Very good article, thanks for sharing!

More than 5100 now... If someone has read them all I wonder if they are talking only about politics or also bitcoin 

Yes!
The whole thing is in fact to teach Romney that if he used bitcoins he couldn't be blackmailed!
 

Some interesting data to ponder via zerohedge: Monetary Endgame Score To Date: Hyperinflations: 56; Hyperdeflations: 0

We won't waste our readers' time with the details of all the 56 documented instances of hyperinflation in the modern, and not so modern, world. They can do so on their own by reading the attached CATO working paper by Hanke and Krus titled simply enough "World Hyperinflations." Those who do read it will discover the details of how it happened to be that in post World War 2 Hungary the equivalent daily inflation rate of 207%, the highest ever recorded, led to a price doubling every 15 hours, certainly one upping such well-known instance of CTRL-P abandon as Zimbabwe (24.7 hours) and Weimar Germany (a tortoise-like 3.70 days). This and much more. What we will point is that at no time in recorded history did a monetary regime end in "hyperdeflation." In fact there is not one hyperdeflationary episode of note. Although, we are quite certain, that virtually all of the 56 and counting hyperinflations in the world, were at one point borderline hyperdeflationary. All it took was central planner stupidity to get the table below, and a paper with the abovementioned title instead of "World Hyperdeflations."

Full table and pdf.

So, the question to the deflationists is always the same: why this time should be different and we should not have an (hyper)inflation but a (hyper)deflation?

@sunnankar: thanks for the infos and the links.
I already found the AAPL121222P00650000 PUT but I can't understand in which market they trade: I already have an online broker, I just have to check if it can trade options.

Dovrebbe essere possibile fare un bonifico anche senza conto andando in banca e pagando le (in genere copiose) commissioni.
Bisogna essere maggiorenni, però.

E bravo Diego ;-)

Invece di tutto sto casino non è più semplice fare un bonifico ad intersango o mtgox e comprare direttamente i bitcoin li?

Probabily I'm a bit offtopic but I don't mind judging the general level of the late posts ;-) so: could someone explain me how to buy a put option for AAPL?

I find the apple capitalization is pure madness, and I suppose that now that iphones get so much competition from android apple will be unable to keep the fuzz to this height and some time after the iphone5 is out the stock value will begin to plunge.

I used to trade a bit on several stock exchanges but I know almost nothing about options and covered warrants: if someone wants to share a bit of knowledge I will be delighted

As stated several times in other threads, a MasterCard debit card funded by bitcoins is already available since months by OkPay, so I see no problems why bitinstant should have any problems.

Matt you are so damn awesome, this is the most entertaining thread ever.

I just can't wait too see how it concludes...

Okpay provides debit cards fundable via bitcoins since months.
(the fees are pretty high, though)

Can you elaborate, please?

Thanks! 

Too bad

With okpay you can generate as many bitcoin addresses you want and you can link them either to euros or dollars account, then you can send btc to the address you prefer, any time.

So, apart from fees (not that these are uninportant, of course) and a nice qr code on the card, I don't see any innovation in bitpay card.

At least, unless the bitcoins sent to your addresses are converted just in time during a payment instead of the moment of the trasfer.

The former option would be a great bonus, but I've not yet read any confirmation for it being the case.

Actually I don't think that everybody is so excited because of the low fees but because everyone (me included) thought that using btc to fund a debit card was a new thing, while instead it was not.

I suppose that's why all sort of news are popping out speaking of this not yet available card while another card doing more or less the same thing is instead available since a while.

And maybe this happens because while bitpay is a great member of the bitcoin community, okpay is not.

So, okpay, I hope you'll learn the lesson 

You can already do this with the okpay card (already available and deployed since a while).

I don't understand that: how would this "little merchant" be notified in real time of the funding? He should wait for a notification from bitpay etc, while if the merchant would use one of the multiple android applications he would have the (0-times) confirmation in real time. He could then convert them to $ only when/if needed, being it a small merchant by hypothesis.

But apart from that, I didn't know that conversion from btc to usd was done on the time of transfer (at what stage? Waiting for how many confirmations?), I would have preferred it would be done only during the effective payment.
In this way I can put for example 100 btc on the card and convert them only when purchasing, i.e., potentially during a span of days/weeks/months.

Also, apart from the 0.99% fee, what quotation is used to do the conversion? 24h average of mtgox?

Am I wrong or this card is nothing new since OKPay has it since a bit of time?



With okpay you can found your card via bitcoins and a whole lot of other means.

Bitpay seems to have a much less fee though, but apart from that, what other differences?

Fee non trascurabile (bitpay è allo 0.99%), però mi rimane ancora da capire su quale quotazione vengono imposte queste commissioni.

Tu hai già fatto una prova?

Molto interessante, ma con quali commissioni viene effettuato il cambio?

E con quale tasso di riferimento?

Totally awesome!!