I find my self wondering more an more whether bitlane and pirateat40 are sock puppets of the same guy.  First bitlane for no real good reason causes a supposed run on pirate's operation forcing him to shut it down.  Next he provides a convenient excuse for pirate to make himself scares due to what appear to be fairly blatant threats.  These two things are actually pretty useful at the end of a Ponzi.  Just say'in.

Actually, let me respond to that to.

If your bet pays off, I'll consider you a visionary AND a if not a dunce, at least quite reckless.  Like someone who tries, and succeeds, in setting a record jumping a motorcycle over more cars than anyone before.

If it turns out that they daredevil is a physics wiz and ran a series of complex computer simulations, specified and tested the mechanical aspects of the ramp, tested his motorcycle's performance in a controlled series of experiments, etc, etc, now I start to develop a fair degree of respect for the guy.  With Bitcoin I do not believe that it is possible to fully analyze many of the more critical factors or even fully predict all of the factors that are and will come into play.  Thus, while I can and do have some respect for someone who goes all-in, I still consider them to be mostly a gambler.  And I tend to have more respect for someone who would do such a thing more out of philosophical or political grounds.

That said, I myself went more or less all-in on PM's.  That was at a time when I had less to lose though, and I never thought that a plausible outcome was to realize a 100% loss whereas I _still_ assume that outcome for my Bitcoin speculation.

I came fairly close to trading some Krugerrands and/or junk silver straight across for Bitcoin in about June of 2011.  I probably would have if I could have easily arranged it.  But it would have been a pretty small fraction of my PM holdings.  Part of the rational here was that I was paranoid about a clamp-down on the exchanges.  The route I went was to convert fiat as it came in to Bitcoin instead.  This turned out to be fortuitous due to the longish duration price drop of BTC and the lack of any legal issues associated with the exchanges.

A theoretical issue is that the money I sent to an exchange is a matter of record in various databases an it could be rationally assumed that I acquired Bitcoin.  But if I were terribly concerned about that I probably would not be blathering on on this forum.

Hard to know for certain since your true thoughts are reserved for people who pay you

We've always been on a similar sheet wrt Bitcoin I think.  I am prone to taking a counter-argument so usually when I talk to someone it is for the sake of disagreeing.  Or just seeking amusement which often comes at the expense of either myself or others.  As I've mentioned before, I think that actually communicating both the pro's and con's of something does that something the best service.  The pro's of Bitcoin (and PM's) are communicated ad-nauseam here.  Unsurprisingly.  I think it is of value to consider the con's as well, or at least not completely ignore or deny them.  Not unlike turning an interesting find over, under, and sideways to try to see it from as many angles as possible.

We are miles apart on Gold yet I think.  I guess we'll have to let time sort that one out.  I remain baffled that someone who went pretty heavily into PM's at one time so completely rejects the most compelling arguments for it today.  Oh well...life is full of mysteries I guess.

I'm not the one who first pointed this out, but a birds-eye view of the price pasterns over the last two years do not really match the more typical scams.  To me it seems to more align with a novel, interesting, and poorly understood opportunity which is evolving and still seeking a rational value point.

I actually don't buy the suggestion that traditional external event play to much of a role in BTC valuations.  Nor that either Bitcoinica nor even the Pirate's thing have as much of an impact as a lot of people seem to think.  The volatility (and for that matter, periods of stability) seem to me to be more or less explainable by the thinness of the market, the mysterious nature of the solution, and by it's continued success insofar as the base solution has not yet been broken.

If one cuts out the previous 30 days the current ~$10 is a pretty promising trend.

The fact that BTC had a bit of an explosion to $15 speaks volumes (to me) that is has very decent potential for high yield by any standards as a speculative investment/bet.

I must add, however, my personal belief that one better be ready to be nimble, and one better be able to understand some fairly technical material in order to maximize one's chance of capitalizing if Bitcoin does indeed take off.

