which means they need even more time to prepare if they've got to negotiate with other world powers to make a concerted effort to 'do something'! My guess is by the time they got around to that it will be too late in that there will be too many examples available to show how Bitcoin is playing a critical role in improving the lives of the most oppressed. Remember also the US government not only gave up on trying to control cryptographic protocols but also released Tor into the wild knowing it would be used for nefarious purposes but accepting that as the cost of the technology being available to those fighting tyrannical regimes. I think in many more ways then one things are looking up  |
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Hi jerkoff and welcome to the forum Just fyi there is generally a thread for the discussing of each news piece or notable blog that comes along which you'll find in the Press section. For the one you're referring to here the discussion has been going on at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=168333.0Whilst I'm here I will comment on a couple of the points you made: Regarding your supposedly 'fictitious market cap' would you say the market cap of gold is 'fictitious' just because the vast majority of it hasn't been traded for some time? In neither case does it need to have been traded for it to be providing value to its owners. As for 20k BTC crashing the market 'down to $10 I'm guessing you've not spent much time watching the size of the trades that go through even those markets we can see let alone many p2p ones we can't? 5k btc trades are pretty common and recently barely cause a blip in the charts. 10k trades are not that infrequent and 20k trades are not unknown either. If you are really interested in researching how realistic your assumptions are there are those over in the Speculation subforum who are pretty adept at finding their way round the figures and could give you something more concrete on which to draw your conclusions. I've read that thread now, and obviously it has a few negative replies. In a bubble, everyone has rose tinted glasses and is unable to see the risks. Regarding gold, even though 99% of gold remains in vaults, last week gold dropped from $1600 to $1540 (and then rebounded to $1580 to close for the week). That's the danger, if a large majority of a commodity is held for keeps, the remainding few percent that speculators hold can fluctuate the price up and down a lot, causing the inactive stashes profits and losses way beyond the capital used for influencing those markets. I am a stock investor, and I see the market that way. There is always risk. In a bubble, gamblers ignore that and only consider profit, yet in the end they're the ones suffering the losses. Neither you nor I know what proportion of the money currently held is in the hands of those ignoring risk and considering only profit. Of course there are some whilst others are very aware of the risk and even if invested heavily, see an immense potential. You're right about the disproportionate influence of smaller amounts if most of it is inactive - such as with gold. And with gold it is even worse because the institutions holding the bulk of it have both the means and a vested interested in ensuring it doesn't look attractive a proposition despite the dire straits of their fiat. I fail to see why (unless the conspiracy theorists are right with their claim that the FBI or Illuminati are behind Bitcoin) early adopters holding on to a lot would want to destroy that which is in their best interest to succeed. I know for at least some of us (if one counts as some!) here, one of the reasons we read all the negative reports and try to give adequate attention to forum posts supporting them is there may be some gem of information or a different perspective that could help us understand the risks better and empower us to act accordingly. Of course it is a challenge for those heavily invested not to be biased towards perspectives that support our position just as it is a challenge for those who have decided not to invest much (or at all) - especially those such as the piece's author who have watched and not not bought for some time whilst watching those that did gain - not to see arguments against their own viewpoint. You say stock is your bag and I think I'm tending to see a trend with stock traders and mainstream economists both who seem to be looking for Bitcoin's fundamentals in all the wrong places - and will draw their conclusions accordingly. Each to his own. |
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1 BTC ~=£100 £100   This is hilarious Even funnier when looking at my celebration above when it went up by another £2 in only 6 days to £12 whereas today it went up £12 in just over 12 hours! Quite astounding really and though I'd be less surprised to see a significant downturn than back then I'm just as if not more confident in Bitcoin's future. If bitcoin is to be distributed enough for it to be common for someone to pay for their coffee or pizza when we happen to have come out without change (maybe in many places that don't offer car payments - or do so but only with a 50p charge) the price needs to go up by an enormous amount more - especially if a high proportion of it is for a long while going to be held onto by speculators and savers. |
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See http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/04/05/why-bitcoin-is-doomed-to-fail.aspxBitcoin will fail because a substantial number of hoarders control most of the supply Blockchain.info, which claims to be Bitcoin's most popular wallet (every user needs a digital "wallet," which is something like an anonymous checking account, to transact Bitcoins), provides the following statistics on its userbase and on Bitcoin itself. I've rounded some numbers for convenience: - Total wallet users: 180,400.
