The volatile market has gotten the attention of slashdot. Slashdot readers are pretty much optimal bitcoin crowd. I'm sure the publicity will be good. This might also account for the influx of trolls. They normally get modded on slashdot, so their having a field day here.

This is cool. Go Italians.

I was thinking that prices might be moving down because people are trying to move money from Mt Gox to tradehill. But, now that I've thought about it, it doesn't really make sense. The easiest way to get from one to the other is in bitcoins. So people trying to move should be buying, not selling.

Having two well established sites will really help the stability of prices. People will be more willing to counter movement in an attempt to make a quick buck of the price discrepancies. This will lead to more people acting like market makers, (and maybe even actual market makers), which will calm the bitcoin roller coaster a little bit.

I would not sell at the moment, it could be a low, and it certainly isn't a high. Sell high, buy low. If you feel the price is low and are worried about it, it is time to buy, not sell.

I can't verify that mt gox does this, but the standard practice is to fill the one put in first. Mt gox allows very small USD price differences, so you can always get ahead by putting in an ask of 29.99999 instead of 30.

^This. Thank you. Piracy is not "illegal". A police officer can be sitting in your room watching you do it, and he can do nothing about it. When you are sued by the MPAA and RIAA, it is a private suit, by a private company claiming that you infringed on their copyright. That is no more illegal that if you get sued for slander or libel. What you did is not illegal, there may just be repercussions.

Now it is illegal in many places to film a movie in a theater. You can get arrested for that and you can get jail time. Neither of which can happen to you if you just torrent that same film.

Guys, why are you taking him seriously? Who lets you leverage bitcoins 60 to 1? No one, it's a joke. Chill.

This is silly. You often have to buy stock in blocks of 100. Meaning someone has to have $10,000+ to invest in a $100+ stock. Bitcoins can be purchased in lots of .00000001. The "psychology" of one simply can't be compared to the other.

Sure you can trace them, from anonymous account to anonymous account. If I want, I'm sure I can store some bitcoins away where no one will ever find them or link them to me personally. And there isn't a way to stop me the way the system is currently designed.

There really isn't a good way to regulate them... that's the point. How would you suggest they regulate them?

Unless mt gox has wrongly used the cash that has come in for something else, they have the cash. When you sell, you aren't selling to mt gox, you are selling to a buyer that put that much money in. So the money is there.

Yes, you can.

So it seems to be that the issue is that the transaction data and the generation address get hashed, and then the nonce is added and it is all hashed again like this:

{generation address}+{transaction data} -> {block hash}

{block hash}+{nonce} -> {final hash}

The pool currently gives you the block hash, you return the nonce of a share and the pool only has to check the final hash. I suppose what we need to do is change the entire system (everything) so that the pool can verify the generation address. Something like this.

{transaction data} -> {transaction hash}

{generation address}+{transaction hash}+{nonce} -> {final hash}

This way a pool member can send its own transaction hash once and the nonce of each share, but the pool still gets to verify the generation address. Is this the upshot of your proposition?

And you'll get some people to buy, but you would have to sell 20,000+ bitcoins. Each at a higher price then you bought it at. You also have to worry about all the people that decide to sell because the price is up. They will underbid you and people trying to catch some bitcoins on the way up will buy from them. If this tactic was plausible, it could be used on any stock. It won't work unless there is real support for the higher price. If there existed real support, and the price wasn't there yet, you just anticipated the market, not manipulated it.

But who is buying? You just filled all the orders in that range. You would have to hope that enough people bid in behind you to rebuy all the BTCs you just picked up. None of the people that just sold are going to buy at a higher value, so you can't count on them. You have to count on a lot of other people stepping in, and it just isn't going to happen.

For example, you fill every order from $18 to $25, costing you half a million US$. Then you try to sell... To who? you filled every order from $18 to $25, the only person selling is back at $17! So maybe some person decides, now that the price went up, I'll buy at $20. This is weird, because just a moment ago he could have bought at $18 but didn't, so why is he buying at $20 now? You'll find a few people who follow the prices up, but not half a million worth. Ultimately, trying to trade on such a short time frame is a zero-sum game. You'll only make money if people willingly lose money by buying higher than they sold for. It simply wouldn't work unless real support for the higher price exists. If support for the higher price exists then the price would have moved in that direction anyway. With such rapid movement, some people on the wrong side will decide to take a small loss, but it won't be as much as you put in. Most people will just sell to you at the inflated higher prices, wait for the prices to move back down and buy. They make a quick buck off of your silly decision, and you pay for it.

I believe it would works exactly the same as donating any commodity. Food, clothing, bitcoins, they are all non-cash donations and all work the same.

If 40% of the world uses bitcoins, I think we are all set for life.

You can't choose who you buy from. To roll the price up you'd have to buy up every ask from every other person along the way, (as well as everyone who decided to sell while prices are up) the risk would be astronomical and there wouldn't be much chance to sell them all without dropping the price even further. Anyone buying this much, actually pushing prices up, is in it for the long haul.

You will have to work very hard to keep the case cool. What type of case and cooling are you planning on?