The Sheep is (was) an online anonymous marketplace for drugs. The owner is Czech. The site is down, so I am told.
There is evidence that 96000 coins have been stolen from it and the thieves are still trying to launder them through tumblers¹.
To me 96000 coins are a bit too much for an online drug marketplace. Who in their own mind would keep so many coins in the hands of some website run by anonymous people? Oh, wait. BTC-E owners are also unknown.
BTC-E use a Czech payment processor².
BTC-E is having many withdrawal issues recently.

See what I did here?

EDIT: just to clarify - if you think I am implying "all Czech people are thieves" - then please don't. Some of my best friends are from Czech Republic.

1. http://www.coindesk.com/sheep-marketplace-track-stolen-bitcoins/
2. http://www.coindesk.com/btc-e-exchange-banking-issues/

Opening new thread because the issue is different from https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=270716.0

Dear Bitstamp clients,

We are pleased to inform you that Bitstamp has successfully resolved both (1) the networking issues that made our site unavailable and (2) our issues with our banking software.

Bitstamp has caught up with all pending deposits and withdrawals. Only standard banking processing should remain in delivering your transfers. We kindly ask our customers with pending transfers to remain patient and refrain from submitting additional support tickets on the matter to avoid any unnecessary delays.

Thank you for your understanding.

Best regards,
The Bitstamp team

(source: http://www.bitstamp.net/news)

Has anybody so far reported not being able to WITHDRAW funds from Bitstamp?

Yes! Still no wire from Bitstamp. Request date: 12/11 amount: $21k

they replied to my support ticket (deposted a few honderd euros more than 2 weeks ago) and askedmy to send a bank statement. I did that and now they are looking into it. Hope it will be resolved soon!

In my case a friend has a SEPA deposit to BitStamp that was executed by his bank on the 19th. No news so far. He opened a support ticket. I have one that was executed by my bank today. I'll report when I get news. Please do the same.

NB: BitStamp has never failed me to date and has always communicated issues promptly. I hope we can bury this thread soon.
NB2: I have no support ticket for my transfer of today, of course. It's too early to open one. Hopefully I won't need one.

EDIT: My deposit confirmed 22.11.2013.
EDIT2: My friend is such a n00b. He never sent the money. He assumed BitStamp was going to take it automatically from his bank

At first it was 500 internal server error.
Now turned into "owner has denied your access to the site.". Tried from a different IP, same story.

On an hopefully unrelated topic, it seems no one has been able to deposit/withdraw any money since about a week.
I know their twitter post about "problems with our banking software" but in bitcoinland that is a warning signal even when the exchange has a clean record of being punctual and professional, as BitStamp does.

I have a few grand trapped there and I'm quite worried.

EDIT: sorry for duplicate topic. I had this post open for long before posting.

... to prove the point to the Senate that bitcoins are just funny money.

Thoughts?

Just saying. Down since 10 minutes and I feel like a kid who got lost in a shopping mall

delete this please. Brain fart. It turns out I stubbornly entered the same incorrect address 5 times in a row. 

Hi,

just I have to say that I'm impressed with my 5-digit EUR transfer credited on the same day it was sent from my bank.
Way to go BitStamp.

Someone who knows I'm into bitcoins just sent me a link to this:

http://vimeo.com/71559751

I googled for it and I found that a flash mob event was presumably organized in Berlin.

http://www.meetup.com/Bitcoin-Lab-Berlin/messages/boards/thread/34789392

Does anyone have more info to share about this event and app?
Because I just think that the idea in itself is freaking cool.

EDIT: Corrected to "Mockumentary" after more googling around. So no such app exists yet. Reason: http://www.berlinsymphony.com/

So here's my morning's brain fart:

US banks and US govt are circling around Karpeles' business. He knows that the Powers that Be have decided MtGox' death. He can't win this epic battle legally.

