It seems obvious that the new accounts won't be in a big hurry to buy; after the drop they'll be hoping to get coins cheaper.  So price will be determined significantly by current coin owners.  Will they sell it down or enforce this price as the minimum?  The next few days will illuminate whether whether this was a correction or a bubble.  If current owners do not value their coins at all medium to long term we'll see attempts to sell into reluctant new accounts -- the bubble drop into "capitulation".  But if owners value the fundamental advantages of bitcoin then we'll see stable or gradually increasing prices.

you might be able to make something out of gold (and other stuff) that proves that it has remained "on" by its progress through a very difficult  blockchain-like (but deterministic) calculation that is then encrypted using public/private key to ensure the no other entity is doing the calculation, but allowing you to verify at any time the progress.  The private key could be microscopically patterned with gold by using some kind of deposition process that is out-of-spec so there would be a 50% chance (a bit) of it working or not.  So nobody would ever know the private key.  But care would have to be taken so the private key is not recoverable using an electron microscope.  Presumably since the gold is the wires in the ASIC that is doing the calculation, you can't shave it.  This is essentially science fiction right now...

Although its hard to do an update at this time, perhaps now is also when it is most valuable.

the silverbox update (comparison from the beginning of this thread, March 13th, 2012, gold=1690, nasdaq=3055, Bitcoin=5.4):
Bitcoin is 71.90.  Gold is 1525.00.  Nasdaq is 3300.00
Bitcoin: 1231.48%
Gold:    -9.76%
Nasdaq:  8.02%
Gold Diff:  1376% advantage Bitcoin and Shrinking
Nasdaq Diff:  1133% advantage Bitcoin and Shrinking


This thread was started in the period of stability after first bubble popped.  If you had invested then, your investment has outperformed gold and stocks by over 10 times!  And if you had invested at the "bottom" (around $2) you would be looking at 20x returns!  In less then 2 years. 

Bitcoin is on an exponential adoption curve.  This is so exciting that it periodically gets ahead of itself.  Way ahead.  Don't beat yourself up for not selling near the top... if you had done so you would essentially have been simply taking that money from new investors, rather then due to a fundamental growth in Bitcoin.  I guess the consolation prize for feeling guilty is being rich :-).  But since you are reading a thread about gold, I'm guessing long term investment not trading is a major part of your strategy; don't lose sight of that now.

A thought for those who are showing a paper loss -- for those who bought during this bubble:  You have a decision.   You can sell and take a real loss, reducing your portfolio diversification, taking a position in an inflating currency, and losing any chance of taking advantage of the volatility next time.  Or you can keep your money in bitcoins, recognizing its significant volatility on top of exponential growth.  If you had bought at the very top of the last bubble you'd be up over 100% right now.  Or see this as a buying opportunity.  Personally I don't see the choice as difficult.

And finally, a note about the future... during the last bubble people really thought that it was "the end of bitcoin".  Today, there is that history to look back on.  And people will look back on it and make investment decisions accordingly.  This is clearly not the end; there is life after a bubble.  In fact the Bitcoin story is still just beginning.

here's some short term bullish news:  Clark moody is showing bids above 5 to be 411k coins! (I just use 5 because that was a long period of stability).  This is the by far the highest I've ever seen it. Typical values for this stat is half that, 200 to 240k coins... so people may have sold, but they didn't cash out -- many are clearly looking to get back in at a lower position.

You can fork from github and build... its not hard on ubuntu.  There are some deps tho so read the readme in the repo.  https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin

What a loser.  We hear this every time we innovate.  "Yes innovation and engineering is good.  But my field is special; you not capable of understanding it.  So go do your engineering thing somewhere else." 

We ALWAYS engineer in someone else's "space".  You think musicians loved the record player?  Funny thing is... soon it becomes our space.  I think unconsciously they know that.

That would be me... guessing where the price would be 15 minutes ahead of time.   But I can't complain.  I sold higher.

