Bitcoin in San Diego (CA) is having a meetup on April 30 at 7 PM at the 'Tiny Factory':

http://www.meetup.com/Bitcoin-in-San-Diego/events/115732702/

The rise of bitcoin, an electronic currency traded on an online exchange, has generated a media frenzy. Once scoffed at, its value has risen by 631% (denominated in dollars) since the start of 2013.

Lots of people think that means we’re in a bitcoin bubble and it will eventually pop. But if you’re one of these bitcoin bears, it’s not easy for you to “short” it—i.e., bet that its value will go down.

http://qz.com/69630/how-to-short-bitcoins-if-you-really-must/

In recent months, Bitcoin, a form of digital cash that has been around since 2009, has shown some impressive signs of growth as it strengthens against the dollar and fuels a resurgence in online gambling.

http://www.dailydot.com/business/bitcoin-online-gambling-us-poker-sites/

Dr. Eben Alexander has taught at Harvard Medical School and has earned a strong reputation as a neurosurgeon. And while Alexander says he's long called himself a Christian, he never held deeply religious beliefs or a pronounced faith in the afterlife. But after a week in a coma during the fall of 2008, during which his neocortex ceased to function, Alexander claims he experienced a life-changing visit to the afterlife, specifically heaven.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/heaven-real-says-neurosurgeon-claims-visited-afterlife-213527063.html


Hmm, not sure what to make of this. Did this guy really experience the afterlife or did he just wake up from a coma and decide that he was going to make money off a book and get publicity?

I feel strange walking into a branch of my bank. I'm courteous to the tellers, but I can't help but think how much the guys running the joint are raping out of the economy. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to tell them how I really feel about who they are working for at the branch. Would you dare tell the people at your bank what you think of them (assuming you hate banks)?

One thing I realized when I read that the SEC may be going after Pirate and BTCST is that the bureaucratic cost of policing the Bitcoin economy is going to go up as more Ponzi schemes and other illicit activities are carried out using Bitcoin. As more and more cases end up on the desks of various local, state and federal law enforcement agencies that have something to do with Bitcoin activity, is it possible law enforcement at large will simply start ignoring such cases?

I've seen Bitcoin based services popping up that have very skimpy information about who is running the site. They look professional, but they don't have any auditing or insurance to reassure people that they aren't just cons. Take a look at these two sites:

BTCJam P2P Lending

https://btcjam.com/

Bitcoin Venture Capital

http://www.btcvc.com/

Neither of these two sites have any information to lead me to believe that they won't just run off with any BTC sent to them. These are just two examples, I am sure there are others.

I found out the other day that a credit card can actually have a positive balance if you pay more than what is owed on the card. I wasn't able to find out more about this strange fact on Google, and I had some questions about it.

What does the bank do with the funds that make up the positive balance? They don't pay you interest on the positive balance. Do they loan those funds out?

If you don't go below your positive balance, does this still help your credit score?

Bitcoin Project's Major September Announcement Will Be Delayed Past September

http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=689

Who wants to bet that this major announcement will be delayed? We are already well into September with no new details on the announcement.

I have a theory and it is fairly simple. As market depth and liquidity of Bitcoin approaches that of gold or silver, it becomes a much more attractive option to those looking for a store of wealth. The reason for this, of course, is because Bitcoin is much more convenient to hold and transfer than gold or silver. So as Bitcoin nears the liquidity and volatility of gold or silver, a rush of more capital will go into Bitcoin as an alternative to gold and silver. The liquidity and volatility of gold or silver is an upper and lower bound as a tipping point for Bitcoin, respectively.

However, Bitcoin would have to start nearing a market cap of billions of dollars in order to reach the liquidity of gold or silver. Is it possible that there is a much lower tipping point threshold that will trigger a large amount of new capital to flow into Bitcoin? I have seen the arbitrary market cap of $1 billion thrown around.

Looks like a bank that you have no mortgage with or business with whatsoever can send men to your house, raid your home of all of its possessions and not face criminal charges:

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/09/05/owners-lose-possessions-after-home-near-twentynine-palms-is-mistakenly-foreclosed/

Can any lawyers chime in here and say whether or not the bank can or will face criminal charges or is this simply going to be a civil lawsuit?