- Bitcoins created to date: 11,000,000.
- Bitcoin transaction volume (weekly moving average): 344,000.
- Wallet users engaging in transactions (weekly moving average): 10,000.
- Total Bitcoin exchange dollar volume (weekly moving average): $9,600,000.
- Estimated Bitcoins transacted on exchanges (at $135 price): 71,000.
According to these figures, only about 3% of all Bitcoins are in circulation at the moment, and less than 1% of all Bitcoins currently in existence are sold on the exchanges. With less than 10% of wallet users actually engaged in transacting their Bitcoins, it becomes easier to see why even a little bit of news can cause massive price swings. The huge sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of the current bitcoin gamblers is that only maybe 1% of the coins is what is traded on exchanges right now. Market cap of $1.6 billion is purely ficticious, if only 10.000 coins a day are traded. And those are coins that are used by a lot of speculators buying and selling or trading between BTC and LTC many times a day. You can estimate that maybe 2000 coins a day are truly bought. An awful lot of coins is hold by early adopters, people with 10K-100K wallets that have been inactive. Remember the 10.000 coins for 2 pizza's worth $20 days ? Even if a few come to the market wanting to cash in, they could drop the price down to $10 just by offering 20.000 coins for sale since it would dwarf the real demand to buy cash for coins, which is tiny compared to the huge amount of bitcoins held by people whose only goal is to sell to suckers that think prices will go higher. Hi jerkoff and welcome to the forum Just fyi there is generally a thread for the discussing of each news piece or notable blog that comes along which you'll find in the Press section. For the one you're referring to here the discussion has been going on at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=168333.0Whilst I'm here I will comment on a couple of the points you made: Regarding your supposedly 'fictitious market cap' would you say the market cap of gold is 'fictitious' just because the vast majority of it hasn't been traded for some time? In neither case does it need to have been traded for it to be providing value to its owners. As for 20k BTC crashing the market 'down to $10 I'm guessing you've not spent much time watching the size of the trades that go through even those markets we can see let alone many p2p ones we can't? 5k btc trades are pretty common and recently barely cause a blip in the charts. 10k trades are not that infrequent and 20k trades are not unknown either. If you are really interested in researching how realistic your assumptions are there are those over in the Speculation subforum who are pretty adept at finding their way round the figures and could give you something more concrete on which to draw your conclusions. |
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there is nothing there regarding my situation  I sent coins, but before they could get added to my account the site went down, and now that it is back the coins are not there, and that old receiving address I sent them into is now replaced by a new one, so where are the coins I sent in just before the site went offline? Perhaps someone else here knows the answer (I don't), but you can always open a support ticket. They probably won't be quick to respond though, I imagine they'll be getting lots of questions these days. I don't know your level of expertise (and I'm no techie myself) but have you tried looking up the receiving address on the blockchain (e.g. through blockchain.info) to see if you can see your transaction? |
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 Apologies for lack of decent wall pic. I don't subscribe to BTCcharts and haven't been able to get on to mtgoxlive.com for probably a month now! |
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Beautiful rising wedge. Just waiting for the Monday cash infusions to blast out of the tip (hopefully upwards!).
Wouldn't serious bears also be waiting for the Monday cash infusion in order to have the depth and price to maximise return? I think I'd personally be more comfortable with a high volume trade battle in the price region we've seen since Wednesday for another week or so to give a real chance for more weaker hands to get out thus decreasing the risk of the next downturn being too wild. |
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What's the hold-up on dividend payout? Seems to get later every month. Feb2, Mar4, April...? 5th already...
