You should read more about the impact of the halving. It's definitely not a guarantee that it will cause "a boom in the prices." Halving may have very little impact at all, particularly if demand remains the same as it is now. Supply is important but without increased demand, significant increase in demand you won't be seeing any moon-rise mornings.

Yes, this! I think that's what the article is alluding to, and it's definitely what I was referring to. The article more directly is a plug for the book Digital Gold. Has anyone read this book?

And I never said that boring was a bad thing! But from the press perspective, there's not much significant crazy news going on with bitcoin - no price swings, no scandal, no fallout.

Boring is beautiful in this business. Banks are boring. Stocks are (usually) boring. Both make a lot of f*cking money. If we want business to really adopt bitcoin, it NEEDS to be boring for a while! And when that boredom breaks, hopefully it will be on the news that bitcoin use is exploding among the masses!

By exchangers you mean foreign currency exchange, Fx?

Banks make money on exchanging money by selling it to you for a little more than they bought it for, that difference is called the spread and it's a relatively easy way to make money. Foreign currency exchange bureaus will DEFINITELY be involved in bitcoin, because it's another easy way for them to make some "coin"!

The two things are that are holding up their involvement in bitcoin today are:

1) Confidence that enough people want to have that type of currency exchange available, it's not like there's one country that deals in bitcoin and that geographic location has been the largest driver for a need for currency exchange, and

2) BTC price stability, the Fx bureaus can't expect to make money off the spread when their entry into the transaction isn't nearly guaranteed to be one that can make them money. We've seen a lot of price stability over the last few months, which is bound to help calm concerns about price stability risk.

P.S. To Amph, I don't think this would replace offering interest on deposits...that's an important piece of what banks offer customers, to end that risks them losing a lot of their business.

http://www.coindesk.com/nyse-chairman-millennials-trust-bitcoin-more-than-fiat/

No shit and can you blame them? Millennials have seen lives get destroyed and fear run through towns based on corruption that's happened using fiat. Why wouldn't they trust bitcoin?

The problem is that all the that's happened to cause fear in the economy - weak markets, mortgage-backed collateralized debt obligations, "clever" accounting with Enron, minimum wage struggles, student loan debt - could have been facilitated with ANY currency. I guess the one thing that's done with fiat that's not done with bitcoin is the government-driven creation of currency, which then devalues the currency OR the quantitative easing.

I hope some of the greed of speculation doesn't ruin bitcoin for us. I hope governments never have a hand in it's creation or value.

From the article:
Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) CEO and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) chairman Jeffrey Sprecher has come out in support of bitcoin and the blockchain, voicing his belief that the technologies are part of a larger change in how trust is being established in society.

Speaking to CNBC's Bob Pisano on "Power Lunch", Sprecher opened up about NYSE's investment in bitcoin services provider Coinbase's recent $75m Series C funding round, one of the largest so far closed by an industry firm.

Sprecher suggested NYSE has been looking into bitcoin and the blockchain for "over a year", but noted the exchange has found the language of the industry difficult to navigate.

However, Sprecher said his interest had persisted due to the fact that millennials are becoming comfortable using the technology in the same way that they are becoming used to other platforms – such as ride-sharing app Uber – where the crowd, rather than a central authority, informs decision-making.

Sprecher told CNBC:

"We're seeing millennials trust a currency that is created in the ether, more than they trust fiat currency by government. I think that trend, whether it's a restaurant review or a taxicab or the way you exchange value, is something they believe in and we want to be on top of it because I think it's going to impact you and I."

"I think there's something to it," he said, alluding to bitcoin and the blockchain. "I think there's something here, that's why we invested in it."

You're right! I didn't realize this was already being talked about, sorry for that all. To the Moderators - please remove this thread, it's definitely a duplicate. I just stumbled upon the other, posted-fist thread about the booty girls today.

Thanks.

The guy that got robbed is an idiot.

1) Replace "bitcoin" with "gold" and then think through if it's a smart idea. You're going to meet a stranger to arrange to sell your "gold" - in NYC of all places - and expect the transaction to not be at risk of theft? Completely naive.

2) Bitcoin's infrastructure makes it possible to sell your bitcoin for cash without having to go on Craigslist to do it! If this guy spent a bit of time figuring out what steps in the transaction he needed to get cash in his hand he would have been able to avoid this risky (albeit convenient) transaction. Clearly the robbers know how to get the full value out of those bitcoin, I doubt they'll be posting another craigslist add to sell their stolen bitcoin.

Is it news if someone claimed "I was robbed, someone took my cash!"? No. Unless the volume is in the tens of Millions.