As I was driving home from work I saw a white mercedes with the California license plate: SR Hack

Could it have been Dread Pirate Roberts of Silk Road? 

http://www.cnbc.com/id/48916562

Has anyone considered a rather cheap but effective attack on someone using Bitcoin? It seems to me that all someone would need to do to potentially steal a bunch of coins from someone is to simply set up some kind of network sniffer that detects any Bitcoin addresses being sent, and rewrites them with an address from the attacker's wallet. For instance, if I am using Bitcoin at work, a malicious sysadmin could set up a proxy server that automatically rewrites all unencrypted Bitcoin addresses I am receiving with addresses from his own Bitcoin wallet. This wouldn't work for web sites that were loading with HTTPS, but it would work for any other unencrypted traffic it seems. This could be really bad if someone messaged me a Bitcoin address to send a bunch of BTC to and it got rewritten. I bet the opposite could be done as well, where the attacker rewrites all Bitcoin addresses going out. I try to submit a withdrawal address to someone or some site, and it gets rewritten with the attacker's address, so they receive any BTC that gets cashed out. Any way to stop this attack?

Has anyone noticed that half the threads in the "Bitcoin Discussion" sub forum have to be moved? I'm not naming names but some of them are from long time posters who are posting threads that obviously don't belong there (e.g. service announcements). What is going on?    Maybe we need a 'list of shame' for these individuals.

After giving it some thought, I realized that lending BTC is quite risky. It is risky because even under the assumption that a borrower is honest and would repay their debt if they could, a sudden rise in the price of BTC would make it difficult or impossible for borrowers to repay their debt. If you lend to an individual, they will simply default. If you invest in a pass through lending operation, what will happen is a number of investors will try to pull their BTC out. They will do this either because they want to take profits on the BTC itself, or they believe the borrowers will not be able to pay back their loans due to the rise in the price of BTC. The operator of the lending pass through will not be able to accommodate all of the payouts and may only recover some of the BTC from the borrowers.

Interestingly, however, lending BTC can sort of act as a hedge against a sudden BTC price drop. If the price of BTC drops, your borrowers will be able to more easily pay back the BTC plus the interest. So, while the value of your BTC holdings will go down, you will suffer fewer defaults in your lending operation.

Thoughts? Any flaws in my reasoning? Discuss.

Would it be worth it to create a gigantic physical Bitcoin? Check out this $1 million Candian maple leaf gold coin: http://coins.about.com/b/2007/05/05/canadian-mint-issues-1000000-face-value-coin.htm. Yes, this would be a publicity stunt. I'm thinking the gigantic physical Bitcoin could be 100,000 BTC (to roughly match $1 million in current prices) with the private address covered by a huge hologram that would have to be removed with special tools (if anyone wanted to get the private address). Thoughts?

A number of times I have seen people say: with Bitcoin it is going to be 'all or nothing'. In other words, Bitcoin is either going to displace and put out of business all fiat currencies or it is going to 0. However, when people say this they don't really give any support for the statement. I think this is wrong right off the bat. Bitcoin could easily have a market cap of billions of USD on 3 use cases alone: black market/grey market products (e.g. Silk Road), gaming tokens (e.g online Bitcoin casinos), and international transfers (e.g. all the Bitcoin exchanges across the world). Another use case would emerge after Bitcoin had a large market cap and stable price from those 3 markets: long term wealth storage. Wealthy individuals who want to stash away a significant amount of wealth that can't be confiscated by governments or otherwise stolen could put BTC into cold storage for as long as they wanted. They could travel the world and sell their coins to local Bitcoin dealers for the local fiat currency.

In any event, I would like to hear some arguments from people who believe Bitcoin is going to either be 'all or nothing'. Perhaps there is a good argument that I have not heard yet.

[Last bump! Event is tomorrow! Use this discount code for half off: AIC50]

There is a Bitcoin hackathon going on this Saturday June 18th in San Diego, California. A co-founder of DivX Jordan Greenhall will be there. http://bitcoinhackathon.eventbrite.com/

Last bump! Event is tomorrow! Use this discount code for half off: AIC50

Has anyone explored or engaged in arbitrage across different Bitcoin exchanges? Suppose on Bitcoin exchange A, you can sell your BTC for $5.50, but on Bitcoin exchange B, you can buy BTC for $5.30 each. So you buy up all the BTC you can on exchange B, transfer them to exchange A and sell them all for instant profit. The problem is what about the confirmation time? The opportunity could dry up quick in the time it takes to transfer the BTC to exchange A. Perhaps some arrangement could be made with someone who already has BTC on exchange A?