Impressive piece of work!  Thanks for it.

One thing I cannot quite put my finger on (even using the WTF link) is the meaning of the upward vs. downward direction of the bars on the depth chart.  This may be because I do not understand enough about exchanges generally.

I personally never said I guessed a crash was likely.  I certainly think it is a possibility...as is the possibility that BTC can inflate into a bubble, or just come to a fair price both or which _could_ be orders of magnitude higher than the maximum I can possibly lose (i.e., 100% of my outlay.)  I simply do not know which direction it will go...and as I said initially, am mysteriously ambivalent about it.

If BTC crashes to the point where I would give up hope of a re-bound, it would not be worth bothering to sell my stash.  If I got a credible early warning of a defect, ya, I probably would liquidate, but I don't see how I (personally) would find myself in that situation.

(Actually, now that I think of it, in some degenerate circumstances, I could lose a bullet-hole-free cranium or a stay in Guantanamo in addition to my outlay of $$$.  I'd liquidate to avoid that to I suppose.)

One thing (of several) I would/will be looking for in an escrow service is a high level of anonymity.  I would be concerned about a successful attack on the escrow during the time I had an important transaction underway, and the types of attacks that concern me most would be from the legal system of the legitimate government of a state.

It would appeal to me to have the escrow service offer a significant bounty on identification or 'outing'.  That is, if BTCrow (in this example) publicly offered a significant reward to whoever could come up with his name and/or the details of his business, that would be a selling point to me.

I bought into my position to hold for a time period measured in years and use (internet services, wikileaks, etc.)  I set buys at various point downward, and most of the non-absurd ones have been taken out so I'm more or less done.

I bought into my position within the last few weeks.  I got interested in Bitcoin some months ago, but had so much other stuff going on that it rolled off my plate.  Oh well.  My stop loss is zero...I went in with the understanding that I could and very possibly would lose it all.  Bitcoin seems one of the most worthwhile causes I've seen in...well...possibly forever.  (Monetary systems are IMHO one of the very most critical things on earth and they influence quality of life for everybody.)

A big factor in my timing (that is, ASAP) was that I wanted to take a position before any obvious legal stuff worked it's way through the legislature.

You are not alone.  In an odd way I sort of feel the same now that you mention it.  Win, lose, or draw, it's an interesting ride...and I never bet more than I can afford to lose.  I guess for me it seems like the most promising thing so far to have a chance of shaking the truly corrupt monetary systems which surround us.  If not, I hope that the bitcoin project can at least help carve a trail for something which can...and if not, the couple grand I waste will likely evaporate anyway.

Down baby down!  Take out my next buy orders (then go ahead and head back up please...I told some buddies that I'm accumulating a position and would prefer to end up without to much egg on my face.)

I wanted to do exactly the same thing.  And did.  As a slight variance on the suggestion about just keeping the bitcoins in a backed up wallet, here is what I did.

1) divided my savings into multiple wallets.

2) _CAREFULLY_ encrypted each one.  Careful means using decent crypto and good passphrases, being careful to not have any temp data somewhere that I did not realize, and using a good wiper program to get rid of my unencrypted wallets. (*)

3) put the passphrases (which are way to complex to remember) in a safe deposit box (plus some other stuff which I won't go into.)

4) put the wallets on the web where I can get a hold of them no matter where I happen to be or what of my physical possessions might have left my control by one means or another.

If I wish to go long on another batch, I'll likely modify my scheme.  It's also quite possible that I will throw this scheme away and adopt a new one.  A lovely thing about bitcoin generally is that it is simple and transparent and it, with other available tools, are like a set of tinker-toys.  It is easy 'roll your own' when it comes to solving a variety of security and accessibility problems.

(*) It took me many years to learn enough to have some confidence in my understanding of computer systems to do this.  I stuck with it for years in part because I get a paycheck to do so.  I would suggest that you consult with a knowledgeable friend if you are not focused on security and want a fairly bulletproof and flexible 'long' plan.

I personally expect that they could, though my biggest concern is that they (MtGox, TradeHill, etc) will be shut down by our 'protectors' and my funds will be frozen.

To mitigate, I simply don't put funds there that I cannot afford to lose, and I only keep the funds with them that I actually need for my trading.  It is delightfully simple to convert to BTC and move them out.  I can barely wait until I have enough of a position in BTC to wish to sell some (though I'll likely not be interested in playing the markets when I reach that point.)  Then I'll be able to fund my account without the time and cost of wire transfers.

Seems to me that it is possible and in fact not uncommon to cheat people using systems that are, in theory, lawful and supposedly regulated.

Google 'redefining systemic risk' for a very interesting vid.  During the dot-com (which is the first time I ever had any money) It became clear to me that the SEC's purpose in life is to hold 'normal' down while they are ass-raped by the SEC's hedge fund owners.  I went with PM's instead.

