funny animated gif's if:
current value is below ("1h moving average")-5% => bear time
current value is above ("1h moving average")+5% => bull time
ATH => a lightning storm where bernanke, FED and ECB dance around a bonfire made of fiat

The new FinCEN guidelines don’t do all that much to clear up the legal confusion about whether ordinary Bitcoin users who use the currency as a hobby or investment are subject to the regulations. They are not a strong endorsement of the currency. But neither do they evince any particular hostility toward the concept of decentralized virtual currencies. FinCEN is clearly trying, in its somewhat bumbling way, to squeeze a square technological peg into its round regulatory hole. Reading between the lines, FinCEN is saying that if Bitcoin-based businesses fill out some paperwork and collect some information about their customers, then they’ll be left alone.

By focusing on Bitcoin exchanges, FinCEN is signalling that it isn’t interested in regulating the core Bitcoin network, which allows ordinary users to exchange currency with one another. That will hopefully leave people at the core of the Bitcoin economy free to continue experimenting.

Personally I would have preferred to see FinCEN issue guidance stating that Bitcoin is completely exempt from regulatory requirements. But that probably wasn’t an option given the laws FinCEN is charged with enforcing. Given those laws, FinCEN’s guidance is probably the best Bitcoin fans could have hoped for: it sends a clear sign that America’s anti-money laundering regulators do not consider the currency a threat and isn’t going to try to force it to change or shut down.

When Satoshi announced Bitcoin on the cryptography mailing list, he got a skeptical reception at best. Cryptographers have seen too many grand schemes by clueless noobs. They tend to have a knee jerk reaction.
...
I was more positive. I've had the good fortune to know many brilliant people over the course of my life, so I recognize the signs.

I'm still in favor of The Federal Republic of Bitcoinistan

We should probably start a support group.

Once we reach parity with Fiji we should buy it.

Or Aruba.


Actually, someone should show this to these nations and encourage them to change their currency so that they can start climbing past the other countries as well.

Just calmer this time please folks - I had to explain to my client that I wouldn't be charging him for today because I'd spent all day watching the Bitcoin charts!  If I don't intend to sell my coin anytime soon I should really be putting days in to recover my fiat position - so please, just chill with this exuberant trading please?

That's an interesting one, the peak and trough kind of balance each other out and now it appears to continue as if the big purchase didn't happen.

ascending triangle forming after the peak -- but -- it's not a triangle so far, only could be one. we have to wait if it goes down again (a bit) and how far (should be above the minimum of the first retreat).

It looks like the bidsum is reaching 8mil again while the asksum is climbing back up to 70k BTC.  It was under these same conditions that we launched from this morning.

I am not a lawyer, but I'm very skeptical of Murck's interpretation that simply selling BTC for cash makes one a money transmitter. I think this is just a case of the drafters of the guidance neglecting to re-specify every single term all the way through, because although at one point it says any person who sells for cash is a money transmitter, before that it defines money transmitter as a sub-type of "exchanger" or "administrator," which are previously very clearly defined as persons operating as a business. It is my impression that, in law, definitions of terms are paramount, and what seems clear here is that no one can fit the definition of "money transmitter" unless they are doing so as a business.

Probably they didn't anticipate that investors in virtual currencies exist, so there's no named slot for them. However, the very fact that "exchangers" and "money transmitters" are given a label suggests quite logically that they have actual customers (buyers and sellers of virtual currencies for real ones, and vice versa). By the lack of mention of the customers of these businesses, and by common sense, it seems in my layman's view that these customers are exempt from these requirements.

Aww man, my last 3 posts in the other thread are basically worthless.

thru 50 like a knife thru butter.

Bitcoin's horoscope for the week ahead ~ March 16, 2013

Sunday, 2013 03 17: Mercury direct - communications delays disappear, we should expect to see some movement again.

Wednesday, 2013 03 20: Sun in to Aries for four weeks - pro-active, assertive, non-stop-go. Astronomical Spring Equinox ~ turns 11.02 GMT/UTC.

Well, to me you're not really a real bear. You're like, a unicorn dressed in a bear outfit.