I have heard the 'centralizing' projection SOOOO many times but have yet to hear a persuasive argument as to what is going to cause said centralisation.  Care to elaborate?

My guess is this is pure troll (and Rampion, I think he's probably referring to Satoshi not Karpeles) but what's interesting about it is that there are people out there who believe so strongly in the simplistic 'gold-backed-or-valueless' thing that when shorting becomes easily available a significant amount of money will be bet against Bitcoin in this manner.

I can't see enough of the bigger picture to tell what how this would affect the market but my guess is they'll have to be borrowing btc from somewhere to short it so if there's a high demand then maybe there'll be profit to be made in lending at a reasonable interest?

Excellent, it's people with this mentality that we need to see shorting if such confidence in their belief is actually reflected in their positions.  This should help stablise prices as people get caught in a credit squeeze and have to bail out of their positions.

Bring it on

No, it can't kill the coin though it might just kill the incentive for those wanting to jump on board purely as a get-rich-quick scheme.  If it forces people to think a bit harder prior to jumping in then all the better because those who do buy will be more likely to be buying sensibly and with more realistic expectations, a considered accepted risk of loss and most likely a better idea of what they like about bitcoin and why they'd like it to succeed.

It's all very well those jumping on board fearful of missing the boat when we were on that massive rally and wanting nothing but to see the value of their investment going through the roof.  Everyone should feel free to buy for whatever reason they want - but they shouldn't come crying to me when it all goes Pete Tong!

They're further back on this thread since dooglus started doing them.  They shouldn't be too hard to locate but if you are going to do them would you mind posting the rest of us the list of the links to the relevant posts please?

Casascius is a worthy addition to that list too.  I already knew all of what you wrote but it helped to read it so thank you.  I think sometimes I get a little frustrated and need more to take my hat off to those doing the pioneering with their warts-n-all services that do, for those who don't fall by the wayside, appear to get better with time.

Repeat something enough times RS and you come to believe it to be true.  Search hard enough in the forum and I'm sure you'll find more excuses to express your gloom and doom about what you're so convinced is going to happen to bitcoin in the weeks ahead

Given that don't you think they got a little too excited with the release and the website not really making it clear that it is the case?  I know we're all excited but as someone pointed out above why time and time again does the cart come before the horse when it comes to bublicising prospective bitcoin-related services?

I think the 'catch' as far as there is one is I can't see how for a simple sms phone the private key can be kept anywhere other than with the service provider such as it was with the mybitcoin wallet so we can't get the client-side encryption we're used to with the likes of blockchain.info so at the end of the day it comes down to how secure is it and how trustworthy the providers.  M-Pesa would stay out as long as they can because their margins are crazy but if it came down to it their brand already has the trust so it would take some beating.  But by all means let's see these things get out there - with awareness of the risks of letting go of the 'be my own bank' concept.

Hi again HowGudAmI,
I'm not into the pooling thing but I have some rolls on order so I'll tell you what I'll do - given that you're interested in reselling:

I'll sell you four coins of your choice (1s for 1.45, 1/2s for 0.875) and if you can show me you've sold them for at least 1.7 and 1 respectively I'll sell you the four you were after for yourself at cost (1.26 and 1.45 respectively).  Does that sound reasonable?

I love it - a magnificent balance of bulls and bears convinced the market is going to go their way whilst the market alternates between looking like it's going to start a crazy up or a massive drop alternately.

For those who didn't see it over the weekend I wrote a blog piece about why this pleases me.  Be warned it's a bit longer and more convoluted than it needed to be but I think I have a slightly different take than what I have seen around here.  Enjoy

Rather a large announcement really for something which (according to the developer) was hacked together in 24 hours!

notme and I had an exchange about it on this thread this morning.

Likewise from the UK.

built in 24 hours (according to its developer)- a little premature methinks to be thinking of it as a solution to world problems!
[/quote]

built in 24 hours (according to its developer)- a little premature methinks to be thinking of it as a solution to world problems!

Just an indication on today's volume to date despite the rally...



Makes a nice wide bottom step doesn't it?  ...  for the time being!

This is what I'm finding confusing.  Going by the limited information on the site alone it says: To make a transaction simply text your request. ex. "send '555-phon' 10 for beer".

Please bear in mind I may have got this totally wrong because I am not a techie.  But my understanding of that is that you're sending your payment SMS to the service provider not the recipient - in which case isn't it just an on-line wallet service with SMS instruction for payments and SMS notification of receipts?  If so then the private keys of the wallets associated with the phone numbers surely have to be kept on the service provider's side.  In which case, my question is: Are they only accessible via instruction from the phone or does the service provider also have access to them.  Unlike Blockchain.info wallets where the encryption/decryption can be done on the client side I can't see how that could be handled by an sms-only phone.

I'm not saying the service provider is untrustworthy but if my understanding is correct one essential aspect of Bitcoins - i.e. not needing a bank - is absent.  Maybe paywithbits.com is more trustworthy than Barclays or Mpesa?  I don't know but it's a big step away from what in Bitcoin world we're used to and I'm reservedly excited about this as something I'd like to see go viral in developing nations until I understand more.

'amount of speculators' is a bit vague.  If you meant the number of speculators then I would disagree that it is primarily the driver.  Closer to the mark might be volume held by speculators - or did you mean volume traded by speculators?

Whichever it was I doubt I doubt there's a correlation between that and the number of posts here that could be of any predictive value in determining price.

But those looking for 'another confirmation' to feel more confident about their belief - whether up or down - will find it almost anywhere if they look hard enough

There's not a lot of info on their website is - and I can't find any discussion on here about it either.  Have they just come out of the blue?  I sent an SMS to 'signup' about half an hour ago and am awaiting confirmation.  I think the main thing I'd like to know is whether the users' in-the-cloud wallets are accessible by the company or whether they're more like blockchain.info's only accessible by the user.  Not wanting to be a wet blanket but if the former then everybody signing up ought to familiarise themselves with the mybitcoin history!

Ask orders appear to be being taken off the table.

You're right about the 'ridiculously low volume' today:


But surely if volume is what it takes to make TA 'work' it makes as much sense to use it today as it did to use prior to the first week of February when these kinds of volumes were the norm.  I don't remember hearing TA advocates not bothering to use their tools until the overall volume rose.  Just sayin...