Seems a stupid feature, but too early to comment.

What is this ATM handscan thing, care to explain more?

Much appreciated, thank you!

One possibility would be to slash the price to BTC5, so that everyone who wants can be donators, and refund the previous holders the difference.

It is such a shame to belong to the world's 7,299,999,000 poorest...

+1!

Only about 1,000 Bitcoin downloads in all of 2009, so perhaps 100 active users. If some of them are still around, we can assume that they've had chance to mine huge BTC and still hold. If they are not around, it is more likely that they have sold the majority.

About 17,000 downloads in 2010/1-6, but the price in OTC was still same. I believe the OTC market did not reflect the increased interest (or perhaps it did, but I don't have the data). At this point is was still possible to mine shitloads, but not as easily.

As price started to increase since the opening of Mt.Gox in July 2010, the difficulty also went up. It did not immediately feel a good idea to buy at the exchange as price was rising very rapidly. Many sold. (I watched price go up from about .25 to a hundredfold without buying).

Perhaps you are right - when Bitcoin was small at .10 or $1, it mainly attracted $1,000 or less investments. Near the top at $15+ it may have attracted more serious money say $5k, $10k or $20k, but at this higher price they would only fetch you BTC1,000 more or less.

After the bubble all the way to this January, was a prime chance to buy. Bitcoin had survived the bubble and was cheap. Now the average investor of $2,500 could have bought BTC250-BTC500, median investor perhaps half of that, and a serious investor of $100k would have BTC10k or more.

No the above chart is wrong.

We have seen million regression charts using mtgox daily, this is the novel approach of having volume weighted monthly prices going all the way to January 2009. So please use the data in OP. If drawing the line is the difficult part, it goes straight between these points:


January 2009:

10^(-2.8 + 5.2/57*(0)) = 0.0016 $/BTC

November 2013:

10^(-2.8 + 5.2/57*(58)) = 310 $/BTC


This is derived using not gut feeling, but the generally accepted least squares method (meaning approximately that the trendline is fitted such that there is the same area between the price above and the trendline, as there is between price below and the trendline).

If you have more than 30kBTC total, I can update it to the list.

Somebody with more skills, please!!

Because the list is under construction, and a forum thread is not a best format because I need to update the list numbers manually.

Besides, I will likely change the format to "about 5000", "about 10,000", etc. It is both difficult and pointless to try to have more exact figures, except from the very top (whose holdings have become public anyway).

Good brainwash - $300k is now "conservative" as Chamath estimated $0.5-$1M... 

How about moving this back to Bitcoin discussion, which was a moderator decision (originally it was in Economics). Let's hope it was BadBear's personal problem that caused one of the most central and most followed (3000 reads in 2 days) threads to be moved here, which necessarily causes the information to be not as accurate as it could be.

+1.

I have started to think that, if possible, the current higher echelons of bitcoin should sell some of it to Chamath, me, and the likes. It would benefit Bitcoin to go from scams and secrecy to integrity and openness. (Not pointing to anyone in particular, you will know in your heart if I mean you

In my understanding, number of bitcoin users now is only 350,000, less than a million at least.

When it reaches 100 million, we are still in early adopter phase in global scale.

It is very important to realize that all growth has its limits, and the limit for bitcoin growth is that it replaces all other liquid wealth. That would lead the purchasing power to be in several million$ range. A more conservative scenario, that of replacing gold, would put the price at $300k/BTC.

I highly doubt that bitcoin ventures in general would surpass Bitcoin's value appreciation. Yes, it is important to grab market share of the services, and power and monopoly positions etc. But so far an average Bitcoin stock portfolio is down.

To an entity of every size, I would suggest first to start a relentless coin purchase program, and then think about bitcoin companies, services and investments.

This feels so much like early February..

Only 10 weeks until the intermediate top.

Leveraged positions should lower volatility, because the people do not aim to lose all their money, rather make more. Using leverage, they can smooth out the market moves with greater amount of capital than what they possess.

That people with no theoretical framework on what they are doing, and <5 years of trading experience use leverage, cannot end well.

Yes I will clean up once that part of the conversation has died out, after a few days perhaps.

I wonder why so secret.. I voluntarily published my own records, because I want Bitcoin to grow. If the high rollers (at least some of them, to at least some precision) were public, it would greatly have increased for example my trust in bitcoin. You want to know the reason why I don't buy altcoins? Nobody knows the holders, so scam, pump and dump are apparent.

Can anyone imagine how much more money I make selling bitcoins when I can say that I own a million-dollar-chunk of them myself? Publicity is good. The trust towards Bitcoin foundation would increase instantly if the board made a joint declaration that they own 10% of bitcoins.

I think the secretive members of the staff should just wake up to the fact that this may be the first public list of their estimated holdings, but government, criminal and even private organisations have their own lists already. I was also thinking of collecting the list privately but then thought - what a heck, this way I can make other people help me in the gathering of the data and make it benefit the public the most, and it is much cheaper too.

If you own too many bitcoins relative to your ability, just sell the excess part and pay the taxes. It is no shame to be an early adapter.

Don't take it too seriously it's just BTC150 or what...