Thx for your analysis (and for changing your screen name to something which doesn't make one think you are a clownish adolescent until proven otherwise...)

I try to understand China as best I can as they are obviously major players on the world stage and destined to become more so.  This story appearing as it does where it does is indeed a very interesting development.  I'm not sure that I can attach any particular significance to it in a high confidence way just yet.  But it is certainly a development worth watching.

It is tempting to write off the OP's rosy analysis as becoming invalid since we have yet to see a sharp rise in BTC valuations (in light of the infamous volatility.)  But I remember back to when I became actively interested and chose a number of BTC I wished to control.  It still took me some number of weeks to understand the in's and out's of various systems needed to acquire BTC.  So, if this story opens up a flood of demand, I would not necessarily expect it to hit for a few weeks.

It is also worth note that Bitcoin is nothing new in Asia.  A certain fraction of those who were most pre-disposed to get in probably did so some time ago.

Right idea, but note that crypto-currency regulation itself is pretty fungible.

The same effect can be had more quickly and safely by actively embracing off-chain transactions and alternate crypto-currencies.  In fact, a lot of organizations may be more quick to jump on the band-wagon if they had a crypto-currency of their own.

I worry that no crypto-currency will be able to be a truly competitive player while trying to fit the 'jack of all trades' roll.  That is to say,

 - A solution with faster confirmations may eat Bitcoin's lunch for much real-world activity.

 - Bitcoin has already effectively given up on 'micro-transactions'.

 - Bitcoin is developing complex transactions suitable for contracts, but at the expense of significant internal complexity, and with complexity comes risk.

 - As a 'digital gold', I personally and I think a lot of other people are not going to be satisfied if the blockchain and mining becomes ever more consolidated to large players who must rely on commercial infrastructure.

I see few disadvantages and a lot to win by letting go the 'one world currency' fantasy that a lot of people seem to have for Bitcoin.  It makes me think back to the old tale about "the fisherman's wife."

It was a genuine 'lol' when I read it.  And nice work on hitting the bottom if hindsight indicates that that is indeed the case.  I had to double-down more times than I could count to achieve the nicety back in the late 2011 timeframe.  Seem in retrospect like it might have been one of my better moves.

I cannot see the ATM thing being much of a factor frankly.  The technology and originality is ho-hum and the real issues are the same as any other major player...regulation.  To top it off, the people involved seem like barely-post-pubescent shysters.

I'm not really convinced that we are even in a bear market vs. just being run-of-the-mill volatility in Bitcoin-land coupled (or associated) with rampant manipulation.  Could see this as a down-blip in the run-up from the 2011 bear bottom to who knows where.  Or it is possible that this is the start of a bear which will end when almost everyone has given up hope.  Like last time.

What ya got there?  A BFL mining rig prototype?

If I operated a part of a crypto-currency infrastructure and someone could demonstrate conclusively that a targeted amount of data from my logs would help expose a person (or group) who was clearly engauged in activities which I strongly disagreed with (CP being a good example) I would very likely cooperate.

It would not surprise me of real criminals actually found it more difficult to operate reliably within a p2p infrastructure than to operate in today's corp/gov controlled one.

FWIW, I was joking about changing my vote to yes (or wishing to if I were not lazy.)  On the other hand, voting 'no' in the first place was a bit of a joke as well.

The Bitcoin Foundation itself has been something of a joke(-ish type thing) in my mind for a while and to say the honest truth I actually could barely give a shit about who's who in the organization.  The thing is so opaque that it is not very possible to form a valid opinion anyway.

I do believe that someone's profits are likely in the top-most level of what is important to these guys, and that probably means high BTC values.  It's just a matter of figuring out the strategy and timings of BCF's operations and figure out how that translates into actions which will maximizing my profit.  On the BTC I choose to sell at least.

As I see it, there are two types who hold BTC:

 - geeks, garden variety crooks, hard working miners

 - VC and hedge-fund types (e.g., the Winkle-twins.)

The fruit is much more loosely attached to the first tree.

So, if I have a _lot_ of BTC, but want more, I'll go to the visible source of liquidity (read Mt. Gox) to do my operations.  Firstly I would put in a bunch of bids.  Next I would do some monster sells to try to get an avalanche going.  Of course I would mix in some suitably timed news stories, lawsuites, DDOS, and the like as well.

A lot of the coins I lost in the monster sells I would have bought right back from myself in the various bids.  Also, of course, a lot of the BTC shaken loose from panic stricken armatures.  Sure I might pay some fee to the exchange, but that's chump-change.

