What billyjoeallen said.  Pretty much same believes here.

After looking at our current monetary system since I started to get really into bitcoin 1.5 years ago, I have come to the same conclusions.  We should have had more larger, severe market corrections to fix many of the markets over the last few decades. But these were not allowed. There is no escape I see now but a collapse.  I hate how pessimistic that sounds but I really don't see any other way it is going to work out. There is WAY too much funny money out there. It is like our global monetary policy stopped reflecting reality and is now almost a complete fabrication. At the best, it is a house of cards.

This year I am going to put 1/3rd to half of my day job income into bitcoin and bitcoin investments.  It is not that I see bitcoin raising so fast in the future, it is more that I see the print-storms of fiat currency losing value against bitcoin, which is a limited something with a growing demand.

If anyone wants to talk bubbles and crashes I think USD should be on the top of the list. You can only kick a can so many times down the road before it falls into a ditch.

There is a lot of talk about suing, but I imagine it is mostly ineffective.  

You'd have to have A LOT of money on an exchange for it to be worthwhile to sue.  I dunno, I'd say off the top of my head at least $75,000 USD, probably more like $200,000.  Suing is mentioned a lot around these parts, but a:) it is really expensive    b:) you have to pony up a lot of money that you are likely not going to get back [in a bitcoin related lawsuit)    c:) Suing an exchange would be a nightmare, as it is probably based in foreign country for you. Like the idea of suing a guy in Belarus who runs a bitcoin exchange who claims he got hacked, is sort of laughable to me....good luck with that hypothetical premise.    d:) Guy being sued can just go bankrupt and you'll not get your money back anyways.

I don't know much about the process but imagine it would be almost a long shot to sue and get your money back from an exchange, even if you knew who it was.

When you are against something because you see at as a threat to your power, you paint the opponent in terms of
a) protecting the children (often bringing child porn production into the mix somehow)
b) terrorists (everyone /anyone can now legally be considered a terrorist for no reason, if you have a lot of power, so this the go-to PR campaign)
c) playing on nationalism or racism (if things get really bad)

That's sort of how governments work in modern times. Hopefully after all the baby boomers retire it'll change a bit, but I doubt it, it will probably get worse.

It's really funny to read many of the hit pieces against bitcoin.  Because they have so little to work with they have to get inventive.

Okay let's compare things to the U.S dollar.  It is used for the majority of the world's drug deals and laundering, and 90% of it estimated to have traces of cocaine on the actual bills (lol!)  So it would be much more reasonable to ban it.  Of course, I'm not serious, but logically, that should be as a ridiculous idea to ban bitcoin for the same reasons, should it not?


http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2009/august/new-study-up-to-90-percent-of-us-paper-money-contains-traces-of-cocaine.html

As for money laundering... for bitcoin is also a bad idea because the block chain is public!   But anyways. Logic and rational thoughts are not what policy is based on. Policy is generally based on expanding and reinforcing your power.

USD is a big bubble. Because it is actually pretty worthless.  So ya, you shouldn't use it, because it is bubble 

Or: something goes from $200 to $1200 in a very short time period, then stabilizes at $800.  Yes, that is a bubble  followed by a crash 

Paypal is a terrible company. They ruled for a while because they had a monopoly.  The monopoly is finally coming to an end, thank goodness. It can't come fast enough.

I remember when I first had a paypal account.  I had some problem, they double charged me or something.  At that time they did not even have a customer support phone number, or any phone number at all to call, anywhere.  And no matter what email you sent them about issues, they would send a form letter that didn't even address your issue. In short the company always sucked, they just could get away with it.

It's likely that scammers, or folks like Matthew N Wright, are clinically psychopaths. It would explain much of their behaviour.  Most scammers have no empathy or qualms about stealing other peoples' money, but they get just as mad when they lose their own.   

After losing money to Jon Montroll Bitfunder fiasco, where it looks like he treated all deposits as his personal wallet, I'm just not leaving any money in any exchange for a second longer than needed. I recommend you do the same.  Sort a hard if you are a trader, but ya, any exchange can go down at anytime, don't keep a balance their if you can at all avoid it.

Bitcoin mining hardware must be the most cut-throat of any hardware or software business thus far.  I mean just a one month set back and you could lose everything. Pretty high stakes.

I'm still wondering where the hell Antminer came from    

I feel for the guy.

Like HSBC, he should just be given the option of paying a $250 million dollar fine for the building of schools and roads and then let free.

At 7-11  Wow that is huge.

Western Union should be shitting itself right about now. And if they aren't , they should be. Their (...20, 30 year?) golden goose is about to get cooked. 

Okay thanks.

The 'legal reason' he can't tell us what happened is because if he told us, we'd be able to use that information against him in court.  There is no known NDA or government info lock down that could possibly prevent him from telling us what happened to the coins, that just is not feasible.  Government agents are not going to swoop and demand that he not allow people to withdraw the money they deposited, at the same time not allowing the owner to tell people that the government is involved.

If you believe that there is some sort of NDA or entity preventing from telling us anything, why would Jon hope to sell his Active Mining shares to give partial refunds to users? That makes just about 0 sense. It would have to be public knowledge if the exchange was shut down by the government.  And if it was a private NDA, how could that possibly be valid that he holds millions of dollars of BTC and then not be able to tell anyone about what happened to them? Like really. Why would any NDA from a company exist that would lead directly to legal actions from hundreds of users that had coins stolen? Can you think of one reason? Can you really believe that?  

