Awwww you beat me to it! I had you link ready to post and everything. Hook line n sinker.

"An idiot is someone that doesn't know something you only just learnt "

What price did you buy your Bitcoins at? Given you only joined the forum a month or so ago, I'm guessing $30 - $50? Chump.

I think the ultimate thing to remember is Bitcoin is unpredictable.

You can predict some things almost (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=171423.0) but there are so many variables involved determining the price of Bitcoin.

Here's a few things which I suspect influence the price of Bitcoin in different amounts:
 - media coverage
 - gox lag
 - service hacks
 - silkroad success
 - mining botnets
 - electricity prices
 - laws of all different jurisdictions
 - world financial crisis
 - individual countries financial crisis
 - the day of the week (e.g. there tends to be a dip just before the weekend)
 - alt currencies
 - forks in the chain
 - client updates
 - miner hardware progression (e.g. ASICs)
 and many many more.

What's more, they all interact, counteract, synergize and generally effect each other in even more unpredictable ways. I used to try do day trading, and even built a small day trade bot as a chrome extension for Britcoin when that was still around, but it's stressful and risky, hence me going for the long game now.

The right strategy though is what's right for you. Everyone lives in different countries, uses different exchanges, has different wages, is awake at different times, has different grasps of number and tolerates different levels of stress & risk.

You seem keen though - ride it out and stick with it. Learn about Bitcoin and it's community and why/how it works, that way even if you lose all your money, you'll still gain some truly amazing, fascinating and inspiring knowledge.

I would hold too.  I think $260 was overvalued for now, but I don't think it will be in the future. Things can only get better. As observed, all this news is bringing interest to Bitcoin, shaking of the image it got when SilkRoad first came around. The further we are away from association with silkroad, the more legitimate vendors take Bitcoin, the more Bitcoins are required, the less they're produced the more they go up in value/

Personally, I'm going for the long game, not selling any coins any time soon, just slowly buying.

As someone pointed out, a year or 2 ago, a bubble burst at $32 and the mainstream media exclaimed it was the end of Bitcoin. Earlier this week, we got nearly 10 times that peak. It's crashed, and once again, the media is exclaiming the end for Bitcoin.

Within the next 10, maybe even 5 years, I wouldn't be surprised to see Bitcoin go over $500 (I also wouldn't be surprised to see it superseded though.)

I don't think it's entirely Gox's fault, but to say they had nothing to do with I think is a bit wrong:

"Indeed the rather astonishing amount of new account opened in the last few days added to the existing one plus the number of trade made a huge impact on the overall system that started to lag. As expected in such situation people started to panic, started to sell Bitcoin in mass (Panic Sale) resulting in an increase of trade that ultimately froze the trade engine!" - from the Gox press release regarding the incident

Even they acknowledge that the failing and lag of their engine caused panic selling which made the situation worse.

They've been around long enough now, and should have made enough money now to pay some experts in HPC, but they haven't. With great power comes great responsibility and I think they're being pretty irresponsible running a system that needs to be shut down for hours to be able to scale up. That's just bad practice.

I agree though, there would have been a crash at somepoint (maybe not as epically) even if Gox hadn't have failed. The growth was too quick to be sustainable and lots of relatively new people buying in who don't understand things anywhere near as much as they probably should - almost like Gox.

That's loser talk:P

A DDoS distributed across many sites... a DDDoS?
Seriously though, whoever is behind it must have a pretty hefty botnet to hand.

well I wasn't THAT far off:)

May I suggest you get someone to proof read the entire site. E.g. the FAQ section relating to security:

"Do my Bitcoins are safe?

Yes, your Bitcoins remain where they are, no Bitcoin passes through our website. It is through your API-Key that we send market orders, but in any case your Bitcoins pass through our website, they remain inside your own Wallets for maximum safety."

'All your base...'

Thanks for agreeing I'm right

But yeah, I don't necessarily believe it's going to happen. As I said, it's an interesting correlation - it would be silly of to infer any kind of definite causation.

Unless it drops below $20, I'm still making a few dollars. Literally a few.... like 15.

Regarding the IP address, it's a TOR exit node so you'll never find out who it is by the IP address alone.

Yup, I think I'll be buying more still. Kinda feel a bit of an idiot just knowing that I've paid less than $10 for a BTC, and I think Britcoin still have 2 - 3BTC of mine. **sigh**

I think there will be a crash at somepoint, e.g. more than a 20% drop over a day. The growth at the moment is too much. But in the long term, I wouldn't be surprised to see its get to $300 - $500 and even more.

