the REALLY big deal for Bitcoin in the past several months has been the tx volume increase.  prior to that, there was a real question regarding widespread adoption.  this increase bodes well for Bitcoins future.  it cannot be interpreted in any other way.

and before the bears scream about intra-wallet tx's as being fake volume, i must remind you that those still have to pay miner fees thus boosting the overall mining economy and revenue.  this is actually why it's important to keep all tx's on the main blockchain as opposed to offramping them to SC's.

there was no Ripple pre-mine.  simple XRP creation out of thin air, distribution to themselves and others arbitrarily, and further creation just last/this year arbitrarily.

Jed left and started the non profit Stellar which was supposed to be better and non conflicted.  then Jesse left the board.  both cuz of disputes with Larson.  Larson desperately got both of them not to dump their XRP for fear of dropping the price.  Larson gets forced to donate his share of XRP to charity after Jesse called him out on it.  now Stellar forks.

the whole debt based IOU model secured by centralized gateway signing a supposed decentralized hashchain doesn't sound like it can possibly work.  why would any banks convert to this after what has happened?  the ultimate in centralization of the entire protocol down to one server?  sounds like the death knell to me.

most ppl are going to lose money in the cryptocurrency space.

I see that as a  negative.

Bitshares had had to change itself several times for flawed assumptions. DPOS probably won't be any better than POS. And the fact that Vitalik was meeting with and changing its own model just this summer goes to show just how incoherent their whole concept is a well.

I'm not sure they have that many banks.  From what I remember there is Fidor and 2 small east  coast banks.  This kind of fault should be enough to kill them off imo. I think it is a hashchain model which I never understood how it could even work.

Didn't they run off a hashchain model?

Wow, that's a big deal.

Looks like lights out for Ripple.

It's coming:

Russian BTC buying continues to accelerate - localbitcoins volume sets 7th consecutive weekly record.

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/localbtcRUB#igWeeklyztgSzm1g10zm2g25zvzcv

Back into the bullish flag. Just a matter of time. 

It's very good that the DOJ has coughed up 80000 coins. Let's hope they keep selling.

this is good.  Sergio Lerner:

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-foundation-sergio-lerner-security-role/

was it my imagination or was pybtctools alot easier?

its good news when the sharks start turning on themselves.  "someones" gotta pay:

The ruling is one of the first court decisions to clarify the legal confusion between retailers and banks in data breaches. In the past, banks were often left with the financial burden of a hacking and were responsible for replacing stolen cards. The cost of replacing stolen cards from Target’s breach alone is roughly $400 million — and the Secret Service has estimated that some 1,000 American merchants may have suffered from similar attacks.

The Target ruling makes clear that banks have a right to go after merchants if they can provide evidence that the merchant may have been negligent in securing its systems.

Mr. Newman said that Tuesday’s ruling was the beginning of a new “legal road map in determining who’s responsible for paying the significant costs associated with a hacking incident.”

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/banks-lawsuits-against-target-for-losses-related-to-hacking-can-continue/?smid=tw-nytimestech&seid=auto&_r=1

ppl are getting closer to "The blockchain may only ever be applicable to Bitcoin as Money"-cypherdoc.

There is only one blockchain and it’s called Bitcoin

http://blog.oleganza.com/post/104274846653/there-is-only-one-blockchain-and-its-called