Oops.  Read 'silverbox'.

To your point though, I cannot see how any thinking silver bug would give two shits about Bitcoin.  The Bitcoin market is so dwarfed by the silver market (which itself is pretty thin) that Bitcoin interest will have about zero effect on Bitcoin silver.  (As I suspect you realize, however, the opposite is highly different...)

That said, the rare instances when I've run across a silver bug (with the exception of our friend silverbox) I'm not sure that there are many 'thinking' ones.  So maybe you've got a point after all.

edit: fix

Why?  I always figured that the guy had a footprint in Bitcoin else why would he be here?

"Participating in ownership of transfer of Bitcoin is aids and abets terrorism, threatens national security, and the perpetrator is classified as an enemy combatant in the global war on terror and is treated according to current protocols on the matter."

I may or may not need to remind people that currently in the US 'enemy combatants' no matter what their nationality and location are subject to extra-judicial actions up to and including execution.

There will probably be a golden window where very few people understand Bitcoin and are involved in it.  That could be the best opportunity for a severe clampdown as the vast majority of the population would buy any story-line (particularly after a few false-flag events) and very few families would have a family member who was neutralized.

In spite of my paranoid ramblings on this topic, I think it unlikely that things will get 'that bad' and indeed it is likely that nothing will happen at all.  But if I were charged with the engineering challenge quashing Bitcoin in a no-holds-barred type of way, I think that would be the most effective way to do it.  We (the US) already have the infrastructure in place for such operations after all, and since building up the infrastructure has been politically costly I am guessing that there was an offsetting reason for getting things set up.

'Parity' to me means 1kg gold per BTC.  That's a rough approximation of what I believe Bitcoin could and should be worth under certain ideal circumstances.  But believing that something could/should be worth {x} does not necessarily make it so and I'm not expecting to realize such a ratio.  Ever.  Always happy to be surprised though.

This thing is starting to look like a run-away train to me.

My theory of large cap parties managing a controlled increase to maximize their BTC acquisition has another side.  That is that if there are multiple parties which are not coordinating with one another, they will end up eating one another's lunch.  The best strategy for these players in that case is to just go ahead and buy with both hands.  If such a thing were to happen it could be quite explosive.

"Your best chance to avoid a diet of cat food when it becomes clear that your pension and social security have already been stolen."

I certainly did not mean to downplay the culpability of the corporations.  But corporations are being what they are supposed to be in distributing risk and damage and consolidating the profits into the hands of their owners.  It's up to the government to regulate this (completely expected) behavior.  If the members of the government are bought off (and I believe that this is more common than not in both the US, Japan, pretty much everywhere else) then it's up to the people to change that.  Or die the deaths they/we have earned...or have their children bear the mutations in the case of Japan.

Or their culture may start to evolve at a more rapid rate due the radiation and the realization that their government is directly responsible for their calamity due to actions (or lack thereof) before, during, and after the Fukushima meltdowns.

Osmosis?

I saw a rarity post on another thread and it reminded me to check up on the SA forum.  As was the case from half a year ago it was many pages between worthwhile posts.  They had a golden period where there where maybe two or three per page but I guess those days are relegated to the dustbin of history.

One funny one I ran across was this:

=====
Raneman
Dec 24, 2010

Bitcoin has 3 kinds of people using it:
1. Dumb Libertarians
2. Smart Criminals
3. People of ambiguous intelligence trying to profit off of the former two.

I was thinking of joining the third group, then I realized I'd be much better off in the stock market where my money won't magically disappear randomly one day.
=====

The poor guy must be unaware of MF Global, or if he's drawing a distinction between the stock market and segregated funds at futures broker, he must be unaware of the flash crash and before that, 2008.  My sense is that he shares the general SA members' faith in the modern capital markets and the effectiveness and willingness of the regulators to actually regulate them and punish wrongdoing.

Perhaps the guy is being tongue-n-cheek but I think anyone clever enough to do so in this way would probably not be paying the SA fee.  I did notice that an SA person who deviates from support of mainstream financial dogma gets slapped down pretty quickly by his peers so a member would have to be about this circumspect in order to get away with such a comment on that board.

Though there is a surprising SA interest lately, it is amusing that BTC/fiat exchange rates have fallen out of favor as a topic of conversation.

...somewhat unconvincingly.

Very true.  I myself am not above exploiting the shit out of things I have no belief in or fondness for.  Like unemployment insurance when I'm lucky enough to arrange a lack of work.  I suspect that Roger has paid plenty of taxes and probably a lot more than me so he's more than entitled to use the system if he can.  Although I'd personally be on the fence about doing so in the case of Bitcoin related issue (in spite of my pinko leanings) since a refreshing thing about Bitcoin is that it's independence from TPTB (which are rotten to the core and in particular Holder's justice department,) I'd probably do it.  Especially for that kind of money.  I prefer and advocate the approach I actually took; don't drop your pants and bend over in front of someone who is likely to fuck you.  I lost the amount of BTC I expected I like would to Bitcoinica...2 or 3 iirc.