IIRC someone who welched would be labeled a scammer on the forum.  Nobody would risk that for any amount of money would they?  I mean it might take longer to become a forum staff member if one has once worn that label.

Pirate has managed to develop a perception of power (like the United States.)  Though it is hard to know for sure, I suspect that this perception is much greater than his actual capabilities (again, not unlike the United States.)

One thing that is clear, however, is that a perception of great power has a deep psychological effect on a certain class of people and that can be leveraged for a lot of purposes...including robbing them blind.

I doubt that the entire Bitcoin economy would amount to more than a spec of dandruff compared to the haul from just the narcotics operations.  At this point anyway.  Going forward it would surprise me very little if Bitcoin were not able to play a useful role in moving value around, but the Bitcoin economy would have to grow significantly before that were to happen.

On must assume that Mt. Gox cooperates fully with any government investigative body (whether it is the case or not.)

It is also rational to believe that a relatively high amount of activity surrounding the use of Bitcoin involves people who are involved in activity which is of interest to various governmental investigative bodies.

As evidenced by how many people get scammed, it can also be noted that a fair fraction of the users of Bitcoin lack the knowledge or basic native intelligence to utilize Bitcoin in a truly anonymous way no matter what they might be using it for.

These things taken together (with the observation in the OP) give the Bitcoin system and ecosystem the potential, at least, to be a truly remarkable honey-pot.  I often wonder if this is some of the reason Bitcoin has gone on as long as it has without being terribly molested by law enforcement.  Indeed, some of the members of the U.S. legislature who were once vocal in opposition to Bitcoin seemed to have clammed up and even more interestingly it seemed that for a good portion of the previous year a lot of the mainstream coverage of Bitcoin was surprisingly positive...in my reading of it at least.

One of the reason I have a multitude of not only addresses but completely independent wallet files is for flexibility in dealing with a lot of issues which could theoretically crop up.  I wanted a bulk of my holdings planted as deeply in the blockchain as possible.  If transferring value to a new address is the best way to solve a given problem and if it can be done without compromising the value I hold in other chain forks then that is what I might do.  Carefully.

In any event I see it as unlikely to need to worry about any of this stuff to terribly much at this point.

No problem.  That's what God created forks for.

And if the blockchain forks in relationship to a codebase fork I'm cool with that too...as long as it doesn't back-track to half a year ago when I last did a transaction I'll just control the same percentage value in more than one blockchain.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that wouldn't be the first time for you, would it?

Don't get me wrong...I'm glad to see you shook the scammer label which I believe I remember being pinned on your chest, and that you've moved on to your current position here.  I don't think that bitmole was a scammer but do think that he was being flaky and in the wrong on that issue with whatever-his-name-was.

I was in a location with a good network connection a few nights ago when the run-up was occurring and bitcoincharts.com went down.  Switched to clarkmoody which was quite exciting.  Moody's done some good work.

I also used bitcoinity which was an old favorite back when I was accumulating BTC because it was really really useful to watch the details of both Mt. Gox and Tradehill on the same plots and I often got a decent discount by paying attention.  I always sensed that bitcoinity was doing depth charts a little differently than others and they were sometimes more accurate and sometimes less.  But I've not studied it recently.

Now I am mostly on a satellite connection and am sensitive to total data throughput, and the high latencies are not something which most designers test...if they are even aware that such connections exist...which makes a manually refresh the most desirable to me.

Lotsa people probably have no option but to wait for a few days due to the issues of moving fiat into BTC no matter what their preference.

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On a tangent, I feel that the recent action in BTC is highly favorable to an outcome of becoming wealthy from them.  As I've mentioned, if I have no plans to either buy or sell during a window, the price moves within that window are irrelevant.  I've mentioned this with respect to PM's mostly, but it stands just the same for BTC and fit's my situation over the last few days.

The recent action shows several things:

 - outrageous volatility

 - very promising upside potential.