Also it's been said multiple times in this forum: bitcoin economy is too centralized around a single exchange. For the sake of Bitcoin's success, elephant MtGox has to go.
Karpeles knows that and he is a strong believer in the bitcoin idea. To the point of sacrificing his own business for the success of bitcoins.
So rather than going out with a big boom he is doing the bitcoin economy a favour by making MtGox slowly fail and die.

In such context Roger Ver's video kinda makes sense. He's helping Gox' slow exit from the scene. He is not lying but his act is meant to be ambiguous and not inspiring confidence.

Karpeles: the hero that bitcoin community deserves, but not the one it needs right now  

EDIT: corrected most of the spelling mistakes to please our native English speaking friends. But left some just because it's a nice day outside.

but the site is up and running

Last time it happened was in January 2013 after block reward halving.
That event more or less coincided with the start of an exponential rise in price.

I'm not saying "buy buy buy" just noticing the event has happened.

Just a thought I have today after seeing how many here complain for high fees when wiring fiat to/from exchanges.

How much does your bank charge for an incoming/outgoing international transfer?

Because mine charges nothing to receive, 15€ to send non-SEPA, nothing to send SEPA.

My theory being that most EU banks don't charge much while most US banks screw their customers on the matter. Maybe it's done to "protect" their precious citizens from those nasty overseas fraudsters lol

[unknown]

Hi,

just warning the potential users that this is clearly a scam.

By following the instructions on the page you are giving an unknown entity who just runs an anonymous blog the permission to borrow up to 100 of your BTC. Nothing in Ripple can stop them from running away with your coins.

If you trust someone you don't know with your money, you deserve to be robbed.

Edit: the Ripple website went under DDOS a few minutes after the scam was exposed on Ripple forums. Coincidence?

Hi, just wondering if someone can help me understand this.
After all announcements around Bitcoin 2013 conference this weekend, I seem to see new exchanges popping up like mushrooms. Take e.g. WebMoney or the new BitInstant. Where do they harvest the coins needed to provide some market depth without slippage? I mean if I can crash BitStamp/BTC-E prices with just a thousand coins, how can these new players guarantee the prices to stay stable on their exchanges that have much lower volume? Do they have some secret agreements for a partially shared orderbook with BitStamp, maybe Gox and BTC-E, maybe Ripple-alike but simpler? Or are they doing fractional reserve banking selling you bitcoins they don't have or buying them in advance with cash they don't have yet?

http://webr3.org/apps/xrp/charts/btc-usd.html

So somebody has just decided to sell some 8 million ripples at 79 XRP/USD.

I'm impressed. This is the first time I see so such a huge wall in the XRP/USD market. Normally liquidity belongs to the XRP/BTC pair not XRP/USD.

Thoughts?

(Note to self: must look into building my own arbitrator bot NOW)

EDIT: I just posted this and the wall disappeared. Magic.

DISCLAIMER: my speculation pocket is half cash/half coins at the moment. So I have not much interest in talking the price up or down. In both cases I win some and I lose some.

Crazy hoarding takes a break. Get-rich-quick dreams die of euthanasia.
You still buy coins to make your purchases but you do not hold them because they are slowly depreciating over fiat.
Dollars/euros or any other weapon-backed currency stay price reference for everything that matters to the public.
But Bitcoin achieves its goal of being an alternative to moneygram/paypal/western union, especially in countries where such instruments are unavailable while getting dollars/euros is expensive or illegal.
New exchanges start popping up like mushrooms - by then maybe the Ripple protocol plays a role into balancing the price and providing the liquidity needed for their users to operate without much slippage. Or maybe not.
The money flow makes it so that an economy of sellers/buyers of goods and services develops using bitcoins. Over time it grows to the day that the average joe is educated to think of bitcoin as an exchange medium for goods (as opposed to gambling/speculation money).
That day the fiat price trend starts reversing again. But a much bigger economy is behind it. Allowing for a long, gradual demise of dollars/euros.

