I know this flies in the face of most people here, including myself. But I am wondering how this would fare..

Set up a group of people who have large holdings and interest in Bitcoin and have them use their large holdings to stabilize the price of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin may have a $1 Billion market cap but it is mainly the amount traded on MtGox that determines the price. Something that could be easily controlled with just a fraction of the full Bitcoin economy.

If the group were to set huge ask and bid walls around a set number, while still raising or lowering on a regular basis as market trends indicate (much like the Fed board meeting to set interest rates), then we could have a bit more stability and we could avoid huge swings either way.

Of course, if the market is too heavy either way and they underestimate the market pressure they could lose one of their walls and lose money so it would be in their interest to follow the market closely and rise and fall at a sustainable rate that the market is calling for.

It could even be advertised that the rate will be going up or down at X% per day so people could plan accordingly. If a major event occurs the rate can be changed.

Judging from some of the walls, a half million dollars worth on each side would probably help to lead the market and hold off on any major wall falling.

Is the sound my coffee mug made when I dropped it after seeing how fast Bitcoin's price is going up!!!

So your friends or family may not get this whole "Bitcoin" thing and just "don't trust it", so they will not put any money into it.

Fine, their choice. But if they must keep their money in dollars, at least tell them that on https://www.bitfinex.com/ they can be getting 244% interest on their dollars.

So anyone who knows about Bitcoin right now can either be making 2000%+ in Bitcoins or 244% value in dollars.

That is not a bad spot to be in.

Does anyone see any downside to the 244% interest? I was going to tell my family (who I told about Bitcoin when it was at $11/BTC) that at the very least if they are not investing in Bitcoin they should get 244% interest on their savings.

Just curious.

I come into work some days thinking, holy crap...I made more money last night than I will make all day at work.

I also have more in my Bitcoin wallet than the net worth of California.

State auditor: California's net worth at negative $127.2 billion

http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/03/state-auditor-california-net-worth-at-negative-127-billion.html

There are many mortgage companies out there, not necessarily banks just mortgage brokers.

There is no reason they could not accept bitcoins via BitPay for payment.

I would switch my mortgage over to a company willing to do that. (if the rates are reasonable)

[You would be crazy to spend dollars when having dollars to spend in the first place is crazy.]

I have seen this said a few times "you would be crazy to spend it when its rising so much in value".

I do not understand this. Sure, at face value thinking that you have X Bitcoins today that are of value Y, why would you get rid of X Bitcoins today when tomorrow their value will be 2Y?

But then how do you spend money? Do you keep fiat currency and spend that? That makes even less sense! Why keep fiat currency?

If you hold Y dollars that are worth X Bitcoins that will tomorrow be worth .5X Bitcoins, why have dollars?

My contention is that most of us are paid in dollars. We all have to pay for things. The best possible scenario for you would be to convert your dollars to bitcoins as quickly as possible and then use it for spending.

Otherwise, if you get paid and then wait a week to spend your fiat, then you have just lost a week worth of value gain.

You would be crazy to spend dollars when having dollars to spend in the first place is crazy.

Holy crap what happen?

From $92 to $83 and falling...

I wrote this up last night before it hit $1 billion, distribute at will:

With 10,960,750 bitcoins in circulation at a price of $94.50/BTC, Bitcoin has surpassed the market cap of one billion dollars.

If Bitcoin was a stock, it would still be considered a small-cap company until it reaches $2 billion, but given that March 6 (just 22 days ago) Bitcoin had a $.5 billion market cap, it could be a short time before Bitcoin joins the ranks of the mid-cap companies.

Some companies of note that currently hold a $1 billion market cap are Office Depot, Freddie Mac, and US Airways (http://www.forbes.com/global2000/).