I have vastly more confidence in bitcoin than I do in anything which is officially protected by the US corp/gov system.  bitcoin is actually remarkably simple and straightforward.  And are proving themselves to be quite robust under what would be the equivalent of a nuclear bomb in most systems (that is, the loss of 90% of the exchange platforms, huge thefts, early adopters with massive holdings, etc.)

I'm not in favor of any sort of enforcement of almost anything even if it were possible.

If there were some sort of a poll of various kinds of use examples with 'yes' or 'no' answers, and the resulting tallies were publicly displayed, I'd spend a few moments filling it out and likely be fairly honest about it.

The utility would be in providing some single easy to understand graphic which, in theory, reflects the 'mindset of the community', and that could be used to point people who are curious about that sort of thing.

I fell asleep last night thinking about the implementation a bit more.

Some of my ideas revolve around the possibility of all such 'bets':

 - details of a bet being transparent to a community.

 - margin calls being automated.

 - distribution wallet(s) being encrypted with members of the the community holding pieces of the decryption key such that a quorum of the community could release funds to the short seller or the lender (depending on how the bet panned out.)

 - the community decides what is an unfair disruption (like the Mt. Gox hack or whatever the next event might be.)

Really (and ideally) about the only person who would take a risk with his/her collateral would be the person who desired, with enough vigor, to short the market.

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The funny thing is that the whole shorting markets, and even playing around with them, was somewhat disdainful to me only a few weeks ago.  Now that I am screwing around with them, I'm kinda sorta starting to see the 'value' of liquidity and speculative interest.  Even if it is just entertainment value.  Probably it would be better for the bitcoin project if these kinds of games came in a bit later (if ever.)  Who knows.

It seems like silver-bugs are having a rough time.  I would like to figure out a way to help them to profit by their wit and short the bitcoin market.

I actually have not paid any attention to exchange markets until now so I don't know much about how they work, but anyway here is my idea.

I'm thinking of something like finding a metal dealer who knows how to deal with bitcoin and is an honest broker.  I would lend my bitcoin to a silver dude to sell short, and he would deposit an excess of silver with the broker.

If the price of bitcoin gets to the point where the silver on deposit equals my loan, the dealer buys bitcoin on an exchange, sends the bitcoin to me, and keeps the silver.

Of course I would take a percent for loaning out my bitcoin.  The dealer/escrow guy would also need a cut for his troubles.  The silver dude could make a ton because the bitcoin market is so sure to crash...ponzi scheme ya' know...

I think that such a scheme is more-or-less how shorting commodities markets work but don't know what kinds of percentages the various parties take.  Anyone?

Parenthetically, it does strike me as one VERY cool thing about bitcoin is that there really cannot be such thing as a 'naked short'. (?)

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(Disclosure:  I'm something of a sometimes silver bug and have a ton of the stuff.  I don't want to be known as one, however, until I hear more of them make some cogent arguments about...well...almost anything.  I've no idea if silver could 'crash JP Morgan'.  I actually kind of doubt it but it would be pretty cool if it did.)

Newbie...not sure if I can post yet or now.  We'll see.

I use FreeBSD.  I'm familiar with the hassles of building from source on this platform and prefer to do things this way for systems that I care about.  I'm using a Trunk source pulled from git a week or two ago.  If I wanted to pick up the fix for the wallet creation seg-fault from a few days ago, it would take only a few minutes.  If there were a a defect which effected me more or which I cared about more (e.g., a notable security issue) I could patch it just as easily.

Additional info from my experience:

I've transferred BTC off of TradeHill twice (funded my account with $$ yesterday.)

They claim it can take up to 24 hours, but in both of my instances it took less than two hours.

I would be happier if it were immediate and I hope that it will be...it seems to me that it is kind of in the 'spirit' of BTC to have it be so.  But if I were running the operations and the systems were as new as TradeHill's likely are, I would start out with a semi-manual and/or human checked method of transferring them out.

I hope that when TradeHill achieves good confidence in their systems they can make BTC transfers out more immediate, or at least only whatever delay might be in order to avoid automated exchange arbitrage or whatever.  I don't really understand the node reduction algorithms used to trim the block sizes down, but I cannot help but wonder if the bitcoin model could be harmed by an extreme number or automated transactions.

Hi All.  I guess I should introduce myself, but I don't really have a name.  Go with tvbcof (for 'TV on BitCoinOrg Forum'.)

Hoover up as many BTC as possible...easy to do if you have an unlimited supply of $$$.

Keep the option of dumping them onto the market at any time open like the Sword of Damoclese hanging over the head of anyone who might amass to big a position (and who is not on the 'right side' of the operation.)

That would probably be a good thing for the plebes using the market.  Would suck for people who wish to use it as a medium for storage and transfer of _real_ wealth.

Couple of percent of my similar investment vehicles.  Really depends on how the legislation (outlawing it) is implemented in the different countries.