...That's a successful pump and dump.
I keep seeing this term used here as an explanation of what's going on. For this to have been the case it would need to have been one person or more collaborating who: - had already had bought the BTC intended to be dumped;
- had here or somewhere else prominent, been encouraging people to buy by " false and misleading positive statements*";
- subsequently had sold enough to have triggered (or to have taken advantage) of this morning's dump;
Is there any evidence that this is the case? Otherwise there's no end of possible explanations for what happened with so many players (including so many inexperienced amateurs) in the game. * This is from the Wikipedia definition I'm referring to which classifies Pump and Dump as fraudulent. Maybe what's being referred to here however is one or many people simply by the timing and size of their buying encouraging others to follow suit to push the price higher in order to then take advantage of the higher price by selling, again followed by the followers, thus causing a substantial drop in price? If so is there a more suitable term from this that doesn't imply wrongdoing? That's simply playing the speculation game where rather than blaming others' imagined manipulation for their losses I'm hoping people will more learn to make better judgements with their trading. I believe it is that, combined with more professionals with volume and experience (and leveraged trading) that will in the long-term take out these double-digit percentage drops and hikes and provide a more stable exchange - which is a more helpful outcome to all those using Bitcoin outside of speculation. |
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...BTC market cap, in USD = BTC value adjusted for BTC rate of inflation, in USD
Whan speaking of bitcoin, is deflation a more appropriate term ? IMO, Bitcoin are in deflation, not inflation ! I'm I wrong ? if yes,, why ? It's not that it's a more or less 'appropriate term'. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think you're thinking of 'inflation' in the way it's used by politicians and the papers rather than as an economic technical term. There are two distinct meanings. The more common usage is measured relatively to what can be purchased with a currency. e.g. a how much a set 'typical grocery basket' costs to buy a year apart. In that sense of course Bitcoin is deflationary. But the technical use is to do with supply money supply. Bitcoin is only deflationary from a technical perspective if more coin is being lost than is being introduced which is very unlikely to be the case. In terms of 'market cap' measured in USD it can only be higher with Bitcoin at $20 than it was at $30 if there are > 50% more Bitcoin in existence i.e. its supply has inflated by 50%, which is how thefiniteidea is using it above. For fun I posited in another thread that relative to total supply even the rate at which Bernanke's extreme USD inflationary policy is being implemented, as a monthly rate he's only introducing approximately half as much new currency as Bitcoin is. Of course this doesn't tell the whole story because for BTC we know from Day 1 how the monetary supply will pan out but despite the popular notion otherwise, for the next few years the rate at which new coin is introduced makes Bitcoin a heavily inflationary currency  |
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The thing is I do think conspiracy theorists are idiotic, it is right to keep asking questions but what conspiracy theorists do is form their own conclusions without even looking at facts or circumstantial evidence and of course you have governments taking advantage of that and painting anyone who questions them with the same brush.
+1 for that. There's a world of difference between a healthy suspicion of government motives with a questioning scepticism and the mental contortionism of the conspiracy theorist. The give-away traits include the dismissal of anything that contradicts their belief by fantastical explanations. It's the absence of Occam and failure to change their opinions when presented with rational evidence. Call me cynical, but I think Alex Jones is paid by someone to make conspiracy theorists look idiotic.
Sorry, I'd misread this the first time, thinking you were saying someone was paying Alex Jones to talk about conspiracy theories in order discredit everything else he says! But that's not what you were saying at all. The point is, as Lethn suggests, it doesn't need anybody to make conspiracy theorists look idiotic. Just observe them in debate with rational people. They're all over the place. I recently watched a series of videos (well the first few anyway) that illustrates this beautifully. It's not that there's anything wrong with hearing some plausible-sounding theories and concluding for the time being that things may not be what we thought they were. But it's another thing to then stick to such a belief, religiously dismissing evidence to the contrary. One of the easiest ways to discredit someone is by saying they are crazy, or racist. The government does this to dissidents all the time. It teaches this practice to its citizens to self-weed out people from questioning what they do. This randomly is done to any dissident voices, like Ron Paul, all the time. Many politicians use this tactic to get ahead, it’s called demagogues [url].