I think a better take on this is that if the NY Post is writing articles about bitcoin, bitcoin is becoming more mainstream. People in NY aren't going to be turned off of bitcoin due to the theft, they're going to be intrigued thinking "maybe this bitcoin is something I need to have!"

This is not the first robbery of bitcoin in NYC. There's a documented instance that happened last year and there's a thread about it in this forum. Anyway, the theft of bitcoin is rarely newsworthy, we all know that pure nature of the currency lends it to being a target for theft. Is it news if someone claimed "I was robbed, someone took my cash!"? No. Unless the volume is in the tens of Millions.

I think a better take on this is that if the NY Post is writing articles about bitcoin, bitcoin is becoming more mainstream. People in NY aren't going to be turned off of bitcoin due to the theft, they're going to be intrigued thinking "maybe this bitcoin is something I need to have!"

So your question is, would we be upset if bitcoin was created by someone evil who died, years, decades or centuries ago (ex-CIA)? No, it would not upset me. I'd be more fascinated by the fact that these people had come back to life!

IF someone notoriously evil did create bitcoin, it would likely improve the popular opinion of that person. It could be seen as a redemption move, they're giving back to the world in a positive way.

I don't follow your thinking here - do you mean sell short or sell the bitcoin soon after buying it on margin?

Buying stock/bitcoin on margin does not mean there has to be an equal short trade opposite that buy transaction. Margin and shorting aren't equal things, or opposite. Margin is buying (or selling) on loan. Shorting is take a position on the stock/bitcoin that benefits me if the price of that stock/bitcoin goes down. I can short a stock/bitcoin while owning it or while borrowing (on margin) that stock/bitcoin.

Additionally, just because I buy stock/bitcoin on margin doesn't mean I'm only looking for a short term hodl. The margin function allows me to buy more than I could today and I can pay back the loan (or cover the margin) without having to sell my position. But if majority of people using margin are using it to facilitate quick swings in the price, then this would mute long term swings in the price. It's a question of how many traders are using margin for short term transactions vs. long term transactions, or being able to finance hodl positions.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnx8fp37M4vlFv3Rk_1sYLw

Has anyone heard of the Bitcoin booty shake girls? If not, check out the link. Apparently some group of people is trying to promote bitcoin with wet t-shirt contests, sexy videos, and other acts of young desire? I'm not surprised it exists. I'm surprised I haven't heard of it yet.

Sex DOES sell...almost anything. I hope it works.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/kraken-bitcoin-exchange-launches-margin-131500929.html;_ylt=AwrBT7u64HNVkAwAZG9XNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTByMjB0aG5zBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--

Kraken, a San Francisco-based Bitcoin exchange, is pleased to announce the launch of margin trading. Margin is an exciting instrument that allows clients to amplify their trading profits and gain in both up and down markets.

Kraken is now one of the few exchanges allowing clients to trade bitcoins on margin. Within the next few weeks, Kraken will be offering up to 20x leverage.

There's alot of ways for the price of bitcoin to explode - one is for speculators to be able to buy it on margin. Think about it, the price is driven by supply and demand. Margin increases demand instantaneously. The downside of margin is that the people that use it can end up upside down, broke, in a very short period of time if they make the wrong position.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/welcome-bitcoins-boring-era-175904966.html;_ylt=A0LEVx404HNVf2wAaQJXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTByMjB0aG5zBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--

Here is a characteristic sentence from Nathaniel Popper’s new bitcoin book, “Digital Gold.” It’s about Mark Karpeles, head of the Tokyo-based and now-defunct Mt. Gox:

He was two years into running the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, but he still had not attended a single Bitcoin event abroad -- a fact that he blamed on the sickness of his cat, Tibanne, who needed daily shots that Mark believed only he could administer.

I still don’t really know what a bitcoin is, of course. But that’s because the inhabitants of bitcoinworld haven’t entirely decided yet either. Popper, speaking on a panel a couple weeks ago at the New York Public Library, offered three metaphors for the “different things going on in bitcoin”:

Digital gold: “It’s a scarce commodity like gold, but instead of a physical substance it’s a digital substance.”
E-mail for money: “It is a way that you can send money just as you can send information with e-mail to someone anywhere in the world as long as you have their address.”
A big spreadsheet in the sky, “in which all of these little digital tokens are recorded. It’s that spreadsheet that allows for some of the more complicated uses of bitcoin, and that gets people thinking in really futuristic terms.”
I thought that was pretty good, but venture capitalist Fred Wilson, who was also on the panel, wasn’t satisfied with the spreadsheet bit.

---------
I can't say I blame him - bitcoin has been a bit boring recently. Has anyone read this book, Digital Gold? If so, what did you think?

