In my view, things are simpler than that. Germany* does not give a shit about any other country and that's to be expected. Neither Italy or Greece gives a shit about anyone else. In the big-boys game, decisions are driven by carefully planning short term gains in various fields. In Democracy the most important thing for a corrupted or professional politicians (as the officials who run the countries all over the Eurozone), is to be re-elected. There are elections in Germany to be held. The official narrative by the national media pundits, backed by the coalition (as of this week indirectly but now directly) says that good German is paying for the sins of the Southern Europeans! That's of course half the truth, as it often happens in these situations, every side chooses to paint in bold the part of the truth that makes him look bold.

To cut it down, I firmly believe, that if this was 2012 Cyprus would be saved with a bailout of 6BL (which is a ridiculous price to pay for "saving" the EU) but there are elections in Germany and Merkel has to make a point: Germans will not pay anymore for bad bad bad PIIGS + C.

Truth is that the German government and the EBC has raped Greece even making money out of Greek bonds, not accepting ANY sort of reduction to the bond price. Last time it made 17 Bil. EUR out of Greece. That's a pure rape. As for Germany's money, they go to Greece, recycle and go back to Greek Bond-Holders which mostly are French and (yes exactly... ) GERMAN banks. What good old fashioned German banks tried and some still trying desperately to do, is sell (at a good possible price) Greek bonds to the government. Recently they accepted a haircut but it was at least half of what it should have been. Greece has defaulted but since it's politicians (and population) apparently prefer to die than to get out of the Euro, German banks are still making money out of corpses.

The rhetoric that German wanted to save the EURO is true: As Cyprus economy is based on a superfluous banking sector, German economy is based on exports. Germany (via EURO) was making sure that Italians, Spaniards (and other pigs) were able to take credit and buy BMW's and Mercedes. Once these countries leave the EURO they will get back to their good old currency which will be devalued so much... Then bye-bye exports. If aliens on the Moon or Chinese (which is ridiculous) do not start buying massively German products, I foresee a hard time for Germany. So YES Germany wanted to save the Euro, but didn't give any loan, or made any sort of move the did not totally and utterly suited the local elites. They didn't give a shit about the social death of Greece (Nazi's are at 14% in pools and it's partly Germany's policy direction that made it happen), they didn't give a shit about Italy - even the remarks about 2 clowns winning the ballots were utterly stupid, selfish and arrogant - or Spain.

Spain and Italy would be much more easy to handle if they were not able to see what happened in Greece and while Greece had Papandreou who committed political suicide (and for what? Greece has 30% unemployment, corruption is rampant as always, suicidal rate is the biggest in Europe and the HDI is going 2 position down every year) and flew away. So no one in Italy or Spain was eager to follow the same path. In Italy Monti tried and we'll never hear from him again.

My prediction is that Germany has already decided to end the Euro. They are looking for a scapegoat, because they have an already awfully bad reputation and don't want to be the country the finally ended the Euro.

And to give dues where we should, France is equally responsible for the current situation. The lack of leadership throughout Europe, at a political level is astonishing. Leaders all over Europe are treated like shit by local and foreign bankers. At some point a collision will come and it won't be with foreigners, although social discomfort is on the raise (I don't want to know how many Germans are preparing for vacations in Southern Europe this year, they will be far less welcomed and same goes for Southerns planning to go North), the bankers are still free-riding.

Oh! that was a long one :-)

Cheers!

* When I say "Germany" I mean specifically the Government coalition.

Maybe I should change bank then.

No. This is Germany's policy. Ms Merkel's narration to Germans is that "We have to give these PIGS + C (for Cyprus) a lesson, they should not spent more than they can, or take bigger risks". Well although this entire narration utterly unfair and stupid - because people has nothing to do with banks, not in Portugal, Ireland or Cyprus - the German government doesn't care (why it should care anyway?).

So elections are closer and closer, we'll see even more incredible actions like these I guess. However, I'm sure that this is a political decision, to send a clear message to the German voter.