People don’t want to hear that things are bad, that the water is poisoned or that their food is giving them cancer. If someone is willing to tell them things are safe, they will readily believe it. But if someone else says otherwise, they don’t want to know? It doesn’t make sense to me.
In the 60s and 70s if someone were surrounded by people who believed in crop circles etc. and didn't have access to independent information and debates covering all aspects of such phenomena I suppose it would have been unfair to call them crazy without first taking the time to go through each of their arguments and patiently explaining everything that was problematic about their conclusions that they were made by aliens. Only then, if rather than reasoning things out properly, going away and thinking about it and being prepared to suspend the belief that all the politicians and the journalists and the scientists and the sheeple were out to con them long enough to come to some reasonable conclusions that they STILL believed that shit, would it be fair to call them crazy. These days I come across very few conspiracy theorists in real life (a cousin being an exception). I come across them on the internet it is therefore safe to assume they have the same access to all the resources I do. Which means someone is either new to all this and rather naiive, is refusing to go see the great refutations, is declining the resources out there to understand the implications of argumentation of open scepticism and of Occam's Razor, or has become or is becoming a true conspiracy theorist who will hold onto their ridiculous notions at the cost of their rationality. The naiive, if they're prepared to take the hints and do some homework are not beyond redemption but the likes of Jones... |
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I think most of the people in here agree on the idea that bitcoin should be tax free in every country. Bitcoin is a great way out of the system as long as you do anything anonymously but the legal businesses trying to adopt btc are screwed by the system and according to the usd/btc rate instability you may have to pay too much taxes. I'm not willing to support a corrupt system but still want to be able to use btc 'legally' and without anonymity. I think I speak for a lot of the people in here.
Here my idea: All the btc (and alt coin) exchanges should agree to have no rate between any fiat/coin and coin/coin on the day(s) that counts for paying taxes. I'm very sure it wouldn't be that easy as it sounds and there are different rules and regulations in different countries for that behavior of course but I just want to put the idea in here. Maybe it's an idea for another altcoin? Let's talk about that.
How did I guess this thread would go straight down the road of the morality of taxation! But that's not what you were asking was it? Bitcoin is not unique as a commodity with a variable value in relation to the fiat with which you run your business so I don't think you need go very far with trying to get 'agreement' here on a usd/btc rate (you'd be pissing in the wind with that one anyway). If you're going to be straight up with the taxman as to at what exchange rate you received and at what rate you converted to fiat there's no reason you should need to pay 'too much' in taxes either. If you made on the transaction that adds to your business profit and if you consider the whole of the business profit as taxable then you'll pay only what is due. I have seen threads on this forum on ways to deal with Bitcoin profits (from mining or speculation) for the purposes of US taxes and I expect there are others for other jurisdictions too. It may need a bit of getting to grips with (or for your accountant to get to grips with) but I can guarantee you it will be easier than trying to get folks here to agree to change something about Bitcoin itself or about interfering with the free floating, market-driven exchange rates to suit your tax return! |
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The thing is I do think conspiracy theorists are idiotic, it is right to keep asking questions but what conspiracy theorists do is form their own conclusions without even looking at facts or circumstantial evidence and of course you have governments taking advantage of that and painting anyone who questions them with the same brush.
+1 for that. There's a world of difference between a healthy suspicion of government motives with a questioning scepticism and the mental contortionism of the conspiracy theorist. The give-away traits include the dismissal of anything that contradicts their belief by fantastical explanations. It's the absence of Occam and failure to change their opinions when presented with rational evidence. Call me cynical, but I think Alex Jones is paid by someone to make conspiracy theorists look idiotic.
Sorry, I'd misread this the first time, thinking you were saying someone was paying Alex Jones to talk about conspiracy theories in order discredit everything else he says! But that's not what you were saying at all. The point is, as Lethn suggests, it doesn't need anybody to make conspiracy theorists look idiotic. Just observe them in debate with rational people. They're all over the place. I recently watched a series of videos (well the first few anyway) that illustrates this beautifully. It's not that there's anything wrong with hearing some plausible-sounding theories and concluding for the time being that things may not be what we thought they were. But it's another thing to then stick to such a belief, religiously dismissing evidence to the contrary. |
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It's not what Bitcoin IS backed by that makes it great, but rather what it ISN'T backed by  Don't ask what Bitcoin can back for you. Ask how you can back Bitcoin.  +1 LOL  |
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Sorry, I did provoke this but seeing as you responded I'll go with this off topic flow. Sound like you view religion as all bad and corrupt.