I don't think bitcoin is synonymous with mobile payments. Bitcoin is a currency (or asset value), but not an infrastructure to make mobile payments. The proper comparison would be the blockchain. The blockchain is what facilitates mobile payments in the bitcoin world. And to be fair to the leaders in mobile payments, they are still (as in it's possible) to include bitcoin in the currencies they allow to be exchanged using their service. The challenge is that google pay, paypal, etc. would have to engage in the blockchain themselves to facilitate payments. This is much harder than merely transacting in Euros, Dollars, or Yen.

Give it time, bitcoin will either exist as a larger player with the blockchain being the mobile payment infrastructure or major mobile payments providers will find a way to transact in bitcoin. The trigger for the latter is having a significant enough volume of bitcoin transactions for the companies to realize they can make money at it OR leave money on the table by ignoring it.

How long are you willing to wait for returns?

If you want annual returns, you gotta go with Index Funds.

But, to absolutely get that 7.1% annual return (as the brochure says is expected/possible) you'd have to have your money invested over the same duration of 113 years (1900-2013). That's not to say that you can't achieve those returns, reliably, in shorter time frames it just means that their analysis is made more sound based on the total volume of years they include in the calculation. If you invest for fewer years you increase the risk that your avg. annual return will be something other than 7.1%.

If you're willing to wait for your return, go with bitcoion...because if it goes, it's gonna go far. You just can't consider it a reliable investment yet.

Yeah, I'm glad to see how much positive action (toward less surveillance) has ben generated by Snowden's whistle-blowing actions. He has a lot to risk, good job with a fat paycheck, comfortable living, the only burden he'd have is living with this information of knowing the big government was doing things he felt morally wrong. What a huge sacrifice to follow his morals, stay true to his beliefs. Imagine what the world would be like if we ALL did that?!

It's great that The People responded with discontent for the government and that the government finally took action to change. The problem is that when general elections come around The People tend to lose their interest and focus instead on sports, movies, reality tv and anything else that's easy to understand and low-impact to deal with.

How do we get people to act more regularly?

freebitco.in

If you're making a faucet you should make the higher payouts actually pay once in a while. Give some a good payout once (like BTC0.03) and you'll get them addicted and dedicated quickly. Allow for referrals. Offer a jackpot roll once a day, that actually pays out.

Let us know what you set up so we can all try it!

I don't agree with your comment on faucets. The reason faucets paid out more a few years back is because the pay rate is pegged/linked to the value of BTC in USD (or local fiat). As the price of BTC increases the faucet payouts go down. The fiat-based payout has remained constant. So in those terms faucets have always paid dust and the volume of actual users probably hasn't gone up any more than general awareness of bitcoin has.

I agree with your main point though. The most money one can earn in a week is based on whatever service or skill they can provide someone...they can buy bitcoin with their fiat, which is much easier to earn!

Why would we want to package intellectual capital into a blockchain type transaction? I guess it could reduce instances of hacking a transaction of IP, however once someone has it they're still able to copy it and sell or manipulate it after the transaction is complete. You should share more detail with us on why this would be beneficial, what problem does it solve?

Love the name!

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/20/politics/jeb-bush-obama-iraq/

Following a rough week, Jeb Bush on Wednesday tried to aim the spotlight away from the decision to go into Iraq and focused it instead on President Barack Obama, sharply criticizing his decision to pull U.S. forces out of the country.

The former Florida governor, appearing at a business roundtable here, also called for a strategy to "take out" ISIS but did not go into specifics. He mostly argued that the war started during his brother's administration helped create stability in Iraq and since been unraveled because of Obama's policies.

"The focus ought to be on knowing what you know now, Mr. President, should you have kept 10,000 troops in Iraq?" said Bush, who's expected to announce his presidential bid in the coming months.

...if Jeb Bush blame's the power void in Iraq as the spark that let ISIS rise, he has to look to his Brother for starting the war in the first place!? At least he won't make it far in the run for President. But it's not encouraging that politicians, in significantly high levels of power, make accusations without any resemblance of critical thinking.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-financial-firms-investigating-bitcoin-212438777.html

The technological innovation behind bitcoin (: BTC=) has the potential to empower the existing financial world, not just disrupt banks out of existence as some have foretold, according to a former Wall Street exec.

"The blockchain is the financial challenge of our time," said Blythe Masters, CEO of Digital Asset Holdings, onTuesday at the Exponential Finance Conference hosted by CNBC and Singularity University. "It is going to change the way that our financial world operates."

Arguing that bitcoin's underlying technology has the opportunity to improve settlement latency and system security for firms, Masters said the market for financial blockchain applications will ultimately be "measured in the trillions."

...Anyone feeling threatened that big companies are starting to pay attention?