As most people here noted already, outside Germany the message it sends is far worse even for Germany. Because it drives the EUR towards collapse much faster and Germany being an economy entirely based on exports, it will suffer much more than avg German Joe can imagine.

We live in interesting times...

Okay, a little bit of conspiracy is in order here:

- 1st scenario: The guy is incredibly stupid. Only mentioning the possibility of a backdoor in a non open source project, will make most of your possible users run away, we're talking about a crypto-currency after all.

- 2nd scenario: The question was so stupid that he wanted to give back an equally stupid answer.

Either way, I'm never going to use (especially if I can't have a clear look at the source code). However it's a fine proof of concept for similar to follow.

I know of no country "bailed out" except from Germany who went away after the 2nd WW. Marshall made it too easy for them to create the "German Ecoomic Miracle". Of course the USA did it to fight Communism, not out of love and affection for the poor Germans who came out of the war mostly demolished.

If you are referring to Greece, most of the bail out money along with internal absurd taxes route from Greece to EU banks who had Greek - high risk - bonds. By bailing them out, they defeat the definition of "high risk", but anyway. Same goes for Portugal, Spain and now Cyprus.

These countries elect governments are advertized as "responsible". Except from Italians of course, which in Germany are depicted as "irresponsible". I can't see why not bailing out banks that should have failed long time ago, makes people irresponsible.

OFFTOPIC: Funny thing that I've read on the news: Bersani (the German/EU/IMF/ECB choice for Italy), went on and on saying that if Italian vote for Grillo (an ex-comedian turn politician, but if you read the wikipedia article about him, you'll find there's much more to him than vulgar jokes) they will turn like Greece in no time. It's funny because Greece did exactly what Germany/EU/ECB/IMF said so far and didn't work out (apparently).

Go figure...

Cyprus was nothing new really. Everybody knew that the bank sector was screwed up, and twice the GDP. That said, as in many other places, people do not connect the dots easily because mainstream is in bed with the local elites (if it's not part of the same consortium, anyway).

That said, don't expect too much in flow. I don't know how many Greeks turned their money to BTC, for example. But I didn't see any new "Greek" section here and Greece is getting screwed since 2009 iirc.

However, every day that a currency fails (EUR, USD, etc) because of corruption and deregulation, BTC becomes stronger in direct or indirect ways.

Cheers,

I see. That's a very interesting point of view, but I'd like to add my in order to fuel discussion.

In a so-called democracy two parties created a totally non-proportional, election law. So whatever happens you end up with two choices which do not differ that much. That's the USA.

I paid taxes for years while I had a relatively small income. When the income grew, I continued paying my fare share of taxes.

Bad thing for me, I *understand* finance a bit more than avg "Joe". What I see is bankers stealing money and people voting parties that turn Al Capone like candidates into Secretary of Treasury, like Henry Paulson for example, turning them insanely rich out of thin air.

Banks buy high risk bonds, first they get the results of accepting high risk bets. Then they get bailed out because they are too-big-to-fail, they also get away legally tax-free with millions (because the CREATE jobs, that's shit they don't create nothing except for bubbles) and I get *raped* with an unemployment rate rising, money debasement and so forth. When I protest, what do I get? Police bullying me.

Truth is that at least 50% do not vote in the USA. Are these people accountable? For me everybody is.

So considering that we have a totally immoral Government. I firmly believe that is immoral to support it in any possible way, thus paying taxes. Taxes are the measure from which government derives power (money). If you cut the ability to a state to tax on people, it will collapse in time. Aritotle, Ghandi and Karl Marx (and many others) had all the same view: If you believe your government is illegal, avoid paying taxes.

Best Regards,

knives

This entire discussion of "IF" is the only thing more *volatile* than BTC currency the last months.

If you guy where buying apple shares in 1998... Can you imagine where you would be now?

#LOL

ps. For story, I also were thinking to get in at 18-20USD and got in just a couple of days ago. That's how the currency market works, especially for new non-established currencies.

