Could we make a parallel to the internet itself using domain names instead of wallets? Not sure about this but just asking as this is the speculation forum

domain names 2002-2014, not far from an s-curve

It's getting flatter, have you tried to buy a domain name lately? Anything made with actual words or short or remotely nice sounding is already taken.

not sure how we value the internet, perhaps market cap tech/web companies 2006-2014 (sorry this graph suck no time to find a better one)
http://www.statista.com/statistics/216657/market-capitalization-of-us-tech-and-internet-companies



Where we are on the adoption curve (avail as live charts on coinometrics)

Hey notme, thanks for clear explanation, I didn't realize this. Quite unbelieveable this is allowed to go on! Do you have some links with more details? That really eases my worries about HFT and BTC, it will really be down on exchanges to make sure this does not happen, and if they don't their customers can move elsewhere.


BTW
#Day 2, and it's not looking pretty.

"Dive! Take cover! Or, at least, hold on to your pants in the scramble. The Chinese bubble has just burst. It looks like the world is going to have egg on its face and elsewhere as Chinese banks are scrambling to get the hands on cash."
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-06-21/chinese-banks-ready-go-bust

Totally agree that BTC is not ready, far from that. I don't think we have 3 years to get there.

Not sure the US or any other country will be able to delay the inevitable much longer. Cyprus was a tiny bubble compared to what we are discussing here, and you saw the effect. All it will take imho is one sizable bubble to burst (china growth, tech stocks, property, bonds, etc), and trigger a chain reaction thanks to the castle of cards which is shadow banking. A single govt or CB will not be able to isolate their market and currency.

pop. pop. pop.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-multi-trillion-dollar-derivative-bubble-deutsche-bank-the-biggest-derivative-exposure-in-the-world/5333472
http://www.businessinsider.com/9-banks-combine-for-over-200-trillion-derivatives-exposure-2012-4

But yes it's musical chairs and no one wants the music to stop. Could go on for a little while, or not. Better get ready, and no I don't mean buying guns and gold and moving to an isolated ranch.

[/quote]
In potential, yes. But I think it's still too early for that, the collapse has to be postponed for another 3 years or so and then I see bitcoin having a real chance in the economy. The infrastructure is just not there yet, too many obstacles at the moment. This will change, but it needs time. Time it might not get if things get sour too soon in the world economy.
[/quote]

Touche - some element if wishful thinking from my part

And you are right at the moment liquidity is not great with markets shutting down left and right, that is probably the biggest risk.

But... there is a difference between agressive trading and manipulation also called cheating. I can't call a banker friend and set the BTC exchange rate, as we have seen in the libor, and seems to be happening with gold and forex. If I have a lot of coins I can try a big dump, small trades to influence price, etc. But it's all in plain sight and anyone doing so takes risk. So I think I meant 'central' manipulation. The equivalent in BTC world would be someone setting up a trojan in the bitcoin source code to skew the algorithms for private gain. Highly unlikely given open source nature.

The only thing I fear is HFT - I hope the community finds a way to ban or control it. Perhaps exchanges should enforce a minimum time between transactions (but very fast transaction execution), or offer a separate exchange with no limitation for the battle of the trading bots. Otherwise bot become a transaction tax as they work on both sides of the spread.


[/quote]
Very liquid and without mass market manipulation - you're joking right ?
[/quote]

Interesting - what makes you think that?

I see it as an hedge against inflation and central bank QE similar to gold, but very liquid and without the mass market manipulation which both currency and commodities suffer. When times are tight, people might also use it just to save 3 or 4% card charges - essentially a universal and private tax on shoppers worldwide. There is also the prospect of fiat savings being confiscated a la cyprus of course which makes btc savings account more interesting. Companies will still run, produce things and people will buy them, but perhaps they will realise the bills in their wallet do not have a 'guaranteed' value and turn to bitcoin has a more transparent and reliable currency.

bitcoin (and other cryptocoins) is a great currency to use in a fairer economy (ie not manipulated and/or taxed arbitrarily), and I really hope that's what we will see at the end of this tunnel.