It's not the way I would put it but I can't be critical of someone drawing that conclusion from what I say. I know many religious people whose core belief is that as humans we are inherently evil and that the good deeds they and other religious folk do (and their abstinence from evil deeds) are due to their faith. This delusion is largely harmless but the corollary, the assumption that those who are not religious (or who are of a different religion) are also inherently evil but don't have faith to redeem themselves, is not necessarily as benign. Mark Twain sums up where I am on the relationship between religion and human atrocities as follows: "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion." Religion doesn't go away and its frequently the system of government.
I think 'frequently' misses the immense progress on this over the last few centuries. Historically, until relatively recently all systems of government had religious elements. The separation of church and state, the concept of a secular government is phenomenally important. Of course it doesn't prevent abusive rule but it takes out a whole raft of excuses for oppression. Recently, as I posted elsewhere, British secularists and Christians worked together to quash a crazy British law. In the US I can't see this would have happened because the religious right seem to have forgotten secularism is a protector of all to practice whatever beliefs as long as they don't interfere with others. Now they see secularism as an enemy, as somehow an attack on their right to practice their faith. They seem to fail to see that all the secularists want is that the religious don't get special privileges just from belonging to the dominant religion. Revolutions and collapsing empires also don't go away and oppressive governments haven't lasted as long as some of our religions so I at guess there's good reasons for the faith many people have in them.
As for 'good reason' I'm not sure what you mean. There are certainly fairly sound anthropological explanations (good reasons?) that explain the role of religion in human evolution and how religion persists even today. Or are you suggesting it having been around for so long as being a good reason to believe in God? Isn't that as problematic as suggesting something must be right because a lot of people believe it? Also the idea of someone contemplating the pros and cons, 'reasoning' out whether or not to have faith doesn't quite seem to fit my experience of how people come to believe. Getting back to technology and the religious, in the extreme the argument is always that it's not guns that kill people but the people who shoot them. It unfortunately takes very little imagination to envisage people who have bizarre world-views causing great harm with guns - or with planes, come to that. Without intending to imply I have the right to prevent someone from owning guns I will admit to having a preference that some people didn't have them! Likewise I would prefer militant Islamists didn't use internet forums to recruit, that they didn't use encrypted comms to plan and that they didn't use Bitcoin to fund their atrocities. However, for me the overriding principle is that I neither have the right to deny, nor should I vote a representative to deny anybody other than convicted criminals the use of these technologies. Maybe for the religiously oppressed, as for the politically oppressed, Bitcoin will be a tool that will have a part in their path to liberation (physical and mental) and for this reason I hope the imams will not deem Bitcoin to be in contravention of Sharia law. |
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I'm not a fan of religion, particularly Islam, and I'm even less of a fan of technology (or anything) empowering the religious. Yet traditionally the way it works is religious leaders make rules for their followers whilst doing whatever suits them. In the case of Bitcoin what I envisage along those lines is for example, a priest who called Bitcoin evil and banned its use then as he had his religious police out there preventing the lay people using Bitcoin he would at the same time be quietly putting some money away in Bitcoin, or using it for his nefarious purchases! For this reason I'd prefer it to be found to be compliant with Sharia so everybody gets to use it equally without threat. But just as Bitcoin is designed to be immune to government intervention and interference, there's also little in practical terms that could be done by religious leaders to control it either. They might be better versed in the tools of guilt and shame to control people than governments (who haven't really needed to due to their use of guns) but I would hope the leaders would think better than to try and use it as yet another means of control. The criteria as presented in the blog seem conveniently vague enough for 'scholars' to come to whatever decision suits their needs so let's hope they choose wisely |
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Not true at all. That bubble happened precisely because of regulation. Banks were practically forced to lower lending standards by Freddie and Fannie, not to mention the FED key interest rate affected mortgage rates to get artificially low enabling many to borrow who couldn't afford it. All Wall Street did was feed upon this circle and meet a demand that was created by the government and no one else. It's called moral hazard, look it up.
