rpietila public diary

[thezerg]

It is a far cry to believe that the current legal system can somehow adopt Bitcoin. A more probable scenario would be a complete dismantling of huge current power structures, such as the U.S. Administration.

Don't be silly, if there's ONE thing a democratic government is great at, its jumping on the train not standing it its way.

If bitcoiners will be let to form their own legal systems, the real bills question can very well be settled in the next 2 years, before the currency stabilizes anyway. (As long as we are in the value appreciation phase, the real bills will have no chance to function.) If the P-T-B act to prevent this, the price of 1 bitcoin will easily overshoot to $millions range, as civilized trade will be difficult, and hoarding will be the main function of bitcoins.

I will be arranging a conference dedicated to this, probably in June. Admission will be limited, so keep an eye on this.

I'm just looking for the "real bills" definition now, but so far from your descriptions it sounds like essentially a bearer-owned futures instrument secured by raw materials.  Or in other words a publicly-issued currency backed by commodities (oil, energy, etc) and some concept of how much those commodities "reworked" into a product might be worth.  Essentially it is the creation of transient currencies because of issues and inefficiencies with the availability, portability, or quantity of the "standard" gold based currency.  
In that context, bitcoin ought to render it unnecessary, due to its transferability and divisibility.

On the other hand, real bills also act as a swing loan.  In this context they may be useful (to pair with bitcoin), but at the same time they increases risk and imply a trust relationship between the merchants.  So if a merchant or his customers do not NEED a swing loan, it is better to avoid them -- historically it seemed to be impossible to avoid both due to the scarcity of gold (it really isn't that divisible in practice) and the transportation risk/inefficiencies.

Note a "color coin" could work very well to represent a "real bill"...

[rpietila]

I deeply appreciate your perspective on the bitcoin economy as a broker, i.e. a salesperson. You see what is holding back sales of bitcoins to investors, especially in comparison with the precious metals market.

Are you suggesting that super nodes contribute code to the open source bitcoin project? Become members of the bitcoin foundation? What functions distinguish super nodes from the foreign exchange operations of the major banks? And in particular what is your view of the role of legacy banks vs brokers in the bitcoin economy?

I see the supernode classification as an interesting theoretical exercise. What has been holding back the investments of many of my wealthy clients, has been the insecurity concerning the negative "black swan" events. The prospective investors have no clue, how the bitcoin network functions; therefore they think, there is some probability that it may just "fall apart", resulting in the loss of the value of their bitcoins. What I am presenting to larger audience now, is an easy-to-understand (for the less technically oriented) structure of the network.

There is no way for your bitcoins to become worth $0, as long as there is one entity capable of operating the network. A vague "consensus" of 4237 bitcoin nodes is not needed. If bitcoin suddenly becomes vulnerable, in an extreme case, if the whole devteam gets kidnapped or something as unlikely - the miners and the holders of bitcoins will just give their quiet permission for a less-capable shadow devteam, which the 1 class supernodes will host as a backup. This is not a power grab or anything, bitcoin is an open source software, and the best devteam will any way win in the long run.

Actually I believe Gavin sleeps his nights better when he knows that there are 3-10 fully functional backup teams hosted by the same number of supernodes in about 6-12 months of time. Since he is no longer a single-point-of-failure, there will be no incentive to harm him, as there is no gain for doing so.

[thezerg]

Don't be silly, if there's ONE thing a democratic government is great at, its jumping on the train not standing it its way.

   Can't tell if serious.

Same here.

They will say they have been supporting it all along, think about gay marriage etc...

Let me rephrase so the context is clear:  When the choice is between dismantling the entire government and bitcoin, they'll choose bitcoin.  Especially because 90% of the representatives will already own lots of coins! 

If you think I'm crazy think on these:
No sales tax in the USA for internet purchases (essentially no VAT tax)...
NH state reps were the first politicians to accept bitcoin...
Gold legal tender in Utah and soon arizona http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/20/arizona-set-to-ok-gold-silver-currency/2100039/
Shire Silver
FinCen implicitly recognizing the legality of bitcoin
Eventually somebody will realize that it is a great way (excuses inflation) to get out of US dollar denominated debt obligations.

A strong top-down government has to have a hard stance, then do a complete turn-around, hoping that that's the correct decision.  That's how governments are "dismantled".  A democracy runs in 10 directions at once potentially indefinitely and is stronger; its like P2P governing, only not quite so much.  Think about this: if the USD tanks tomorrow because all the international holders decide to exchange their holdings for something else, the only thing that will keep imports/exports flowing are US citizens with bitcoin and PM holdings.  Can you imagine that that hasn't occurred to them?

[rpietila]

No matter how you slice or dice it - bitcoins will go to the moon. This is common knowledge to everyone here.

The new information is, nobody can stop it. (supernode model is just a way to tell it to non-techies like me)

Expect l a r g e buys from wealthy people, as they wake up to the latter..