At least 33% of the plaintiffs in this case are fairly vocal in their advocacy of that line of political philosophy.  That caught my attention...and provoked a chuckle.

Heh.  Among the engineering feats (purportedly) of Zhou is the ability to convert Libertarians into Socialists.  It's OK.  I don't mind if some of my tax dollars go toward helping seek recompense for any member of society who was wronged...even given the questionable judgement of entrusting half a million $$$ to a minor in Asia and/or a handful of bozos living under the British crown.

I may simply be projecting, but I assume that said theoretical party/parties have some of the same motivations as I.  That is, they consider the Bitcoin solution have a very high potential value and see BTC as hugely undervalued at this time.

If this is the case, they, like I, would mostly cash out if they sense an imminent collapse of the solution or if the value starts to approach the theorized peak.  Probably also like I, such parties don't really need the funds they've speculated in Bitcoin and can absorb a 100% loss (and consider it the most likely outcome.)  So I would expect selling to be more muted than it might otherwise be.

My take is that some party or parties with significant capital want to vacuum up BTC and are running a long upward slope which is designed to keep people who want in but on a dip in the cold and meet the price objectives of the weak hands who've decided to capitalize at particular price points.  Unfortunately a lot of small time would-be investors may not really get much of a chance or when they take the plunge they'll end up with a fraction of what they might have.  If I wanted in (and I don't because I'm already in) I'd just cost average from here.  That is to say, spend {x} amount of fiat at a predetermined schedule and thus balance out the risk of overpaying with the reward of catching a break.  In this way I'd protect against getting left out completely (which itself may or may not end up being a good thing.)

We are also getting ever closer to the block reward being cut down from 50 to 25 BTC per block.  Close enough such that the recent run-up might have a component of pricing that in.  I find it hard to project what impact this event could have on exchange rates and could see arguments for it having quite a range of impacts.  Again, if I wanted in I'd want to have some of my foot in the door before this event just in case.

For reference, here's a couple of threads related to a problem along similar lines:

  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=45881.0
  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=45943.0

and if it will do you any good, here's a link to some code I hacked out which takes lists of 'hashes' and forms them into sheets with 10 business-card sized things each to be printed.

  https://github.com/tvghub/tvghub/tree/master/proj/bitcmp/trunk/print/pub

I had some thoughts along the lines to develop a system which one could run multiple 'campaigns' either educational or commercial.  The 'hash lists' would form the communications between the back-end machinery (where people go if the scan the QR or tap in the deliberately short URL) and the material handed out.  This would facilitate dynamic value adjustments.  And, again, avoid any need for a user to give any information about themselves.

I've lost interest in such a thing for the time being.  The code was just hacked out enough to successfully get a few card sheets printed off then abandoned, but it might have some ideas you can use.

Voorhees (at least) had the same idea a year (at least) ago.  Worked on it some but as far as I know it went nowhere.

I wanted to have two pools:

 1) distributed samples which were picked up and 'registered' by interested new users.

 2) funding pools by interested rich folk.

Basically things would be dynamic such that the samples (probably Instawallets) which ended up being active (which I suspected would be a small percentage) were funded over a period of time (but primarily on-demand when initial use was detected.) The main goal...or mine anyway...was to get people using Bitcoin a bit, transfering them around, and generally learning the ropes, and a big part of that was getting them to _good_ info and wouldn't be ripped off or taken advantage of by all the sharks in these waters.

A further refinement was that funders maintained their control of the funds (their portion of the funding pool) and could withdraw their support or add to it depending on their perception of the direction of the campaign.

I didn't expect the implementation would be terribly challenging, and it was important to me that the new user need not give up any info that was not necessary (which would be effectively zilch.)  This as opposed to registering a username and password to some system in order to claim funds or something.  There were some differences of opinion on some of these things.  More than anything though I came to the conclusion that Bitcoin was not right for most people at that time.  I still hold that opinion but my contention is weakening as time goes by.

"Oh, ye seekers after perpetual motion, how many vain chimeras have you pursued? Go and take your place with the alchemists."

  - Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

In spite of being pretty cool, I cannot see a big win for Casascius coins.  To me they seem to just tie the advantages of one form of wealth to the dis-advantages of the other.  I don't expect that one will be able to argue that they should have the right use one because it has some value as the other (in the face of authoritarian restrictions on one or the other.)  One may be able to argue it, but it is unlikely to fly very far and they would simply encumber one another...though I guess the respective values are relatively easily separated.

Might be cool to have one as a memento or some such, but the bulk of my speculation/investment will be (and is) in the most 'native' form of each of metals and Bitcoin respectively.  To my way of thinking, this carries the least risk and the least premium.