People, please keep in mind that a pullback is what the some investors are waiting for... to let exuberance pop.  The fundamental value and promise that underlies Bitcoin remains strong.  So hang onto your coins!

looks like the DDOS is here, flash crash to come soon... hope you put in your bids!  Last chance for coins below 250...

Wow!  Leave you guys for 18 hours...

the silverbox update (comparison from the beginning of this thread, March 13th, 2012, gold=1690, Bitcoin=5.4):
Bitcoin is 240.11.  Gold is 1585.00
Bitcoin: 4346.48%
Gold:    -6.21%
Diff:  4641% advantage Bitcoin and Growing

Nope... bummer huh?  flying on the company's dime.

yes, for all you newbies looking at this and the "crash" the media reported last week, think about trying to trade this.  For example, you could sell at the ATH, and keep the money in USD with a bid trailing the ATH by (say) 10%.  But if you do that, you miss the normal weekly runup, in this case from $140.  So this catch-the-dip strategy nets you half the profit as buy-and-hold.  But the risk profile of fiat-on-exchange is pretty similar to btc-on-exchange so the risk reduction is not worth the profitability loss.  And traders can't reliably react to a dump (sell then buy) due to the lag.

Of course, people can use their intuition and knowledge of fiat bank transfers to make informed guesses and narrowing this profitability gap.  But that is hard and ultimately devolves into guesswork rather then a strategy.

tl;dr; these dips happen because its more profitable to buy-and-hold then to sell-early-to-fiat-and-catch-the-dip.

West coast USA getting to work in an hour; a risky time to attempt the flash crash trick.  The runup from 18x to 19x today occured right around east coast 9:30:10:30 am.  But with this lag west coast may not be able to actually trade until tomorrow   so maybe its actually an evil clever plan!

Wow... recommend you sign up for another exchange as well.  You may pay a couple % more due to lack of liquidity but getting in sooner will likely be worth it.

Good Morning East Coast USA!!!  Gold down, bitcoin ATH!!!

the silverbox update (comparison from the beginning of this thread, March 13th, 2012, gold=1690, Bitcoin=5.4):
Bitcoin is 190.00.  Gold is 1575.00
Bitcoin: 3418.52%
Gold:    -6.80%
Diff:   3675% advantage Bitcoin and Growing


(PS: I'm very happy for others to post the updates as well.  Esp tomorrow as I will be flying to San Fran)

Given that rpietila claims a bunch of ATH buys, I'm guessing he meant "never see coins that cheap again..."

At long last:

the silverbox update (comparison from the beginning of this thread, March 13th, 2012, gold=1690, Bitcoin=5.4):
Bitcoin is 160.00.  Gold is 1582.00
Bitcoin: 2862.96%
Gold:    -6.39%
Diff:   3065% advantage Bitcoin and Growing

That's right, if you sold your gold and bought bitcoin you now have THIRTY TIMES the buying power of the goldbug who held...
To steal a Smoothie move, I'd just like to ask "how does it feel?" 

And friday was a big day for gold rallying almost 30 bucks... was that just a blip?  If we use the friday gold low and the bitcoin high of 162.50, the advantage increases to 3171%

Sorry!  Always around but often unable to get on a real comp to run the script... Maybe I can set it up as an appengine so u can run it too

yeah there's 11.8 million in bids and who knows how much off the wall.  As soon as these people realize that the weekend dip won't happen they'll be coming in.

Like all other goldbugs he seems to ignore the validation/ counterfeit detection time that would be required to actually use PMs as a daily currency.  The time value required to execute the validation of PM coins on every transaction would be significantly higher then the purchase of a smart phone (or other bitcoin capable device).

And he also conveniently steers the conversation to address only face-to-face transactions as if that is a absolutely necessary component for a currency.  Even if PMs (or fiat) were solely used for face-to-face (and here he completely ignores the PM divisibility problem) BTC could be incredibly successful in the "niche" market that includes every online transaction, every international remittance, and every B2B deal (like a retailer-distributor-factory supply chain), etc.  At the same time, the progression of technology does imply that a vast majority of available money will be owned by people carrying BTC capable portable devices in the near future (if not already).

ARRG!     Link or it didn't happen!!!