I'm sure future customers looking to use bitcoin and bitpay would be very pleased that as soon as they start transacting moderate amounts of money they'll be outed on web sites.  You wouldn't see a bank behaving like that.

You are correct that BFL is shipping products to customers.  BFL also never made predictions about being ready to ship products to end consumers in October 2012, November 2012, December 2012, January, February (swarm of locusts), March and April.  Those predictions about imminent shipping had no impact at all on potential customers deciding to order units that were time sensitive in their use.  BFL also never advertised a 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 production mix that offered customers ordering that day to get units as they were produced.

Everyone loves a car analogy.  If you ordered a new car from a dealership that took your money on the day of order and then promised delivery within a week, but instead strung out the delivery to many months while the competition started to offer better deals, would you grin and bear it?  The dealership would also make you sign a statement that all sales are final and you just have to be patient and wait.

I don't have an open BFL order and will never make another.  

Factors that work in favour of bitcoin in regards to the Chinese market:

- Chinese lose money in banks through inflation, so they're always looking for something to invest in to protect wealth.  Recently its been property, but bitcoin also has the advantage of being easily movable outside of the country.

- Some major cities (Shanghai for example) have put limits on the number of properties that can be bought.  People with savings will be looking for something else to dump money into.  Bitcoin has the distinct advantage of not requiring any storage space and also being an easy place to hide wealth.


Factors that work against:

- Because many Chinese are looking for anything to put their money into they're prone to fads and bursting bubbles.  See the China Garlic Bubble of 2010 for example.  If bitcoin's price or popularity starts to deflate you will see a very rapid rush for the exits.

- If bitcoin is seen as becoming a threat by the central government there could be a very swift and severe crackdown on exchanges.  Despite stereotypes China is a pretty open society with citizens enjoying a lot of freedom, but anything that may cause harm to the government is harshly dealt with.


Some of my relatives are Chinese and own investment properties there.  They keep the properties empty as a 'used' apartment is seen to be worth less, unlike in my home country where investors try to cram in a renter even at a loss to claim the tax concession.

How to predict a crash:

1) The price of bitcoin starts going up exponentially over a short period of time.  About a week.

2) Coupled with the above, this forum becomes full of posts predicting the price doubling by next week and so on.  See March/April 2013 posts.

You then know it's time to sell.  Knowing when to buy is the harder part.

It will continue for some time to come.  Even BFL is still shipping units customers bought and paid for over six months ago.  I wonder if all ASIC companies are prepared for the order cliff, where customers suddenly stop placing new orders because they see the current ASIC units shipping with ROI in months or years, with a backlog of even more ASICs to come.  Even if no new orders were placed from today we would see difficulty more than double simply because there are so many orders in the pipeline and companies still doing R&D on building new designs.

Difficulty won't keep increasing 30% every 10 days.  Think about it.  Roughly doubling difficulty every 22 days or so.  In a year's time it would take the entire wafer production output of a company like AMD to maintain that sort of increase.  Eventually miners will realise too much gear has been ordered at an inflated price versus what they can hope to gain.  Orders will fall off a cliff while those waiting 6 months for their ASIC (hello BFL) will bitch relentlessly on these forums as they see ROI being impossible to achieve.

Those BFL Monarch orders shipping in February 2014 at the earliest are beginning to look better and better...

If BFL 5Gh miners are paying US$1.20 per kWh for electricity, sure.  Otherwise I suspect it's going to be profitable for quite a while longer than you imagine.

There are many people hoping the Republicans do go full retard this week and push the country well on its way to default.  There's a little schadenfreude there mixed in with a feeling that the USA does whatever it wants, borrows money like there's no tomorrow with no one to say 'enough, live within your own means'.

Dick Cheney: "You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter"

Many thought the Japanese would be the first to hit the wall.  A government that spends a quarter of its entire budget on debt interest, borrows half the money it needs every year.  Pure madness.

I have some of the highest electricity costs on the planet yet my Jalapenos will be online even when difficulty reaches 1 billion with the current price. 

It's a simple case of trading on the beliefs of other traders, not on what you think is actually going to happen. 

If you believe other traders are thinking of buying BTC because the US government is going full retard then you should buy before they do.  When the debt ceiling is lifted and the other traders dump their BTC holdings you should sell before they do.

I have tried SwC and it worked pretty well.  The game software works fine but it's not a polished product.  The major problem with SwC is there are not enough players online with the site struggling to fill 2 Hold'em tables most of the time.  If you find a table where players are abusing each other (not uncommon) it's impossible to move as all the other tables are empty.  Player quality is about average for online poker, with most playing extremely tight.

I wrote my own martingale bot (and since I created it, I know exactly how it works with no surprises).  On JD it got through 6900 rolls and didn't quite get to doubling up the bankroll before it hit 12 straight losses in a row and quit (to preserve the initial deposit).  No money lost overall and it was interesting watching it play, but be sure your starting bet and bankroll can withstand a very long run of losses.

12 losses in a row = 1/(.505^12) = 1 in 3634 rolls you should go bust.
14 losses in a row = 1 in 14,253
16 losses in a row = 1 in 55,890
20 losses in a row = 1 in 859,354

If you started with a 0.0001 bet and lost 20 times in a row you would end up betting 104 bitcoins to win back your original bet of 0.0001.  Betting US$13.5k to win 13 cents overall.  Hmm.  You can't martingale bet after 22 losses as the max profit won't allow it.

This is why investors love martingale.

The possession and use of small quantities of drugs are decriminalized (but still penalized) in places like Portugal, but SR and its ilk would still be illegal as clearly the site was being used for trafficking commercial quantities. 

In regards to online gambling, the sites I've seen make no attempt to verify a player's age or even offer a simple warning that under 18/21/whatever is not allowed.  Then there's money laundering laws, operating a gambling site without a license (in whatever country the site is hosted), etc.  I hope the sites involved are hosted in countries that don't care about online gambling and that investors' money is stored off site and automatically returned should something happen.

Looking at the raw bet win/loss numbers, players are winning about 48.5% of the time, so JD is doing a bit better overall than it should.  Of course, we know the site is far below where the maths suggests its profit should be, so a disproportionate number of small bets are losing and large bets are winning.  The longer the trend continues the more unlikely it becomes.

Playing online chess for money would be a competition between who has the better chess program and CPU time.

I do care, therefore I would never donate a single bitcoin and strongly urge others to do likewise.  You lost.  That's the nature of gambling against the odds.  Accept your decision.

Couldn't have been Nakowa, as he declared the site was rigged, Dooglus was there to make him lose, changed the rules, and that Nakowa would never return again.

 

Well, its just turned September 30 here and it's an exciting day, the day BFL ships several thousand units to catch up with all the preorders as promised.


LOL

The betting action was fast and furious, with massive swings of 4000 bitcoins.  Nakowa (or someone just like him) finished the session well up.  Previously Nakowa complained the site was rigged to make him lose when he lost 16 bets in a row.  Above, he wins 12 182btc bets in a row and has other massive winning streaks.  I hope that's enough to convince Nakowa that the site is not rigged and plays fair.