An investment in bitcoin could be likened to an investment in a tech startup with various seed rounds. High probability of failure, but success means massive a ROI. Bitcoin may be in it's series C, with many more seed rounds to follow.

$0 - 1: Bootstrapping. Bitcoin had little promise of mass adoption, very theoretical use cases, and was used by a small handful of people.
$1 - 10: Series A. Bitcoin finds a great use case in dark markets and potential use cases in other markets. First VC money doled out to build Bitcoin companies. Still very theoretical and small user base. Regulatory status unclear.
$10 - 100: Series B. Overstock and some other large companies accept bitcoin payments. Much more VC money pumped into the developing ecosystem. Regulatory stance becoming more clear in many developed nations. User base expanding consistently. More use cases becoming clear.
$100 - 1000: Series C. More than 100,000 merchants accepting bitcoin payments. Investments into the ecosystem from some very prominent institutions. Real regulatory framework being built. User base still expanding accordingly. More potential use cases being discovered.

Each series comes with less risk of failure, but also less chance of reward, much the same way a venture investment works.

I remember feeling a similar sentiment in June of last year. The feeling that BTC was over-valued and it would keep falling with no end in sight. I remember speaking with a client over the phone about the continually falling price. It was about $60 and he just had to get rid of his. He couldn't hold it out. I wish I could have encouraged him not to liquidate at that point, but honestly, my spirits were low as well. Fortunately, I held my coins, as always.

After selling the August 2012 mini-crash, I learned my lesson. It really does take a few of these cycles to work up the nerve to hold through one. For those of you who have been through it, there is no convincing necessary. For those of you who haven't been around long enough to have the experiences yourselves, I'm not sure I can convince you. But when you feel the most despair is almost always the best indicator of the bottom.

"Jaime Caruana says investors are ignoring prospect of higher interest rates in the hunt for returns."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/10965052/Bank-for-International-Settlements-fears-fresh-Lehman-crisis-from-worldwide-debt-surge.html

SEC form D filing: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1598389/000090266414002722/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml

A short write up about it: https://medium.com/@inthepixels/pantera-bitcoin-fund-ltd-files-form-d-with-sec-beeab628f143

There is not much press about this for some reason. Barry Silbert (Second Market) said there were 10 or so funds looking to invest in bitcoin who "don't get out of bed for less than $50MM."

"Last month, the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust filed its latest update that stated the ETF would trade on the NASDAQ exchange with a ticker symbol that has yet to be determined."

Read more: http://www.nasdaq.com/article/bitcoin-etf-inching-closer-to-reality-cm358963#ixzz33iWPO4jO

This is expected to launch before the end of the year. Hold on to your hats.

[DoS is something else. As far as I know, nobody has ever built a P2P network that is really DoS resistant. It's not even clear it's possible with current technology. This may make Bitcoin technically unviable in the long run.]

In the topic of Deanonymisation of clients in Bitcoin P2P network (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=632124.0) Mike Hearn says:

Encrypting individual Bitcoin connections with overlay networks isn't as helpful as encrypting other kinds of connections, unless you're willing to waste large amounts of bandwidth and time. The problem is an observer who can watch traffic in and out of the encrypting server can watch a transaction-sized packet arrive over an encrypted connection and the decrypted transaction get relayed on to the P2P network a moment later. Given the highly predictable packet sizes and timings involved you can probably match them up very reliably. Delaying things doesn't really help - there aren't many transactions even across the whole Bitcoin network, so the anonymity set would be extremely small even if batched, and people want instantaneous response for things like in person transactions.

This could be solved by encrypting the entire P2P network (but then, it would be trivial for an adversary to connect to you and get the traffic unencrypted again), and by sending lots of cover traffic so it's harder to tell when a tx is being relayed. But that's very expensive, probably too expensive.

Privacy against privileged network observers is one thing. DoS is something else. As far as I know, nobody has ever built a P2P network that is really DoS resistant. It's not even clear it's possible with current technology. This may make Bitcoin technically unviable in the long run. However our current anti-DoS strategy is not that great and this is no news - e.g. banning an IP address because it sent an 81 byte message that cost almost nothing to process doesn't make a whole lot of sense (it would be better to put that IP at the bottom of a priority queue instead).

My questions for the more technically apt amongst us are:
How big of an issue is DoS? Do you think it is solvable?

From what I have seen: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MtUKr05Y3I & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-C3llqr_sEMike & the above post)
Mike Hearn seems rather unenthused about the success of Bitcoin recently. Does anybody know if this a view shared amongst other core developers?

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101711220

Author Bill Barhydt is an advisor to Vaurum, which just secured $4MM in venture funding. Very well written, as he actually has a grasp on his subject. "Vaurum runs an exchange that facilitates over-the-counter bitcoin trading for institutional traders."

I watched a video today, in which former assistant U.S. attorney general Jeffrey Alberts clearly has no idea what securing a contract via the Bitcoin protocol would even begin to look like, yet it doesn't stop him from mentioning it. And we see this quite often amongst regulators. They are becoming bombarded with huge technological leaps that they just don't have the capacity to understand.

Regulators are so far behind the curve of technology it's hindering the progress of society. As individuals we don't have to wait for permission, but large companies do. Improper regulation and confusion in how to regulate is the reason we haven't seen an influx of well-funded Bitcoin exchanges.

Look at Google and Amazon's new big projects. Fully autonomous cars and drone delivery service, respectively. They are both ready to launch, however, due to the complexities, or yet I should say bureaucracies, of regulation, neither will probably be released for at least 5 years. I believe there will be a time (relatively soon) when this current form of government restricts the pace of innovation to a breaking point, where a paradigm shift is necessary for the ways that we as a society implement regulations. I believe distributed consensus could offer a potential solution, along with self-regulated industries.

