It's been showing an upward trend for longer than that. It looks to me that it's been rising (more or less) since 22 September. My theory? 22 September is Chesney Hawke's birthday. How could that not be bullish?!

I'm worried about any personal details being on any database. Not because I'm unreasonably paranoid (though that's certainly arguable) but because the more information outside my control, the harder it is for me to manage it. I live in a jurisdiction where there are pretty robust privacy laws, so I'm not too worried about sharing financial information with my government (or other European governments) - I have a relatively high degree of confidence that my information will be used for the advertised purpose, and not sold or leaked to other parties - but it still makes sense to limit the information I share. I'm not going to give out personal data willy nilly - there would have to be a compelling reason for me to do so.

Your second paragraph, 99% of trades are fake? I assume this is conversational, like your "proof" earlier? Yeah, of course your general point is correct - Gemini is safer than a non-regulated exchange. That's why I hope institutional investors in BTC will increase, that's why I welcome Gemini. But in order for me to trade there I need to locate ID documents (what documents do they need? Will mine be acceptable?), send them (or copies - do they need to be notarised?), wait for them to be received, approved, etc. All for trading a few BTC. When I'm already trading quite happily elsewhere.

Seriously, I'd love to be part of Gemini's target audience. If I had the money, I would trade there. But I'm not going to go through the AML/KYC hassle for the sake of a few BTC. And I strongly suspect that most people will display similar inertia. They'll all have slightly different reasons, but the outcome will be the same - most people will continue trading on the exchange(s) they know, until/unless there's a compelling reason not to. And yet-another-new-exchange, even one targeted at institutional investors, is not a compelling reason.

I'm almost certainly not a part of Gemini's target demographic, and I imagine very few Bitcointalk posters are either - though I seem to recall one poster who claimed to work at a fairly high level for one branch of JP Morgan. Gemini have gone to a great deal of trouble to ensure that they've jumped through the regulatory hoops necessary for US institutional investors to feel comfortable trading there. I'm not in the US, I'm not an institutional investor, and the BTC I'd be prepared to trade on one exchange is fairly meagre, so there's little advantage to me trading at Gemini.

Obviously rational traders want to reduce exchange risk as far as possible. But for many of us part of that risk is derived from, not mitigated by, regulation. I can transfer a few BTC to an exchange, trade a bit, and then transfer my BTC back to my control quickly and easily, with no risk that my personal details (except possibly my email address) end up being hacked, or, possibly worse, on a government's database. That's convenient, and also reassuring. I don't have the wealth to justify trading on Gemini - if I did, I could afford to consult legal counsel and take legal action as appropriate if they "shared" my personal information with hackers (and remember that that information would be far more extensive due to AML/KYC requirements). I'm not obliquely referencing the criminal element - I reject without hesitation the argument that only criminals have something to hide. To limit my risk I'd like to avoid sharing my financial information as much as possible. Obviously I have to share some information in some cases - when I take out a mortgage, etc. But a mortgage is a big thing, much bigger than the limited amount I'd risk on any one exchange. Fortunately there are still exchanges available to me that offer a far less onerous option.

How does people not flocking to Gemini prove that exchanges fake volume?

I'm pretty certain some exchanges do fake volume, but I'm at a loss to see how action at Gemini (or the lack thereof) proves anything. I think Gemini is a great development for Bitcoin but I'm not going to trade there anytime soon - and my reasons have absolutely nothing to do with volume, fake or otherwise, at Gemini or elsewhere. There's inertia associated with moving exchange - why should people move from an exchange they're comfortable with (where they've either managed to avoid the AML/KYC hoops or they've already jumped through them once and would prefer not to do it again at a new exchange) unless there's a compelling reason? There's hopefully money out there that wants the safety and security of a heavily regulated exchange - but I doubt there's significant overlap between that and money already on unregulated/less-regulated exchanges.

"The real volume is maybe.... If that's not failing..."

OK, so you don't know what the real volume is, but you do know that if it is as low as you think it is, it's failing? It seems to me that the first thing you should be doing is dispensing with that "maybe" by finding out what the real volume really is. Other wise your post is nonsensical.

Absolutely - I'm definitely not saying "don't invest", I'm just calling out the idea that an investment can be risk-free (and, related to that, that we should probably regard claims to the contrary with the utmost caution).

Ain't no such thing as a risk-free investment.

The closest thing to a risk-free investment is a government bond where the risk is considered so small as to be negligible.

As soon as transfer control of our assets to someone else there's a risk that they'll default in some way. That's as true of governments and multinational corporations as it is of some random dude on the internet (though the risk itself, while always present, would probably be considered to be far higher in the latter case).

The block reward reduction was a year earlier, in November 2012.

There wasn't a November 2012 peak. There was a price increase (back to USD10+) in the 6 months prior to the halfing, as talks_cheep mentioned, but it had tailed off - price was flat - by November. There was another increase (USD100+) from January 2013, though the degree that this was due to the reduced supply kicking in, increased demand prompted by willybot, or other factors - is probably still open to debate (personally I think willybot is overrated, but I suspect I'm in a minority).

It is still accurate: 

What do you think is the likelihood - in percentage terms - of that happening, and why? (Personally, I'd assess the chance to be vanishingly small - so small as to be not worth considering - but I'm interested in the reasoning behind higher values).

I doubt they edit the OP that frequently. Like kostya.ash said, check the Google doc.

I'm fairly certain the OP was being satirical. Subsequent posters... maybe not so much!

What drew me to Bitcoin initially is that it gives me control over my finances. With that control comes responsibility. If anyone has put all their life savings in Bitcoin, they need to take responsibility for that.

However, I remain to be convinced that people are that naïve, and in sufficient numbers, to warrant the excuse amaclin has offered.

Uh, OK. Are many Bitcoin users keeping their lifetime savings in BTC? What proportion of users are we talking about? And how did you find this out?

How has this proportion changed as your efforts to educate users progress?

This is a trick question, right?! HODL!

More seriously, I've been either buying BTC or selling puts (various strikes, but break even around 220+) whenever the price drops close to USD 200. Right now I'm hodling. I've no intention of selling anytime soon, if ever.

Aha! Just because there won't be any trading going on until the exchange officially opens! Though I guess if you could rustle up an invite it might be quite interesting to see what the main site looks like (I've not bothered with an invite - I'm not in the US, and I strongly suspect my net wealth is far too low for me to be interesting to Gemini, or for their exchange to be of much use to me).

Cesmak, British - apologies.

Opens in a few hours, I think (I'm about 4-5 hours ahead of New York - I've not checked but it must be 7am, 8am in NY).

Here's their website, but their blog is probably more interesting for the next few hours!

We can choose to avoid heavily regulated exchanges. That doesn't mean other people want to, and it doesn't mean that an exchange positioning itself in terms of regulatory compliance is a bad thing. It's just another choice. Choice is good, even if it's not beneficial to a limited group of people (us) in the short term.

Thanks! What I'm seeing is similar to what I'd expect to see from, say, Slush's mining pool - is there some way to link the TXs to an individual piece of mining hardware, or to a specific individual/organisation that controls the miner? (Apologies if it's obvious and I'm missing it, it's been a long time since I mined).

Edit: it occurs to me that an alternative is to tally up the total AntPool hashpower and compare it with what Hashnest customers believe they should be getting. Is that possible?