A strangely detailed article for FUD... could be only one detail (the investor perhaps) is incorrect.  On the other hand, the person spreading the Paypal rumor seemed a cut above the average liar.  Could be there's a high stakes pump operation going on...

Its a good time for an update...

the silverbox update (comparison from the beginning of this thread, March 13th, 2012, gold=1690, nasdaq=3055, Bitcoin=5.4):
Bitcoin is 107.62.  Gold is 1320.00.  Nasdaq is 3687.00
Bitcoin: 1892.96%
Gold:    -21.89%
Nasdaq:  20.69%
Gold Diff:  2452% advantage Bitcoin
Nasdaq Diff:  1551% advantage Bitcoin
2551.5965207631875

what's your interpretation of the buttonwood in-person exchanges?  Clearly, if you just show up and buy that's ok.  But what if you are willing to buy/sell a spread?  Not as a primary source of income, etc... but just to help disseminate the currency?

Except that they've "popped" "down" to 5-10 times the pre-bubble price... this a very important difference.

As I said before I think that this not a bubble.  It is a new thing, perhaps driven by the speed worldwide subcultures can communicate due to internet technologies.  With most prior bubbles (that I know about), total valuations during the bubble reached many times the size of the conceivable future market.  Yet the bitcoin market cap topped out orders of magnitude below that (not going to repeat all the great infographics ppl have posted here).  In a system with exponentially increasing real value, for the first time knowledge can flash through subgroups FASTER then the exponential value rise.  At the same time, knowledge cannot easily pass across gender/age/vocation/language/cultural boundaries because to do so requires a re-working of the presentation, a different emphasis, or different layered applications.  We saw BTC flash through certain sectors of college students, libertarians, IT professionals, finance, etc.  We still see it predominantly used by young people...

The phenomenon of rapid, super-exponential spread through these subcultures is what has caused the BTC micro-bubbles of 2011 and 2013 -- periods when expectation simply temporarily exceeded the reality.  Essentially the bitcoin market cap DID vastly exceed the conceivable future market OF THOSE SUBCULTURES only.  But bitcoin is universally applicable... new memes are already coming: "bitcoin and PMs are complementary" for example.

No joke... quit your day trading perspective and zoom yourself out to an investor's timeframe.  Despite a flash of media hype barely anybody knows about bitcoin.

I'm the guy who earned 10BTC convincing bytemaster that his original system would not track the underlying asset.

Look, let's state the problem theoretically.  Let us propose 2 independent entities "Digi", and "Commodity" which can be priced in a 3rd entity "fiat".   Now the task is to devise a system to create a 4th entity "DigiC", using exclusively Digi that reflects the value of Commodity.  

Since Digi and Commodity are independent variables, this is an impossible task.  Any escrow system that holds Digi and issues DigiC is promising 1 Commodity for every DigiC issued.  It is essentially SHORT Commodity.  So lets say everything starts at 1, so we have N DigiC backed by N Digi.  Now if Commodity goes to 10 fiat and Digi goes down .1fiat, the "expected" value of DigiC is 10*N, but the backing escrow is only worth .1*N.  A factor of 100 difference.  

This will happen in reality as well as theory.  

As Cyprus learned when it gave people CyprusEuro (DigiC) backed by loans (Digi).  When the value of those loans drops, the only solution is to give holders of CyprusEuro a "haircut".

If that doesn't convince you, look at the 7x appreciation of Gold 2000-2012.  Or imagine trying to create a "MasterBitcoin" with a 10x appreciation in 1 year!?  Or pretend that MasterCoin appreciates 10x like bitcoin did, while gold drops 20%.  Now you have the opposite problem your backing is worth SO much more then your coins.

And these aren't even "Black Swan" events (or Black Swans are the new normal).


I think you know that it won't track.  You use terms like "Given a reasonably stable MasterCoin".  But Bitcoin has shown that to be VERY unlikely.  Also, its not even a stable MasterCoin that matters, but a stable RATIO between MasterCoin and the commodity...


The sooner the powerful collective intelligence and creative force moves from this pipe dream to creating a system that simply allows identity-verifiable entities to back digital commodities with a legal framework to enable criminal prosecution if the digital commodity does not meet its contract (AKA no gold in the vault), the sooner we will have a workable system.  Also, look at how the Winkelvoss' (and other) ETFs work to see how multiple backers could exist for a single DigiC.

...You can gain respect for Satoshi's intelligence both by what he did AND by what he chose NOT to do...

Stored in America's new PM "brainwallet"...

  you should have been in 25-50% at the short stability at 65-70 b/c predictions on this forum were to 50, and it NEVER goes quite to the bottom.  Then the whales from 70-90 could have been a big hint with a nice long pause at 87-92 for you to finish your purchasing (say up to 95% -- always leave a little  ), esp. since we've been hanging 'round 90-110 for months.

Or maybe you're day-trading and you've been in and out (of Ms Market? ) a lot since then?

I think that we are seeing the predominately North American "early" (anyone up 100% or more, say) adopters leaking some coins for summertime fun on campBX and CAvirtex because they can't get out on Gox.  This is pushing the prices down on these geographically limited exchanges.  At the same time buyers who do not have access to these exchanges (Asian) are buying from Gox.  The significant # of exchanges in China with quite high total volume strongly implies coins are shifting to this region via Gox.  Why not bitstamp?  I don't know.  Can Asian and non-euro European areas get easy access to bitstamp? 