[rpietila]

This sounds awesome and is rather fascinating. I have a request -  is there any way for you to verify that you are undertaking these operations and setting up your own command center? I understand it would be quite the elaborate troll if you weren't, but stranger things have occurred.

Lol, I did not even say I would What made you think so...

I don't need to do it. The fact that A) there are certain power centers in the world + B) Bitcoin is interesting, guarantees that several entities will do it in the coming weeks and months. I can readily monitor the situation in Helsinki - it's full of this kind of organizing going on, just this thread has invited 10+ people to develop their ideas. Title: "Are you interested in a Bitcoin enterprise of your own + the business ideas".

For every 2.0 operation currently, there are dozens of 3.0's.

[rpietila]

2008 it was difficult to get silver for anything. I even remember a whole day, I tried to buy one 90% bag in vain. Considering that there exists approx. 600,000(!) $1000 F/V bags, I think it is a significant event if a full time dealer is not able to secure one, even though he says he is able to pay any price.

That would seem to be a very small sample size. One dealer, one day, five years ago.

No, I called quite many dealers, since that was my job.. I could have charged 20% premium on top of everything I was quoted, you just don't forget these things. No reason to downplay this. I think it was October 15. There were small scale "bank runs" (depositors queuing to withdraw for no apparent consumption demand), since the G20 meeting or whatever was scheduled for the weekend, and some in the know considered that the banks all over might not open on Monday.

I had already been confiscated of all of my inventory for bogus charges (which were dropped later), I had withdrawn my meager money from the bank (I have only twice in my life minimized my bank balances in anticipation of a bank run, the latter started March 20, this year, and is still in effect), and made just-in-case contingency plans in case I would not be found. The PM of Finland revealed a year after, that "we were hours away from financial meltdown".

If you run for your life, you just don't forget it. This time it's different, everybody knows what I know. It's all here in this thread.

I have seen you use this anecdote as the basis for your thesis several times. But specifically, it only speaks to a possible strength in the price of silver, and not PM's as a whole, particularly gold. There is demonstrable strength in industrial demand for silver according to the Silver Institute. Whereas, demand for physical gold has been on a long term decline, it is only investment demand that has been keeping the price up, now that is on the decline. Much as the circumstance you describe for silver in the 1980 scenario. I would expect that silver will suffer to an extent due to the stickiness of the s/g ratio, but time will tell if its fate will remain coupled to gold.

They can play with physical gold, but as they do it, the dimwit margin traders in COMEX think, that silver should also crash as it's also a pm. So they sell paper silver short, causing the very crash they anticipated. Paper silver is very thin as the physical longs generally don't bother, it's like Mt.Gox really, just a pathetic manipulation joke, I don't even have the account there, lol. The public runs to buy the cheapened physical, causing a run on coin shops, and now they've mostly been out of silver (or with very low inventory) for 3 months already. They need to pretend they don't have silver, since if they tell they do, but just won't sell it because manipulation, it causes an outcry and the feds raid their shops.

That was why they did not sell to me in 10/2008. I was offering to pay too high a premium, I was already on the feds blacklist (my standing inventory was already confiscated), and they did not want to risk their business since they knew I was in trouble because of my internet trolling. Funny that they all knew it.. 

It was one day, yes, but you just don't forget it.

Today I couldn't care less. The leverage is in bitcoin now.

[rpietila]

A day in my life. After a late-night flight from London, I slept a 3.5 hours, and woke up to my small daughter climbing on me.

At work, the shop was open, so from the top of my head, I traded the following
-32oz silver +850€
-18,400mBTC +40g gold +20oz silver +100€
-$18,000 +148,100mBTC
-110,700mBTC +324g gold
-324g gold +11,400€

This evaluates to:
--------------------------------------------
-12oz silver +12,250€ -$18,000 +40g gold +19,000mBTC
--------------------------------------------
-1,500€ -12oz silver +40g gold +19,000mBTC
--------------------------------------------
-12oz silver +40g gold +3,200mBTC
--------------------------------------------
+14,600mBTC

It is good to have a small and steady profit every day. This one was small, but honestly I did not need to work much for it. Perhaps about 1 hour of work + 1 hour of backend. The rest of the time I spent with my 2 associates telling them about the current and future postings in this thread, honing our trading strategy, walking barefoot on ice, drinking wine and having generally some nice time. I got home after 9 hours in the office.

[rpietila]

I wonder to what extent you, as a bitcoin professional, use bitcoins to pay routine expenses for your businesses?

There is plenty in the Internet that is available for bitcoins, even only for bitcoins. Sometimes I employ people from my own pocket just to cut the red tape. I have so many bitcoins, to not care that I cannot deduct it from my corporate profits.

Traditional salaries, rents etc in fiat currently.