No divvy for March. SD had a loss. Divs were paid on MPEX 890 satoshi per share. Quite low but April looks nice so far. how/where do you see what April looks like? Adam, surprised you didn't know already but dooglus kindly posts daily with the current SD stats here. It was you who got me onto the availability of these stocks in the first place though I was late to the party and paid on average way over the IPOs. I guess most of us have taken a significant knock in share price of late but I don't particularly mind as long as that 1.9% edge keeps on rising, no matter how slowly, I'm happy |
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I'm referring to the two pronged attack on Bitcoin last night/this morning by the FT and the BBC in their Financial News. So far for the large part the City ignored Bitcoin as per Ghandi's quote so it is clear to me we are moving forward if they have got to the next stage, that of laughing at us This of course only leaves 'then they fight you' and 'then you win' I will admit after the New Yorker piece the other day I would have thought the FT would have been a bit less one-sided but it is clear it is designed as a deliberate hit piece. I saw the BBC one last night and will draw attention to a nail-on-the-head comment by youtube user 'droow' who commented: 'That woman is Angela Knight, the old boss of the British Banking Association. No wonder she doesn't want it to work. She's as much of a crook as the rest of them. She was the one who was wheeled out on the news to defend the ridiculous bankers bonuses. "no assetts behind it"  !!!! What you mean like the banks that leveraged 30x their deposits??' So why did they do it? Let's get the conspiracy theory out of the way first: They're doing it to trigger a sharp downturn so that they can get in! I wouldn't entirely rule it out but I'd say probably not. More likely I think is they don't like it, see it as a threat but also love the graph they can recognise from their economics studies of bubbles and naiively believe if they slap it down now they will set the scene for the 'one scandal' that apparently Bitcon is away from 'collapsing entirely'. I am of the opinion both these pieces are a good thing for Bitcoin right now for two reasons: i) It's a bit of a tall order but it would be nice if reverberations of bubble warnings got to the ears and got those who are about to chuck large lumps of money without thinking the risks through enough may not. I would rather they didn't or only put a smaller amount in because it is these types who are most likely to lose their nerve when in disbelief they see the 'ever up' chart go downwards and panic sell thus exacerbating the plummet. If fewer of these do it the buying frenzy may slow down somewhat which gives more opportunity for weak hands to get out with less damage and for a wider base of newcomers coming in at a better rate. ii) The other thing I'm delighted about is those most likely to listen to the banksters are other banksters and if they laugh and stay away for the time being it will also prolong the opportunity for more of the likes of you and me to get on board before the big money hits and drives up the price. Also I really like the idea of the poetic justice were a significant proportion of the population to get on board before them because the benefit of the increase in value through their money would somewhat offset the value they sucked out of the economy with their antics in recent years with fiat! Just some thoughts |
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BTW, did anyone else notice yesterday's volume obliterated the previous $12m usd mtgox vol to a whopping $19,519,658.71.
Unfortunately it's not something we can really celebrate properly due to the ridiculous circumstances by which it came about. We will never know whether it would have been more or less had people been able to trade the whole time and had not been forced to trade blind most of the day!
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Thanks guys - and I have cross posted this too to here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=166512.msg1736319 . Unfortunately it looks like LBC only do highlights as a free podcast with full programmes available only to paying subscribers. I'm guessing this won't be the last time the host, Anthony Davies, will be bringing this up. I got the impression he really wanted to understand more! Even just his use of bringing a knowledgeable caller in to assist when he couldn't answer a caller's question was so unlike chat show hosts who just want to make their lack of understanding heard! He did well. |
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I'd like to hear this, can you find a link by any chance?
Going by what's on the linked LBC website only selected highlights are available by podcast for free whereas whole programme podcasts are available only to subscribers. |
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Cross posting this from where I originally put it on the Wall Observer channel er.. I mean, thread  Just so you know London's Biggest Conversation talk radio channel http://www.lbc.co.uk/ are currently doing a piece on Bitcoin. Impressive so far... Update: It was a pretty good hour all in all which covered Bitcoin, baldness and bands we wish we would have seen live! The host had learned about it from listening to Max Keiser and from tomorrow's headlines (hint hint!) and seemed excited about its revolutionary potential along with online petitions etc. 