+1

Bitcoin is a great transaction currency. That will never go away. Whether BTC is $200 or $2, people somewhere on the internet will use it to transfer value anonymously across the globe.

But it also works as a digital container to hold value, securely, that is impossible to track. In theory it might end up being the ultimate off shore/tax haven/swiss bank account, ever. It can hold millions, it's easy to secure, and no one can ever prove how much of it you own of it or even that you own it at all.

Obviously it's a lot better at the first option, but the 2nd option is coming. The rally to $266 happened because people started hoarding Bitcoins. There will be a point in time where that happens again. The next extended rally, people will simply refuse to sell. There will be no supply. Which is why the price skyrockets. SR peeps start holding instead of selling. Businesses start holding instead of selling. Miners hold a little longer before selling. The price goes up every day people keep hoarding  until it's too tempting not to sell (turns out that was $240-$260 ish). An extended rally turns everyone into a bullish speculative investor.

Turns out, same thing happens to gold. It will just take time for BTC to mature, but that time is coming no question. It is the new digital gold.

Working for me too.

I'm printing up 1 BTC paper wallets. I'm going to give them as presents for Christmas with a note saying "Go pay off your mortgage, quit your job, we're all FUCKING RICH!".

Less Baileys more coffee.

I think I see a candle all the way to $180. Fuck yeah, $180! Bring it!

The story of the Bear Bitcoin left behind...

"Just like 2011" he said. A few clicks of the mouse, it was done. Bitcoins gone. Replaced with a pocketful of fiat. Joy, triumph, he was king of the world. All those suckers, I got out when the getting out was good! The bubble ain't gonna get me!

Oh how did it all go wrong. The bad news Bear keeps checking the forum. "What?!" he yelled, "Bitcoin is up?". Why? How? Who? This wasn't how it was suppose to go. Sub $100 they said. $50 coins they said. We had charts. We had FUCKING CHARTS!

Mom's bitching at me to get off the Xbox and go outside. What the fuck does she know. I used to own Bitcoins. Mom never said shit to me when I had Bitcoins. Now I'm locked out, a rally comes, fancy GIFs of rocket ships, trains, even hot chicks. A sad Bear with a pocketful of fiat, what does he post? He's not invited to this party. One day he thinks, one day they'll wish they were me. Their precious Bitcoins will be worthless and I'll be rolling around my bed covered in $5 bills. Just wait he thought. Just wait.

    Keep us updated. I won't be able to sleep tonight unless I know whether you were able to buy in or not. It's like Christmas, Birthday, Wedding day and Jesus Christ being resurrected all rolled into one. If anyone offers you money for the movie rights, get an agent first! Trust me; you're sitting on a fucking lottery ticket.

The one short term risk is people being forced to liquidate BTC. If 150M of fiat just got nuked, people are going to have to sell something to make up for that. Will be interesting to see if there's a number of large coin dumps today.

MtGox has now lost Dwolla and LR. I'm not sure how much LR was used but it might slow down some fiat coming into the exchange at least for the very short term.

Med/Long term this is great news.

LOL

I've never liked weekends or holidays on the exchanges. I'm sure someone can go run the numbers to see if the weekends are actually worse, but it seems that way to me. I also don't like the end of the month, but I'm fairly sure someone disproved that. 

Same here. Long weekend in the USA, end of the month, things don't pick up until Tuesday.

Another site reporting about Liberty Reserve.

Liberty Reserve Closed, Owners Get Arrested for Money Laundry

Pretty sure everyone saw it coming. It was discussed in the wall thread for awhile. Bids stacking way up, Asks were dropping off, people saw this rally coming from a mile away.

It was going sideways for weeks, this was a pretty minor bump. Just people tired of waiting for cheap coins. Less volatility helps get new investor in. With no buying Monday-Thursday, it was pretty clear on Friday that the bids were going to have to actually cross over to get some coins. So they did. 

At least in my view, there's been a lot less manipulation, less pumping and dumping, for a few weeks now. You don't see nearly as many fake walls, far fewer 5-10k coin dumps, a little less FUD, fewer DDoS attacks, I think it just got harder to push the market around. Less panic sellers, more people holding. Anytime it drops now, it's cheap coins. It's much much much harder to push the market down just by dumping coins. It used to be a big coin dump would sucker in panic sellers left right and center. Now it's a value play for cheaper coins.

It's also harder to push the market up. People worried about "bubbles" and "crashes" they take a little profit much sooner. The ask walls we see now are real, people really wanting to sell, and it's a lot slower eating through walls that don't get pulled.

If we do rally to $150, sure it will be a little fishy. But that's fine, sell your coins at $150, then re-buy when it slides down. Every market has maniulation, just go with the flow, make money on the way up and down. 

You'd think with 6-8 month delays, you'd upgrade people for free.

To turn around and ask for MORE money, from people who paid in June 2012? Wow.

These guys have balls of steel. I'd be worried some crazy Bitcoin nutjob would show to the office and start shooting. You tell people you're about to ship for 4 months, then try to upsell them on an upgraded firmware?

Someone should sit down with them and let the know if they keep pushing their luck this might end badly (lawsuits, charges, insane bitcoin nerd with a gun). I still find it hard to believe they've had people's money for 8-10 months and somehow have the nerve to ask for more. Treat people's trust and money like a big joke, it usually ends up biting you in the ass. Fucking crazy.

In terms of cost/performance, they rank quite well. So if you could actually get them and they actually worked as advertised, sure they'd be great. Which is why everyone hasn't requested a refund, just in case they ship.

However, it's likely 4-6 months before you get the unit, maybe longer. At that timeframe, it's not worth it. There are better options available right now.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=192916.0

Buys you some batch #3 ASIC chips. 16 for 5Gh/s or 64 for 19 Gh/s.

You should be able to get those built into a mining rig (through steamboat or someone else) within 10-12 weeks. If you were looking to get into ASIC mining, that's probably what I'd do.

I'm not sure you can pump and dump within a $5-$7 range. To "pump" it up to $132 took a bunch of 100k-500K USD market orders. So now it's $132 and you have a bunch of coins. You sell those 10k coins, because of slippage you might end up getting on average $126-$127 for them.

Seems like a lot of money to make $1-$2 per BTC. Pumping and dumping is usually on a bigger scale, it's inherently risky to begin with so you need a decent margin to play with.

We had a lot of people waiting for cheaper coins (sub $100) which didn't happen. Old people getting back in, some new buyers, some good news the last few weeks, good stability, people were in a buying mood. A 5% jump is pretty small compared to the 30% swings we had, I don't think this slow rise in price is fishy.

Now if we hit $150 next week, that's when I'd expect it to get slapped back down to $135 type range. This really wasn't that big of a move.

And how many people had money sitting on LR. Seems like a fairly big deal. Without Dwolla, I'd imagine LR was a fairly big chunk of Gox deposits. Surprised no one is talking about this, they were down all day Friday. Maybe not that many people used LR.

Well, that sorta sucks. Looks like Liberty Reserve was shutdown today.

Costa Rican arrested in Spain for alleged financial crimes

Article seems a little iffy, but http://www.libertyreserve.com/ does appear to be down.