And the 'blockchain not bitcoin' narrative continues unabated, fuelled by the banking sector and advisors to non-decentralized players. "Banks will remain wary of Bitcoin because its "permissionless ledger" relies on anonymous participants to validate transactions, cryptocurrency researcher Tim Swanson writes in "Consensus as a Service: A brief report on the emergence of permission, distributed ledger systems." This setup means that there is no one to hold accountable in legal disputes over the ownership of assets, should someone tamper with a transaction."http://www.americanbanker.com/news/bank-technology/banks-can-cherry-pick-the-best-bits-from-bitcoin-report-1073642-1.htmlI'd rather respond to that article with Tim Swanson's face photoshopped on to this image: http://www.quickmeme.com/img/73/73f07f805a0ac0165ab2bd0f09bc1375cd0812da578a97bae454cde2c1ddff30.jpg , but instead I'll point out that he's making an implicit assumptions that it matters what banks do and that their assets will remain valuable in the future. Mostly what banks own is debt and the long term value of that debt depends on the willingness and ability of borrowers to repay, and the willingness and ability of governments to assist the banks in recovering collateral after defaults. None of those things should be taken inevitable. you beat me to it. Timmay is an idiot. how are they going to "tamper" with tx's on the blockchain? |
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so are avatars back to being enabled? |
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Stocks: nice late day dump
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Wow, I'm really surprised how many people get it there! Is it maybe just few but loud noises (media outlets, VC companies) that give the impression of "blockchain without bitcoin" being the current hype? Or did sentiment change recently? no, they are still parroting that same ol' tired message. conspiracy theory says they're doing it on purpose to derail Bitcoins ultimate purpose, that of Sound Money, but conceivably they really are that ignorant. folks like IBM are trying to jam the fiat square peg into the blockchains round hole. from a price perspective, this can be interpreted as the bottoming out phase, where the market realizes it may have made a mistake with such an excessive selloff; Bitcoin really is something new and innovative that will disrupt finance and the monetary system. the backlash could be quite impressive. |
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meanwhile, we have a nice pop in gold after Friday's job report. If the $1220 resistance gives way, there is a room for an attack at 2015 top at $1307.
That is the highest gold can go before summer.
Weakening of dollar should be also Bitcoin-positive, shouldn't it?
Theoretically, as the dollar weakens, more money should go into stocks, metals, bitcoin, etc. The problem here is that people are being urged to steer clear of BTC due to the massive number of scams and thefts. The more people steal from one another, the harder it is to get people involved, which is going to limit BTC's growth potential. These scammers are screwing everyone over -- even themselves. Scams and thefts but also the 'don't fight the Fed' mentality; stocks have tripled since 09. I think that bitcoin won't have the 'slow and gradual adoption' over time. When the time comes it will be swift and brutal. yes, i've said before that i think volatility is our destiny; at least until the issuance curve flattens out more. but that's not a bad thing. lotsa money to be made if you time it right. and it's simply a reflection of the tremendous disagreement and early nature of Bitcoin as a concept. it's also why alot of us believe in the binary nature of Bitcoin with a likely outcome of UP. it's only a matter of time before the dam breaks. |
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valiant attempt to save the bacon. i doubt it's gonna last:  |
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If the government wants to mine bitcoins they can compete with every other miner on the planet to acquire the 42% of bitcoins that remain to be created. However, like gold, they can't print additional Bitcoins out of thin air.
