How would a hard fork work at this stage of the game?

Would the new block chain be generated by a handful of dev nodes and then the world would have to resync and let the new 'chain perpetuate throughout the network?

That would cause some serious downtime.

These last few posts contain some good points and I'd like to add that regulation should shake off the blackmarket/drugs image associated with Bitcoin once the super rich get trading, perhaps making it more appealing to God-fearing, law abiding middle America.

Would an influx of wealthy traders who can finally trust an exchange to handle hundreds of BTC in their account at a time mean that there are greater price swings?

Or would the resultant (presumed) rise in BTC value cause it to become more stable?

Yup. Place it on that spot in the Sea of Tranquility. :-)

Any chance of a transcript for those of us without WSJ membership?

Could this be some kind of promotional probe they're going to send to the moon with a BTC logo? Is that financially viable these days? That'd be a let down. If it's just some promotional bullshit with no effect on the interoperability of Bitcoin here on Earth I'll not be impressed.

I think the key thing here is that they have secured a NY bank as their backers and appear to be doing everything by the book and make a the exchange 100% culpable and legitimate. It may not seem much to you or I (and others on these forums that know how to secure their BTC) but it might make the difference to some wealthly old guy or average 2.4 children family that don't have technical peace of mind but want to try out Bitcoin.

That's the way I see it, anyway.

Nope, I can't use a display size any greater than 1024x600 on this old netbook. The previous client worked fine though and I like this little old netbook (a U180).

EDIT: Just found a workaround, by dragging and dropping the main menu bar from accross the top to down the left hand side of the window. I should have tried that before posting! :-)

Just upgraded to the new client and deleted peers.dat. I'm doing some mixing and it seems more slick.

The screen layout is ruined for my little netbook, though. The old client used to maximise in Lubuntu 14.04 to fit the screen properly. I'm now left with this in the new client:



As you can see: I'm missing the lower half of the screen on my little 1024x600 display. The older client fitted perfectly and I'm now stuck when it comes to selecting/deselecting Darksend. The bottom part is still cropped when I've got the window resized inside the display.

Any ideas for a workaround?

$230  

If I'd stolen 19,000BTC and I knew a guy who'd help me mix them and stay totally anonymous I'd give him a nineteenth of my stash, yep. If you paid someone that kind of money you be pretty sure he'd want to keep it quiet too.

If you just sold the private keys then the person buying them would now have coins linked to the theft as soon as he imported them over clearnet. If you were selling keys for 500BTC a time then people would be inquisitive I guess.

If you were the hacker wouldn't you set up your own mixing service?

I assume the hacker is technologically literate and has friends who are good at coding/web design.

Why not pay one of your buddies 1000BTC to set up a new mixing service and slowly churn them through it over the next year or two.

Is this a viable option, or would the coins still be traceable?

I don't get the hate for NXT. I've just started using it the past week or two and it's impressive. Sure the prices are low enough as to be meaningless but there are a lot of good things there: speed and stability of price being the main ones.

It's proof of stake compared to Bitcoin's proof of work, so apples and oranges really, but NXT seems a great system.

Given that the reward halving is just over 18 months away, does anyone think that by then we will hopefully have a lot greater adoption of Bitcoin?

If this is the case, there will be a hell of a lot more users buying electronics, holidays and other luxury items with Bitcoin. The companies that are accepting BTC as payment may be less likely to convert straight to fiat too.

If the above is the case in 18 months time would it give greater stability to the market and prevent whales from exploiting the price by pumping and dumping? The above scenario would mitigate large downswings, yes? So we might see the value bump up immediately at the time of halving without too much drop.

Does my thinking make sense?

Is the price everything though? I'd have thought that this thread is ignoring the fact that people pay attention to the news and none of us are sure what the economic climate is going to look like every year from 2015-2016-2017-etc-etc.

If we start getting really bad news reports about global economics (or even just western economics), combined with gradually more people knowing about Bitcoin then it might get them thinking "Why am I putting savings into a bank account that may go under? Lemme have another look at this Bitcoin thing..."

So I don't think it's just about price.

I have a small amount of BTC bought from $600 downwards and I'll hold until the miners switch their gear off. That may seem like a waste of money but look at what we're dealing with here: it's a new economy model.

I just hope that those in power haven't got enough power or guile to screw up Bitcoin, for the sake of the average Joe trying to save his hard-earned the best way he can.

^ No. One of the few reasons I hold is because I'm afraid I would screw up at day trading. :-)

That's the responsibilty aspect of being your own bank, as it were. If Bitcoin's price becomes more stable due to widespread adoption and it is used as a store of wealth, which I believe was one of Satoshi's main intentions, then we will have to know how to secure it ourselves and be responsible for our own wealth.

I don't think it's particurlarly hard to keep most of your BTC in an encypted offline wallet, whether it's backed up on paper or on multiple media (paper, SD card, USB drive etc.), and the younger generation would have no problem in doing this, I expect.

To pick out arbitrary figures - say you owned 100 BTC: you'd keep 90 BTC in cold storage, 7 to 8 BTC on a secure computer just used for signing transactions and 2 to 3 BTC in your online PC/smartphone wallet for everyday purchases and bills. This is how I could see it working for the younger generation of Bitcoiners. If they could afford 100 BTC, of course 

Yup. I appreciate that "there's no good reason for Bitcoin to go higher at this point".

I'll stop watching the f***ing ticker and go to sleep. I was frightened of missing a spectacular low but It'll be interesting to see the charts in the morning 

I'm watching it break below 280 and I really should get some sleep, but I want to see it crash to ~110 to start buying.

Guess I'll just keep staring...

What about these economic collapses that are happening to various countries around the world at the moment?

There could be a chance that investing in stocks/bonds is like burning your money in x years time.