http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-13/guest-post-argentines-escaping-capital-controls-bitcoins
http://www.sovereignman.com/offshore/argentines-escaping-currency-controls-with-bitcoins-11192/

My friend Sir Charles at PricedinGold.com wrote me this morning from Argentina's Salta province (near Doug Casey's lovely property in Cafayate) and told me that TEA Turismo, a local tour operator and rental car agency there has started accepting BITCOINS.

If you're not familiar, bitcoins are digital currency units that are not controlled by any government. Bitcoins can be exchanged for goods, services, and other currencies, privately and anonymously.

For obvious reasons, Bitcoins are becoming increasingly popular in Argentina as people seek any means necessary to survive the economic destruction.

3rd article in 2 days  

http://www.etoro.com/blog/markets/13032013/bitcoin-the-top-performing-currency-in-the-world/

This is the future of money as we know it and the best news is that soon you will be able to trade it using your eToro account

For those who don't know etoro :

The company claims to manage investments worth tens of billions annually and reports an annual customer growth rate of 20%. In its public statements the company has reported that is has 1.5 million registered users and claims that it receives 2,000 new account openings every day

(source edit : 2011 figures)

This rally is far from being over  

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-03-13/bitcoin-crashed-again
http://monetary-metals.com/bitcoin-crashed-again/

Bitcoin is still apparently a great trade—a speculation—as it has risen more than 12% even from when I recorded that video. Bitcoin is still useful for certain transactions particularly across borders, and especially for those people unfortunate to live in countries with censorship, capital controls, or in which some kinds of goods are prohibited.

But it’s not money. It is not the good to hoard as the core of one’s savings, if one does not like the rate of interest or trust the banking system or feel comfortable about the future.

The good for this purpose remains gold.

That's a contribution, coming from monetary-metals.com, following this video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP188-j9kRI

One more jealous PM bug  

I have an issue with bitcoin-qt which has stopped downloading new blocks for more than a day (stopped at block 215809).
There's a message in the status bar saying something like "Alert : displayed transactions might be incorrect. You or other network nodes might need to do an update" (translated from french).
I do have 10+ connection so that shouldn't be the problem. I tried a -rescan without success.
Version is the latest from ubuntu repositories, OS is an updated ubuntu (12.04 LTS), datadir is on a encrypted (AES iirc) usb stick.

Any idea what might be wrong ?
I guess I could just erase every file except my wallet.dat an re-download everything, but just in case there's another solution I prefer asking.

The soon to be most widely watched news commentator on the planet Max Keiser interviews Tuur Demeester about his paper "The Gloom of Central Banking" (the one being posted on ZeroHedge) on today's Keiser Report

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5vowdygIPU

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/max-keiser-barack-obama-is-clueless-mitt-romney-will-bankrupt-the-country-8269633.html

No direct mention of Bitcoin, but an interesting news :

You may never have heard the name Max Keiser, even though, once he begins to broadcast across China in the New Year, he will have confirmed his status as the most widely watched news commentator on the planet

For a Bitcoin advocate, that's good news in my book
The Bitcoin world will get some audience

And a really good interview btw

Rapport TRACFIN 2011 (Traitement du renseignement et action contre les circuits financier clandestins)
Basically TRACFIN is a commission dealing with AML.

First, for a good laugh, let me translate the introduction to bitcoin (p21) :

Bitcoin is a virtual currency, which may be qualified as "viral" (bitcoins duplicate automatically)

What is more intriguing is the example case they talk about : Illegal activity as a banker using a virtual currency with no legal value not being a legal tender (p23).

TRACFIN attention was drawn in June 2011 by company A activity.  This company is used as an intermediary inside euro area for bitcoin trading by the company B, located in the country X. [...]
During a period of 3 months, more than 3000 transactions have been recorded for amount around 2.4M€ in deposits, and 1M€ in withdraws. The deposits (corresponding to bitcoin buying) could be up to 30k€ per transaction, and some people could to several transactions on the same day

From the date and the amounts, looks a lot like MtGox, when they still had their account in France. They don't have it anymore, but I don't recall hearing about them being accused of "Illegal activity as a banker using a virtual currency with no legal value." (exercice illégal de la profession de banquier avec une monnaie virtuelle n’ayant pas cours légal)

Rapport TRACFIN 2011 (Traitement du renseignement et action contre les circuits financier clandestins)

L'intro du bitcoin est juste légendaire : 

Le bitcoin est une monnaie virtuelle, qui peut être qualifiée de « virale » (les bitcoins se dupliquant automatiquement)

L'exemple qu'ils donnent d'activité illégale (Cas typologique n° 7 : exercice illégal de la profession de banquier avec une monnaie virtuelle n’ayant pas cours légal) ressemble assez à MtGox non ?

L’attention de Tracfin a été attirée courant juin 2011 par l’activité de la société A. Cette société sert d’intermédiaire dans le commerce de la monnaie électronique bitcoin dans la zone euro pour la société B, située dans le pays X. [...]
Sur une période de trois mois, plus de trois mille transactions ont été enregistrées pour des montants de près de 2 400 000 euros au crédit et plus de 1 million d’euros au débit. Les crédits du compte (correspondant à des achats de bitcoins) pouvaient aller jusqu’à 30 000 euros par virement et certains particuliers effectuaient plusieurs opérations le même jour

MtGox avait donc finalement été déclaré illegal en France ? J'ai du rater ça...

http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/lightning-fast-dirt-cheap-bitcoin-shows-what-banking-could-be-1052108-1.html

It took 11 minutes, tops, after I pushed the button for the equivalent of $5 to travel across the Atlantic. For this service I paid less than a penny.

There were no banks involved. If there had been, it would have cost me at least twice the amount I was sending.

Whoa.  (...)