The trouble happens when other people of my caliber are playing the same games.  They could do what I refer to as 'eating my lunch'.  I shake the tree and they pick up the fruit.  Thus, everyone (who is anyone) is better off to engage in some amount of collusion to coordinate operations.

I got it no problem.  Watched about half, but it was one of the most tedious things I've ever seen.  I basically did something else mostly before killing it.

I kept thinking of that Southpark "aaand, it's gone" episode whenever I envisioned actually feeding either money or BTC into the thing.

Devil's advocate:  being a 'peer' in the 'p2p' network is analogous to putting up an antenna.

Internet carriers seems rational and potentially covered by the law.  Careful what you wish for, though, because it could be formed into an argument to force carriers to actively monitor and filter traffic.

An interesting hypothetical.

If I were Karpeles (in this situation assuming it model reality) I'd be sending a message from Japan along the lines of "Suck my big liquidity stick."  I'm guessing that other source of liquidity have developed at this point, but Marks taps into the distributed and un-savy pool which is still probably where the richest BTC ore is to be found.  Not only does Mt. Gox have this advantage, but also a certain amount of isolation from the direct influence of the US regulatory millstones.  I'd guess he probably has the upper hand were all-out war to break out.

For my part, I had been looking forward to working through Coinlab (if/when I needed to in order to dump some BTC.)  I now would prefer Mt. Gox though I'll be keenly interested as the gaps in our (us plebs) understanding of what's going down get filled in.

Funny how you are now embracing the OWS people.  Libertarians had nothing but scorn and derision for these folks when they would not, en mass, move to you favorite crypto-currency solution.  (I don't remember you in particular, but that was my strong sense from the more hard-core Libertarians when this stuff was going down.)

BTW, you think that somehow BTC holders and not going to use 'violence' against the poor saps who didn't get them some back in the day?  I fail to see a particularly big distinction between Bitcoin and any other form of wealth in this respect frankly.  The only real distinction I can see is that Bitcoin has (and will probably lose) the potential for the 'have not's to use 'violence' right back.

I see.  Since I find your bizarre assertion that everything which effect you negatively is 'violence' amusing, that means that I Love Big Brother.

Having some priorities in common, I've 'worked with' Libertarians enough over the years to understand how that makes perfect sense...to you...

edit: add word.

Try this:

A strip mine is used as a repository for undesired fill dirt.  Eventually a nice set of vegetation grows and it's a decent place be and is obtained as a public green-space.

Years later, it is found that someone dumped a stash of offending material in the pit before it was filled.  Everyone who uses the park comes within 300 feet of the stuff, and it would be possible for someone to dig a tunnel and actually look at it.

What to do?  Make the park off-limits and prosecute anyone who walks in it?  Tear out the park to find and destroy the offending material?  Ignore what is obviously a non-issue?

I suspect that if occupy-wallstreet started using the park it would be obvious to the authorities, media, etc, that making the park off-limits would be the thing to do.

All this weird hangup-type nonsense about 'violence' had me confused for a while.  Now I get it!

  Q:  What is a Libertarian?
  A:  An Anarchist who got picked on in school.

(c'mon...I'm only at '7-11 ignores')

Wow.  BTC down to $86.  Harshest of tokes!

Gold looks like it's toying with $1500 again at least.  Nice to be diversified.

~sipa says (on the dev irc channel) that the registrant 'Martti Malmi' is ~sirius.

Wasn't ~sirius the guy who ran it when the zero-day cosbycoin hack happened and he handed it over to ~theymos who had somewhat better sys-admin skills?  I wonder if he decided he wanted it back?  Presumably it's worth some bucks.

Noted also that ~theymos did an AMA on reddit recently.  Almost as if he wanted to gain some support for retaining a userbase or something.

I wonder if the course relationships (seemingly) demonstrated by ~vess and ~magicaltux are rubbing off?

Another line:

Coinlab realized (after the FINCEN guidance came out which, iirc, came the announcement but not by much) that it was going to be costly and risky since it was clearly just some opening volleys in the abuse yet to come.  Mark and Peter still needed to give their investors/friends something and what these people want are BTC (being late to the party and finding themselves sucking hind tit to a bunch of geeks and garden variety criminals.)  So they engineer a bubble collapse calculated to shake out the highest number of BTC.  The rather questionable figure of $75M seems a bit pulled from the air which lends some strength to the admittedly far-fetched hypothesis.

Does this end with ~vess going up the river to Tokyo and hacking ~magicaltux with a machete?

Changed my mind (but to lazy to change my vote.)  The guy is costing me money.  Take a hike ~vess!

And as for the update, thanks for nothing!