they would be welcome to do so. in fact, i'd advise the USG to get on it as China is way ahead of them, in terms of private mining. |
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Final verdict: Big trouble dead ahead until proven otherwise:  |
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here's a representative transport company, UAL, breaking down. you would think their profits would be going up given the falling price of oil that has been going on since last summer. but no, someone is selling it off probably b/c travel is down due to the ongoing deflation and overpriced stock:
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Given our global economy today, I've always thought the Baltic dry index is one of the best indicators of economic activity. Pretty much every physical good goes through international shipment at some point in it's manufacturing chain from raw materials to finished good. It's not pretty, essentially we are at historic lows. http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$BDI&p=W&yr=5&mn=0&dy=0&id=p89283055899And, Why the Baltic Dry Index is at an all-time low http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/03/economist-explains-7We are witnessing the beginnings of the next credit contraction during a time when central banks are already at their limit in terms of accommodation (zero bound rates, multiple printing cycles, already loose lending standards, banks at historically high leverage, etc). During this downturn central banks will have very few options other than outright currency depreciation. At the same time societies are completely accustomed to and dependent on central bank bailouts to fix everything. What will happen when we finally reach a point in the cycle where central banks can not fix everything is unknown. We are living in historically interesting times. Whether or not that is a blessing is up to you. BDI is a good indicator. i like it's practical everyday counterpart stock, DRYS, the international shipping company. this stock is dead, dead, and deader and looks alot like NBG, the National Bank of Greece. this is what inflationary printing will do to a company that is forced to build years ahead in anticipation of unlimited and unfettered growth; they get caught overbuilding with their pants down:  |
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Even if it is true that VC money is slowing into the merchants, Bitcoin 2.0, & altcoins space I think it is not a bad thing. I've always thought that too much money was flowing into those spaces way too prematurely before Bitcoin 1.0 even had a chance to establish itself at its primary function, that of Sound Money. For it to get there the price has to go much higher and maybe now that many people have gotten their hands singed dabbling in these alternative investment buckets, maybe now the price can ascend to where it needs to be to support all these other arms of the economy.
The recent stabilization aka bottoming of the price after the usual 90 % pullback is indication of this happening. Let the price bucket fill.
On the charts, mining difficulty has topped out while price has bottomed out. Venture capital continues to rise, though:  If venture capital finally quiets down a bit, the cash hose gets directed into the price bucket again. It's probably important to note why the mining and VC buckets were filling throughout the past year, and the most natural explanation is of course that people saw the price as overinflated. It had just risen 10000% in a year, and mining and VC looked like great investments in comparison. Well now mining is overdone, and VC is looking frothy. Hopefully the BIT and ETF will be just in time to catch the Wall Street money. I personally have several wealthy friends who are finally starting to get in. They've been watching it for years knowing my involvement and are quite frankly surprised the whole thing hasn't collapsed to zero yet. Six years is a long time and demonstrates longevity especially for something that started at zero and grew out of the primordial ooze. With continued education on my part and the obvious collapse of currencies worldwide, these people are worried. And they're not about to buy a few hundred pounds of metal bars. The Trezor helps alot. Knowing that they won't get their bitcoin stolen. |
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And that's the only other part of the Trezor system I dislike, although it's not so bad if you can use the trezor-python library commands from an offline system. Sure, it would make the seed restore operation less user friendly, but who needs that with a function you're unlikely to use all that often? (or at least not as often as other functions like signing transactions)
i think everyone is underestimating the desire to test the restore function just to be sure one doesn't load a bunch of BTC to the Trezor, lose the thing, and then find out you mis-copied a word. |
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For the average user would you say using Android would be safer than Windows for this procedure?
My personal take on this would be Offline Linux > Online Linux > Latest Android > Windows Although I have a feeling that an Android 5.1 NOT rooted might even be safer than an Online Linux PC, the other apps not being able to access the other apps it's storage space and all this, BUT I'm no security expert... Would even like an answer to this very question. Yeah, that's what I would have said but the part about android being more secure than online linux is intriguing. That's what Mycelium continually argues as a safety feature, app isolation. |
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Even if it is true that VC money is slowing into the merchants, Bitcoin 2.0, & altcoins space I think it is not a bad thing. I've always thought that too much money was flowing into those spaces way too prematurely before Bitcoin 1.0 even had a chance to establish itself at its primary function, that of Sound Money. For it to get there the price has to go much higher and maybe now that many people have gotten their hands singed dabbling in these alternative investment buckets, maybe now the price can ascend to where it needs to be to support all these other arms of the economy.
The recent stabilization aka bottoming of the price after the usual 90 % pullback is indication of this happening. Let the price bucket fill.
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