If Apple and the banks face problems getting Apple Pay accepted, the challenge ahead for Bitcoin is many times more daunting. Simply being a clever or novel technology is not going to be enough. If 2014 was a tough year for Bitcoin, it doesn’t seem likely that 2015 will be any better.

The Republican response to President Barack Obama's historic opening toward Cuba this week has generally been awful and dispiriting to behold. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), for example, was the politician most single-handedly responsible for the United States re-establishing diplomatic relations with still-communist Vietnam two decades ago, saying at the time:

"Instead of vainly trying to isolate Vietnam, the United States should test the proposition that greater exposure to Americans will render Vietnam more susceptible to the influence of our values. Vietnam's human rights record needs substantial improvement. We should make good use of better relations with the Vietnamese to help advance in that country a decent respect for the rights of man."

What does McMaverick say now, with his co-conspirator Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)?

"It is about the appeasement of autocratic dictators, thugs, and adversaries, diminishing America's influence in the world."

The gap in both the writing and sentiment in those two passages speaks volumes about how far GOP foreign-policy thinking has degenerated over time. (It also speaks to McCain's own 100% malleability on key issues—back in 2000 he said "I'm not in favor of sticking my finger in the eye of Fidel Castro. In fact, I would favor a road map towards normalization of relations such as we presented to the Vietnamese and led to a normalization of relations between our two countries.")

Two senatorial exceptions to that rule have been Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who has long advocated lifting the U.S. embargo, telling Reason TV in 2011 that "If someone's going to limit my travel, it should be a communist, not my own government”; and also Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who came out in qualified support of Obama's actions yesterday.
...
But Rubio and the GOP are wrong, and wildly so, about a number of their Obama-Cuba critiques. This move was not "appeasement"; increased American travel and remittances do not "only" serve "to benefit the regime," and this does not mark a retreat from fighting for the freedom of Cubans.
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But how, precisely, is this appeasement? The U.S. got one of its longtime intelligence operatives, plus an innocent-seeming human rights activist, out of Cuban prisons in exchange for three genuinely awful Cuban spies whose work was linked to the death of Americans. Now, that two-for-three swap is certainly unequal, and may indeed (as Rubio worries) incentivize bad actors to take innocent Americans hostage in the future, but as Israel for one can certainly testify, sometimes countries that genuinely value their own citizens' lives accept numerically and morally disproportionate prisoner exchanges. Frustrating, yes, but not definitionally appeasement. Should Reagan have left Nick Daniloff rot in Soviet prison just because he, too, was most likely a hostage?
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Rubio, to my knowledge, has never visited Cuba outside of the U.S.-controlled Guantanamo Bay facility. My 1998 experience of attempting to live in Havana convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that three of the most important and attainable things Cubans need, both for their basic human dignity and for their struggle against their totalitarian overlords, are 1) exposure to Americans; 2) increased access to non-governmental sources of money, and 3) increased access to information. Obama's moves help on all three fronts.
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Once upon a time, "appeasement" meant ceding the Sudetenland to an expansionist Adolf Hitler without even allowing Czechs a seat at the negotiating table. Now it somehow means a two-for-three prisoner swap, a slight easing on unconscionable restrictions against Americans, promises of 53 political prisoners being freed, the same diplomatic engagement the U.S. has had with Venezuela since 1835, and a net increase in individual Cuban latitude? Republicans not named Paul or Flake (or Amash) may want to start rethinking their hyperbole. Sadly, there's little reason to believe that they will.
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If it will stabalize.. it will not be at $700-800 more like $60-80.

Senator Marco Rubio believes the embargo against Cuba has been ineffective, yet he wants to continue perpetuating failed policies. After 50 years of conflict, why not try a new approach? The United States trades and engages with other communist nations, such as China and Vietnam. Why not Cuba? I am a proponent of peace through commerce, and I believe engaging Cuba can lead to positive change.

Seems to me, Senator Rubio is acting like an isolationist who wants to retreat to our borders and perhaps build a moat. I reject this isolationism. Finally, let's be clear that Senator Rubio does not speak for the majority of Cuban-Americans. A recent poll demonstrates that a large majority of Cuban-Americans actually support normalizing relations between our countries.

Please enlighten me, where is the instruction manual for shooting a paradigm shift?

Indeed, patience is definitely a virtue.  For now, we're neither wealthy nor elite nor wealthy elite nor gentleman.

Pretty sure this is where we stand:

Nope, nope, nope! All of those were created by Mark Karpeles with his bot army (read the willyreport) Enjoy ur dead asset.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is the latest potential presidential candidate to weigh in on policy changes to Cuba and the libertarian leaning Republican's position splits from other Republicans who are also considering a presidential run.
Paul told Tom Roten of News Talk 800 in West Virginia that the 50-year embargo "just hasn't worked" and normalizing relations with the island nation is "probably a good idea."



"If the goal is regime change, it sure doesn't seem to be working and probably it punishes the people more than the regime because the regime can blame the embargo for hardship," he said.
Potential challengers, Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio, both of Florida, denounced President Barack Obama's decision to open diplomatic and economic ties with Cuba. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas also slammed the deal.
Bush called it a "misstep" that "undermines America's credibility and undermines the quest for a free and democratic Cuba."
And Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, vowed to use his role as incoming chairman of a Foreign Relations subcommittee to block progress on policy.
"The White House has conceded everything," Rubio said, calling the policy "disgraceful."
Paul, who has often bumps heads with members of his party over foreign policy, expressed a similar position to another potential presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton.
"Despite good intentions, our decades-long policy of isolation has only strengthened the Castro regime's grip on power," Clinton said in a statement. "As I have said, the best way to bring change to Cuba is to expose its people to the values, information, and material comforts of the outside world."

Well, with titles stating that Bitcoin was a worse investment than the ruble in 2014, for example, it may be a case of speculators dumping Bitcoin to cut losses. One thing's for sure at the moment: there are more sellers than buyers.

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-panic-selling-today

In spite of all the uncertainty in the fiat markets, bitcoin's price seems to be going down and down.
This wasn't the case when there was uncertainty in Cyprus last year.