Its not communist or capitalist - its just a currency. It is for sure a demon for Keynesianists, which usually label themselves as "left wing economists", as the ability to inflate the currency is a must for the Keynesianist "stimulus strategy" in crisis times, which is a central point of Keynesianism.

That said, a communist government would never accept a national currency they cannot fully control - on the contrary, libertarian capitalists or more generially austrian echonomy followers would embrace it with joy.

Anyhow, I can see anarchists/communists/anti-capitalists supporting Bitcoin just because is a "bank killer", and right now the financial elites are the ones ruling the world, so we could say that Bitcoin could turn upside down the current status quo, which might be a desiderable intermediate step for communists/anarchists/anti-capitalists in general. Bitcoin would never been the end goal for anti-capitalists, but it could be a first step to radically change the power balances in the world.

Going back to the "mike from ebay" thing: nightowlace story didn't seem a lie to me, I was just amazed that he did not ask more info (last name and position) to the guy making the questions - now I see he did.

Nevertheless, I still cannot understand how Paypal/Ebay could be seriously thinking about integrating Bitcoin - it's totally against their interests. Come on: irreversible transfers, decentralized currency, pseudoanonymity? It's a Paypal antagonist, I really cannot see how they could support BTC, it is completely opposite to their philosophy - in fact, aren't Paypal and Ebay jerking around with people dealing with BTC?

As I said when I saw the CEO of Paypal speaking about BTC: I'm very sure those guys are looking closely to BTC, but IMO they would develop their own proprietary crypto, they wouldn't embrace BTC as it is.

Print the QR code and store it in a safe place. Before activating 2-fa check that the QR you printed can be scanned by GA.

But does "mike" from eBay has a last name and position in the company or is he just a customer care guy who collects "user feedback" regarding a strategic issue with profound implications as it would be the adoption of an universal, decentralized currency which also happens to be a "PayPal killer"?

Chances are that Bitcoin will grow exponentially in the years to come - that's the trend, and fixed allocation will cost you a lot of coins on the way up. Would you care to backtest the fixed allocation strategy since Gox opened trading in 2010 till today, and compare it with buy&hold?

"Invest in BTC as much money as you could comfortably lose" is the best simple advice you could have given to anyone in the last years, and I do not see that changing anytime soon. Obviously this is a volatile market and I do think we will test again $100 sooner than later, so Id recommend buying gradually, but the end goal in my book is to accumulate as much coins as possible - fixed allocation kills that purpose.

For the faint of heart, day trading is just a very expensive gambling, not only because the market is very small and thus volatility wild and unpredictable, but also because of huge fees and slippage.

"Mike" from EBay asking you about the anonymous cash of the interwebz? And you didn't ask him his last name and position in the company?

Sounds good btw

Yes it is. In fact you should have a paper backup (just print the QR code) of ALL your Google Auth tokens.

Not looking good. This is an Illiquid and inneficient market: big spreads, huge slippage for medium volumes, crazy high trading fees, withdrawal issues..

As far as I know the exodus address is controlled exclusively by J.R., so he sent $120,000 in BTC to an address he controls. Funds are supposed to be used for bounties and project development, but again the hard cold fact is that those funds are "in his pocket", at least at the moment.

Don't get me wrong, I repeat again that I invested in Mastercoin and I trust J.R., but someone needs to play devil's advocate.

I do not doubt of your good will and honesty, that's why I invested in your project. I understand what you say regarding an "upward impact" - the fact Satoshi is holding tight to each and every coin of his +1M stash is for sure one of the reasons Bitcoin has historically only gone up. In fact, I can tell you that discovering "the founder" didn't move a single coin from his stash, even during rallies and bubbles, was some of the things that fascinated me when I first learnt about Bitcoin.

On the contrary, I always believed that the day in which those "first mined" coins start to move, there will be a lot of panic and dumping going on, unless the transfers and movements are minimal. If large amounts of Satoshi's coins suddenly move, it will probably not be a good sign at all. I always thought that if he had sold his coins during the 2011 bubble, probably the "this is a ponzi" crowd (Nagle et all) would have had much more credit among the community and the world in general.

What I mean with the above is that by holding such an insane share of Mastercoins, you have a very big responsibility. I guess Satoshi understood that and decided to just hold. The project might be open source, other devs might make it huge, but still the fact remains that one single person (you) holds 30% of the total coins in circulation (which BTW in proportion is much more than Satoshi's holdings in relation to the total BTC supply). That's "total power" and "total control" for one single person, and an honest concern for every new investor.

I trust you, but to be honest when I've been asked about Mastercoins, among the few drawbacks I included "one single person holds 30% of them". I will keep saying that to whoever asks me an opinion about the project - not because I do not trust you, just because it is a hard cold fact.

Fascinating research as usual, Sergio.

Going back to your first research (the one that proved that Satoshi is holding to aprox. 1M Bitcoins that never moved) I think somebody should write a script that immediately sends a warning if some of those coins are transferred… That would be probably the best time to dump everything and run for cover!

Nefarious or not, it remains a fact that JR holdings are so big that he "owns" the market. What he does with his 30% share of the market will deeply affect price.

If you are in the EU, not at all. Sweden is an EU company, and any EU registered company is considered an intra-community operator - you can buy and sell goods without any VAT between EU registered companies.

Because of my work I constantly deal with EU companies and I can guarantee you that there is no VAT in anything I buy/sell in the EU. In fact, my KNC miners have 0% VAT on the invoice.

what whale? The biggest buy was 300ish BTC, and in the last hour the total volume is roughly 1k BTC. Those are not whales, those are mice.

Group buys of expensive professional items should be handled by companies, giving away +20% in VAT is just crazy.

Buying such an expensive, proffesional gear, as a consumer really sucks, because you will have to pay VAT and you won't be able to recoup it, which is a profit killer. IMO a $7k miner is not a consumer product at all, it should be bought by a registered company so you can recoup the VAT - or in case the registered company is in the EU, you won't be charged any VAT at all.

Yep, 70ish BTC is also the figure I'm considering from the very first minute to calculate ROI. I paid in $$, but you know, the right way to calculate the return is to see if you at least recoup the same amount of coins you could have bought with your $$ when you placed the order. The miners are still profitable, but honestly is not looking very good. If they are only a couple of weeks late, it will be hard to reach break-even.

Do not forget that all those calculators consider 100% uptime, which never happens. Calculating 90% to 95% uptime is much more reasonable, I'd recommend to insert 360GH/s as hashrate for a 400GH/s unit in order to factor possible downtime.

Isn't the fact that the OP holds roughly 30% of the Mastercoins in circulation a big concern? His course of action (holding or selling) will drive market price.

One more question: will the bounties for the developers be denominated in BTC or Mastercoins? I think it would be cool to give Mastercoins to spread them in more hands while helping broader adoption.

It looks to me that 1.3 Mastercoins were transferred in that transaction? That info should be in the hash of the data address (http://blockchain.info/de/address/1EwzPMJan18uaTVWSJtKYJk5H6NnVyiRqp) - if I got it right the amount transferred is 0x7bfa480 or 1.3 Mastercoins.

Mmm.. So you have 1000 Mastercoins, meaning you sent 10BTC to the Exodus address? Before asking 1000BTC to be sent to your address you could at least prove you OWN 1,000 Mastercoins, right?

You can prove you won 1,000 Mastercoins by signing a message with the address from which you sent 10 or more BTC to the Exodus address.