Sorry, but Krugman has shown his utter ignorance of bitcoin before. Trying to explain bitcoin to him is like trying to explain Netflix to BlockBuster video in 2008. They just had to see it for themselves.

What were you trying to do? If you were "investing" in BTC then you should have noticed that it is a terrible investment. It was not conceived as an investment and has poor utility as such. You should expect drops of 60%-70% or more. This is totally normal.

It is also a beta phase social experiment with profound risks of failure. Which is why rule number one in investing is "Thou shall never invest more than you can afford to completely lose." A better approach is to use it as money (since it is money). Just buy $200 worth and spend it when it goes up. Then repeat.  Live life on a discount.

Those forks don't produce Bitcoins. They produce worthless alt-coins. There will be almost but not quite 21million bitcoins. That is a mathematical fact.

People should however be free to throw their money down the toilet buying them if they think their daydreams will come true as a result.

Hi Katie, Fellow Wagner here. I have to disagree a bit with your comparison. The cost of mining a bitcoin is irrelevant. As the cost of mining increases with difficulty the price rises. If it becomes unprofitable, mining is scaled back and the difficulty drops until it is profitable. Because miners compete, the Tx cost always trends toward the lowest profitable amount.

Miners don't particularly like this, but it is not their network to own, it is ours to use. So many alt-coins attempt to solve the "problem". The problem is not having your money in their pocket. This is why all other coins basically follow bitcoin. I just don't buy the miners argument. When I started at this we could just mine up some coins on our laptops. When it went to dedicated gaming cards... bitcoin was said to be dead due to difficulty. The same thing happened when ASIC chips hit. It just does not make sense unless you consider the desires of miners to make ever more profit. But Bitcoin does not care for your desire. She is Queen of all because she works for no one segment of the economy. If you want a currency that works for others, just continue using dollars.

Internal investigation may not mean an investigation of you. 

Hope it resolves quickly for you, that's a lot of coin to have locked up.

I certainly agree that I am an outlier. But I use BTC all the time to buy stuff. It is 95% of the money I use on the internet. This week I am buying Holiday presents for example. I think it's dumb to pay a fee to turn better money into fiat, then pay a charge and risk your identity to buy stuff. I basically live my life on a discount.

True. I am not sure what the worst was? As I recall we dropped from $32 - $2. That was brutal by percentage.

Bitcoin does not care nor want. It is how we use bitcoin that will create the economic conditions we live with. What have YOU done? Have you written Amazon and demanded they take BTC? If nobody is doing anything then the price should fall. Totally understandable.

Okay, okay "script kitty" is too strong.

So the guy who missed the biggest development in his field is an expert? And now he has advice for us? 

Another way to say this is:

"Man who did not see train coming predicts arrival of better train."  

Everyone has their own circumstances. I spend some bitcoin every week on this or that. Others may only be interested in converting to fiat because they see no value in BTC, only fiat. I disagree, but so what. None of that matters to bitcoin. It is just money. It was not created as an "investment". It is a fair system for all because it cares for none of us.

Bitcoin is was not designed to enrich the poor. It is fair money. Fiat currencies, like the dollar, are subject to manipulation of all sorts. It can be used unfairly by issuer. Bitcoin does not allow for anyone, even if they own 99.999% of the supply, to change the protocol.However, if your neighbor owns a factory, they may be making more than you and buying more bitcoin than you.

Anyone is welcome to own bitcoin and nobody can stop us from it. That includes people who can buy large sums of bitcoin. They of course pay large sums of other wealth to get it, it is fair. Even if how the banksters got their money originally is not. You know, the fiat they got from us all.

A state that wants to create an open source, de-centralized network may work. It must have no ability to manipulate the distribution, supply, or valuation. I don't know how you would pay for this unless you copied bitcoin's competitive math for money idea and issue a reward for discovered blocks. So if Iceland made a currency like this it may gain a legitimate value.

However, it is really just copy of bitcoin that only works in Iceland. It would be better to fully use bitcoin's potential and adopt it globally as an accepted form of money. Cut out the banks, the governments, the advertisers. You don't need them to engage in most transactions. And in the end that would not only be good for consumers, but for banks and governments.

That's awesome!
Remember, if you take a picture of the location and send it to me it is worth an additional .001BTC ! I really fell in love with Namibia last year and I am definitely going to return sometime.

EDIT:
OMG, I'm an idiot.
I read "11K Kilometers" as 11 Kilometers. I thought you were a days walk from the cache. Now I see that you are even further from it than I am, lol.

Never ever do business with any unregistered company. Chose an exchange (not an investment company) that is registered in your country and has a license to operate. Anything else is highly likely to be a scam. Seriously 99% are scams. Just fund an account at a legitimate exchange and avoid alt-coins like the plague. Buy bitcoin at market price and go on a spending spree when it goes up.

If you look through this thread all the information on the location of the cache is right there.

Want to make money gambling? Buy a casino. There are no other exceptions.

We must look like we have down syndrome to you. 

If you could make "12BTC with just 0.005BTC" then why the hell do you need money? It makes no sense whatsoever. It's like saying you have invented a way to make gold from water and you just need some money for a glass of water.

It is also worth remembering that this is a 24/7 global market. Before entertaining any ideas about why the price is changing you need to know who is selling. Many times I have seen posts explaining "The price went up because Elon Musk said...". Then a quick review of the sales shows 95% were made in China that day.