Since the beginning of October, the price of Bitcoin has been about where it is now, $350 ±  50. There were brief excursions outside that range, but they didn't last. Difficulty has also leveled off. The last difficulty was a slight downward change.

What if that's what 2015 looks like? The Silk Road and China bubbles have run its course. Without some big outside event, there's no particular reason for the price to move much.

The speculators would be bored, but as a medium of exchange, Bitcoin might be more useful.

We need all those bulls suckers to keep the price up. Bitcoin is zero-sum. as I point out occasionally. For every winner, there must be a loser.

This tells you what the real costs of Bitcoin transactions are. Looks like they're about $10 per round trip, in and out of Bitcoin, or, at current prices, about 3%. This is an inefficient market by modern financial standards.

0.5% per day is 6x a year after compounding. That's huge.

It's not likely to be maintained. The last difficulty adjustment was negative.

Bill text.

Main provisions:
* Federal preemption of new state laws regarding cryptocurrencies. This would preempt New York's law.
* Mining and revenue in cryptocurrencies only taxable upon conversion to dollars. This preempts current IRS guidance.

Zero co-sponsors. GovTrack predicts 1% chance of being enacted.

For some miners, yes. For the big guys with low costs, no. We just had a small difficulty drop, indicating even some of the big miners are dropping out.

Today, unless you have a big mining farm, cheap labor, good relationships with an ASIC vendor, and cheap power, you can't make money mining Bitcoins. See the Mining Speculation part of the forum.

No.

There are Bitcoin Ponzis. They're scams. There was at one time a Bitcoin stock market. That didn't go well. Bitcoin loans are possible, but Bitcoin debt collection is very hard.

Mark Karpeles.

Coinbase has announced a "USD wallet". Now you can put money into Coinbase without buying Bitcoins. This makes them a Bitcoin broker/exchange.

As with other exchanges, don't keep any funds there you're not actively trading. Coinbase does not offer the insurance or legal protections of a bank account, and over the history of Bitcoin, more than half the exchanges have gone bust.

A huge number of Bitcoins were created in the early days and never seen again.

At 5 hours to go, the next difficulty change is going to be very close to zero. The current prediction is -0.44%.

At 2 days to go, the next difficulty change looks like it's going to be very close to zero.

They charge 5% to get in, $55 to get out. Plus, your bank will charge you a cash advance fee.

Read through all the documents from the bankruptcy trustee now on the Mt. Gox web site.

A few key points:

* The Payward/Kraken deal is more about outsourcing claim processing and, eventually, payout of claims. They also bought Mt. Gox's computer hardware (not the data; the machines will be erased), and, strangely, its chairs.
* The search for missing assets has been carried out so far by two accounting firms, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu LLC, and and ReEx. They've found some of the cash, but not the Bitcoins.
* Karpeles and his four other businesses owe the estate of Mt. Gox about 11 milion USD in "loans". The bankruptcy trustee is trying to collect.

Coinbase is more like Joe's Cut-Rate Check Cashing next to the liquor store. Merchants don't keep money in Coinbase for more than a few hours. Bitcoins go in, and US dollars are deposited to the merchant's account that night.

You can keep money in Coinbase, but shouldn't.

December will probably be a lot like the last few months, price wandering around in the $300 - $400 range.

If you actually read the ETF's prospectus on the SEC site, the terms are not very good. Compared to a good mutual fund, they're awful. For example, the managers of the ETF do not hold errors, omissions, or theft insurance in case they happen to somehow lose the Bitcoins. Owners of fund shares have weakened voting and litigation rights. Stuff like that. There are more risks here than the value of Bitcoin.

In the last half year, the use of Bitcoin hasn't changed much. See Estimated transaction volume in USD, which has been flat for six months now. There's been a lot of talk about growth in usage, but it's not happening.

Difficulty has little observed effect on price. Difficulty has gone to the moon while the price went down slightly.

Price affects hash rate. Miners who are losing money drop out.