Gib' auf, du hast keine Chance! Lass' es uns beenden! Es ist einfacher für dich, viel einfacher. Du wirst sehen, es ist gleich vorbei.


Reminds me of the old $13 resistance back in 2011. Those of us around long enough to still remember know how that went...

[What would happen if the Bitcoin system (as is) was so fundamentally/socially flawed that it would simply make more sense to start anew?]

This may not be a very popular question around here, especially with all the BOOM/DOOM posts of late, but perhaps a very necessary one for all of us to ask at one point in time.

What would happen if the Bitcoin system (as is) was so fundamentally/socially flawed that it would simply make more sense to start anew?

Introducion:

Bitcoin itself is nothing but a protocol - people trading Bitcoin as a currency/commodity often forget that the price they are willing to pay is just for the few Bitcoin (or fractions thereof) they are purchasing at that time. Once that transaction is done, the inherent value of those purchased Bitcoin is again 0 until someone else is willing to then AGAIN pay some Fiat X for it.

The willingness to pay any amount X however is directly correlating with the degree of trust users of the system are willing to put into the trading system as a whole. That does not only mean trust to the technical aspects, but also to the underlying (utilizing) society in general.

One could say that the success of any crypto-currency is directly correlated to the amount of acceptance and adaptation amongst its peers (this could mean hundreds of thousands of micro-traders, or perhaps only a few reputable big-name market participants). If, due to trust issues, that acceptance was to falter, the system as a whole may be prone to fail.

Problem:

The main point of concern of non-Bitcoin users to the Bitcoin system (apart from technical issues that may or may not occur at one point in time), is that that the distribution of Bitcoin unfairly favours early adaptors to the point that they could wait indefinitely to then dump their share and cause ridiculous amounts of price drops (either directly or indirectly by initiation). We all hear the term PONZI-scheme floating around frequently - and maybe not unjustifiably so.

I would be willing to wager that high levels of price fluctuations do not contribute to a more steady/widespread distribution, meaning a system of high volatility favours an outcome of even more volatility. Some people say this is a good thing, and that "those with a steady hand ought to profit from stupid/short-term oriented 'speculators'" - but I think they are failing to grasp that every time we see high levels of price fluctuation, we have a lot of people either already involved or on the sideline questioning the validity of the price attached to a Bitcoin in general. So in short: when if comes to social adaptation (and ultimately the success of a P2P crypto-currency system) high volatility is neither good nor healthy, and for the sake of system credibility, "early adaptors" should in fact not be rewarded to the degree that they may or may not think they should be (for possibly doing little more to the system but to sit on their coins indefinitely). Hoarding is not good when it comes to the PONZI-scheme debate, which in return inflicts heavy damages to the reputation and therefore level of social acceptance of Bitcoin in general. The system grows with people utilizing coins, creating businesses around coins in circulation, not just piggyback-riding on a wave of speculation for a golden future to come.

So, assuming that we are able to overcome all the other technical and social/economical problems that may come at one point in time (e.g. at the time and level of mass adaptation), here is my question:

Would you be willing to accept the fact that Bitcoin in its present state may perhaps be nothing more but an early experiment (doomed to fail or not); however one that may eventually lead to a more advanced decentralized crypto-currency, one which were to enjoy maybe higher levels of trust?

Conclusion

I think Bitcoin did a lot in terms of raising awareness for the fundamental necessity of an inexpensive, decentralized P2P wealth transfer system, and we should be more than thankful for it, but to treat it as the holy grail that ought not to be questioned may not contribute to our cause. In the eye of the public, the damage already inflicted to the name Bitcoin (mainly due to heavy price swings, but also frequent technical failures, and a certain amount of un-intuitiveness) may be too large for it to regain enough trust in time.

Considering that we now have a more wide-spread user-base fighting for our cause than ever, it could be easier than ever before to quickly reach a critical mass of acceptance without the disadvantages of having to deal with some of our present issues (e.g. the whole early adaptors/PONZI-scheme debate).

Perhaps we could redesign some parts of the current Bitcoin system and come up with a new one, where the amount of coins grow more closely correlated with the total amounts of users in the system, effectively eliminating most of the hoarding and perhaps also work on other present issues along the lines of de-centralization, technical/transfer efficiency, public trust into the system in general).