 - the above two in absence of a system failure

 - a price pattern quite unlike at least a Ponzi form of scam

While I continue to expect to realize a 100% loss as a basis for my speculative investment in Bitcoin, the last few weeks have eroded my believe that 100% loss is the most probable outcome and have enhanced my estimate of the chances of a jackpot outcome (which I define as $1000's/BTC.)

I think the last few weeks also illustrate that in terms of choosing a vehicle for simple storage of wealth, gold and Bitcoin are really not good replacements for one another at this time.  I find it hard to imagine a rational investment adviser counseling to have a nest-egg in something as volatile as Bitcoin no matter what it's other pros and cons.  On the other hand, I'm getting to the point where I would advocate it as a reasonable speculative gamble for other people who have a situation similar to my own.

A slight issue is that if Pirate is a scammer and is running a scam, he almost certainly would not be above fudging a bit.

In fact a lot of the types of people who would be prone to being scammed in this way would likely have considerable awe in someone wielding the power of {a large number} of coins and it would tend to install CONfidence in them.  They also might feel a strong sense of loyalty since Pirate was using his vast accumulation of power to the collective benefit of the group.

But...if he is fudging his numbers high (and has a fewer number to buy back thus weakening the OP's point) then he is a scammer and there would be very little reason to give anything back at the end of the Ponzi.

Turk has his well rehearsed talking points and rarely much more in my observation.

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On a slight tangent, I was on a long drive recently and trying to think up ways to describe Bitcoin.  I've always advocated formally (whatever that means in the Bitcoin world) the term 'money' when talking about Bitcoin for a few reasons.  Here's my description which takes the form of a comparison:

 - Fiat:  A centrally managed accounting system backed by the law.

 - Bitcoin:  A distributed accounting system backed by cryptography/mathematics.

 - Gold (physical):  A distributed accounting system backed by physics.

I wonder if Turk would or could grok that?  I've always held that Bitcoin and gold are so close to one another when contrasted with fiat that for a lot of conversations they can be considered identical.

I personally am in no hurry to see the general public use Bitcoin.  In my opinion it would be bad for both the public and for Bitcoin at this point in the existence of both, and there is no particular need on the part of the general public as long as the current monetary solutions are reasonably functional.  I note that in spite of the supposed technical savvy of the current Bitcoin user-base, the magnitude weighted rate of the victimization in our community is notably higher than under more mainstream systems.

If Bitcoin can provide a demonstrably usable alternative to more traditional systems (e.g., fiat or PM's) that is to me one of the bigger wins, and it is on track to do this to a reasonable degree.  So, everything is chipping along just fine at this point as far as I am concerned.

We start out in a similar boat time-wise.  A driving force for me was paranoia that the exchanges would be clamped down on which was unfortunate because it induced me to buy faster than I would have otherwise.

I kept buying all the way down and would have made one more purchase if we saw sub $2.00.  We never did and Tradehill went down and sent my money back which was a natural stepping off point.

Dabbled with Bitcoinica for fun and got really really lucky, but since I didn't have much on the line the haul was minimal and I gave it to charity.

I always assumed a 100% loss and in fact I still do.  If I were fortunate enough to cash out I figured it would be years from when I started.  So sitting on my hands has been mentally quite easy for me.  At $15 I was up 3x.  Even if we do hit any of my anticipated cash-out points I expect some significant downturns prior.

I was never keen to have any of my assets under counter-party risk so I never held more fiat than I needed for near-term use at an exchange, and when I started the only exchange which had had a problem was Mt. Gox.  OTOH, I always funded with wire transfers and the larger the funding block, the lower the percentage I paid for that part of the transaction.  So it was always a balancing game.

I choose the position I wanted (which was a function of how low the price got), achieved it, cold-stored my loot, and have not traded since.  So now I can just sit back and enjoy the ride no matter what direction it takes me.  Until we get to points where I expect to back some of it out at least...if we ever get to those points.