Every interesting - I've been following the crash.

I would be interested in hearing about stories with respect to PP being on the side of the seller.  Has not been my experience.

Two things go into the determination of btc prices:

1. Supply and demand.
2. Perceived utility.

Perceived utility increases when people realize that more and more merchants are accepting the currency. This happens when more and more infrastructure has been developed for the network. Utility is the real good behind the options considered, what we see may not always be accurate, but it's better than nothing.

Mining:

Mining is a lottery system that awards the computer which guesses certain numbers that pertain to outputs representing transactions done in the past. The computer is awarded transfer fees (set by the transacting parties) and the release of new btc if the number guessed corresponds to the completion of a new block (2,016 transactions - programmed to happen roughly once every 10 mins). It is how btc is generated, and validated (validated because the correct answers are sent to all the other miners on the network on a real-time basis, this makes sure that everyone on the system know the latest state of affairs within the system).

This is one of the most speculative suggestions I've seen on the entire site.

1. China is not the center of the world; Germany has fully adopted it.

2. It was imposed on banks, the country isn't all banks.

3. China is putting out more BTC infrastructure every day than most other countries in the world.

4. China is leading miner in the space - that along will float the price on a speculative basis.

5. This article is part of a new wave or early adopters which don't even know that btc isn't fully anonymous; t's regulation-inspired propaganda.

It's the beginning of the end alright: for spot-market speculators. They're the ones who are (i) going to get burned by price fluctuation, and (ii) get eaten when they've flipped the currency without paying taxes before the proper regulation has been put in place.

My favourite is KNC Miner.

A lot of companies have great products, however the main issue (once you've accounted for credit risk, of course) is delivery time. You have to make sure that your order gets to you at the date you've planned for.

If your order arrives too late, the network difficulty (hash rate required to gather returns > than input energy + principal expense) will jump and your miner will retain some smaller salvage value in the best case scenario.

I had bought from Butterfly Labs and Avalon beforehand, those guys were mining with the miners they'd agreed to ship.They didn't send me my miners until it was too late. I hope they never get a dime of business furthermore, and I hope all their bitcoins get hacked or lost. No one should ever take advantage of their customers.

KNC Miner backlogged their orders. That was the only reason I bought from any mining company ever again. KNC delivered. That being said, a couple of KNC's miners did explode (mine didn't), so you have to be aware of that. However, if you aren't aware that mining is the riskiest venture in the btc space then you shouldn't be buying from anyone. KNC told me the date and time of my delivery, and then they delivered. That was that. I'm going to be buying from them over the short-term at least.

CoinTerra is a new prospect that looks promising however. I would suggest you look up both extensively. The time invested into studying the infrastructure is the most valuable asset at the moment. Time > btc > $.

Good luck.

Mining and ordering ASICs is the riskiest part of entering the bitcoin space. I heavily suggest grabbing the currency and holding it, that's speculative enough assuming your a Newbie (at the moment). Maybe you aren't and you've just recently decided to create an account at btctalk (in which case no offence was intended).

Anyhow, considering the twofold risk in mining: 1 - You're machine doesn't get delivered in time and the network difficulty spikes, 2 - You're machine doesn't get delivered at all >> it may be shrewd to consider only the most respectable and trustworthy companies with the best track records of timely delivery.

So far those are far and few in between.

Basically you want to choose your mining company on the same basis that you choose bonds (if you were an investor). Avoid attempting speculative genius until you're sure you've attained expertise sufficient to cover the risks of your decisions. Reputation and history of delivery is of utmost necessity.

Look up Labcoin. I lost money on that, I don't want you to make the same mistake, learn from mine. Simply stated - don't buy from the company you've posted about.

All the best with mining.

I would also suggest that you do not try to re-post things too often if your original message doesn't go through the first time. You'll get backed up further.

There's a developing trend in the space. The more popular an exchange becomes, the more backed up they become with customers, the higher the currency risk for the customers already entering the pool.

You have every right to feel the way you do about what happened to you on that transaction. However, I don't know how far I would go on suggesting others to adopt new, smaller exchanges (which would actually be healthy for the BTC economy).

Some users don't want to be capped at low buy/sell orders, which new exchanges will have to be limited to in the short term. On the other hand, larger exchanges tend to be big targets for hackers and price manipulators. The two biggest crashes in BTC history have both resulted from Mt.Gox, the first was a hack, the second was a server crash that was caused by excessive traffic.

As far as your personal decision to not use Coinbase, I can understand it and would probably act similarly if founded with the same scenario. However, that's not to say that every new user has something to lose by trying Coinbase. Coinbase has a very intricate hardware and software foundation, along with a lot of liquidity and customers. Their wallet is also easy to use and looks nice.

My conclusion would be to suggest that you disburse your bitcoins onto different exchanges and addresses to make the most utility of the fact that Bitcoin was created to give you options.

Sorry for the double post, but you can also sell locally for a higher spread and take cash as well (or credit if you would prefer to not deal in large sums of cash).

Depends on how much you want to withdraw, and the time frame in which you'd like to make it happen. CA Virtex has a system by which you can sell coins to their exchange and get cash on your account. Your cash can then be transferred by ETF or Vogogo (depending on your bank) to your own personal legacy bank account.

I do not know how far your physics relates to engineering applications, but I know for a fact that ASIC development will be a big thing in the Bitcoin space for a long time to come. It has to guarantee the steady price increase over the next 100-127 years of transaction verification and coin generation. Making these chips smaller and more energy efficient might be your best out.

I think debit cards are also coming soon.  You'll have lots of options soon enough.

Here's what's going to happen this year (my humble opinion).

Organizations are all going to be creating their own coins (PepsiCoin, BMWShares, etc.). These coins will all be created to for more liquid securities trading (people can buy fractions of these new virtual currencies, instead of having to buy full shares of stocks).

They will also have a secondary purpose. They will be used to buy into Bitcoin with an overvalued speculative wave via new adopters. The same way an IPO usually tends to sell at a price above its worth, these coins will all do so with people hoping to get in early on the "next Bitcoin."

How does this affect Bitcoin? Easy. Bitcoin will be the measuring stick. As long as it remains a point of reference in a larger virtual-currency securities market, the price will have to increase, at least over the longer term.

That being said, I believe these companies (and definitely governments) will make their own shares to buy into Bitcoin at a better rate than fiat will offer. Because the new coins will be overvalued, they'll be able (for a short time) to buy more Bitcoin than they're worth. That will make $10,000 bitcoin valuations very reasonable as high demand for "CorporateCoins" will transfer over into Bitcoin; all plausible within 2014 - definite by 2015. Again, my humble opinion.

A lot of the things you said were true. Bitcoin is currently seeing a bubble in its pricing.

However, only part of the price increase is a bubble. A lot of it is actual infrastructure being developed and installed. The volatility of the price will eventually decrease when more companies start having a relatively larger share of input power within the network. Before, anytime Mt.Gox got hit, Bitcoin got hit. Now it's not the case so much, because companies like Coinbase have captured a bit more market share.

The more time that goes into Bitcoin, the more real outputs will come out of it.

It isn't all a bubble.