Calling today June 20th 2013 the official start of the all-mighty 2013 meltdown. A series of events might be about to unfold which could propel BTC to insane levels. It will mostly suck for everyone in the real world. It starts in China and with the bubble of all bubbles, and Feds mentionning the possible easing of QE which they can only delay for so long. To be expected in some chaotic order:

- China Bubble pop (how shocking, are you saying these figures are not to be trusted? And you borrowed half GDP in a single year?)
- Stocks crash back to fundamentals (oh, I thought higher p/e ratio was better?)
- US real estate crash (why are all these empty houses not for sale?)
- US student debt crash (how would you like to work for the government for say 30 years to pay this back?)
- Sovereign bond haircuts and defaults (cheer up, at least we might pay something back and still better than penny socks)
- Bank bail-ins (don't worry just like cyprus)
- Pension funds meltdown (it's gone? but you told me I had the 'cautious' plan?)
And a lot more...

The spark:
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-02-22/why-china-crash-may-be-imminent
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-19/china-interbank-market-freezes-overnight-repo-explodes-25
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/20/us-markets-global-idUSBRE88901C20130620

Even mainstream investors bracing for impact:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/doomsday-poll-87-risk-of-stock-crash-by-year-end-2013-06-05

Please cheer me up and tell me I am wrong and everything will be rosy this year

Could an arbitration clause in lending contracts be a good option to avoid having to go through debt collection? This service below was suggested by a btcjam user. Have no experience with it so no idea if it actually is legit or works. As I understand, the decision is followed up by law enforcement directly not a debt collection agency. It also works in many countries, with fits BTC global transactions model.

Would be great to hear what you guys think about this. I think the biggest impact of btc will be fair and global micro-p2p lending.

http://www.judge.me/
(...)
How is a judge.me decision enforced?

After the judge.me arbitrator has decided the case ("rendered his award"), both parties are bound to make each other whole again. Statistically, 96% of the arbitration awards are honored, meaning the losing party makes a payment or delivers goods or services to the prevailing party as ordered by the arbitrator within the set time limits (most commonly 30 days).

However, in the 4% of awards that are not honored, the prevailing party must seek to enforce the award by asking a court where the losing party has assets to turn the arbitration award into a court judgment, upon which the judge can then issue a fieri facias ("fi fa" in short), which is an order to the local sheriff to seize enough property of the losing party to make the prevailing party whole again, as well as to (typically) cover the court costs incurred by the entire process of enforcement. (This is why 96% of losing parties pay immediately: Not complying will most likely only incur more court expense for them and cause embarrassment from a forced property seizure.)
(...)
These two processes of recognition and enforcement of arbitration awards are possible in all jurisdictions of the 146 countries that signed the 1958 UN Convention of New York.

J'etudie encore la question, et j'ai l'impression de commencer a comprendre comment marche la monnaie. Finalement c'est pas si complique, mais c'est un peu une arnaque! Quelques pensees recentes:

L'argent cree par les banques centrales diluent la valeur unitaire de la monnaie. Par example, imaginons que l'etat imprime des billet de 1 million d'euro et en donne un a chaque francais pour relancer la consommation. Les prix au supermarche changerait dans l'heure avec quelques zeros en plus. Resultat tous les gens avec un million sont maintenant pauvres (les prix sont eleves et leur salaire ne vaut plus rien) et le gens qui ont un milliard peuvent tout controler.

Aux etats unis, 85 milliard sont crees (=donnes aux banques pour le preter et repreter) chaque mois. Chaque moi, 85 fois la valeur de tous les BTC en circulation. Dans un seul pays...

Pour l'instant l'inflation n'est pas perceptible, parce que cet argent n'est pas distribue a tous le monde, mais donne a une petite fraction de la population (les grosses banques qui emettent de prets avec interet, en utilisant un emprunt sans interet a la banque centrale), qui cree encore plus d'argent avec.

Tout le monde s'appauvrit relativement au 1% (ou peut etre 0.1% dans ce cas) de la population. Cet argent doit aller quelque part, mais pas encore visible en inflation parce que les banques n'utilisent pas cet argent pour acheter le pain. Il est deja visible dans le stock market, avec des prix d'action record du simplement a cet inflation et non a des hausses de performance. Aussi dans l'immobilier, etc.

