+1 what hyphymikey said

If your plan is to flip bitcoins for a short-term USD profit you will get eaten

But if your plan is to hold bitcoins and use them to pay businesses, you will come out on top

Second that. It's crazy to think nobody bought it before now. The seller was smart to challenge buyers with a switch to a fixed-BTC price tomorrow.

In the long run, Bitcoin needs more sellers to switch to a fixed-BTC price instead of an exchange rate. It strengthens the value of Bitcoin.

From the "Are we going to hit $50" thread...

And that is the second point I was making: gold is hard to exchange freely.

To be fair, I don't think gold is very hard to exchange right now, but we're dealing completely in hypothetical situations here so I'm imagining a world where the US president declares a "war on gold" and gold traders get sent to jail for longer than murderers.

If the government declares it illegal to have gold and confiscates it all, you can't buy any bitcoin either...

I see two problems with gold that bitcoin doesn't have:

First, people claim they "have gold" when all they have is an IoU from a gold holdings company. That's got to be the best "fractional reserves" scam ever. Do they really have gold to back that paper?

Second, if people do actually take delivery of their gold holdings, they will quickly discover the physical drawbacks of gold. It's heavy. It's hard to manipulate. Scammers will try to fool you and take your gold.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were a way to trade gold IoU's but guarantee that the holdings companies aren't lying about their holdings? That is starting to sound a lot like bitcoin! And that is my point: bitcoin is like a gold IoU. If you really want gold, there are merchants who will sell you gold in exchange for bitcoins.

Helicopter Ben says:

Let's make more fuel out of thin air. Send it all to MtGox.

instawallet.org says:




Down for Maintenance
We have detected a security breach. Services are temporarily suspended until we have thoroughly investigated the situation. We will resume services as soon as possible.

Please do not send funds to your address for the time being.

Stay tuned for further updates, thank you for your understanding.

the founder (user here on bitcointalk) has locked his thread but it has some details

Today is a bank holiday in Europe. The market price today may demonstrate unexpected or even inverse behavior relative to the overall trend.

If you get tired of making all this money, sure, sell some of your BTC stash into fiat.

Then you can enjoy the hyperinflation for a while, or even balance the risk/reward of each.

Having BTC as a deflationary currency is good. Having the opportunity to use both deflationary and inflationary currency is even better!

For the curious:

Normal addresses currently always start with 1 (addresses from script hashes use 3), though this might change in a future version. Testnet addresses usually start with m or n.

Very sorry to hear of the tragedy in Kaufman, Texas.

Mike and Cynthia McLelland, you will be missed.

Yeah! zeroday, don't let those guys ruin your cool.

I sympathize with the situation. It's shameful what the EC has done to Cyprus.

Click the "ignore" link under carlos. I did.

If quantum computing can actually break the hash functions and crypto which are currently used in the blockchain, bitcoin will evolve simply by switching to new crypto and hash functions that are not broken by quantum computing.

The bitcoin protocol allows the blockchain to use any function. Every transaction includes the instructions on what algorithms were used.

slashdot had a good run, but eventually became a wasteland of posts that are unhelpful, ignorant, me too, or trolling.

digg, reddit, even bitcointalk all struggle with the same "eternal september."

slashdot polls are trolling by the authors. ignore slashdot poll results - vote fraud runs rampant.

Well, yeah. Obviously I like the fact that my APU generates a few mBTC each week but it's a small difference.

Even a 7970 doesn't generate much BTC anymore.

You mean like the US federal government of today?

The brilliance of the US founders was that they foresaw exactly what is happening and built as many safeguards to hobble, cripple, stifle, and frustrate the federal government in its attempts to grab unlimited power.

The checks and balances are still having some effect even today. That's impressive.

Worldwide the most beneficial setup for individual liberty is probably to have strong nations that avoid "entangling alliances" such as the IMF, UN, NATO, EU, NAFTA, Amero, ITAR, and so forth.

Strong nations that are not entangled into one another will make it difficult for any one organization to seize control of the entire world.

It would also be beneficial for individual liberty if the individual can travel relatively freely around the globe, so that when a nation is suffering from bad leadership, people can move. To be clear, nations should have immigration laws and restrictions as they see fit (and they should enforce the laws they enact – unlike the US). However, nations should not restrict emigration.

GPUs will mine LTC faster than any CPU, so get whichever one you like better for whatever your other criteria are; your choice of CPU will make no difference in the long run as to how many LTC you can mine.

Although it's regrettable that a cartel of whales has decided to play pump and dump with bitcoin while it's young, the end effect is that everyone who does have the guts to hold on through the price swings will be rewarded for it. That makes them less prone to panic sell in the future.


So in the end bitcoin becomes a mature currency faster this way. It seems everything about bitcoin is on an accelerated growth schedule.

I missed that announcement, thanks.