This be awesome!!!

True, the quick retarget makes things very difficult. I can see ways to take advantage of this, but it would have to take a significant resource. At the same time, we don't want the network hash to grow too low also. But I'm not overly concerned about that. Honestly, I like the trajectory that NOBLE is taking.

This is a nice thing, but at the same time, it functions as a double-edged sword. Hopefully, this notability assists more in propping up the network rather than diluting NOBLE with an artificially high hash rate with the intent of pure profit.

Quite the optimist eh? So you're valuing WDC at $2.5B? Any particular reasons, fundamentals, etc? Just curious.

From what I can gather from reading this thread (and the articles), it seems that you can have BTC and sell it on something like Coinbase for USD, or you can use it to make purchases on sites that accept BTC. But you can't sell BTC to another person as you would be functioning as a form of money transmitter which in that technical legal mumbo-jumbo makes sense. Is there somebody that can confirm the veracity of these statements or am I way off base?

If I am reading this correctly, then where does gifting BTC fall under? Additionally, if you traded BTC for something like an alt-currency without the use of a regulation-compliant exchange where does that fall under?

This is where we need to find a richer teenager to destroy the living crap out of this first teenager, and we too can say that he had Affluenza.

Then again, we could just use common sense in society. But we wouldn't want that because we don't want to be thought of as "common" or some bull like that...

I loved how you could get them for 1 satoshi a few days before it was listed on Cryptsy and then sell them for 30 satoshi when it hit Cryptsy. Good times, good times...

Understandable, I guess the trickiest thing is which global economies can cryptocurrencies penetrate further in to. It's hard to say really. The biggest issue is that cryptocurrencies need direct inflow to support market caps. I could imagine market caps continuing to grow, but to reach $1 Trillion would require Y/Y growth of nearly 100% for the next ten years. That's really a lot for any starting cap, more or less for a cap already in the billions.

Whoa! $1 Trillion? I need to see that analysis. That's nearly 5% of the US M2 estimate in 2024. And that's nothing to sneeze at...

Could you provide a link to that analysis? I'm very intrigued to how such a high number was obtained...

I personally do a proportional thing where I dedicate the amount of hashing power needed to meet operating costs + 33% to a multipool where I cash out regularly and use what I cash out for operations + some play money. With my remaining hashing power, roughly half goes to coins that I have feel have strong fundamentals and are good long term, and the other half goes to speculative mining endeavors.

It's worked very well for me thus far. Of course, YMMW...

This shake-up with Scharmbeck was really quite the impact. There is a similar feel to when the UNOCS issue happened, but to me, this feels a good bit heavier...But there is still a fairly strong community of users/supports so this storm might be weathered.

I think this is really cool for informative purposes. But for in-use practice, maybe a minute-by-minute update I think is too much (for most consumers that is), maybe like every 10 minutes (to match block creation rate ) or something. Your average shopper doesn't want to get an item, then checkout only to realize that the price has gone up (obviously though, they wouldn't mind if it went down).

I wholeheartedly agree. Uncertainty can be very deadly for some markets. It's best to let the bad news occur, the quick market action to take place, and then if the fundamentals and community is there, it can start to rebound.

Scary thing is that this may be harder to recover from and it might cause long-term downward pressure on the prices of WDC.

Yeah, that state ban, and I think there was one more story. It was like four negative stories in a matter of less than two days. Those kinds of things will definitely drive down price. Because it's all about perception.

Gotta love the speculation section. And the hope for huge crashes.

Anyhow, I say it's very unlikely that we'll see $500. But hell, you never know. We've already got 3-4 price sinking stories. Maybe a few more and who knows...

I think it is a double-sided publicity stunt personally. It first gets tech media attention since it's an "unusual" step for a significant retailer; and secondly it gets the attention of Bitcoin users and generates some quick revenue for the retailer. So yes, it is a publicity stunt, but I don't think it's only a publicity stunt; there is a likelihood of some alignment with business strategy.

Media affects price because it is one of the few things that reaches a broad audience. And humans, as much as we try, are psychological by nature. That being said, I still think there are some fundamentals other than news/media that drive price, but it acts more as a stabilizing factor rather than a driving force with price.

Do have to say, the issues with Mt. Gox have also affected price too (that's why there is a much smaller spread between it and the other major exchanges). Apple is powerful, but I don't think it was the only thing that caused this price swing; after all, just yesterday the Gox price shrank quickly driving the other exchanges down a little too.

Thank you for the clarification. I wasn't sure of the scope what they would want to use data-based ledgers for. I should have been clearer. Yes, I definitely see it being beneficial for verifying purchases of physical items using a digital means. I just wasn't sure if they were also implying using this type of safeguard for purely digital goods too. The way I read it made it seem like that.

Hm. Three days and still silent. Are people with WDC holding a bag? That'd be quite unfortunate...

In either case, this greatly affects the fundamentals of WDC and it's market value. With all of the new coins that are coming out, this may be something that WDC might never be able to recover from.

Some people would say that running away from stocks is economically ignorant. And honestly, there is truth in that. But only to a degree.

The "system" is built so that economies inflate. Because of that, if the amount of money you have is stagnant (i.e. you hide it under your mattress), you really are losing money as your spending power deflates. One of the best ways to mitigate that is by investing in something that either meets or exceeds the rate of inflation. And as it stands, one of the "safest" ways to mitigate that is by investing in stocks (however, investing in just one stock bring a lot of risk; so either having a portfolio, or using some sort of mutual fund or something mitigates a lot of that risks).

That being said, if you have an equivalent asset or contract that functions the same way, then you're not falling behind the curve. And I feel that Bitcoin serves as something that is equivalent.