This is completely and utterly bass-ackwards. The only influence Freddie and Fannie had was that they wouldn't buy mortgages on the secondary market unless they met minimum underwriting standards. The pressure was actually in the opposite direction - the banks pressured Freddie and Fannie to lower their lending standard so the banks could make more money on risky subprime loans. However that ignores the bigger picture, namely the amazing and astounding history of Freddie and Fannie from the 70s and the knock on effects. My oversimplified understanding of it is of the way in which those government-set-up institutions got used to force lenders to lend irresponsibly to fulfill political agendas. I've heard this said a lot, but again the exact opposite is true. For instance have you looked at what the much-criticised Community Reinvestment Act actually did? It banned the practice of "redlining" - banks were no longer allowed to refuse mortgages to people who otherwise met their lending criteria just because they were buying homes in poor, largely black urban areas. That's it. It didn't require them to lend money to people who couldn't afford it or any of the other things blamed on it; that was a purely profit-motivated commercial decision by the bank. Actually, things would probably have been worse without the CRA. Amongst other shady things, banks had been pushing black homebuyers into expensive subprime mortgages they couldn't afford even though they were eligible for a much cheaper, affordable prime mortgage on the same house because those mortgages were more profitable for the banks in the short term. Without the CRA, the banks could and almost certainly would have refused to give prime mortgages to those buyers, forcing them to rely on the subprime mortgages that caused the problems in the first place. OK, I've gone back to where I'd got this impression. The author is Eamonn Butler, Director of the Adam Smith Institute so his angle is not surprising. However, it sounded plausible when I read it and I've still not been persuaded otherwise. I will admit to wanting to continue believing because it supports my world-view but I will invite you to post any references backing up your argument so I can if necessary revise my opinion by being better informed. How politicians forced bankers to make bad loans
The final ingredient in this poisonous cocktail was the Community Reinvestment
Act (CRA), which President Jimmy Carter signed on 13 October
1977. Its aim was laudable – to promote home ownership for minorities.
It made illegal the practice of redlining, whereby lenders would simply
refuse mortgages in poor (and commonly black and Hispanic) areas on
the grounds that low-quality housing and high levels of unemployment
and welfare dependency made local residents unattractive as borrowers.
From now on, the lenders were expected to conduct business over
the whole of the geographical area they served. They could not favour the
suburbs over the inner-city districts. To make sure they complied, the
1975 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) forced lenders to provide
detailed reports about whom they lent to. And the Carter administration
also funded various ‘community’ groups, such as the Association of
Community Organisations for Reform Now (ACORN), to help monitor
their performance on the CRA rules.
In 1991 the HMDA rules were strengthened to include a specific
demand for racial equality in the institutions’ lending. In 1992 the
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston published a manual for lenders that
went even further. It advised them that a mortgage applicant’s lack of
credit history should not be seen as a negative factor in assessing them
for a loan; that lenders should not flinch if borrowers used loans or gifts
for their mortgage deposit; and that unemployment benefits would be a
valid source of income for lending decisions. It also reminded them that
failing to meet CRA regulations could be a violation of equal opportunity
laws that exposed them to actual damages plus punitive damages of
$500,000.
The government went further, ‘streamlining’ the CRA regulations in
1995 to allow, and indeed force, lenders to ignore most of the traditional
criteria of creditworthiness in their loan decisions. Mortgages could
now be any multiple of income; a person’s saving history was irrelevant;
applicants’ income did not need to be verified; and participation in a
credit counselling programme could be taken as proof of an applicant’s
ability to manage a loan. In other words, the government was now
forcing the institutions to make loans to people who they knew were not
creditworthy.
And to make sure all this happened, more taxpayer funds were
given to monitoring groups such as ACORN. As public scrutiny of
bank mergers and acquisitions increased following their 1994 Riegle-
Neal deregulation, these groups were actually able to hold the banks
to ransom. Under the CRA, if a lender wants to change its business
operation in any way – merging with another bank, opening or closing
branches, or developing new products – it must convince the regulators
that it will continue to make sufficient loans to the government’s
preferred groups of borrowers. ACORN and others can file petitions
with the regulators to stop the banks’ plans.
