You have just watched the Great Silk Road Panic of '13
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The Fed is supposedly transparent - but from the last speach He (yes there is a god complex) made it clear that anything can happen, supposedly based on data, but the Fed analyzes those data and decides the trigger levels.
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This may relate: Panama announces 5 day bank 'holiday.'Whether or not savers wake up Tuesday to find they just saved the bankers country, 5 days is a major inconvenience - especially around payday. The news are really thin on this. This is tuesday, what is going to happen in Panama? What did happen during the weekends. Where are the stories about families out of liquid money this weekend? Do they even have a central bank? Banco Nacional de Panamà seems to be a government owned, commercial bank. Their website https://www.banconal.com.pa/ has nothing suspicious. Seems it was a hoax.
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To the banks, bitcoin is a torpedo coming right towards them. To them, it looks small, but they are fooled by the distance. Don't tell them.
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nope gap back to $16 now...
He's gone out of juice. Probably cathing up when fiat sent from gox arrives at stamp.
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We now have a 16-17 USD diff between stamp and gox. It seems that the "1 BTC several times a minute"-arbitrageur has used all his steam for the time beeing. Awaiting more arbitrage as soon as fiat (deposits) have moved from gox to stamp.
This arbitrage, and more to other exchanges, should provide some damping to the dump/panic buy movements on gox. Maybe the next bubble (entrepreneurs having temporarily too much faith in bitcoins rapid world takeover) will be a tad more leant back.
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It is time to brush the dust off the all time high website. I can't find it. Where is it?
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It's not a handout and its primarily in support of bonds for growth projects. Are you implying the government is investing the money they print on something useful? Last time I checked America's infrastucture got a D+. Why didn't they spend that money on that when they did the stimulus package instead of tax break gimmicks. We're trillions of dollars in debt and have nothing to show for it. There was a lot of construction happening on the interstates between WV and Illinois last weekend. (not that that has anything to do with QE) It could be used as a reason to print more 
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So in the end again you don't trust your bank, but the FDIC (in the US for example) that they have always enough funds available at all times to guarantee you at least 250000$ in your account. I'm using absolutes here, because any even tiny doubt would reduce the worth of the IOU from face value to below it.
Any kind of more beneficial terms (e.g. higher interest) then makes the IOUs more attractive - but that just means you are willing to take on more risk for a potentially more rewarding IOU. This just offsets the loss in value because of less trust to bring it up to face value because of more rewards. Why shouldn't this be possible in Ripple too?
Someone should check the FDIC assets. Browsed their site, but could not be bothered to find the real answer. A 2% number was mentioned. I wonder, are some of the assets bank deposits? Ok, found some old numbers here: (DIF Balance Sheet - Fourth Quarter 2008) http://www.fdic.gov/about/strategic/corporate/cfo_report_4qtr_08/balance.htmlIt seems the biggest number is "Investment in U.S. Treasury obligations". Yeah, that is really smart. From what I understand, no one has ever lost a single dollar due to a bank failure, thanks to the FDIC. Love it or hate it, consumer confidence is key and this provides exactly that. Meaning you don't have to look at the numbers, the FDIC doesn't really have to have anything at all, and they still can guarantee all the deposits? So there is no risk, just because they up till now have not defaulted? So you crossed the atlantic in an armchair with party balloons, and since you made it, there were no risk at all?
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So in the end again you don't trust your bank, but the FDIC (in the US for example) that they have always enough funds available at all times to guarantee you at least 250000$ in your account. I'm using absolutes here, because any even tiny doubt would reduce the worth of the IOU from face value to below it.
Any kind of more beneficial terms (e.g. higher interest) then makes the IOUs more attractive - but that just means you are willing to take on more risk for a potentially more rewarding IOU. This just offsets the loss in value because of less trust to bring it up to face value because of more rewards. Why shouldn't this be possible in Ripple too?
Someone should check the FDIC assets. Browsed their site, but could not be bothered to find the real answer. A 2% number was mentioned. I wonder, are some of the assets bank deposits? Ok, found some old numbers here: (DIF Balance Sheet - Fourth Quarter 2008) http://www.fdic.gov/about/strategic/corporate/cfo_report_4qtr_08/balance.htmlIt seems the biggest number is "Investment in U.S. Treasury obligations". Yeah, that is really smart.
