Keep at it.

Some graph analysis people might be able to find irregularities, even in coin mixing services, that can be tracked. Also, it would be good if exchanges comment whether any target addresses proven dirty are theirs.

I never had a wallet with them, but that doesn't make me a bit less angry about it. Tracking down these MyBitcoin operators would make a good example and possibly reduce the incentive for fraud. It's a real service to all of us.

These people are the real enemies of the Bitcoin community. Get them!

Welcome to the EU government bonds market.

Bankrupt countries pay back bonds by printing new bonds. Last buyers: bag holders.

I really wouldn't want to play the game they're currently starting. EUR inflation is at its limit before a feedback may hit all bond interest rates, however, Italy and Spain are at the limit of destabilizing their rates because their finances are too bad. Now the ECB tries to buy just the right amount with newly printed money to walk the edge. But with each further mistake or inefficiency of the participating governments, the path grows narrower. And these "inefficiencies" might even be of short-time advantage for the governments in question, possibly causing a Tragedy of the Commons in which the debt increases further.

An attempt to solve the problem with printing money. No, I really wouldn't want to play it like that. These people are either too good at this for me to understand their plan, or they're just not giving a shit anymore. My guess is the latter, politicians never gave a shit before.

Let's see who the bag holders will be. According to interest rates, the market does not consider banks any safer and has already switched from making profit to limiting losses. Some big deals have negative yields even before inflation is factored in.

Might be a "bear trap". If confidence is strong, a sell-off will bounce back first, and only start a decline after the slightly more hesitant buyers are also depleted.

We often had these, most notably on the 32 and 25 double-peaks of the bursting bubble in June, but also in the "first sell-off" phase, which featured a drop but still led to the all-time high in the end.

I think it's a sign of instability; day-traders don't function the normal way in such situations, thus it can happen. AFAIK a few bots still profit from the small-scale volatility though, even right now.

Even though my option is in there, I don't think it's good to answer before all the options are in. Screws up the statistics. Many people still expect prices above 7, and I don't claim it impossible either, just less likely.

lol @ air-to-ground

Good job on the short. I was being hesitant to sell, it seems that cost me money.

I smell mania. That's a down-signal for me, because it only pays for bids until things go sideways for the first time.

We had almost 2 months of rallies. A step down wouldn't hurt. Another instant rally would take us back into bubble territory, and what's the point of that? Everybody has made this experience by now, it's unlikely to repeat itself.

So you would buy long-term bonds on the government of Italy below 7% interest? Then, by all means, do it.

It is not a good idea to construct any kind of money-printing feedback to government debt. How do you think the hyper-inflations happened? It was people constructing exactly this kind of genius plan, getting deadlocked into a position that produces ever-increasing amounts of paper with funny numbers on it.

The ECB model before 2008 was good. Don't go blame it for the "government==people" crew who considers creating trillions of dollars of debt a good plan. IMO, the ECB should cease buying bonds and return to doing its job. The people should focus on keeping public order and let the crappy governments implode. They are guilty of this debt crisis, not the banks or the Euro, and no amount of fancy blaming changes that.

Edit: before anyone starts screaming, I am aware some banks will disintegrate in the crisis, and I consider that acceptable. If the defaults are properly executed, people should still get a decent fraction of their accounts' contents.

I generally agree with your sentiment, but this statement makes no sense. What the heck is a "meta-currency"? IMO, the Wired guy who invented the term doesn't know himself. Generally, the article is an abomination, I'd be too ashamed to leave the house again after writing such nonsense. Genjix wrote a nice blog post on it, still too nice in my opinion though, but it saved me the hassle of typing rage-posts.

Anyway: by the given reasoning, the USD is one hell of a "meta-currency". Almost everyone uses it to quickly exchange into something else.

That's your interpretation, but not how I think and IMO not reasonable.

Trying to do just any economic trading platform, even just planning it, on a market worth less than 1M USD is such a strange idea, it should be apparent why I would call sub 0.1 prices absurd.

Prices above 1k USD in the future are based on the assumption that Bitcoin will become a real, large currency. First of all, this is a probabilistic statement, and today's value gets scaled down to a maximum of the inflation-corrected expected value times the probability of the scenario happening. Moreover, reaching the value assumes public acceptance of the scenario, or some other infinite supply to support the claim.

This is an assumption so bold, one might also call it absurd. Few people really understand the significance of Bitcoin, those are not necessarily able to buy in for large sums right away, and even those who are will probably not even remotely go all-in because of the risk involved. These effects are self-strengthening, since one speculator will not want to rely on the bubble-like state of being backed only by other speculators.

Surely, I use past prices as reference, so that I can roughly correlate indicators of market size with price, volume and whatever comes with the hype cycles. But the price of 7 is not an arbitrary value, and I'm fairly convinced it is currently closer to a healthy equilibrium than 2 USD or 20 USD.