I agree. It's a recognised stage of currency development.

Ideally, at some point, bitcoin will reach some kind of equilibrium letting the price settle at some level (or at least not fluctuate so wildly) but until then, it's anyone's guess!

It's most likely the "change"

Transacitons have numerous input and outputs.

The sum of all the inputs must equal the sum of all the outputs.

The money you have available is the sum of all your available inputs (they're actually outputs from previous transactions - AKA Unspent Transaction Outputs or UTXOs)

You can't divide UTXO without sending it through a transaction like what's happened there. For example:


So say you have 10BTC in 1 UTXO, and you want to send someone 5BTC, you put 5BTC in you client and press send

Behind the scenes, you client only has 1 UTXO to play with which is 10BTC, so you have to use that as in input.
So the transaction has 10BTC input, and 5BTC output to the person your paying.
In that state, the total input is 10, total output is 5, so they don't match up, your money disappears.
To solve this, a "change" output is added: basically the remaining 5BTC that isn't going to your friend is sent back to you as an extra output.

The position and address used for the change output is randomised by the client to protect anonymity a bit more.

Hope this helps:)

Nice, did you find that method...? What other methods did you try to get there?

Set it going and wait around 5 minutes on your PC, it can take a while to get going.

What rate are you getting on your phone out of curiosity?

awwww but the graphs are the best bit!!!!

I agree though, that's why I dotted numerous disclaimers that it's equally (if not more so) as likely that it wont happen.

I've been following BTC since the last crash. However, I only have like 2BTC I bought for about $10 just after last crash.

It's no benefit or cost for me to mention it though, just on the off chance it does happen! I tried to do it in the least scaremongering/retarded sounding way:)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=92716.msg1782853#msg1782853

The site was overpaying people. It's a shame, and I agree, they should have noticed. Hell, if I noticed with my measly 100khs, would have thought the operator would have noticed.

I wouldn't expect them to do anything more or anything less than what they did (e.g. taking it back off everyone)

That extra money everyone received wasn't for extra mining power, it was a bug. An accident.

I don't think the operator should have to pay for the accident as no harm was done really.

:O me too!

The past day or so though I noticed I've been getting a noticably (as in too good be true) return. I think there may have been a glitch and it's them correcting it.

Comparing the 2011 crash to now, I think within there is a chance that within 1 week, BTC will "crash" from $240 down to around $130.

I say "I think there is a chance" because it's naive to conclusively say the market will repeat itself. There's so many other factors to take into account.

The evidence for this chance:

Graph of past 2 months
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60zczsg2013-02-10zeg2013-04-10ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv

Graph of past 2 months leading up to 2011 crash
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#czsg2011-04-8zeg2011-06-8ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv

load them in separate tabs, toggle between the 2.

You notice 2 - 3 small peaks in about the same place, and a pretty similar growth pattern. 2011 had a noticeable peak at $10, went up to $30 and then down to around $15 before sinking lower (made worse by hacks at the time.)

I wouldn't be surprised if it just carried on rising though - after all there's no similarity in relative trade volume. If it did crash, I have faith it would recover in the long run.


Any thoughts?

Hi,

I've just started studying towards a PhD in Web Science (interdisciplinary study of the web) and over the next 4 years, I would like to do some serious in depth research into distributed currencies.

Initially, I'm looking into the link between crime and distributed currencies (sore point for some I know, but I try to be as clear as possible in the statement that not every Bitcoin transaction is by a criminal or for illicit purposes regardless of what the media say.) Eventually, I would like to go on to investigate the effects of distributed currencies on the real world and existing currencies and businesses, and hopefully contribute some good peer-reviewed literature that can help the push towards a successful and widely accepted distributed currency for the masses.

My background is in Computing Science so as you can imagine, I have a lot to learn before I can comment on humans or on currencies.

At the moment, I'm trying to bring myself up to speed on economics. I've had a fairly decent look and I may be looking in the wrong places, but I'm gob-smacked at the lack of economics textbooks that talk about the web and the internet. I mean, surely the implications of the web on economics justifies at least one textbook?

Can anyone advise any economics textbooks that discuss the effects of web on economics and vice versa (e.g. if it's the same as "real-world" economics, and if not, how?) Even latest editions of books like "economics for today" don't even have a chapter on economics on the web.

Thanks in advanced:)