OK, last part is probably visionary. But the rest... what do you think?

some taobao sellers started to accept bitcoin

How many sellers accepting bitcoins there? Any major sellers? Do you see a trend?
I suppose btchina.com is their CNY price reference (which so far follows Gox with some delay).
How do they protect themselves from the fluctuations in value of bitcoins?
Do they have a price in bitcoins and one in CNY?
Do they use some automatic conversion system, e.g. BitPay-style?

I'm trying to evaluate the real relevance of that fact, once the rumors of last weekend are fading.
(for westerners: taobao is one of the biggest Chinese marketplaces)
Thanks

So here's how I read the current sentiment around this forum: most people who watched 2011 happen here are now expecting a dump. Most newbies aren't.

2011 bitcoiners are mostly middle-class geeks not pro investors. Their fun-money has suddenly become something you can buy real estate with. At that level there is little point for them in buying more coins with their monthly spare cash - it's like adding a few dimes to a million.
Most of them were true believers at the beginning, yet now I'm not sure most of them still are - to the point they'd actually spend their coins.
Their stash's potential worth keeps oscillating between "decent car" and "financial empire", depending on the news of the day.
So much at stake doesn't make you sleep at night. Turns you into a zombie checking tickers and watching walls.

Newbies - they are coming late to the party and are likely in for the get-rich-quick hype. They don't have the 2011 bias. It's like fathers vs kids. Fathers have cognitive bias so they are uneasy to adapt to new conditions. Kids have inexperience bias so they are likely going to make the same mistakes again.

And then there are speculators. Pro speculators. Likely silent lurkers here. Maybe we are all being played by a few pro's of them who just need to get all the coins for their own play, and are ok with burning some serious amount of fiat in the process. I don't know.

I think BTC price is like Schroedinger's cat. The simple act of us observing walls and talking about them makes it so that they move in the opposite direction of where the most of us expect them to. And yes I think the dump will happen. But only when almost nobody is expecting it anymore. Which makes it hard for us to get profit on the way up.

[12 USD/BTC]

DISCLAIMER: most of my coins are going to stay in cold storage until November 2013. The rest is my play money and I converted it into fiat, but it is still sitting on the exchanges. I hope I am emotionally detached enough to make sense here.

Hi guys,

I asked this question in the wall observer thread before, yet I don't recall getting an answer (or maybe I skipped through the thread and did not see it). I'd like to know what's your take on the reasoning below.

My assumptions:
1. Fiat value of bitcoin = mining cost + speculation value added.
2. Half of all mining power is ASIC as of today
3. Cost of power worldwide is approximated with average cost in US (0.15 USD/kW)
4. Average hardware breakeven of 3 months (90 days) is reasonable to many.

Using the mining profitability calculator at http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/
- Leave default values (BFL Single SC) (hmm I know Avalons are less efficient, not sure about Asicminer)
- Find the cost in USD per bitcoin that gives hardware breakeven of 90 days -->12 USD/BTC (this could be even a higher-than-reality estimate as it assumes everyone is paid list price while I think people owning mining farms got discounts).
- Double that value to factor-in all non-ASIC miners: 24 USD/BTC

So even if I were to be wrong by a factor 2 (say 48 USD/BTC), we are in a bear market now and the speculation value is currently approaching zero or negative.
And that's why I sold my play money coins. They are way overvalued - we all know that since January - just the bull inside me had gone delusional and I was expecting the bubble to pop at 440$ so I missed. Of course I have the intention to buy back at the right price - AND GET MORE COINS  

NB1: OK OK I know bitcoin has intrinsic value because of many reasons - that's why I have cold storage.
NB2: Before you hit me with a stick, please remember this is the SPECULATION forum, and that's what I am doing - speculating  
NB3: Oh come on please save me from the xkcd picture "my hobby:extrapolating". Be original with your memes, ffs

It looks very fast to me... 

Ffs. Can't sleep when it's so bumpy to watch.