Knightmb operated totally within the law. He was still raided by the Secret Service*, solely for the crime of owning a lot of Bitcoins and being publicly identifiable.
*FYI the Secret Service is a division of the US Treasury.
What's the story? PM OK. |
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Just read the link, the study is not about addresses, rather statistical methods.
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Ripple is an example of model, where money supply is fixed, but distribution is according to the whims of a soviet.
Bitcoin is an example of model, where money supply is fixed, and distribution happens over more than 100 years according to a predetermined model where everyone can participate in a free market fashion.
Ripple team has stated that they do not want energy to be wasted in generating the money supply. In other words, they want to get something from nothing. In the real world things don't go this way. If you have paid a lot for something, you value it more, and with Bitcoin you are guaranteed to pay the going price (if you buy outright) or even more (if you start mining). No free bitcoins have ever been. In 2009 when you could have mined thousands, the "exchange rate" was so low that you would have done better working at McDonalds (unless you saw the vision of the whole thing and just needed the amount of coins, like Satoshi, or the guy in the Reddit post). Later on and when MtGox opened, it has been more profitable to buy from an exchange, which means that the actual value is paid in return. |
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Land you "own" isn't really yours.
Could you tell, what is the difference in this regard, between: - bitcoins - gold - land? |
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Like the situation where you have a $1 million in Bitcoin and only $20,000 in fiat.
This is interesting... I have far less money than your example states, but my BTC/fiat ratio is roughly that. I have also found that optimally I would have 2-3% of total assets in fiat (no matter what the rest has been throughout the years). Anything over, I feel the urge to invest (I will be buying BTC100 next week), anything less, business is not functioning smoothly. Sweet spot? |
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seizure of DPR's coins depresses me  Why? What's the worst thing they can do with those coins? In my opinion they have three options: 1.) Destroy the coins -->less coins for everyone -->price goes up 2.) Keep the coins for a long time -->less coins for everyone -->price goes up 3.) Sell the coins -->weak hands panic -->cheap bitcoins for the rest (who probably will be fully aware that the sold coins are the FBI coins). And as little as I like the US Government, it might still be better to have them own the coins compared to drug dealers and murder-for-hires. +1. Once in a while the govt actually does its duty to find and punish murderers (assuming that the story is true). |
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How do you know which several addresses a person has?
The methodology is dissected in the thread: number and size of addresses is not any part of the model itself, but it was used along other metrics in the estimation of parameters. |
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Yeah, and on par with these easily, is the Pirate@40 bubble. I just arbitrarily decided that price will have to decline 80% in order to qualify as a bubble. Nothing in the history of financial markets has repeatedly recovered from such and made new highs in a matter of months. Bitcoin is a highly disruptive innovation and what is happening in the exchanges is a collective effort to price it. The behavior is not at all typical to a fad. When I bought several months after the 2011 bubble pop, I was taking a risk that it was a fad. I got rewarded for the risk. Now bitcoin is the least risky thing out there, except for the high variance in less than 2-year holding period: - The banks typically instruct you to hold cash only, if your investment horizon is so short. Everything else may show a negative after such a short time. - The worst you could have performed by holding bitcoin 2 years is about +150%. SERIOUSLY NOW, if you read this and don't invest minimum 50% of your worth to bitcoin, you are not optimizing your wealth (that's OK) |
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The fbi is near the top now after getting 144k more from dpr.
Yeah, this is something like 4th largest known stash (after Satoshi, DPR's remaining coins, and MagicalTux). But it will not be credited to FBI before they own it. (I decided to employ the rule-of-the-law principle in accounting. Just having the key does not count if the coins are not yours.) |
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Now since we have the numbers, it is time to discuss the implications.
I am quite stoic myself. Bitcoin distribution is a product of a free market process built on top of a carefully thought-out mining model. For years already it has been possible to buy bitcoins in the exchanges as well as sell them, and (to some degree) to exchange them for goods and services. What results from individual liberty and free market is, by definition, good and right. (If it wasn't, the discontented one could buy or sell to adjust his balance.)
I have never mined any coins, or even had a bitcoin client. Still I am among the larger holders, even this is possible. Someone else may have mined 100,000 bitcoins and sold them all when the price went up 400x (to $1/BTC). Can't really blame him, many would do the same.
Large holders are important as power centers that can provide jobs and credit, promote culture, act as spokespeople, innovate, organize and take risks. When private equity is not allowed to be concentrated, poverty will result in many levels.
What we need now is that an increasing number of the large holders step up and increase their efforts in bitcoin real economy, and cooperation between each other.
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I think the most important thing is that bitcoin is the only asset in the history of financial markets that has seen 2 such bubbles as we had in 2011 and 4/2013, and survived them both, currently sitting at its all-time-high (if measured by 10 day average).
My logical conclusion is that it is indestructible and it is virtually risk free to buy bitcoins. The only thing that can happen is that the exchange rate may move -50% or -80% against you, but then again, how else can it rise 2000% or 3000% in 2 months? Surely that magnitude of rise has to be accompanied with some volatility.
Bitcoins are the easiest to store and most difficult to coerce from you so they are the ultimate in safe-haven investments. Only the natural need to diversify hinders a logical thinker from investing all his wealth into bitcoins.
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Since the rise was quite fast, there is room for a drop. I believe we are in a mid-trend Fibonacci correction mode, which should take us to revisit $150-$155 before 7 days have passed. Once this is consummated, we will take the old ATH.