What do you think?

Title says it. Screen shot here: http://imgur.com/gallery/xj10IXA/new

Any ideas what that's all about? Can I pay my 2014 taxes in BTC?  

https://coinreport.net/budweiser-partners-coinbase/

Budweiser will be accepting bitcoin as payment at concession stands AND giving $10 in free bitcoins to all attendees of the Budweiser made in America Festival. They give you $10 in bitcoins to spend! Imagine how many new people this is going to open up bitcoin to as not some crazy, impossible to understand drug dealers currency, but as a real world frictionless payment system.

"Budweiser has the potential to get a strong digital currency following as their event’s Concert Series runs between April and August, traveling through Wisconsin to California."

Marc Andreessen: In 20 years, we’ll talk about Bitcoin like we talk about the Internet today

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/05/21/marc-andreessen-in-20-years-well-talk-about-bitcoin-like-we-talk-about-the-internet-today/

The first part of the article focuses more on the future of the internet regarding other nations' responses to NSA spying on the world and the degrading trust in U.S. tech giants.

The second part of the article focuses on... Bitcoin!

Here is a great podcast for beginners or even for experienced bitcoiners who want a little refreshment or encouragement. It's from late March 2014, but it didn't have it's own thread anywhere on the forum, so I thought I would share. Mark Andreesen and Benjamin Lawsky are the notable guests. There is a clip from Milton Friedman that blew my mind! Check it out:

http://freakonomics.com/2014/03/27/why-everybody-who-doesnt-hate-bitcoin-loves-it-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/

Hey guys,

This is an article my friend sent me. It seems littered with incorrect information, such as this:

Mining attacks occur when the computers used to solve the complex mathematical problems are faster than the software. Miners can hoard coins before the software has a chance to make the equation more difficult.

However, my mining aptitude is low, so if you guys can help me dissect this, I'd appreciate it!

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101633191

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/in-one-month-everyone-in-iceland-will-own-cryptocurrency

Quite an interesting approach. I wonder if the people of Iceland will have enough awareness and interest to actually make this work. I have a feeling that the citizens of the U.S. would not.

http://www.businessinsider.com/overstock-accepts-bitcoin-2014-1

Overstock.com has become the first major online shopping retailer to commit to accepting the digital currency bitcoin as payment in exchange for any of our million products. We are doing this for both business and philosophical reasons.

First, the business reasons: There are large numbers of holders of bitcoin who are eager to patronize firms that will accept this form of payment, but so far, their options have been limited. I believe that by being the first major online retailer to accept bitcoin, we will tap into a significant group of loyal consumers, and as a result our share of the overall market will grow.

In addition, the cost of carrying out credit-card transactions is roughly 2 percent. Given that our net margin is also approaching 2 percent, the avoidance of such fees will make bitcoin sales that much more profitable.

And, while it's true that the value of bitcoin has proven more volatile than that of gold, this will not be a risk to Overstock.com; we will either immediately convert bitcoin to dollars or hedge our bitcoin risk through bitcoin-dollar derivatives (should such a market develop).

Now, the philosophical reasons: I believe limited government is a better business model for our nation than is unlimited government (and limited government has the additional benefit of being consistent with our Constitution). Among the many vices of authoritarianism is that it can sustain itself only by offering more things to more people than it can actually deliver, and one way it makes up the difference is by debasing its currency.

People who share my belief in limited government often favor gold-back money, because for millennia, mankind's stock of gold has increased at a rate of 2-3 percent per year, and no government mandarin has the power to will additional gold into existence.

As a digital currency, bitcoin is, of course, suited to online transactions. In addition, however, it possesses those key virtues of gold: Bitcoin is mathematically constrained such that there can be no more than 21 million (infinitely divisible) units, and the supply will grow in a predictable manner.

I am agnostic regarding the future value of bitcoin. I merely feel bitcoin is a viable medium of exchange that Overstock.com should embrace to better serve our customers, and that the U.S. should embrace to create a robust, viable alternative to our current monetary institutions.

— By Patrick M. Byrne

— Patrick M. Byrne is chairman and CEO of online retailer Overstock.com. Follow him on Twitter @overstockceo.

This is slightly outdated and the Overstock story is over reported, but I think it is significant to hear the CEO and chairman of such a major online retailer publicly endorse Bitcoin in such a positive way.

[Is that realistic? In my opinion, probably not.]

According to Thomas Reuters GFMS, roughly 377 MM pounds of gold exist above ground which equates to about 6,000,000,000 ounces of gold. For simplicity, I'll use an undervaluation of gold at $1,000. This means the total value of gold above ground is roughly 6 trillion dollars.

If bitcoin is adopted on a global scale as a deflationary store of value that is coupled with other valuable functions, much in the same respect as gold, what does this mean for the potential price of one BTC? If BTC ever becomes as valuable as gold, we're looking at 6 trillion dollars divided by 21 MM instead of 6 Bn.

~ $285,000. Is that realistic? In my opinion, probably not. Is it a possiblity? Anything's possible.

EDIT: This would make one satoshi worth $0.00285. 

This gave me a good laugh, especially "what I really do."

I've been trying to access my account at mt. gox and keep receiving a blank white page with the words "Database access error, please retry later."

Is anyone else getting this? From looking at the mt gox market data, it's obvious that trading is still happening....

I'm looking for the most secure storage option for my long term bitcoin holdings. I'm thinking paper wallet. I know blockchain.info offers a paper wallet, but I would prefer something that generates private keys in an offline environment. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

I use Mt Gox API to calculate prices on my website, and it has not been receiving the information for more than 12 hours now. Is anyone else having the same problem? Any ideas?