http://www.wsj.com/articles/wal-mart-says-it-will-stop-accepting-visa-cards-in-canadian-stores-1465592845

This is the most surprising news I've read in a long time. I had always thought that with so many people hooked on cards in America, retailers had no choice but to accept them whatever the conditions, but I'm pleased to be wrong.

OK, this isn't BTC related, but it shows that if a payment system isn't satisfactory, companies are open to the idea of dumping it. So they may as well be open to new payment systems. Let's see, could there be another payment system, cheaper than Visa, and that people could use at Wal-Mart?

Technology? Supply? Contracts? Let's be frank. I don't give a damn. The microwave oven remains the perfect example of my point. I know how to use but I have no need to understand how it works. Nor do I care.

What matters is people.

BTC is ungoverned. We've seen that the BTC Core team is unable to fix problems (or way to slow). Will the foundation make a comeback? Satoshi Nakamoto? I would have liked Craig Wright to be Satoshi, he would make a nice ambassador.

On the Ether side, I see Vitalik Buterin who is smart, young, very knowledgeable, so much that I trust his abilities to find and implement solutions if a problem arise. I have no doubt the scalability issue BTC's facing would have been fixed months ago if he was running BTC.

So I'm afraid Ether will pass BTC some day, not because of better tech, but because of better and stronger leadership.

So much for the people saying that Britain shall leave the EU for fear of a muslim invasion from the continent. The muslims are already inside, and they are winning elections. But considering the British have caused so much havoc in the Middle East, creating the Iraki kingdom with a foreign Sunni king no local wanted, creating Israel against the Palestinians, I guess it's only justice that muslims conquer London today, and the whole of the UK tomorrow.

The UK is doomed, and I certainly won't cry for it. My worry is that the EU is being caught in a squeeze between muslim Britain and muslim Turkey.

So Craig Wright may or may not be Satoshi Nakamoto, and that won't be the subject of this topic.

What I want to discuss here is that among all the naysayers, there are folks who seem to just look down on Wright, thinking that he cannot be Satoshi, because he's a middle-aged clean-shaven normal looking white guy (yes, that description also fits me), and that they expected Satoshi to be some kind of a long-haired pot-smoking pale-faced anarcho-punk with tattoos all over.

So he may or may not be, but we should all agree that he has the correct look, age and background to be. Some posts I've read about him are really offensive, and there's no need for that. I'd be happy if Satoshi is a man like M.Wright.

For the past 6 weeks, I guess I've been buying and selling ETH more than 20 times. Each time with a profit. Last time I've bought, I paid 0.029 and I had the opportunity to sell with a profit, which I did, but I've chosen to hold 10 ETH. I won't sell them no matter how down the price may go. I'm doing that because I want Ethereum to be more than pump and dump. The idea, the whole project, I want to support it. It is a great project. The currency may go down, but I sincerely hope the big project behind will be successful. I also hope I'm not the only one.

One thing surprises me.

We're currently seeing the dump part in the ETH massive pump and dump operation. The surprise is that all other big altcoins are down too. Factom, Monero, they're all seriously down, but BTC harldy gains. It's up only 1%. It should have gained much more, shouldn't it?

I'm surprised not to read anything about this, but with all that euro-craziness with negative interest rates, it means that putting your money in the bank equals shrinking your savings. So it's better to hide some cash under the mattress.

I wonder if the negatives interest rates could be linked to the fight against large banknotes like the €500 bill.

I believe Poloniex is the largest marketplace for altcoins, so a topic about the new fees structure seems appropriate here.

To those who haven't noticed, the flat, standard, 0.2% fee will go, replaced by a maker-taker system.

I kinda like the idea of a lower fee for the person who creates an order. This will entice more people to make orders, and that's good. I also like the idea of diminishing fees for the people who trade more, but what I don't like is that the lower fees require a monthly volume of trades over 600 BTC!
Who's doing that? Making 20 BTC worth of trades every single day of the month! That is huge.

Ethereum has a clear, identified leader: Vitalik Buterin.

The guy's now well-known, and respected because of his great knowledge of anything related to crypto-currencies. BTC had Gavin Andreesen as its frontman for a long time, and now that he's gone, BTC has stalled. Well, it's actually more complicated than this, but everybody can see that BTC has a governance problem. The block size and scalability issue has been hanging above our heads for 3 quarters. Ethereum, nor any altcoin, suffers from the same lack of vision, because there's a manager at the top who is able to fix things, and solve problems when they arise.

Decentralization is certainly an exciting concept, but it doesn't make things easy when there's a problem.

In the past 30 days, we've seen several blocks with more than 1,500 transactions included. With the current 1 MB limit, it means the average transaction must be below 666 bytes to fit.

Well, I made a transaction today, and I discovered it was 1,481 bytes. I'm very sorry. Other BTC users will have to make smaller transactions so that another 1,499 can fit into a single block.

This just shows the block size issue is very real, and that it needs to be solved as soon as possible.

At the end of the month, I'll fly to Budapest for some heavy dental work, and I'm planning to pay with BTC. Has anyone ever paid his/her dentist with BTC? The dentist I'll see mostly has foreign patients traveling to Hungary because it's much cheaper, so BTC would be convenient for many of them. Any argument I could use to convince my dentist?

