I would really like to know the best way to strengthen a country's currency.
Increase in it's import or export?
Please share some good ideas.
Back it with bitcoins. That is an interesting idea unlike gold and silver reserves a Bitcoin address is publicly verifiable and accessible As long as individuals know the Bitcoin address they can see that their is a reserve available. I am not certain if that would give Bitcoin an official currency status though which may raise a few legal issues but it is a unique approach that a digital economy provides Verified reserves visible to all and secure from attack seems like a win win win. |
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I haven't heard of Silk coin before is this a coin for the Silk Road or something
Would like a bit more information about what it is about etc.
Form the White paper I see it uses a swarm network but how does that operate.
As a storage mechanism or differently?
BitTorrent protocol files are divided into pieces and the torrent file is used to check the integrity of the hashes.
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I would say a whale owns at least 1000 BTC
That said the definition of a whale is someone who has a lot of money
By Fiat Standards a whale would be someone who has
300 to 600 BTC to spend in vegas at an exchange rate of $500
1000 BTC in Macau
From Wikipedia
A high roller, also referred to as a whale in the casino industry, is a gambler who wagers large amounts of money. High rollers often receive lavish "comps" from casinos to lure them onto the gambling floors, such as free private jet transfers, limousine use and use of the casinos' best suites. Casinos may also extend credit to a player to continue betting, offer rebates on betting turnover or losses, and salaries of employees may also contain incentive arrangements to bring in high rollers.
The definition of a high roller varies. At Crown Casino in Australia it involves bringing between A$50,000 and $75,000 to the table. High roller players often have very high table limits allowing the high roller exclusive use. Casinos compete on bet limits, in Australia limits of A$300,000 are common, in Las Vegas they are between US$150,000 and $300,000, and in Macau they are up to US$500,000. Only casinos with "substantial financial firepower" can accommodate high-stakes gambling due to the "volatility" of results.
Great post, thanks for justifying your number, but I think you're off a bit. In Macau, Gambling amounted to $24B ( http://www.heritage.org/index/country/macau ), since BTC is only about 1/3 of that, it makes since that whales should be too. So around $167K USD. Or 278 BTC at 1 BTC = $600. 278 BTC doesn't seem to high though considering that we have people with 10K+ BTC in the markets. So perhaps that 278 BTC is only the amount that they actually have invested in alts, in which case, the definition of whales becomes much more strict. Thoughts? In that case I would say that the one person I am really aware of that would classify as a whale besides the early betters on Satoshi Dice would be Nakowa or possbily Celeste from Just Dice who was able to bet up to 1% of the bankroll and created a rule change because to much capital was being moved back and forth  By that definition a whale in Bitcoin would be someone who is capable of making the casino take precautions to lower the risk the house faces by being capable of moving the variance significantly. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=242962.880With around 222 Bitcoins but winning a few times that would be enough to be a whale. |
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Whonix seems very interesting indeed, Whonix is an operating system focused on anonymity, privacy and security. It's based on the Tor anonymity network[1], Debian GNU/Linux[2] and security by isolation. DNS leaks are impossible, and not even malware with root privileges can find out the user's real IP.
Whonix consists of two parts: One solely runs Tor and acts as a gateway, which we call Whonix-Gateway. The other, which we call Whonix-Workstation, is on a completely isolated network. Only connections through Tor are possible
Source: https://www.whonix.org/This will allow some level of anonymity and privacy for tech people, but the mainstream is still left out in the open The article focusses a lot on Tor, which I think is a good but I don't think it's the only method. Tor is a very secure system, but it does have its moments when someone can get in like the FBI with Silk Road. They didn't really break into Tor in that case but caught the person through investigation but it still counts more or less. Still for less technical people tor is a good way to communicate with a relative sense of privacy and security as the article mentioned the super paranoid will have stronger stuff to use . http://www.howtogeek.com/142380/htg-explains-is-tor-really-anonymous-and-secure/ |
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This has been very fun. England, Spain, one of Italy and Uruguay getting out. From the group of death the first qualifier is Costa Rica. I love it when there are upsets Same here this years world cup looks like an interesting one with many teams playing well and several upsets to the rankings. It is becoming much harder to predict who will become the champion although I have a Netherlands Brazil bias still there are other strong teams and unexpected teams who could take this cup. That is Game Ghana 1 and Bosnia Herzegovina 0 |
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I've used the RSI to see if we can expect a new bubble. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) is a momentum oscillator that measures the speed and change of price movements. Just before the last bubbles we had a rise of the RSI above 80 and directly after that we had a drop. After this drop comes the bubble. I'm expecting a top of about $3800 to $4000 because of the symmetrical triangles. Price target of a symmetrical triangle: the widest distance of the symmetrical triangle can be measured and applied to the breakout point  This seems like a viable way to measure relative growth in the index. Btcoin is not really an index the price may follow a similar pattern so it makes for good speculation. I hope the price goes up to in relation to the news of the sale from the FBI and the market reads that sentiment positively. |
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Back onto the article
The article was spot on about the utility of Bitcoin as well and I love his writing style.
Now I realize that there is no big day for Bitcoin; there is a long march of small steps in the direction where it appears to be headed. No one adoption is the key. No one improvement in the protocol is going to make it finally happen. It has to go through a process that includes small steps toward commercial adoption, the building of a producer-side infrastructure, and a slowly dawning public consciousness.
There really is no shortcut we will get there one step at a time.
@ Junko as a curiousity would you accept Bitcoin if one of your patients was willing to use it.
Anyways good article.
Thanks for sharing
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Companies that engineer their products to fail eventually fail themselves. Just take a look at the U.S. auto industry.