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So in the end again you don't trust your bank, but the FDIC (in the US for example) that they have always enough funds available at all times to guarantee you at least 250000$ in your account. I'm using absolutes here, because any even tiny doubt would reduce the worth of the IOU from face value to below it.
Any kind of more beneficial terms (e.g. higher interest) then makes the IOUs more attractive - but that just means you are willing to take on more risk for a potentially more rewarding IOU. This just offsets the loss in value because of less trust to bring it up to face value because of more rewards. Why shouldn't this be possible in Ripple too?
Someone should check the FDIC assets. Browsed their site, but could not be bothered to find the real answer. A 2% number was mentioned. I wonder, are some of the assets bank deposits?
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Bump. Still waiting to hear from someone about what they have spent BTC on.
privateinternetaccess.com
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There is a real life version of this in the bearers cheque or Wechsel (german) or "Bill of exchange", where the wechsel can go from hand to hand, and the intermediate holders endorse the debt. If there are many names on the back of the wechsel and you know all of them (or some of them) to be solid merchants, or there is a bank guaranteeing it, it is just as good as money. The value is the principal less the interest until the maturity, less a little expenses and less the fact that the receiver always prefers money directly.
The point is that you know at least some of the intermediate holders, it would not work with complete strangers.
There is still a systemic risk, for instance if all the merchants trade at different levels of completion of the same end product, they can all go titsup at the same time. In such a scenario, the IOU's will be worth less and the money worth more.
I don't know if ripple can mimic this, but of so, I think it will be useful.
That is very much the idea with Ripple. It decentralizes exchange so that IOUs can be traded freely. Contrast with conventional exchanges who maintain total control of their IOUs (remember when MtGox removed their function for USD codes?) and nobody knows how many they've issued (on ripple this is public information. bitstamp's current gateway capitalization is $263,911 USD and 2,560 BTC). The point about paper-checks not working when passed around through complete strangers is because you cannot trust a stranger not to counterfeit and double-spend a paper check. Issuing and trading IOUs are cryptographically signed transactions on the ripple ledger, so double-spending and counterfeiting IOUs is prevented just as it is with bitcoins on the blockchain. I didn't think about counterfeiting, only the solidity of the issuer and endorser. It their solidity can be questioned, the IOU will be worth less, because there is some risk of getting nothing.
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Back above the monthly average - at last. Walls? No walls.
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Using "Fun fact" as a pretext for your fallacious argument doesn't suddenly make it hold ground, even with a sarcastic undertone. It wasn't an argument - it was just a fun fact. It's yet another fallacy. By presenting your argument as a "fun fact" you are trying to distract from your fallacious argument and make it appear as it isn't argumentative while it is. You are suggesting similarities between Charles Ponzi and Ripple using the stamp analogy. You committed two fallacies at once. So what is my argument? Se my take on ripple (which I don't understand fully, I admit): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=297287.msg3226115#msg3226115
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I suppose you need a country where a bubble has recently burts. Check out Spain.
Are you sure the bubble in Spain has already burst? If so, why are the insolvent banks still there? The banks have not cleared the losses, which is a huge problem, but the prices are down.
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Using "Fun fact" as a pretext for your fallacious argument doesn't suddenly make it hold ground, even with a sarcastic undertone. It wasn't an argument - it was just a fun fact. It's yet another fallacy. By presenting your argument as a "fun fact" you are trying to distract from your fallacious argument and make it appear as it isn't argumentative while it is. You are suggesting similarities between Charles Ponzi and Ripple using the stamp analogy. You committed two fallacies at once. So what is my argument?
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Using "Fun fact" as a pretext for your fallacious argument doesn't suddenly make it hold ground, even with a sarcastic undertone. It wasn't an argument - it was just a fun fact.
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Ripples are like stamps. Stamps are hardly a good store of value.
Fun fact: Charles Ponzi, who gave his name to the Ponzi scheme, traded in postal reply coupons, which can be traded for stamps.
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