Bad loans and booming markets
Not surprisingly, the banks paid the ransom. And now that creditworthiness
was no longer a requirement for getting a loan, the number of
sub-prime loans boomed. Home ownership increased, from 65 per cent
of households to 69 per cent between 1995 and 2004, representing about
4.6 million new homeowners. This put pressure on house prices, which
also rose sharply from their stable position in the early 1990s.
Meanwhile, a 1992 law was pushing the government-sponsored
Fannie Mae and its younger twin the Federal Home Loan Mortgage
Company (Freddie Mac) to devote more effort to meeting wider home
ownership goals. High-risk loans were everywhere. Even the FHA
promoted more credit to poor borrowers by offering low-deposit loans.
And Freddie Mac actually developed the process of securitising bad
loan packages and selling this bad debt around the world. This business
boomed after 1995 too.
Fannie and Freddie profited from this system, while passing most
of the risk on to taxpayers. To make sure, they contributed heavily to
congressional offices, and spent hundreds of millions on lobbying and
pressure groups. Other unscrupulous lenders also knew that Freddie
and Fannie – and ultimately the taxpayers – would guarantee their bad
loans, so were happy to make more of them.
While house prices continued to rise, everything seemed to go well.
Even the riskiest borrowers were meeting their payments. Some people
refinanced on the back of rising house prices and pocketed nice profits.
And other government interventions kept the bubble growing. Land-use
regulations, limiting the opportunity for house building, pushed prices
up further. Income tax deductions for mortgages favoured housing over
other savings.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve – assisted by the Bank of England
– had flooded world markets with credit after the stock market crash
of 1987. They did the same again whenever any downturn threatened
– the dotcom crash, and spectacularly after 9/11, when interest rates
came down from 6.25 per cent to just 1 per cent – which just boosted
borrowing even more. So house prices continued their rise, and homeowners
enjoyed the boom.
There seemed every reason to buy houses, and no reason not to.
By 2006, perhaps a fifth of buyers were simply speculators – not just
middle-class speculators, but low-income ones too. In states like California,
where lenders could not go after a borrower’s assets, there was
no risk at all: if things went wrong, you simply sent the keys back to the
lender and walked away. They called it ‘jingle mail’.
Butler - The Financial Crisis: Blame Governments, Not Bankers - from the IEA publication Verdict on the Crash, Edited by Philip Booth |
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Let's say that there are couple of semiconductor manufactures, they accept BTC payment, then they need to use BTC to pay salary for employee and other costs, unless all that cost can be paied in BTC, some exchange is needed
But, they could have a deep saving account in local currency, so they just accumulate BTC in the process, while use the local currency saving to pay for the costs, this could be considered a benefit if the BTC price rise continuously, but then Avalon ASIC sale in BTC ensured this will happen
There are many levels of this kind of self improving feed back, as long as the price is rising
From recollection, although I can't find the post, I think BitSyncom was saying one of their major suppliers accepts BTC so I guess they're less vulnerable to market fluctuations than otherwise. But if there's also no reason, given they're using a payment provider (BitWallet I think) then I guess they can select, as with BitPay, the proportion of the payment they receive in Bitcoin and the proportion exchanged immediately to local currency. I will admit to being mildly amused by the questioning on this forum of their wisdom in using BTC for payments. The reasons they give may be familiar to some of us: ease and speed for international transfer and no chargebacks. |
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... I'd say but the UK has all kinds of anti-hate speech and other thought crimes on the books now.
