[TLDR another very high-profile name to accept Bitcoin.]

This is a revival of lebing's original thread which was a great starting point for the biggest developments for noobs and old-timers alike. I shall endeavour to keep it up-to-date. Starting today with the most relevant bits to fill the gap. Sit tight while I get it up-to-date.

I'm going to keep this thread updated with the most important fundamental reasons (not technical) which will in the long term, move the price. Hopefully over the long term this reduces the number of "OMG?! why is the price going X??" I will be limiting the updates I make to this thread to only those items which have the power to significantly affect adoption/ move the market (snip)

Expedia to accept Bitcoin payments for hotel bookings, initially US customers only, for hotels not flights (yet)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27810008
TLDR another very high-profile name to accept Bitcoin.

Bitcoin charts on bloomberg for employees, coming soon to everyone
http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/09/bitcoin-ticker-available-on-bloomberg-terminal/
TLDR Bitcoin now officially mainstream

Bitpay partners with 3dcart
http://btcbible.com/bitpay-partners-with-3dcart/
TLDR Bitcoin now available as a payment option to 16,000 new merchants

Bitcoin finally coming to Africa
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1hn0ue/kipochi_launches_first_bitcoin_wallet_in_africa/
TLDR A SMS/ web hybrid system is being developed now which will reach the place where bitcoin has the most potential for organic growth.

Bitcoin ETF (once approved by the SEC) coming soon
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2043473/winklevoss-twins-will-secure-bitcoins-like-gold-in-vaults.html
TLDR You might soon be able to purchase bitcoin derivatives from your stock broker

Webmoney (Russian Paypal with 11 million users) is now an exchange and wallet servicing p2p and merchants
http://www.thegenesisblock.com/bitcoin-access-expanded-to-over-11-million-users-of-webmoney/
TLDR Big pressure was just put on Paypal to integrate sooner rather than later.

Okcupid is now accepting bitcoin (7 million users)
http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/04/okcupid-says-it-will-accept-bitcoin-as-currency-falls-to-recent-low/

Hedge fund looking to inject 1 billion € into bitcoin for large investors
https://exante.eu/press/news/266/
TLDR Big €€€ starting to move into Bitcoin

Western Union looking to integrate bitcoin into services
http://mobile.blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/04/01/western-union-eyes-digital-currency-services/
TLDR Bitcoin is on the verge of worldwide physical exchange infrastructure

Expensify Brings Bitcoin to Main Street
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-29/expensify-brings-bitcoin-to-main-street
TLDR App with 200,000 business users is leveraging bitcoins strengths

New zealand, Cyprus & other Mediterranean countries considering/ have decided to confiscate "one time" X% of depositor funds
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/world/europe/russian-ties-put-cyprus-banking-crisis-on-east-west-fault-line.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
TLDR The money you thought was safe from theft in your bank account is not safe (especially if you live in an at risk country in the euro zone).

FINCEN releases guidance for virtual currencies (bitcoin)
http://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/guidance/pdf/FIN-2013-G001.pdf
TLDR Small exchanges based in the USA will likely have a tough time due to this, but by making the grey legal area black & white, it will make larger players willing to step forward. In other words, bitcoin is now legal.

Blockchain forked, but problem solved
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1a51xx/now_that_its_over_the_blockchain_fork_explained/
TLDR Double spend issue has been fixed in the short term and long term with the new roll out plan

Amazon fulfillment integrates with Bitpay
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bitpay-integrates-bitcoin-with-fulfillment-by-amazoncom-2013-03-06
TLDR There is now a convenient way for anyone (registered business @ Amazon) to sell anything with bitcoins through Amazon

Bitspend.net
https://bitspend.net/
TLDR You can now buy ANYTHING on the net with bitcoins (under $100 during beta and under $1000 after beta ends)

Coinlab Bringing Bitcoin to Wall Street with MtGox Deal -
http://bitcoinmagazine.com/coinlab-bringing-bitcoin-to-wall-street-with-mtgox-deal
TLDR - Details are sketchy at this point, but it seems that there may be a deal coming up which will bring bitcoin into the forex market. I'm including this here because of the absolutely insane effect this would have on the price if this were in fact happening.

Mega - https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/302844443223023616
TLDR - The service formerly known as Megaupload (which was the top non-torrent based file sharing service on the net) is now accepting Bitcoins

Reddit - http://blog.reddit.com/2013/02/new-gold-payment-options-bitcoin-and.html
TLDR - One of the largest sites on the internet is now accepting bitcoin for their premium service!

Bitpay - http://blog.bitpay.com/search?updated-max=2012-12-06T10:13:00-05:00&max-results=7
TLDR - Merchants are signing up in droves with Bitpay's (and other payment processors) payment system

Wordpress - http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/pay-another-way-bitcoin/
TLDR - The largest blog network on the internet is now accepting bitcoins. This paves the way for wider, mainstream bitcoin adoption

Coinbase - http://blog.coinbase.com/post/42587245753/coinbase-is-now-selling-over-1m-usd-of-bitcoin-per
TLDR - It just got alot easier for users in the largest bitcoin market in the world (USA) to acquire bitcoins and it is showing up in the numbers.