Not quite there are several times when a company engineers something to fail but it still gets significant scale This is due to decreasing product quality and the need of a consumer to go buy a replacement. Basically its cheaper in appearance but in reality you pay more than the premium product As Some have said I'm not rich enough to buy cheap http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2009/02/why_i_cant_affo/Example: Home Heating Systems made 30 to 40 years ago still work but the newer models don't work as long and tend to require replacement much sooner. Shavers such as disposable razors where the blades don't last nearly as long as they use to. Printers: I still have a dot-matrix with the side papers and it works but the video shows that new ones break much faster http://www.niyaazenterprises.com/dot-matrix-printer-paper.htmThe lightbulb is a good example though since the older systems can stay on longer as long as the filament is not exposed to air but the weakest link the Glue fails long before the lightbulb would break. I guess I have a soft spot for old school lightbulbs Incandescent light doesn't do any harm to people and even in minute quantities gaseous mercury seems unappealing. LED's are fine with me though but they are a bit more expensive than the incandescent The video looks interesting though but the problem is that people don't repair things as often anymore and just buy new stuff. So combined with Planned obsolescence the second truth is the inflation of repair costs. Example repairing your glasses in Canada and the US costs more due to a monopoly they hold. It was on 60 minutes if anyone wants to look it up. http://wire.kapitall.com/investment-idea/free-press-60-minutes-exposes-eyewear-monopoly-held-by-lux/ |
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I would say 100 Billion dollars would keep the price very stable
The reason is that a movement of 1 billion dollars would not move the price much in relative percentages but perhaps a lot in Fiat terms still.
Kind of a tricky question since mining would still be occurring and it depends on how many Bitcoins still remain in circulation not lost stolen etc.
Due to divisibility.
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This one got my interest since it seems like the smartest way to anonymize
Whonix creates multiple “virtual machines” on the user’s computer—software versions of full computer operating systems that are designed to be indistinguishable from a full computer. Any attacker trying to compromise the user’s computer will be confined to that virtual machine.
Thanks for the share
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I would say a whale owns at least 1000 BTC
That said the definition of a whale is someone who has a lot of money
By Fiat Standards a whale would be someone who has
300 to 600 BTC to spend in vegas at an exchange rate of $500
1000 BTC in Macau
From Wikipedia
A high roller, also referred to as a whale in the casino industry, is a gambler who wagers large amounts of money. High rollers often receive lavish "comps" from casinos to lure them onto the gambling floors, such as free private jet transfers, limousine use and use of the casinos' best suites. Casinos may also extend credit to a player to continue betting, offer rebates on betting turnover or losses, and salaries of employees may also contain incentive arrangements to bring in high rollers.
The definition of a high roller varies. At Crown Casino in Australia it involves bringing between A$50,000 and $75,000 to the table. High roller players often have very high table limits allowing the high roller exclusive use. Casinos compete on bet limits, in Australia limits of A$300,000 are common, in Las Vegas they are between US$150,000 and $300,000, and in Macau they are up to US$500,000. Only casinos with "substantial financial firepower" can accommodate high-stakes gambling due to the "volatility" of results.
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Do you guys think the same thing applies to someone who is 60 years old and nearing retirement?
I'm not 60, but if I were I would be much more conservative. And it would seem awfully risky to put so much of a retirement fund in to such a volatile instrument.
For someone approaching retirement I would personally suggest an annuity Receive a fixed payment for as long as you are alive and there are various products to choose from. That said if they have spare income from the annuity that they do not need to live on a month to month basis investing some of that in Bitcoin would be a good idea after their expenses. The annuity interest rate is a bit low still due to the recession still impacting the bond markets but it is a safer system of payment. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/annuity.asp |
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The poll after the article doesn't make for very good reading: Calgary Poll Question June 19, 2014
Have you used, or would you use, Bitcoin?
Yes 107 (4 %)
No 2278 (96 %)
Total number of votes: 2385 Looks like there's still some educating to be done before we really start to see mainstream use. Good point it sort of reflects Bitcoins current user demographic where there is a small but dedicated user base and the mainstream usage is still a ways off. The adoption is getting there though but slowly but surely is still progress |
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What do you think is the highest amount percentage wise someone should devote to bitcoin in their investment portfolio?
How much is too much? Even for someone who is not risk adverse?
Does age matter?
I would say a conservative approach would be around 5 to 15 percent of ones investment earnings. The aggressive approach would be 20 to 30 percent Amounts higher than this would be considered for those who are not risk averse since their is a chance of it burning you by dropping when you need to take it out. If you have a long duration holding a fair portion of coins is fine though. With the exception your countries currency is in Jeopardy in which case it might make sense to hedge even more. |
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Too bad Ghana did not win. They were winning  Good to see that they fought better than Portugal. I am hoping that they are able to win their bracket with one of their key players getting the second yellow card that will be an interesting game against Portugal which despite their bad luck this cup are a pretty good team. Germany 4 USA 3 Ghana 1 Portugal 0 The next set of matches will decide who makes it to the next round if Ghana wins they secure the second spot. The Winner of Germany USA will decide the first qualified team to make it to the next round. If it is Portugal that wins over Ghana and the USA loses then its difference that will settle the bracket If the USA wins and Germany loses and Ghana wins over Portugal then the difference will settle second place This is an interesting bracket |
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I jumped into mining with a purchase of a $15 AntMiner USB chip. I'm not and never had any belief I'd make much of a profit on it, it was mostly for learning. But I'm wondering if it's even possible to make any profit.
In the short term no in the long term probably also a no but you never know what price Bitcoin will appreciate to If you can get free electricity say at school or at a university then yes it is profitable  But you can use a mining calculator such as this one https://tradeblock.com/mining/ |
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