Of course, a single indicator of change can massively affect what prices are reasonable. Surely, the numbers can jump by a factor 4 or so from a single event. If the Android market were to start officially accepting Bitcoin, I would consider 7 absurdly low the next moment.

In my book, it means that the market is small enough to go wild despite the recent experience, just by people pushing volume up. If the rally stays on exponential track and no indicator seems to justify the hike, I classify this as an echo bubble and sell at certain price points. So far, I only sold small amounts, because I always expected higher prices than just 3 USD. But that doesn't mean I'm comfortable with a doubling every few weeks.

I see myself as a speculator doing his proper job, namely stepping in when prices go absurd. I'm probably not the only such person. Whoever wants to push back to 20 right away should expect some resistance -- it just doesn't seem reasonable yet. The high volume shows this resistance.

I don't want to use more than one cryptocurrency that is based on limited supply. The reason is simply that the instabilities created between them damage the idea as a whole, such as the natural monopoly taken by one possibly resulting in a devaluation of the other.

Litecoin is such a minimal modification to Bitcoin that one should discuss altering the Bitcoin block frequency instead of forking the project. True, the generation curve is a little better -- but IMO, they should have gone all the way and left out the minting cuts in the first place. On the long run, it's not different from Bitcoin, and on the short run it's preferable to not migrate away from Bitcoin.

Namecoin merges a problem into the block chain that doesn't belong there.

Strongcoin appears to be broken by design.

Bitcoin is the way to go, and right now, I really see no project that comes close to being worth the overhead of switching. Most competition is just an attempt to be an early adopter.

Beat you! 2560x1440. Gotta love that new Samsung PLS panel.

Apart from that, I want to implement the Bitcoin killer app and acquire a master's degree simultaneously. Admittedly, that packs my schedule pretty tight until 2013.

drink --> post

Mt. Gox is a commercial exchange, why would you expect it to open the moment a program appears on some crypto mailing list? Also, capital letters and punctuation exist for a reason.



Anyways: Happy Birthday, Block Chain!

This is not how speculation works. If the number of Bitcoin users does keep rising and the current price does not yet reflect this, it is a logical consequence for speculators to buy up Bitcoins now and sell them to the newcomers later.

Of course, I am aware there are many crazy people around who will just do whatever strange move for whatever reason. If they only like trends, such as in the bubble, we might see pointless over- and under-valuations caused by maniacs again.

Still, I won't forget that Bitcoins are not just some fancy item. They're the #1 payment technology of the day. There's just nothing that compares when it comes to automated payment. We have a reason to be enthusiastic.

I don't think it's that simple. It was rising exponentially for quite a while before it popped, and it stabilized halfway up. Don't forget that exponential growth means exponential returns, so selling everything instantly is not always the best tactic.

I'm not rich enough to make sharp bets, so I sell small amounts in exponential steps unless I notice some indicator info that helps. That means that my selling volume goes with log price increase, and my returns grow heavily on the more extreme movements. In the June bubble, the erratic market movements and mania triggered me to stop and sell everything. But right now, I'm not so certain. After all, Bitcoin fundamentals were far better than a price of 2 or 3 USD, and I can't guess them to factor 2 precision. So I don't really see an opening for a bold move of mine, since it can still go either way.

Especially: look at the volume. This is not a simple repetition of the last bubble, the BTC volumes are extraordinarily high *and* people are more aware of the issue.

TL;DR: Don't know what to make of this. Some mania has returned, but Bitcoins can become quite valuable, so I don't know what to think.

Oh, it seems I missed out on something. That's cool! A good container coin to buy as physical but stay close to market price, it's exactly what was missing! I'll probably order some when they're out.

Oh, okay. So the recipient field is "just" not coded such that I can see the full list of recipients? Strange.

Sorry about the ruckus, I removed all the details from the first post and answered you on PM.

@admins: maybe the recipient display needs some attention, might be worth annoying the forum devs for a moment.

Edit: I first thought the message was not intended for me, but I guess it was according to the sender.

I received a message from that shows a user different from my own as the recipient. I guess that confused me.

Should I see that, a recipient other than myself? Strange.

He didn't say it would go to minus infinity today.

There was a point in stopping the bear trolling back when the bust was on, but right now there's really no reason to go against people with either opinion. Bitcoin fundamentals are good, but the rise is faster than the market catches up, so both sides have a point.

I was in on slowing down Edward's bearishness back in the bust, but now that things have turned I don't see a reason to do so. It's good to have a variety of opinions.

The above post and the target of the link are typographically broken, mostly by basic mistakes, such as missing spaces after punctuation and not using the forum's hyperlink feature. Likewise, spelling mistakes such as "have a nce day", which the browser displays on typing.

Not a good start to get quality bloggers on board.