The time may come where we may have to role out with Bitcoin 2.0 instead of just patch Bitcoin 1.xxxxx to overcome some of the apparent issues of our time (soon to be past). Due to social mistrust, we may even have to end up renaming the new Bitcoin in general. That time may very well not be now, but I would just like to remind everyone here that the Bitcoin system is still nothing but a social experiment and technical infant at best. It is not a guaranteed-to-succeed investment vehicle, and it would (IMHO) be extremely unwise to put more assets (life savings, cars, houses, etc) into it than you can bear to lose.

I know this may be a shock to some who went all in, but hopefully we can learn from past mistakes and make the most of it.

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Thank you very much for reading and your consideration - may we all live long and prosper!

Both, bulls and bears, are heavily over-leveraged so it seems. One of them will bite the dust eventually.

[[9.5101,175.91808498]]

There seems to be a large number of highly suspicious MtGox bid entries at the moment, which still seem to be making use of a bug in the MtGox order entry engine that lets you put in several entries without you actually having enough money to actually execute all of them, caused by simply not erasing the previous entries if the highest ranked orders lock in all available funds.

They will not get executed once being reached, but cause a market distortion by leaving people with the false impression of highly increased demand, when in fact, there may be little to none.

Here are some of the latest orderbook entries (some of the suspicious orders in bold) - you judge for yourself:


[9.5101,175.91808498],[9.511,25],[9.5111,50],[9.51501,0.34941901],[9.5171,12.29],[9.52,191],[9.52111,4.738],[9.53,39.7],[9.531,2.18455146],
[9.5311,351.06096464],[9.5312,1.01],[9.54,0.5],[9.55,37],[9.55007,0.24190069],[9.56596,12.5],[9.596,174.34332847],[9.5961,174.34151166],
[9.6,1146.12980519],[9.60001,50],[9.6001,348.53774024],[9.6071,696.56757192],[9.61,535.58518418],[9.61001,10.0651],[9.61131,37.675],[9.61132,1.5],
[9.613,0.5],[9.615,6.5],[9.616,1],[9.62,3.05993711],[9.62999,1],[9.63,64.83396677],[9.63013,17.79],[9.65,50],[9.65001,1.5],[9.6528,0.4144],[9.66,42.05115767],
[9.66001,0.1],[9.662,1.00315],[9.67,21],[9.69,0.864],[9.6969,10],[9.7,205.30468485],[9.70003,0.2],[9.701,1.006],[9.707,10],[9.71,5],[9.718,3],[9.72255,8],
[9.725,3],[9.735,3.3],[9.73501,0.2],[9.73502,4.28],[9.74,1.04070944],[9.7401,16.42693606],[9.75,2],[9.7501,24.61513215],[9.7502,8.2049599],[9.76,1],
[9.7701,20],[9.78,5.5],[9.79,65.37282944],[9.7901,16.34304042],[9.8,59.54339998],[9.819,38.99769426],[9.8203,269.17155891],[9.8311,268.87585926],
[9.8402,268.6272088],[9.8459,0.4063],[9.8502,268.35449636],[9.8601,268.08505593],[9.87,537.23231206],[9.8721,1606.55511594],
[9.8731,535.46413184],[9.8732,267.72935421],[9.88,68.9261589],[9.889,1.02502881],[9.89,2],[9.9,0.10473535],[9.9601,513.28693186],[9.9602,255.39090179],
[9.9603,255.3883377],[9.96315,2.299668],[9.9701,0.1],[9.97584,0.1],[10,17.566959],[10.00551,0.9912828],[10.01,245.66567932],[10.01237,0.1],
[10.0301,245.17337315],[10.0399,244.93405811],[10.05,0.52],[10.056,978.1676412],[10.05608,7.9948839],[10.05784,0.15],[10.06,6.2568986],
[10.0601,244.4422471],[10.061,181.25],[10.0741,207.50569877],[10.0742,207.503639],[10.0851,207.27936857]

[edit: I am mostly referring to internal exchange sites transparency, as in I purchase 10 bitcoins on MtGox and get a transaction ID which I can then trace back to a verified previous transaction in the bitcoin chain as an additional way to verify the legitimacy of said purchase without having to wait until the coins are actually being cashed out!]