Whales move slowly but have a longer memory.  They are bringing us up because they are probably completing their analyses started during the run-up and entering long term positions.  Fewer small buyers are discovering bitcoin due to the ebb of the hype cycle (at the same time the level of news coverage in this "ebb" seems significantly higher than in 2012...so it hasn't ebbed so much as de-hyped) and the effect of these small buyers is probably hidden by the incumbent sells and inflation.

Sorry for an on-topic posting  , but anyone track the 3000 GoxUSD bid wall that's on $100?  When was it put up, has it been touched, etc?

Also, anyone care to speculate on the CampBX/bitstamp inversion?  That is, normally CBX is closer to gox, but now bitstamp is closer.

The big dumps (w/o similar big buys) ARE a post dump phenomenon.  Someday they will stop.  And if you look to the past you'll see the price slowly rising in 2012 from 4.x to 13 before the big launch.  You don't want to miss 4.x to 13 that didn't suck one bit :-).  And personally I don't think it will rise even that slowly... in 2012 bitcoin was still "dead", now its just post bubble.  It already did that.  The only thing holding it down now is fear.  Lots of awesome but "building-a-base" news has come out last few weeks...

I think honestly that its even hard to entirely characterize what happened as a bubble when you have a price that doubled 5 times but stabilized at *only* 4 doublings.  Its something new & I think bitcoin behavior is going to be the subject of a key chapter in intro Econ textbooks 2025.  "bubble" is the closest term we've got today, but a better description would be over-eager investment in a technology that is world changing.  In 1999 the total market cap of all internet companies trying to do X routinely exceeded even the most optimistic projection of X by 10 to 100 times (there were 10-100 companies each valued as if it would gain the entire market share).  That's a bubble.

I've got no questions about what that wall (not pulled when touched so not fake) at 96 is doing.  Somebody wants coins for very long term investment.  He doesn't care if he gets them today or next month, so just places a likely wall and lets people sell into it.  A wall like this is a way to communicate to big sellers that a buyer is there.  Many here forget that if you look at the BTC graph over a relatively short 5 year time frame it is freaking incredible.  But its THAT graph that most investors (vs speculators daytraders, etc) care about.

Nor do I think you will see the suitcases of cash required to trade 1k BTC at these venues (but actually I think if I wanted to trade 10k+ USD, I could carry and trade that in 1oz gold a lot more subtly than cash -- if the buyer does not have to assay the gold).

I'm not sure if the volume per exchange is essential here -- its the ability -- the existence -- of these markets that will continue to drive adoption.  Especially if they grow to one in every major city.  In that case cumulative volume may be non-trivial.  And a key though is that these markets are very amenable to impulse purchases (which I think are more likely to be held or spent -- have lower velocity -- than coins bought on Gox) unlike online exchanges that require difficult method of payment and identity verification.  And adoption will be driven because these markets will exist as another baseline exchange mechanism -- "even if <exchange X> is shut down, I can always head to the park and sell my coins (or phys)."  This becomes yet another answer to the question "what can I DO with bitcoins?"

Also these markets could encourage P2P trading among friends and acquaintances in casual environments.

You are certainly entitled to your opinion but at the same time you are being very discouraging simply because Buttonwood does not fit your needs. We Get It. Your debate is not constructive, it is belittling.

Guess what?  It doesn't fit my needs either... but unlike you, I can imagine people who would find it very convenient.  Cash is a simple solution to the BTC fiat impedance mismatch.

And chew on this; I'll bet that this service is distributing coins to more newbies then average, and that a much greater % of the sales in this market move the coins off the market (to small hoarders) as compared to an exchange like Gox.

WTF is your problem?!  If you don't want to exchange BTC IRL then don't go.  Nobody needs EV to show flush with 100k BTC from the SD sale -- there's not that kind of volume.  "Established" in this context simply means consistently willing and able to trade coin.

Don't sh*t on other people's fun just b/c it doesn't fit your personal needs.

And campbx was tracking gox not bitstamp which is abnormal.   A few days ago gox pulled up to 92, while cbx hit 90 but bitstamp below 85.  So I figured I could trade this by selling on cbx and letting it relax back down to bitstamp.  Didn't really work... bitstamp is rising now.  I got out (AKA back into BTC) with a buck per btc profit on very low volume... I was looking for 5.

Everybody thinks SD buyout -> 150k BTC being sent to stockholders... not true if the buyer already owned 90% of the outstanding stock.  Always a good plan to ensure the purchasing "premium" is a lot fewer actual BTC than calculated.

As for the "whys" of the sale, it was inevitable.  When you've got little, being involved in a quasi-legal enterprise (that does not violate your own ethical standards) is one thing.  But once you're looking at living a luxurious lifestyle without ever working again, the idea of cooling your heels in jail over an issue that could have gone either way starts looking pretty grim.  SD probably went on the block the moment the website was blocked to US customers.  

Better (for SD at least) that it be sold to an owner living in a jurisdiction where gambling is legal...

http://live.wsj.com/video/five-bubbles-investors-need-to-watch/3A31FA17-FEA2-4FB0-812C-E9E54A53DE4E.html?mod=WSJ_article_outbrain&obref=obnetwork#!3A31FA17-FEA2-4FB0-812C-E9E54A53DE4E

bitcoin is #4.  Just says it went from 20 to over 200, now at 100 may go down.

But its interesting that its thrown in there with more traditional investment vehicles.

Not bad WRT response time but bad in that the transfer probably WAS in the bank's queue and so to remove it at that point would have meant calling the bank.  Not something they want to do in this situation of a tenuous banking relationship.  But some kind of more informative response would have been better.

Interesting... if they had liquidity issues they would have agreed to the cancellation as that keeps the fiat at Gox.  Seems just like bad customer support.