SatoshiDice/gambling potential: http://calvinayre.com/2013/02/01/business/why-bitcoin-can-no-longer-be-ignored/
TLDR - While its not possible to gamble with dollars in the US, it is possible with bitcoins. The big players are starting to take notice of this fact and over the next few months its likely that we will see one emerge onto the scene

Blockchain: https://blockchain.info/charts/my-wallet-n-users?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=
TLDR - The best online wallet is experiencing exponential growth of new users (as of 2013, this exponential growth is continuing as of June 2014.

We're looking at $100K or thereabouts as "da moon". Most would agree that if BTC reaches that price, we'll officially be standing on Terra Formaggio right?

As I understand it a US plate is only unique to a state. Here in the UK our number plates are unique to the whole country therefore rarer.

You can't of course rearrange the characters so this is the closest you can get "100K BTC" or "BTC 100K".

I'll leave this ad here just for when there might be interest in the future.

Not that I'll need the money if and when we get there...

It seems discussion of this erm, 'exchange' has tailed off recently along with its credibility so I can't find any recent threads to tag this onto, hence a new topic.

Basically, it seems as if the Ruskies are running around like headless chickens after repeated DDoS attacks getting quite paranoid. Handing out 600-day bans like candy (yes, me included!) to anyone even vaguely critical of their operation.

In short, around May of 2013 I posted here the problems I had with a BTC transfer to my wallet that was held up for days. Support takes 2 days to answer any query which is very reassuring. And when they answer it is a two or three word answer in pidgin English. Eventually the transfer went through with no explanation of why it was held up.

Rather stupidly I gave them another chance as I wanted to trade FTC and LTC and they have a 99% monopoly on those markets.

Referring to this in chat got me a 600-day ban with no warning, appeal nor explanation. No, I wasn't trolling, in fact I was always really helpful to everyone, even the trolls, especially noobs with problems. But in the trollbox there is no such thing as a good reputation.

Now, you could say, "Well good riddance! Now get on with your life!" with which I'd agree, so tough luck you'll see more of me back on this forum now

But hey I'm just posting this for posterity as a low note in their customer relations and opening it up for discussion for anybody else who's either noticed this or had a similar experience.

Rant over, thanks for reading!

Hi all, over on BTCe I trade and chat as DunningKruger. I've decided to push all my trading related tweets onto a new Twitter account of the same name https://twitter.com/DunningKruger_ (note the underscore!)

I've been trading the 'real' markets since 2009 but cryptocurrencies just since early this year. My real job sometimes involves a little teaching and I enjoy giving one-to-one Skype tutorials for trading currently priced at 0.5 BTC per hour.

As a small bonus, I'll give away 10 FTC to a random follower at midnight tonight GMT (7PM EST, 11PM UTC).

I'll be talking about mostly BTC, LTC, FTC and XPM as these are the coins I trade and know best.

It's not about pump and dumps, it's not about misinformation, in fact I hate FUD and see enough of it in the BTCe trollbox. Rather than simply rant about it in chat, I'll debunk it chunk by chunk via Twitter.

Mods: no idea if this fits here!

And it's gone. All gone.

SOLD, off-forum. Feel free to delete.

I post this as something, at last, happens. Though the past 7 days (almost precisely) have seen the most stable BTC price since just before the 20-fold rise, some would say stability is boring: a week is a long time in the cryptocurrency markets and few would buy into the cliche that, "No news is good news."

With my last chart of May 16th, I was all but ready to throw away my "blue line" trend showing 1.86% average daily growth between January and March of 2013. Did it cease to be meaningful as a trend to predict future performance by as soon as that daily growth spiked to 4, 5, 6% day on day? Perhaps not, as twice on the recovery it seemed to bounce off a line parallel but below my blue line.

If you've seen my charts before you'll know I'm no soothsayer. I don't like to predict prices because...well I don't think I'm not very good at it. If ever I produce a chart solely for the purpose of bragging how prescient I am, you'll know about it. Hey, if you're feeling prescient yourself, tell me when I'll do it

As a side-note, today's rise happened at EXACTLY the same time I took the bulk of my Bitcoins off of the two exchanges I use and placed them into cold storage. It prompted one of those moments where I look over my shoulder, quickly, full of paranoia, ready to catch a wayward cameraman running out of view, a la the Truman Show. I didn't spot any but I'm still not convinced.

Disclaimer: the disclaimers are back.

When I have time in between obsessing about Bitcoin, I take photos and sell them:



Fine Art America is a very popular website which takes my digital images and uses them to fulfill print and product orders anywhere in the world. Which is handy because I don't really like sending mounted prints across the pond, especially not if they're framed.

Now, FAA are a little stuck in the 90s. I'd love them to accept Bitcoin and I am about to ask them. I know what the answer will be however!

But if they suspected that buyers would want this facility then who knows - money talks after all.