We certainly do - and they keep getting added to the statute book. However, I'm delighted to share with you folks that one of these is in the process of being struck following a campaign protesting about a clause from a 1984 statute that made it a crime to say anything that, in the opinion of the arresting officer, another could find insulting! I am the proud owner of a 'Feel free to insult me' campaign hoodie. Every now and again, against all the odds, law makers see sense! In this case it was the House of Lords, the undemocratic house in the UK. It's ironic how frequently the democratic house tries to bring in liberty-taking laws which are rejected by the Lords who appear to have a better understanding of the importance of liberty than elected MPs! Another reason I love the way the whole 'Reform Section 5' campaing happened was that the Secularists and the Christians actually worked together and appeared publicly side by side arguing for this. Now that this is gone, next time they appear on opposite sides of an argument they can get back to insulting each other without risk of arrest |
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This video makes the point I was trying to make much better
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Yes I felt slightly retarded trying to figure out what the pic was telling me. I'm sure the author knew what he was trying to achieve with that chart. Look at the chart through the eyes of the uninitiated. Their immediate response will be "whatever, seems to be too complicated". Yeah - but confusing the uninitiated is easy, without the extravagance of using nonsense. This one is just bamboozling even if you do have some understanding of Bitcoin transactions. Overall I'm happy with the article. I think it's fantastic that it's there and that it's such a big feature and covers so many aspects. I do get the impression the writer's failure to grasp the simplicity of transactions from a user perspective (recipient Bitcoin address, amount, send) made its use to be much more complicated than it actually is, for instance with a blockchain.info wallet and smartphone app. And the infogaphic just exacerbated this. Also, given the number of precious metals ads in the magazine I'm a little disappointed that there was no talk of Bitcoin in terms of its parallels with PMs and its potential as a store of value. But all things considered it will be interesting to see if this has an impact on demand over the next few weeks/months. I was told once people on average need to hear of something three times (ideally from three separate media/sources) before they remember it and take enough of an interest to act. For many Emirates travelers it is likely to have been the first time they heard of Bitcoin but for some it may be the magic third. Let's wait and see |
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friends don't let friends buy bitcoin at the top.  I'll be sure to give my friends a month or two's notice if ever I think we're nearing the top |
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Speculation is the main factor driving the price, so bitcoin will always be overvalued.
If bitcoin was worth 17$ due to supply and demand, speculation would drive the price in the 100's.
OK, now I see how that can make sense though I don't see how realistic nor how practical it is to take speculation about the future of Bitcoin out of the over/under-value assessment. I think we can all agree demand for Bitcoin for the purposes of immediate purchases or immediate transfer overseas etc. is speculation-free. How about those buying it as a store of value? Those who believe there is no future to Bitcoin obviously will not buy for that purpose so are only those hoping it holds its value included as non-speculators or do you also include those who hope it may raise in value? What about those who are buying for ideological reasons, because they believe in the principles underlying Bitcoin? Do they need to be hoping it will succeed but not hoping for the value of their holding to increase to count? However you get to your figure I guess we're talking about tiny numbers and yes, the available formulae for this kind of thing would then lead us to an extremely low valuation. But I suspect the vast majority are buying for ideological, speculation (for-long-term-gain or short-term trading) or any combination of those, and that these dwarf the influence of 'pure' non-speculation demand on the price. These I guess are mostly people who are enthused about Bitcoin not so much because of what it is doing today but because of its immense potential. To me it just doesn't make sense to discard these considerations in establishing whether the Bitcoin at today's price is under or over-valued (excepting of course those who trade exclusively on the basis of technicals). |
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Why can't MPEx be ... is easier to use?
It is deliberately not easy and also has the 30BTC registration fee in order to put off all but serious, tech-savvy investors. They're not geared to dealing with high volumes of newby questions. However, if its S.DICE shares in particular you want there are a number of 'passthru' trading sites. I use Havelock myself which is a subsidury of a Canadian bricks & mortar business, the proprietor of which, James (username lightbox) to be very helpful and responsive to suggestions for change. I will warn you at the moment there is over 7% difference in price buying via Havelock but that's likely to be because there was substantial trading and price movement in S.DICE the end of the week (mainly on MPEx but with knock-on effects on the 'passthrus' too) so I guess it'll take a little while for things to 'settle'. Edit: 4.7% difference in ask price now between Havelock and MPEx - I guess some trader was reading my post |
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This rally is pointless, if we hit 19 again we'll just get another smack down.
