They hold them for a couple years while the case processes, meanwhile BTC price goes to $100,000, bringing the little stash to $2 billion, and the motherload (cold wallet) to $50 billion. Someone on the inside "loses" the keys or gets compromised or taken out as the feds have their bitcoin security failure moment. Coins are gone with the wind.

Yen, maybe not $, is easy to get from Gox.

I thought you were a logscale analyst. Why the linear scale?

By the way, the feds did set up their own bitcoin address and moved the SR funds into there. They were apparently able to do that because they imaged the server and the coins were in hot wallet. They don't seem to have DPR's probably-gigantic cold wallet, and if he hid it well enough they never will.

I doubt most people who voted Yes meant the mining pool ops should steal the coins into their own pockets. Obviously few people would get behind that. The idea would of course be to make the funds immovable, effectively the exact same as stealing the funds and distributing them to every bitcoin holder in proportion to how many they now hold. The money goes permanently out of circulation and everyone's bitcoins become that much more valuable since they are that much more scarce.

Hence it is possible and it IS necessary to explain why it's a horrible idea.

Besides, letting the government get comfortable with Bitcoin and maybe get a sizeable stash will just help the cause. Government becoming a stakeholder in Bitcoin, particularly if the price rises a few more orders of magnitude as this case runs its course over several years, could be the best thing to ever happen to Bitcoin.

We have to decide once and for all, Is Bitcoin as good as gold? If it is, we have to take the bitter with the sweet. Consistency is a bedrock principal of sound money. Start getting cute with it and it'll all crumble to the ground.

People who voted "Yes," think about this a little more. If the Bitcoin community was going to pull such a stunt, it would have to save it for a cataclysmic situation. If the feds somehow seized half of all bitcoins in existence, then it might be time to have a careful debate about this...and probably still not do it. But for this little bit of money?

It would destroy Bitcoin's reputation as impartial, unimpeachable, immutable money. Not only would it turn governments against us, it would also show people that money they receive could be taken from them if they lose in the court of public opinion. It would be like a giant billboard saying BITCOIN: YOUR MONEY AT THE WHIMS OF THE MASSES.

And some people say there's a clean line we can draw in the case of the feds. How about legitimately seized bitcoins, from real criminals? How about those of the big banks? How about large companies like Apple and Walmart, that have close ties with the government just by virtue of their size? How about pirateat40's stash? Why not anyone with a Scammer tag on bitcointalk? Heck, why not annul the bitcoins of all taxpayers, since they feed the government by not resisting?

This is the most dangerous idea to come about in a long time. Please, please, please think this through.

In fact DPR posted his own email with his real name right in a forum post.

SR was huge, economy-wise, but this isn't 2011. Bitcoin is now an official investment and those types will say good riddance to SR, will be waiting to sweep up the cheap coins.

I'm pretty sure we will go quite low in the short-term, but I also think Bitcoin has graduated SR. Let people react as they will; none of what makes Bitcoin promising has changed.  

Same here. Losing money hand over fist, but don't feel like messing with my wallets. Bitcoin, you spoil me...becuse I know *yawn* that you'll eventually be back up after all this delicious drama.

Definitely a good thing for Gox to bleed market share, as long as they get their act together fairly soon. 30% Gox, 30% Bitstamp, 40% others would be a more robust infrastructure.

Yup. The reward for overcoming fear in this market is gargantuan.

Everyone should own a few bitcoins.

What are you going to do, wait outside MtGox HQ all day until Karpeles comes out?

According to MtGox's latest notice (viewable when logged in and trying to do a withdrawal), they are processing them steadily with a few weeks' delay.

This cannot be emphasized enough.

But seriously, the best part of their investor presentation is this page:



Note how the store-of-value function is way bigger than the rest combined.

3.65% increase in two days. Assuming that keeps up, that's a 64000% increase in a year. Sounds decent.

Also, could they be using bitcoinaverage.com for the price? It's the closest match I've found. The prices don't match Bitstamp or Gox at all.

I think the recent dropoff has more to do with discussion spilling over to reddit.com/r/Bitcoin and elsewhere off-site. Also, the speculation forum seems by far the most active, so it should be obvious that stable pricing will curtail activity, especially considering how stable the prices feel relative to the instability of the recent past.

Few are seeing the big picture.

If you want to see the big picture, if you want to be positively blown away by all the ways Bitcoin will change the world, I invite you to read one of the classic works by Ludwig von Mises or other Austrian economist, like Socialism*, so you can see all the ways the current system of centralized power is massively screwed up, staggeringly inefficient and unjust, and suffocating to human progress. Then realize that Bitcoin can fix all of that by decentralizing power.

In bland and general terms, we're talking about a tremendously higher standard of living for everyone in the world (even the current power elite, although less so), a jetpack strapped to the back of technological advancement, the Internet showing its true power, a vast clearing away of suffering and injustice of many kinds...it sounds unbelievable until you realize just how messed up things are currently, and why. Much like the early Internet, people who understand this often avoid mentioning all this because it sounds "too good to be true," yet it is true - in fact even these gushing forecasts probably will be looked at as lacking in imagination in 20 years.

*For a much lighter, quick read, try this comic book: http://imgur.com/account/hegawid/albums