Well I've officially found the house that I want... Now to just get bitcoins to the $250K ea I need to buy it...   

Pretty cool...

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/is-the-government-sanctioning-bitcoin-with-auction-fHjpuE_uQcqc9K88fQaR6g.html

"When a drug dealer's assets are seized, they sell the Ferrari. They don't sell the coke to the public."

"They're not going to turn around and sell you a bunch of weed even, which is legal in I guess most states now..."

"Ok, so basically is this is this sort of sanctioning bitcoin?"

"Yes, I mean in a way the government is saying that this is a legal asset."

If FBI auctioned $18m of seized gold, would price of gold take a hit?

Hell no!

Then why Bitcoin?   Doesn't make sense... 

If you were at work, and suddenly something HUGE happens that hits every news station that has the general public taking flight to Crypto, the price just explodes into the stratosphere whereas your current stash of Bitcoins can last you a lifetime of comfortable living.  

Would you continue working?  Get a different job?  Just stop working altogether?

For those in school, being a student is your day job.

Weird stuff going on at truecrypt.org, I've been using it over the past decade to protect all my files including all my Bitcoins.

“TrueCrypt is not secure,” official SourceForge page abruptly warns

Coinotron pool has bigger than 50 percent hashrate on LTC.  You only need something like 50.000001% to be able to double spend

Coinotron mined 8 blocks in a row earlier today.  OKcoin only requires one confirmation per deposit, someone could double spend sell LTC buy BTC withdraw to exploit millions.

Being a photographer, many pros suggested not shooting a wedding on just one SDHC card.  Such as shooting at a wedding, shoot on multiple cards just in case one card goes corrupt.  But some internet mathematician pointed out that it's more mathematically safe to shoot on one SDHC card.  The low failure rate is such, that you increase your possible failure rate with each additional card (Ie.  Using 4 8gb cards in place of 1 32gb card increases the odds of a card failure by 4x).

Would this apply to wallets?   I looked up risk probability on Google but couldn't figure it out.

Right now, the bulk of my funds are stored in (1) Electrum and (2) a brain wallet that never touched the Internet.  I also use blockchain.info (3) & (4) as hot wallets for spending.  I also use Mycelium, Multibit and Dark Wallet but those are just intermediaries with no money ever held there.  Personally, I feel most safest with electrum, and maybe the cold storage brain wallet.  A little afraid though that some future quantum computer could some day figure out the random seeds on Electrum and the Brain Wallet.

Friday May 9, 2014 report 

http://media.bloomberg.com/bb/avfile/Markets/Analyst_Calls/vBFF7SdR1oSQ.mp3

"When we say big things, we mean big things"
#bitcoin #tothemoon

https://twitter.com/bitpay/status/465206481474686976

Go to their website to see for yourself.

[Attack against LocalBitcoins infrastructure 3.5.2014]

https://plus.google.com/+BitcointrukkokHu/posts/UkRc4jrJAbn

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Attack against LocalBitcoins infrastructure 3.5.2014

LocalBitcoins received a very dangerous attack against the site infrastructure on Saturday 3.5.2014.
For now
All user data and Bitcoins are safe;
The site will be down for a while as the system is being rebuilt

Details

LocalBitcoins hosting provided received a request to restart the LocalBitcoins.com website server and give access to the server console (root) on Sat May 3 13:32:27. LocalBitcoins team did not initiate this request. For now, it looks like the request was made using spoofed email addresses and other weakness in the hosting provider support system.

• LocalBitcoins team was alerted about the abnormal activity when the hosting provider restarted the server.
  The attacker gained a root access to the server for ~40 minutes before the attacker was kicked out and the server shutdown.
• All data on the website server is encrypted. Manual actions are needed to make this data readable, so the attacker could not gain access to the data even when having a server console access.

It is very unlikely that the attacker gained access to any data;  LocalBitcoins is still performing full investigation on the matter.

• Bitcoins in hot wallet and cold wallet are safe, as LocalBitcoins runs its bitcoind and wallets on a separate server.
  LocalBitcoins team has started to rebuild the website server on fresh hardware.
• LocalBitcoins team will make further announcements when the investigation proceeds and the site becomes available again.  

We expect to spend at least 24 hours on this. LocalBitcoins team apologizes the issues the downtime may cause to the users.

Looks like they've released the alpha and is available for download Here.  

Interface is slick!  Thus far, my favorite wallet.  They really put a lot of effort into the design & usability.  I come from a designer background, so the clean interface is really inviting to me.



Cheaper mixing fees:
0.0001 DarkWallet CoinJoin (adjustable)
0.0005 Blockchain.info SharedCoin (fixed)

Password required on send, so your cat may experience difficulty emptying your wallet while walking along your keyboard.



Should be fun to play with.  









There is a troll box chat room pop-ups on by default, where users can help with support.  Or you can create a channel to chat with your friends.  I hope all transmissions are secure.  Pop-ups get annoying quick, disable via Settings > Notifications.





If you found this post helpful, throw some magic internet money to my Dark Wallet, for experimental purposes.  

1MBwmT84zDY1zj6am5Cmw1pmXAFE3T78bE

PBOC held a serious talk with Chinese banks and payment service providers on April 24, requesting that they stop withdrawal for trading platforms and close accounts completely.

I think this is the 10th time they've done this already? 

Getting mixed up seeing the same icons for browser tabs, one of these sites needs to get a new Favicon. 

Who came first? 

I'm kinda a Bitcoin Noob, however, I hope years from now people will still see 2014 as an "early adopter" phase.

Almost lost about $35 USD worth in a password protected Multibit wallet.  Finally realized I mistakenly had my cap lock key on when I originally typed in my password.

Then, I'm always concerned about losing my 2-factor Authentication phone for an anonymous web wallet only accessed thu Tor, therefore, I try not to keep much online.

So thus far, none for me (knock on wood), but I can easily see how BTC can eventually be carelessly lost in cyber space.