Hi guys.

I have already mentioned this issue in the official MtGox IRC channel but would also like to bring this to the attention of the greater community in general as well.

I find it mildly astounding that while we are all using a transaction network which is based on total transparency as one of its greatest assets in its very foundation, people are conveniently willing to give up on this very right (yes, I think it is my right to know where my bitcoins are coming from) by exchanging their bucks in open exchanges for potentially unaccounted for bitcoins.

Considering all the bad news about bitcoin lately, I think it would be in the best interest for overall bitcoin legitimacy to make use of the network's already existing transparency and link all virtual trades to actual bitcoin transactions.

Not only would this help track down stolen coins more easily, but it would also ease many people's minds and concerns as to where exactly those 10s of thousands of bitcoins come from that get poured into the markets on a daily basis.

I think this needs to be addressed somehow and has to be implemented in one form or the other - as such I'm even willing to pledge 10BTC for its development so people start taking this issue more seriously. Perhaps other people are willing to commit to this issue as well, but generally I think this actually has to happen with or without any pledges (especially if it can be established as some form of standard for any legitimate bitcoin business that works with virtual, non-directly bitcoin backed user accounts).

Perhaps we can get some MtGox, Tradehill and Camp BX (non-exclusive list!) officials to post their stance on this issue.

Thanks for reading, now fire away!

edit: I am mostly referring to internal exchange sites transparency, as in I purchase 10 bitcoins on MtGox and get a transaction ID which I can then trace back to a verified previous transaction in the bitcoin chain as an additional way to verify the legitimacy of said purchase without having to wait until the coins are actually being cashed out!

[edit: gnnn - nagut, auf Grund von Anfragen per Mail und hier dann jetzt doch mit Link: http://kleinanzeigen.ebay.de/anzeigen/s-bestandsliste.html?userId=6548309 - aber nur unter Protest!]

Verkaufe grade wegen Umzug meine gesamtes (noch verbliebenes) Inventar. Da ich die Kohle nicht ganz so dringend brauche, hab ich bei Ebay Kleinanzeigen mal nen 30% Bitcoindiscount auf jeden Artikel in die Überschrift gepackt. Also wenn Geld sparen mit Bitcoins die Leute net überzeugt, dann weiss ich auch nicht.  

Soll keine Werbung für meinen Verkauf sein (daher auch kein Link hier) sondern nur eine kleine Anregung zum Nachmachen, wie man gleichzeitig die Bitcoingemeinschaft in Deutschland vergrößern, ein paar Skeptiker zum Schweigen bringen, und den Bitcoin-Warenverkehr stimulieren kann. Klickanzahl scheint jetzt schon schneller zu steigen als bei meinen vorherigen Verkäufen.

Wenn alles gut läuft hab ich nebenbei auch noch was Kohle gemacht. Worst Case Szenario - werd zwar nix los, hab dafür aber kostenlos Werbung für Bitcoins gemacht.  

edit: gnnn - nagut, auf Grund von Anfragen per Mail und hier dann jetzt doch mit Link: http://kleinanzeigen.ebay.de/anzeigen/s-bestandsliste.html?userId=6548309 - aber nur unter Protest!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnGHQokMhZ0

Is there is way to find out how much one should pay in transaction fees to get included in the next few blocks?

I paid 0.001BTC and have missed out on the last 5 blocks. Perhaps some form of projection function would be helpful here.

I was wondering... would it influence the market if somebody put up something like this?

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Enough of this trolling. Put your money where your mouth is! I ask for a reputable source to come forward and act on behalf of the Bitcoin community as fiduciary/escrow.

Here's the name of the game:

1. Place your bet and state whether you believe it is either not gonna exceed above $20 or below $5 $10. Reason doesn't matter, opinion and OPERA SCREAMING VOLUME is all that counts!
2. Transfer bet amount to fiduciary.
3. Watch how the market crumbles or soars.
4. Whichever mark gets hit first wins!
5. Payout will be: your bet + a fraction of the opposing bets determined by your fraction of your side of the bet if you win, nothing if you lose.

Stop bitching, lets go!

I pledge 10 bitcoins to reaching $20 before $5 $10 (if total pledge amount exceeds 20 bitcoins).

edit: floor + pledge requirement changed!

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