On what basis do you conclude that? My take is that Bitcoin is still undervalued* and that the only reason we had the shakeout is because enough people believe growth that fast shouldn't be sustainable. If it really is as undervalued as I believe then the an increase in price closer to a realistic evaluation is only waiting on enough people realising how undervalued it still is. Sometimes such things are easier for people on the outside to see than those who may be over-familiar with previous patterns. Given that so many here are not comfortable with fast growth and may be looking at things from the perspective of their purchase price it is not surprising every now and again that we have a good shake out. However there are as far as I can see and as far as others have pointed out quite eloquently, plenty of fundamentals pointing to an exponential growth (at least for some time) which eventually, despite the pressure of those refusing to believe it, is bound to be reflected in the shape of the growth chart. * This whole post is based on the undervalued assumption which is the assumption upon which my trading decisions are made. This is not to say that I deny I may be wrong. It's not what I'm arguing. What I'm questioning is why others who are bullish in the bigger picture are seeing an unlikelihood of buying pressure continuing after the weekend? |
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Overall, although in an earlier post on this thread I was critical of Wagner, I don't think it's that bad. I prefer that this came out as it is than that it didn't come out at all. I actually like the inclusion of the story of the lost wallet even if for the narrator, and I guess for many for whom this is their first exposure to Bitcoin, it leads to a 'not for now' conclusion. Better that, given we're still officially in Beta experimental stage, than naively diving in expecting and assuming the same protections as people are used to with cards and emailed password resets etc. If their next exposure to Bitcoin is more positive and eventually they decide to jump on board, with any luck the cautionary tale of their first exposure will have left a lasting impression and they are less likely to personally suffer such an experience which could switch them and their network of friends off Bitcoin for a very long time. |
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My guess is MtGox keeps a fairly low profile in Japan?
Yes. I can add my data point here; there is very, very, little knowledge of Bitcoin in Japan, even among tech-minded types. In my case, I had held a lot of JPY which had done fairly well for me (vs for example USD) but that seems to have ended. Should have bought more BTC before Abe-kun came in. The debt expansion / QE / printing / whatever you call it is on the news here. There was also an NHK peice a few days ago where they talked to grandmas in line to buy gold bars / coins at some dealer in Tokyo. Apparently there's that, and also people going into stocks. So that's what's on TV. Who knows what's actually happening. I can get from JPY physical cash to an MTGox accoount at well under 0.1% transfer fee here. Takes like an hour. I Bet if I opened a Suitomo account I could get that even lower, to maybe a flat 200 JPY fee or so. Non-anonymous bank transfer, but still, very, very easy. So in that sense Japan is quite well set up for Bitcoin adoption. I sort of worry that the whole reason MTGox is in Japan though is that Japanese regulators have no idea what MTGox is doing, in fact no regulator has ever even heard of it... in fact likely the bank MTGox uses probably has no idea either... and for all involved, trying to find out or ask is not in their job description. We'll see how long this situation lasts. I wish you the best in getting the word out to those who want to hear but don't realise it yet! I guess the exchange rates won't be so good on MtGox with volume being so low if there were suddenly a rush to Bitcoin but then that creates opportunities on p2p trading such as through localbitcoins (where I see rogermemorydealers is already selling BTC for JPY). Sounds to me like Japan is a place whose people right now have much to gain by jumping onto the Bitcoin bandwagon. |
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Alex Jones needs to be more like Ron Paul.
Someone 'should be like' someone else??! He is his own person. He makes his own decisions. He has his own personality. He's not going to take it from you nor anybody else that he should conform to what you think is a 'better' way. He is what he is. Now let's take a look at what that may be... He is alarmist at times..
[he is] yelling and raving..
Alex gets mad. People don't respond well to angry people...
He [is a follower of] David Icke...
...and let's not forget he's a 'truther'! Look at that list a minute. How on earth do you acknowledge all of that yet still conclude ...more people should be following him.
 ?? Please reconsider this. You say yourself: The movement for reason and libertarianism needs to have level-headed spokespeople...
In which case where's the reasoning in having that imbecile as your representative? I know there are some good arguments for defending the right to bear arms. It's not a topic that particularly interests me maybe partially because it's not really an issue here in the UK. Yet when, despite my better judgement knowing the two characters involved, I clicked on the link I was ready to listen. What I got was Jones openly displaying his lunacy whilst boasting his massive following numbers. What does that say for the quality of thinking of your movement? Please do yourselves a massive favour. If you claim reason is on your side then have someone who can reason as your spokesperson. If you have any interest at all in winning this battle by argument rather than just by boasting you'll shoot anyone who comes tries to ban your weapons then have someone who is prepared to act reasonably and civilly with someone who thinks differently. Don't follow him and don't encourage others to follow him. Regarding the media portraying gun advocates as crazy there may be some element of truth in that but by having the likes of Jones as your representative you really are not making it difficult for them! He will get marked ... as crazy ... if he acts crazy.
... as will all his worshipers. If it looks like a duck... |
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