Le resultat final: peu de gens possedent tout, et la majorite de la population sont des 'esclaves en dette'. Heuresement les crypto monnaies sont arrivees et ne peuvre etre manipulees comme ca. Je conseille la lecture de http://www.zerohedge.com pour un grosse douche froide quotidienne.

I would say zoom out a little bit, think about months/years not days, and you will see that we could very well still be at A. This is still very early adopter stage, as we are talking about a global techology with possibly huge adoption potential.

Just compare this with apple and the iOS tsunami for example. Are we at the stage where everyone and their mother has BTC, everyone talks about it to death, all hedge funds invest in it and guarantee unlimited growth (we're past this for AAPL and price has now crashed)? Or are we still at a stage where people discover this, journalists still scrambling to understand it, most of your friends don't know about it, and very few mothers own BTC? If you think about all the money in circulation globally, and a 'market share' for BTC, I am guessing we are well under 1%, probably a few decimals from that? Certainly a lot less that when apple market share when stock was trading at $15.

Of course BTC is a game changer, the first global currency, so hard to compare with a generic chart which probably applied to pets.com and other high branding-low innovation startups.

Of course this is really speculation land, no one can predict world events that could really alter the price, or whether big money (hedge funds etc) will decide to get on board or fight this to the ground.

Je viens de decouvrir celui ci, qui integre un news feed, et supporte bitcoin-central
http://bitcix.com

Situation resolue, la balance est correcte maintenant - ouf

Hard to believe, but this would make for quite a viral story if true and properly documented.
- paste date says march 29, is this to be trusted?
- who initially propagated that pastebin?
- does this match mtgox trade volume (10K dump)?
- what irc channel was used and is there a record of it?

mon favori
http://bitcoinity.org/markets?currency=EUR&exchange=mtgox

quelques autres
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=131829.0

Dans la meme situation, transfere le 2/04 et apres 8 jours, les BTC ne sont pas la (sur la nouvelle adresse). Pas de reponse au ticket malgre des emails repetes. Vive le transfer d'argent immediat

Une question non une accusation.

Merci pour le lien, j'ai tout lu mais cela n'adresse pas mon cas. Mon transfer est date du 2 avril, et le changement d'adresse a ete annonce le 5. Questions simples:
- avez vous tous les fonds envoyes sur les (anciens) comptes pendant l'interruption de service
- Quand est ce que mon nouveau compte aura sa balance a jour?

Bien sur plus simple de regler ca par votre service support, mais je n'ai pas eu de reponses pour l'instant.
N

Oui les attaques DDOS sont juste la pour faire chuter le cours, mais ce ne me fera pas vendre Le plus inquietant bien sur ce sont les attaques de comptes... Bien plus lucratif et moins risque que de braquer une banque pour qqn de mal intentionne! Bitcoin-central etait la premiere companie (et peut etre encore la seule) a assurer les depots, mais j'imagine que c'est juste pour les euros, pas les btc.

1. bitcoin-central is down again, apparently under DDOS attack
https://twitter.com/Bitcoin_Central

2. There are missing funds in my account. I had sent BTC to my account on apr 2 before realizing the site was down, 4 messages to support and no response so far. Blockchain shows the transfer completed, but then was transferred to another account on apr 5 while site was offline.

let's hope they get everything back under control and start responding to users.

Encore offline, sous attaque DDOS
https://twitter.com/Bitcoin_Central

Et surtout Il manque des fonds sur mon compte. Quand le site est revenu en ligne, j'ai realise que mon adresse a change, et que le dernier transfer BTC envoye vers mon compte (le 2 avril) a disparu. Cette somme a ete transfere pendant la panne (le 5 avril), vers un compte btc inconnu.

4 messages au support et aucune reponse. Il y a-t-il eu un detournement de fonds? Il y a t'il d'autres personnes dans la meme situation? Plutot inquietant tout ca.

Thanks for this post - really useful. Can we please confirm this user as a scammer. Was a real noob investing on his loan, we all have to learn don't we Now I spend a lot more time before investing anything, and I have made back that loss with good loans fortunately,

itai3856
https://btcjam.com/users/1681
฿18.05 overdue payments
no response to pm, forum account appears abandonned

He might have scammed other users on the forum selling stuff.

thanks