The https://www.mobileworldcongress.com/ is the largest event of its kind, and there shall be a large "Mobile Money" pavilion this year. Apple Pay, Paypal will be there along all the other big guys in the field, I wonder who will attend from the BTC world?

BTC has to be there!

A few weeks ago, there was a proposal from 3 lone members of the European parliament, but it's much more serious now with this proposal. It's coming straight from the European Commission in Brussels:

Virtual currency exchange platforms can be considered as 'electronic' currency exchange offices that trade virtual currencies for real currencies (or so-called 'fiat' currencies, such as the euro). On the other hand, virtual currency wallet providers hold virtual currency accounts on behalf of their customers. In the 'virtual currency' world, they are the equivalent of a bank offering a current account. They store virtual currencies and allow for their transfers to other wallets/virtual currency accounts.

There is a growing consensus in Europe that virtual currency exchange platforms should be subjected to 'know-your-customer' rules under the Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive, which will have to identify and verify the identity of the person exchanging virtual currencies for real currencies and vice versa.

No more anonymous transactions in Europe. That's their goal.

There's another topic comparing the 2: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1260666.0

The subject here is that between 2014 and 2015, Paypal gained 16 millions new users (https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/about). There's no way to be sure as it's impossible to count how many users BTC has, but I believe it's more than BTC. Much more. So I'm asking why? And ultimately, what can be done to reverse this trend?

Since BTC is cheaper to use, I guess Paypal is more successful because it's better at making its users feel safe, without any dark cloud/block size issue above their heads.

I sincerely believe BTC's one hundred times better than Paypal because it's a currency, and unregulated, but something clearly has to change. I've been here long enough to remember guys writing that BTC would kill Paypal, it hasn't, and it doesn't look that it will.

Mike Hearn has left and I fully understand him. He won't the only one to leave.

I'm afraid that in a few months there will be only losers supporting BTC. Yes, losers, because smart guys want action. Smart guys want results. Fast. Now! The block size problem has been hanging around for more than 6 months and no clear solution is in sight. Can you name another business where problems don't get solved, and people just bury their heads in the sand hoping the problem would disappear? What will happen first: the next release of Android, facebook having 2 billions users, Elon Musk going to Mars, or the block size issue solved?

I cannot imagine how much frustration, and sorrow, the people who have invested several years of theirs lives in BTC, shall feel. When I look around I see plenty investing in blockchain systems because the tech is so great, but nobody's investing in BTC anymore.

If the block size issue isn't solved this quarter, any sane person shall leave the ship. I guess that if Satoshi Nakamoto is still alive, he would cry! He launched something truly great, but it has stalled last year. There's no lack of dreamers hoping that BTC shall reach $1,000 again, but I (and the real BTC supporters, I hope) certainly haven't joined to become a renter. BTC may be worth $100 or $10,000 and I don't care. What I do care about is that BTC has the ability to grow ten-fold this year, then one hundred-fold next year (I mean the number of transactions).

If BTC cannot grow, if it cannot change, it will follow the footsteps of the typerwriter. It was fantastic at launch, but it disappeared when a new superior technology appeared, and no typewriter company has survived making computers.

Note: don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying BTC's dead. It can keep on going many years with the same small number of users. There are some old folks very happy to collect stamps, you know.

[Western Union]

From
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/07/europe/paris-attacks-brussels-operatives/

The man, using the false Samir Bouzid identification card at a Western Union outlet in the Brussels area, wired 750 euros ($807) to Hasna Ait Boulahcen on November 17, the Belgian prosecutor's office said. Both of the publicized suspects -- the men going by the names of Kayal and Bouzid -- were at the store from which the money was sent.

Time to stop the stupid rumor that BTC is used by the bad guys. They're using WU.

This isn't related to BTC at all.

I should be in Spain right now, but I'm not so I'm looking for someone to replace me. It's a very easy job, so low pay BTC). I'm looking for someone to make a few phone calls, asking details from classifieds.
You need to have a Spanish phone number, and speak perfect Spanish (no Catalan, and no accent).

Send PM if interested.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Among the people fighting IS, the most ardent fighters are probably the Kurds. They were fighting Irakis before IS, and they're also at war with Turkey. As Turkey has shown many times, it's more concerned about crushing Kurds than IS. Now that Turkey has also decided to fight Russians, Russia should support the creation of a free Kurdistan, just like I do.

The international community allowed the creation of Israel in 1947, it is now time to allow the creation of Kurdistan.

To people who are not familiar with this magazine, it's very highly regarded everywhere in Europe. It's British and more than 150 years old. I bet this cover page alone is worth a rise of at least 3% in BTC's price. The article is also available online but you need to register.

http://www.economist.com/

Have you seen that?

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-34594262

The killer replaced by fiction. I'm not sure what's worse. Maybe we shall forbid all statues of known people. It's nicer to have statues of lions or eagles, otherwise we'll have to wait about 2,000 years. When you visit Greece or Roma, you can go to museums with plenty of old statues of people who were famous in their days, but most visitors have no idea of who they represent (except the emperors, of course).