With Bitcoin prices holding around $4/BTC this time last year, a price of $94.50/BTC today shows a 2360% increase, if the price value were to rise as much over the course of the next 12 months, we could be seeing the price as high as $2,232 this time next year. This would surpass the revenue of the United States video game industry. Such growth will certainly pique the interest of industry leaders and investors looking to get a piece of the market and join the many venture capitalists who have started putting some serious money into Bitcoin businesses, such as CoinLab's $500,000 (http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/04/24/coinlab-attracts-500000-in-venture-capital-for-bitcoin-projects/) venture capital investment and BitPay, which has just received additional seed funds following their initial $510,000 investment (http://www.floridaventuresourcing.com/2013/03/bitpay-raises-additional-seed-funds/).

If Bitcoin was a country, it would be greater than the market value of the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose M1 stands at $1,016,000,000. This, after having passed Aruba ($868,500,000) and Fiji ($794,600,000) earlier in the week (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2214rank.html). Perhaps this will inspire some small country that wishes for a currency that does not lose value to switch to Bitcoins and reap the benefits of it.

Would there be a way to branch off a local currency backed by the contents of a single address?

Imagine there were 100 BTC in a single BTC address. Then this community that is on an island in middle of nowhere uses this address as their currency but runs their own mining software and exchanges coins back and forth between each other spawned from this single address.

Then, if ever necessary, they could all put their money back into the one address and use it as BTC.

I have no idea how something like that would work, I am just thinking of how it would work if a small community shut off from the rest of the world would be able to exchange their own local currency while still being technologically tied to Bitcoin.

Does the ruling help or hinder the possibility of getting a debit card where you can store your BTC and spend your local currency via a debit card?

Say you and 9 buddies with 1k BTC each got together to spend 10k BTC, what would you spend it on?

And you are actually spending it, not just holding it and watching it rise (unless it is to wait until a certain price to pay for something).

Either to help Bitcoin, help yourselves, help others, etc...

I am calling a flattening out between $95 and $99 for about a week followed by a break through $100 and beyond.

Has anyone done any calculations on the Bitcoin price based upon the cost to mine?

A quick check at this calculator: http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator shows that at the current difficulty, a $1,500 60GH/s mining rig will produce ฿189 or $11,921 per month.

I know that those ASICs are just starting to ship out, but at this price it would be smarter to buy an ASIC than to put that $1,500 in MtGox.

Once those ASICs start shipping on the level of being able to buy a PS3, the price of Bitcoin will likely more closely mirror the cost to produce as opposed to being so high above the manufacturing costs.

How many ASICs are currently on order and how much will this affect the difficulty? That is key to determining the target price level.

Is there a single web page that shows the latest price for each exchange?

I looked on Bitcoin Charts and it only has 3 USD exchanges.

I have confidence in MtGox and I tend to trust a portion of my BTC in my account, but with their transition to the US and with prices going up so much bad things could happen.

Transfer most of your coins to an offline wallet for a while, keep your private key secure.

I was thinking about what would be the perfect Keynesian coin, not that I would want it to happen but just thinking.


The coin would delete any stagnant balances that have been around for more than x amount of days, maybe 3 months to a year (maybe even fluctuating based upon activity).

The rate of new coins created would be based upon the amount of activity on the blockchain. As the rate increases, the reward goes up, as it slows down the reward goes down.

And there would always be a minimum amount of coins created.

And a government would have to require people to use it.

Did I miss anything? Other than a group of men manipulating things manually.

Is there ever a case where the government could legally steal?


The definition of theft is the "illegal taking...". Considering the government may pass any law they want and make it a "legal taking", is there anything the government would ever do that you would consider theft?


This question is more for those who do not believe that taxation is theft.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=152348.0

This is no hack of some Bitcoin service, this is a hit to Bitcoin itself.

How low will the price go once this gets out?

I sent 1.5 BTC from MtGox to a WalletBit address: Bitcoin withdraw to 1QARSgpZ2um4n9JFBhMYTxBYXZsxEhEUb6 late last night using the Green Address option on MtGox.

I think it was right around the time of the bug because the price crashed soon after and as I watched blockchain.info it went from an estimated 6 minutes to confirm down to 0 and then replaced with "Unknown".

The confirmation still sits at "Unknown" as of this afternoon.

Will it ever go through or did my BTC get lost in the ether?  I had to send 2 more BTC this morning because of the price change, I was trying to pay for my hosting service.