'tomorrow's means of street protest' which I thought was quite a nice analogy. Caller 1 was a restauranteur who said it was rubbish because it wasn't backed by anything (to which the host responded neither is the pound) and that its value would disappear as soon as it was out of fashion and that any idiot who tried to pay for their meal at his place would be... anyhow, if someone gave him one bitcoin how would he pay their change? In pounds? The host was also under the impression a Bitcoin was 'about the size of a two pence piece'. Caller 2 was me who tried to keep talking to get as much in as I could first explaining physical bitcoins was what he was talking about was just one minor means of storing bitcoins, other options being wallets on pcs, on smartphones, on a printed piece of paper and as a brain wallet which could be carried anywhere in the world. Also (although I don't recollect using any full stops!) I was talking about it being used as a fast cheap international wire equivlent or its use to buy things mainly on-line and as in the case of the restauranteur paying with smartphone with QR code holding address and value and tip being added and BitPay meaning he could offer the service to customers without being exposed to Bitcoin. I was asked whether it is a 'legitimate currency' given so few places accept it. I said it was early days that if you wanted to find a restaurant to pay in Bitcoin you might need to research on the internet first but I also mentioned Bitcoin street in Berlin and the new Jeep dealership in the US accepting Bitcoin. I finished by talking about the hit piece on FT and me being OK with Banksters being stuck in their old paradigms because if they're late to the game all those who bought before them will benefit so the bankers will end up paying something back for the value they destroyed by their antics with fiat! Caller 3 was a miner who talked well about distributed network providing security, confirming transactions and receiving new coin as reward. Caller 4 was someone who had looked into it and was puzzled if the inventors were so anti normal money why were they making a fortune in normal money by exchanging their bitcoin for them?! The host was unable to answer so brought on... Caller 5 who has been into Bitcoin since 2010 and explained about the origins but that mining was now done by a community. However caller 4 still did not understand why people if they were so into bitcoin would sell it for normal money and was suspicious of it still, which is fair enough. Caller 5 also mentioned the experimental nature of it which the host repeated as a word of warning to close. Very impressed with the how the whole thing went and I will admit to being quite pleased by my own bit too PS mods, if this should be somewhere else please tell. I thought under 'press' but logically to me press comes under media but there's no category. Anyway, let me know and I'll move it or feel free... |
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Just so you know London's Biggest Conversation talk radio channel http://www.lbc.co.uk/ are currently doing a piece on Bitcoin. Impressive so far... Update: It was a pretty good hour all in all which covered Bitcoin, baldness and bands we wish we would have seen live! The host had learned about it from listening to Max Keiser and from tomorrow's headlines (hint hint!) and seemed excited about its revolutionary potential along with online petitions etc. 'tomorrow's means of street protest' which I thought was quite a nice analogy. Caller 1 was a restauranteur who said it was rubbish because it wasn't backed by anything (to which the host responded neither is the pound) and that its value would disappear as soon as it was out of fashion and that any idiot who tried to pay for their meal at his place would be... anyhow, if someone gave him one bitcoin how would he pay their change? In pounds? The host was also under the impression a Bitcoin was 'about the size of a two pence piece'. Caller 2 was me who tried to keep talking to get as much in as I could first explaining physical bitcoins was what he was talking about was just one minor means of storing bitcoins, other options being wallets on pcs, on smartphones, on a printed piece of paper and as a brain wallet which could be carried anywhere in the world. Also (although I don't recollect using any full stops!) I was talking about it being used as a fast cheap international wire equivlent or its use to buy things mainly on-line and as in the case of the restauranteur paying with smartphone with QR code holding address and value and tip being added and BitPay meaning he could offer the service to customers without being exposed to Bitcoin. I was asked whether it is a 'legitimate currency' given so few places accept it. I said it was early days that if you wanted to find a restaurant to pay in Bitcoin you might need to research on the internet first but I also mentioned Bitcoin street in Berlin and the new Jeep dealership in the US accepting Bitcoin. I finished by talking about the hit piece on FT and me being OK with Banksters being stuck in their old paradigms because if they're late to the game all those who bought before them will benefit so the bankers will end up paying something back for the value they destroyed by their antics with fiat! Caller 3 was a miner who talked well about distributed network providing security, confirming transactions and receiving new coin as reward. Caller 4 was someone who had looked into it and was puzzled if the inventors were so anti normal money why were they making a fortune in normal money by exchanging their bitcoin for them?! The host was unable to answer so brought on... Caller 5 who has been into Bitcoin since 2010 and explained about the origins but that mining was now done by a community. However caller 4 still did not understand why people if they were so into bitcoin would sell it for normal money and was suspicious of it still, which is fair enough. Caller 5 also mentioned the experimental nature of it which the host repeated as a word of warning to close. Very impressed with the how the whole thing went and I will admit to being quite pleased by my own bit too |
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Just so you know London's Biggest Conversation talk radio channel http://www.lbc.co.uk/ are currently doing a piece on Bitcoin. Impressive so far... |
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PANIC PANIC PANIC!!!
SELL SELL SELL!!!
Go bears, let's see how low you can take it
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Day Volume All Time High ... with over 6 hours to go...  currently $12,636,383.56 Edit: Changed chart pic to monthly which shows top 10.
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