Greets :-)

So are you proposing Amazon uses local BTC sellers who would be able to exchange amounts like … how much? 10 BTC or 100 BTC? I don't think it's a viable solution. You need a sort of "bank" like Nordic Bitcoin (for Europe) etc, and even that, I'm not sure it can cope with big quantities on a weekly/monthly basis. You may accept BTC but you still have to pay in local currencies your expenses.



Sure, but that's not a *positive* think for a merchant. As said before he has to pay in a (probably) much less fluctuating currency. Why take unnecessary risks? Especially when the amounts are *big enough*.


Hard = not easily done by your computer at home. Again, there's a problem of quantity and transaction speed here. Same as above.


Proof? No, how could I? It's not pure speculation though. It makes perfect sense, it's a virtual crypto-currency. Fits perfectly the scenario. Silk-road accepts BTC for the very same reason so… I don't think we need to elaborate much on this.

regards,

knives

Thanks for the reply

Greetings to you from a land far far away.

Strictly speaking BTC has the property of being pseudo-anonymous (under the right privacy conditions we could remove the "pseudo" part completely). That said a social state-driven economy should be able to keep a record of transaction in order to be able to tax properly it's citizens.

That's theory though. In reality this *almost never* happens. If you have *enough money* banks sell you services (with a fee of course) to money launder, tax avoiding techniques and so on. Then if you're Goldman Sachs, you don't even have to care about that. You don't get tax'ed and if you "fail" you get "bailed out".

You see, anyone can say the shit they want, but there's no way to seriously back the thesis that a Hedge Fund can create 1Billion USD in 5 hours (because FOREX went crazy) while a farmer bust his ass 8 hours for 8 to 24 USD while he ACTUALLY creates SOMETHING (a tomato?). But that's the art of finance: Creating money out of nothing, let the retards pay the bill when the time comes, because "Hey, it was a bubble" ... of course it was you fucking idiot! And instead of putting these people to jail, you have them in both parties (Dem or Rep) in all key positions.

That said, do you really give a shit about these fucking retards?

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher who lived around 350 B.C. and one of the few things he said (and I remember, I guess he said a lot more): If you consider your a governance immoral, supporting his perpetual existence by any means [such as paying taxes] makes you complicit.

So until they decide to tag Bernanke as a loser, put Henry Paulson, Tymothy Geithner, Stephen Friedman and Blakfein in jail. I don't seriously give a shit about ethics and morals.

Read here fore more on GS: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405

NOTE: I don't have nothing against GS or HSBC (who launders money for murderers, rapers, pimps and so on), etc. as institutions. I just can't stand the idea that these people are so full of shit when they talk or "release non-papers" to public media, but they always get away with billions of $$$ while everyone else gets fucked up.

Hello everybody,

It's good for Amazon to accept BTC. However, BTCs are considered by the market an investment (asset) and not "cash". So as of today:

1. Converting any currency to BTC is expensive (bank fees, conversion interests, etc).
2. The currency is fluctuating a lot.
3. Hard to cash-out

So there's no immediate gains except from the illegal market or for banned countries (IRAN) which use BTC + private banks to "hide" money from USA (in this case) and other authorities.

We need to find ways to make BTC readily available at very cheap (costs) price to the masses.

Good call though.

Greetings to you,

The low level of understanding how the "internets" work among BTC "afficionados" is incredible, don't you think?

Anyway, I use OpenVPN at home (without static IP, oh me, I'm a magician!) with DynDNS and everything works like a charm. I have an embedded low consumption fan-less server which runs FreeBSD.

As for the anonymity I use TOR bundle these days. I used to run a TOR node and connect through VPN -> FreeBSD/TOR node (10.8.0.1:9051) but I had really low bandwidth so it turned out that using latest torrent bundle is way safer and faster.

That said, paid VPN's are a fine thing in some ways but mostly protects from some sort of DNS-hijacking that could occur in private WiFi networks easily (metasploit has some fine examples, like redirect from facebook.com to login.facebook.at) where the page asks for confirmation etc. Most avg users will give you the user/pass for fb, twitter and so on. Another way that doesn't work these days is sniffing non-https connections, but almost every website have an https.