The moving averages are now higher than ever. The April top of $266 was so sharp that the exact figure does not matter too much. The current hurdle is for overcoming the ATH.
After clearing it, I would not be surprised to see a double to $500 before the next small correction. At any rate, our think tank estimate is that Bitcoin will reach $2000 in maximum 8 months.
Any correction less than 35% can be a mid-move shakeout. Never sell low. I exhort to just buy and not sell, until you can drop from work and start living with your bitcoins.
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The centralization of BTC owners (big corps, governments, rich people)
Of all things, why would that prevent Bitcoin to rise in value? I mean, we may not like it if Bitcoin develops that way, but don't confuse your personal likes and dislikes with the market. A well researched study shows that Bitcoin is not very centralized: - Half of the coins are held by 1,000 users - The other half is held by the rest 350,000. |
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The United States in its current form is a menace to the civilized world, causing even my company to write such clause as:
Customer may not be a national of or resident in the United States, Canada or Japan,
nor may his bank account be located in the aforementioned countries,
nor may the SIS Information System be accessed in such countries.
No materials, securities, redemption codes, certificates or anything issued by the Merchant
may be taken to, used or stored, in the aforementioned countries and [by] their residents.
Pretty fucked up, if an Estonian company needs to employ such precautions. Shame on you!
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When I see Goat as the last poster in anything, I tend to read it as he is one of my most respected members (like TOP-5 in 151,000)...
...then I see this kind of infantile rant, making me think "what the flying fcuk is goin' on here"
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You'd have to calculate different scenarios of difficulty growth.
That does not alter the outcome very much though, as the near future is near certain and after 2 months, not many coins will be generated in any scenario. |
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That is completely unnatural ...
This quote about is the core of every issue I disagree with libertarians. What's natural? Be naked, living in caves, dying with 45, loosing you teeth with 30, rape innocent women, killing your neighbour, eating raw meat, being in a state of allday war ... Being natural has in no way any value. The opposite. Everything we call civilization is a product of human genius to overcome things that are natural. I just think it would be better, if the coins are distributed more equal. Too much money in one hand is dead money. It destroys the ability of money to build wealth in the same degree as the equalification of the state. If this is fair or not, is another story. It depends if you define "fairness" by mechanism or outcome. It is natural in the same sense that any random sample of numerical data has about 30% of numbers having 1 as the most significant digit. This can be used to reveal fake/colluded transactions, if the launderer uses another distribution (such as all numbers are equal). Number of bitcoins a person has is not a stable quantity, rather it is a product of a dynamic economic process, a sum of all the choices that an individual has made concerning money. Even the governments have not found a way to increase someone's wealth, yet preserve his right to squander it. Even dead money contributes to the economy in several ways, for example I derive great pleasure from the knowledge that Satoshi owns the largest stash, yet even that is only 5% of the total. This gives me confidence to purchase more myself. There are other matters such as autoregulation of the rate of interest etc. that can be researched from the gold standard era and applied here after fiat loses its grip. If bitcoins would be distributed equally to all, it would not take long to reach the optimal distribution. The beauty in the current model is that the optimal distribution can be reached in concert with the process that proves that Bitcoin is money and ripple is not. |
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We should open a new mining company. A virtual mining company that sells shares.
We will give you back 25% of your investment in 2 years. No hardware required.
Yeah. What is the problem?? If we actually bought hardware, that would further diminish the yield by increasing difficulty!!  |
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Minimum number of all users, or minimum number of users in the top brackets? Because we know we've had over 100,000 bitcoin users since Summer of 2011.
I need your (plural) help in estimating the current number of users. It is a subtask much better suited to someone else than me. |
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I'm one of those early ones. I read the original paper, thought about it for a few hours and decided that this is going to become bigger than Jesus. Bought a lot of mining equipment (took a lot of risk with my money, at this point there was not any kind of marked price/exchange or anything) and mined like there was no tomorrow. I have not sold many coins, had to sell a few to prove to my wife that I was not completely insane, she was not satisfied until she saw USD appear in her account. I have no plans to sell anytime soon, I'm fairly certain this is only the beginning. Sure there will be ups and downs but in the end I would be very surprised if the price didn't reach several thousand USD per coin or more. In which case i will be in the global 0.000001% for sure. I also gave away about half of my coins to a friend and a few to other friends. I was pretty well off even before this, very close to independently wealthy, but the bitcoin's have definitely tipped the scales. I'm not in this to become rich and buy a lot of "things", from the very start I was politically motivated, as are many others of the very early adopters although with a little bit different alignments. I have a conviction that bitcoin will be the liberator for the worlds poor giving them access to the global marketplace on a scale never seen before. If bitcoin can give market access to that many people the entire planet will experience an upswing comparable to the industrial revolution, only stronger. I will save my coins until the price is of such a magnitude that I can begin investing in freestate projects enabling such a future to become reality. Buying a nice car or house is not even tempting, i have that already, what we are talking about here is how the world my children will grow up in will look like and making us a space faring species - nothing else will suffice selling out towards. This is as far as I can see the best shot in my lifetime to contribute towards this reality, if it turns out to go to zero i will not regret holding on to the end. This is all or nothing. Governments have spent hundreds of years fighting for power with little other than misery to show for it. Politicians preach altruism for the masses convincing them to sacrifice their lives for the greater good which always turns out to be a monster. Bitcoin is for the people by the people. Revolution is at hand (i hope). wow |
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