Note this is my best guess. And since Ukyo is not saying anything, this is all we have.  Just look at the facts and make your own judgements.

[I apologize if I'm spamming these threads. Thankfully it seems at least finally some of you are coming around to the idea that something isn't right here.]

Ok switched to the 0.4.4.6. Deleted my Novacoin %appdata% directory (after backing up my wallet of course).  Started novacoin-qt to d/l block chain and still getting the message about there being a sync issue and to downgrade to 0.4.4.6.

I'm using the recommended version (I think)  v0.4.4.6-nvc-dirty-beta .

Guys the market is too big for all the whales to be planning some sort of concentrated effort at manipulating the price so particularly around the world.

The bitcoin economy is not like the Federal Reserve fiat economy where this actually does happen, where you have a few dozen people setting the monetary policy for the world based on their own personal believes.  No, thank Satoshi, we have an actual free money market!

Any 'manipulation' in a free market like this is good manipulation.  Because.....any one is free to manipulate it, it is not run by a few rich bastards. It's not a monopoly like fiat currencies all pegged to the USD which is created with no backing by two companies passing IOU bonds to one another.

There is no secret cabal of old-bit miners setting any agenda.  Too many people are playing in this market, and it is too global for that. Maybe back in the days when Gox was king, there could have been some effective manipulation . But I can not believe there would be any way to effectively do this now, unless you owned like, I dunno, a quarter of all bitcoin or something.

^^^^^^       [& thanks for not using that over used Picard WTF meme]

Well too each his own.   For myself,  I started with X bitcoins.  I added 1.25X bitcoins through mining, and then about 1.25X bitcoins through trading.  And than I lost about 75% of my bitcoins through scams, failed group buys, and mostly one really bad investment (riding asicminer stock down from 4 btc to .8 btc).   So that's why I AM HODLING.  To each his own.

I think for us bitcoin-heads here in this forum, hodling isn't such a bad idea -- we are the minority (I presume ?).   I think the majority of new money (that drives the btc economy) is coming from new people entering who are not hodling, so there is still enough new-bucks money to keep the bitcoin economy improving, which is the most important thing.

I can't say I'm sure though. These are my current guesses. The more people holding the more stable the price is, so I don't see that as a negative. It is only negative when so many folks are hodling that the economy doesn't have enough gas in the tank to run, but that is not happening IMHO.

The government is the answer to your question.

With bitcoin, it is incredibly easy to get your money out of the yuan and into other markets, or other physical locations in the world.  The Chinese gov sees this, and is locking it down, in an effort to prevent their rich from moving money out of the country and into other assets.

The yuan, just like the USD and most other currencies around the world are in very, very dangerous territory as the house of cards they have been built on is going to collapse, this is unavoidable.  When the collapse comes, people will be exchanging fiat currencies for anything other than fiat currencies.

Basically bitcoin's success would be success for the citizens, not for the elites in charge, so they trying their best to shut it down out of reasonable self-interest.

The Chinese, as a people, I believe would be the world's greatest proponents and champions of bitcoin. (Why? Because they are notoriously good at saving. They also hate getting boned by fees more than most. I have made respect for the majority of stores in my city's Chinatown because they do not accept credit cards because of how much a rip off they are for transactions. That is awesome. What other cultures have done that? )

You know what. I think the market is just too big now for any sort of general statement about 'what people in the market are doing'.

There are as many plans to do with bitcoins as there are satoshi's in one.
 
Speaking for myself I AM HODLING

But it must be good days for trading, especially with the never ending flood of new crap coins.

People are pretty funny when it comes to definitions.

Personally I don't think this third bubble was a bubble at all.  I think it was a rapid climb to a new normal. I think bitcoin had 2 bubbles and then a popularity boom. Primarily the third bubble not-bubble was just about Chinese getting into bitcoin in typical Chinese fashion: somewhat delayed, but with a massive push.

I also don't really see how people can describe the third bubble as a bubble when it the price 'crashed' to 300% its value in over a month.  Like if something goes from $200 to $1000 than comes down to $800 (in the span of a month) how is that a crash?  

I guess many of you are expecting any day now for the price to fall to $400?  I really don't think this will happen.  I think our new bottom-bottom is $550 and we are not going to see any coins for less than $650 going forward, besides just a few days of 2014.

It would be a huge hit to the alt coin world if btc-e was shut down.

Personally I'm hesistant to leave any coins on any exchange after losing my deposits to Ukyo and Bitfunder / WeExchange.

What I don't understand is, why don't these big exchanges run them from countries without such ..... stringent  rules?  They could have their physical infrastructure in Cambodia or the Fiji Islands or Liberia, run it remotely from Belarus (or some place with better beaches) and then not have to worry as much about being whimsically shut down by the majority of the planet's countries which have their financial policy dictated to them by the Federal Reserve.  

8 or 9 out of 10 new coins are just simple (and shockingly effective) ways to make money.

It really is not that hard at all to make some of the scam coins.  You could do it in a few hours.  You just take the source code of another coin and just a couple of numbers, like the drop rate etc and whamo, new coin.  You do NOT hve to be a smart dude or even a decent coder. You could do this with no programming ability and no original idea.

That's why we have over 200 stupid coins right now with more coming out every week.  (Yeah PotCoin just came out, grrreaaattt.......)

There are some great new coins in development but ya, it is tough to tell with the flood of shit coins.  I wish people would not invest in the copy-coins but hey, it is a free market.