I'm implementing a simple cart on my website which will take BTC orders but this denies me the functionality of the FAA website, ie. customers being able to visualise exactly what their finished product will look like but in the meantime I have to rely on FAA

Anyway, please take a look:

http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/tony-coleby.html?tab=artworkgalleries&artworkgalleryid=296435

If there's a print you'd like from my gallery, why not email them and ask if they have plans to accept Bitcoin. I think the only way to do it otherwise would be for a customer to make their selection then I invoice them in BTC. Awkward but I pledged to accept BTC in my business as much as I could.

I'm willing to bend over backwards to start selling to international customers in BTC so would do all I can to make this work including taking payment in BTC and placing in the order for you in USD/ EUR or GBP.

This is a genuine question. I've been thinking a lot about how the ease of buying BTC with USD no doubt fuelled its uptake and eventual price spike. Things are changing now and again we have to look at the bottlenecks of global BTC uptake: a flaky exchange in the form of MtGox and an increasingly-hostile US government.

It seems to me that in the near future, a hedge against US meddling might be to have a European exchange which does NOT TOUCH USD but does business in EUR, BTC and perhaps LTC. Drop the dollar, drop the junkcoins.

Site it in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Malta, anyone of the financially-liberal countries which doesn't look like it's going to tank.

I wonder, though of course figures can only be guesses due to the mostly-anonymous architecture of cryptocurrencies, how many people who hold or trade BTC actually have USD bank accounts?

Half? More, less?

My point is I think there is enough non-USD fiat to support this kind of exchange. The days of thinking "international business" equals "USD" are slowly coming to an end, in fact, is this not core to the very idea of Bitcoin?

This is a brain dump really and I know there would be massive hills to climb to get something like this up and running but I fear that the land of the free will do all she can protect the position of the almighty dollar in the global economy and this would be a way to pre-empt that.

I suspect the main trend I've been looking at is now only of historical interest and we've departed from any meaningful reference to it.

Personally I will use it as a measure of how bubble-like the market becomes if we ever see something similar develop again.

Ie. 1.86% growth day-on-day HELD for around 9 weeks. Who knows, it may be months, years before we see it again but as long as Bitcoin is alive, be ready for it I reckon.

Do historical charts relating to the economy but containing no speculation belong here or in Economy?

Specifically asking because my MtGox vs BTCe relative trade volume chart was moved in this direction.

Come to think of it this probably belongs in Meta right?

I think we could use a little fuzzy logic here

Here they are:

http://tonycoleby.com/shared/ManBearPig-MTGO.dek

Most of the cards are from years ago and I held onto the classics like Counterspell etc.

These are the Mythical Rares (top row) and Rares (the others):

So today's the day I get my coins back on to Gox, or so went the plan!

I seem to remember having the usual hour+ delay transferring BTC into BTCe from MtGox but I've been waiting 4 hours for a transfer in the other direction.

Blockchain shows 0 confirmations.

Yes of course I'm waiting for a response from support (in Russian-English) but can anyone shed any light on this please?

A history of weekly BTCe vs MtGox trade volume.

Last 9 weeks have seen the BTCe's relative trade volume triple (it's a bubble!11)

I'll keep this and other charts going if I receive a few donations

Too tired to make a chart but at first glance it would seem that the volume ratio of Gox:BTCe has halved in the last 5 days from 10:1 to about 5:1.

Again, skipping my usual diligence (had some real-life work today - no I didn't get paid in Bitcoin!) it would seem the ratio may have been around 20:1 at the start of the year.

Knee-jerk reaction to the Coinlab lawsuit or something deeper?

Personally, I took everything I trade with off of Gox last week and onto BTCe.

Make of it what you will, it's just the facts and one rather obvious line that may or nor still be pertinent.

Also, I was getting more tips when the market was bullish :p

I've tidied up a few of the projections: the exact growth in the defining part of the trend was 1.862% though the last couple of digit or so is unreliable as I use closing prices.

What-if's:

What if we revert to the 9th Jan to 17th March trend of 1.862% daily growth? (blue line)
Then we would expect the current price to be in the region of $109 today and around $124 on May 8th.

What if we repeat the last open to close weeks's movement ie. a -9.7% decline?
Then we would expect to see a  price of around $126 on May 8th.

I'm beginning to sound like an evangelist for this 1.8% daily growth thing but you know what the last week's growth has been as a daily average?

Yeah you guessed it, 1.8% - hovering right above that blue trendline for 7 days.

Disclaimer: Investments can go up as well as down.

Recently I've noticed more people either agreeing with the relevance of that +1.8%/day trendline (the dotted blue one on my charts) or at least a similar one.

For me, putting a little faith into it, it's a reason to be long-term bullish because the price is still roughly, throughout the spikes and crashes, holding to it.

For others it seems to back up their bearishness: the price is ABOVE that line so I should sell.

Each to their own, as ever I post this in Speculation because I do speculate a little on my charts, otherwise it's just as it happened.

LOL!11 YOU N00BS YOU BETTA SELL NAO COS BTICOIN WILL BE WR0TH ZERO 2DAY LOL.

Sorry, I HAD to get that out of my system.

Normal service will be resumed.