Again: VPN protects you from third parties (if you route all your connections from the VPN). Especially in countries like UAE, Iran, Iraq, etc. It's a *must have*. Even if you travel there, but for *real anonymity* you're between i2p and (way better imho) TOR.

Regards bro :-)

Hello,

I bought my first BTC today. I'd like to buy some BTC every now and then exchanging EUR for BTC. However, my bank is charging 18 EUR (SEPA) in a transfer of 400, which is quite a *a lot*.

I have a credit card, I wonder what would be the fees if I had used my VISA to buy BTC. Probably from 1 to 5 EUR.

Do you know guys any other options to buy BTC for small fees like 150-200 EUR without being robbed by the bank?

Hand to hand might work but it's not optimal either, I dislike meeting people i don't know.

Regards,

knives

How did you figure it out? (that you were hacked) And how come that you know it's the third time?

Hello,

I don't understand all this paranoia with offline wallets and the rest. An encrypted TrueCrypt container with the wallet + wallet encryption (bitcoin-qt 8 support encryption of the wallet.dat), should be enough to keep the "bad guys away" even if the steal your wallet.

Keeping regular backups or even syncing the container with a service like google drive, dropbox and the like will keep you safe.

However, these are the 2nd line of security. The first line of security is a computer (normal avg joe computer) that has:

1) Original Windows or MacOSX installed. If you don't want to pay use Linux and/or (Free/Net/Open)BSD.

2) If you use windows, pay for an antivirus or use MS Antivirus which is pretty good.

3) Update your software regularly.

4) Disable Java in your browser! Seriously you don't need that.

5) Enable a firewall

6) If you travel a lot buy a VPN. Connecting through public WiFi's all the time can be an issue on a computer that holds say 1.000 BTC.

7) Use encryption as much as you can BUT better *not* to use full disk encryption and use software like PrayProject which would help get-back your laptop as a last line of defense (If your important data such as wallet, important emails, etc. are encrypted there's no problem as long as you have a backup). Full disk encryption protects the data if the computer is stolen, but there's no way for the attacker to boot without resetting (erasing) everything so.. there's no "last line of defense" here. If you choose this path and the laptop/computer is stolen, then you're left with the backup. It's amazing how stupid laptop thieves are and how well programs like PreyProject work.

Don't download torrents (okay except from audio and video) or illegal software in that computer. If you need a program, buy it!

9) Use firewalls! IF you don't understand how they work (seriously, it's complicated to understand how a firewall works without knowing how network, packet filtering and the rest works) use a user-friendly commercial (yes pay for it!) firewall which monitors incoming and outgoing connections! MacOSX has the awesome LittleSnitch, costs a few bucks but it's worth the price!

10) Stay informed! User your RSS reader, or whatever you use to read news (you read news online right?) to at least KNOW when something big (like a javascript vunl) hits computers.


I believe that 99 out of 100 users that get attacked do not use half of these measures. If you do, you are certainly not going to need all that insanity of offline-online wallet like if your operating a bank.

HOWEVER, if you pass a threshold where your amount of BTC CAN be considered *big*, let's say 1.000 BTC ( now worth 46000 USD) then I'd say setup a computer with full disk encryption and the rest in your basement, offline keep your wallet there etc. but until you reach 500 BTC.. that's insanity imho. (the amounts are subjective of course)

Hello,

I'm a bit off-topic but I have a question about services like "Nordic".

These services charge you 2.1% if your wallet is hosted in Europe and 0% if your wallet is located outside Europe. But, I wonder, if a third party authority (say the IRS) wants to know, can they tell your location if you don't use TOR network in order to sync and connect?

For example here you can see that the transaction started from France (or at least that's what I understand) or it ended up in France? (can you please clarify this)

Best Regards,

knives

I use the same setup. The 'truecrypt container' is synced using drobox so, it's encrypted and always synced and "online" for be to download and open (using my pass-phrase) at all times.

If you have less than 2.000-5.000 BTC I don't understand all this madness described in this post...