You wanted to know if I can become a supernode. Yes, at least for some time. Before moving on to other things (I have already been suggested this, even though I have hardly been playing this level enough yet..). I can easily pay the $50k monthly burnrate of 1.5 class supernode in 1-2 months. That long I estimate it takes to gear up the systems. My weakness is tech, I am too stingy to employ a shadow devteam myself. The guys of that level are expensive.

Tomorrow I have some work in Tallinn. Wednesday await for something cool to be revealed 

[molecular]

No matter how you slice or dice it - bitcoins will go to the moon. This is common knowledge to everyone here.

The new information is, nobody can stop it. (supernode model is just a way to tell it to non-techies like me)

Expect l a r g e buys from wealthy people, as they wake up to the latter..

Why not have a weekend seminar in some skying resort and actually explain to them how bitcoin works? A huge network of crappy nodes so much more trustworthy and powerful than a "supernode". (btw: this one guy in Bratislava showed his java re-implementation of bitcoin called "supernode", made with "institutional users" in mind). Or is the black swan == switch off interent?

[Qoheleth]

Seeing $115 ever again seems unlikely to me.

Wat.

rpietila is a mega-bull. Has been as long as I've been paying attention.

[rpietila]

Rpietila, when do you think we will reach market cap parity with silver?

Well I'm not Rpietila, though do a guess yourself:
Market cap of silver is 590.5 billion USD (Google Calc:http://tinyurl.com/d3hy48y , numbers are based on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_as_an_investment)

And since at this moment we have Bitcoin market cap of 1.274 billion USD (bitcoincharts.com http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin/, we need to increase the price almost 464x (590.5/1.274), this means if we want to match market cap of silver we need to have price of 1 Bitcoin at 55620 USD in near furture (I know more coins are mined though even twice the coins would not save us atm).

I did some calculations and using "healthy" gain of 2.375 % per day (I did average of average and median gain from 2012-12-25 till today with extrapolation to the future, I removed the period of crazyness which in my opinion was from 2013-04-03 till 2013-04-18 when we experienced extreme heights and extreme lows) we will get to price 55620 USD per 1 BTC somewhere in the end of April 2020. Obviously this assumes that we do not experience some killer app (like the ATM) or killer news (seizure of assets in Switzerland) in meantime. You should also consider that Bitcoin might end in the oblivion and thus its price will be zero.

You are obviously not rpietila, as you don't understand exponential function. If it grows 2.375% per day, it will reach $56k in January 2014. Which I think is realistic.

Another fail in your reasoning was this "Bitcoin end up in the oblivion" part, which just does not happen, since there is at least one supernode operating (me) regardless of what others do or think. qed.

[rpietila]

Rpietila, when do you think we will reach market cap parity with silver?

This begs the question: how much silver is there? Just investment silver? Paper silver?

paper silver is not silver

But silverware surely is. I would agree. Any physical that could possibly come to market?

In 1980 there was a glut of physical in all forms coming to the market. But I think it was perhaps 1-2Boz nationally (U.S.), and it was not accompanied with international movements. So the large holders in India did not sell their silver to the U.S., afaik.

We have to remember that the silver price rose by a factor of 35x (10-15x sustained), to effect this move.

The silver price would have to rise by a factor of 10x from its current level, before the scrap sales would see a large increase. It would be accompanied with large investor interest, so the total silver flows would remain anemic any way.

There is only 1-2B investable silver in the world, regardless of the price.

[rpietila]

Seems that this was a self-fulfilling prophecy:

$0.115 never again, takers?


Reasoning:

I have charted the spot_price/ATH price over Jan-Mar, and I think the rally has already resumed. You can offer to bet with quite good odds that we will never cross 0.95*previous_ATH. And you win the bet with a surprisingly good probability. Chart it yourself, lol. I almost always bought at ATH during those months, since it was the least risky entry point.

The supply of people that think that we are in a bubble/denial/bear market/correction/consolidation/younameit is dwindling, and it's dwindling fast. Especially their economic share of the market is about to be crushed if they do not buy back soon.

Do you still see the people that sold out in February? Where are they? LOL, they made their $10k and are out for good. The next time they will hold bitcoins is when they receive their salary.

I had a morning meeting with Roni, explaining to him, that there is no resistance left anywhere in the price going up. No level above $0.15 saw any large volume action. So if you think:

A) bitcoin is a bubble, sell to the strength. I would suggest selling with a predetermined schedule, such as 1% of the remaining holdings per month, or 10-25% every time it doubles.

B) bitcoin is going to $300/mBTC, hold.

C) what is bitcoin??, buy with all your funds that you can afford to lose.

[Odalv]

A) bitcoin is a bubble, sell to the strength. I would suggest selling with a predetermined schedule, such as 1% of the remaining holdings per month, or 10-25% every time it doubles.

+1

I wrote simple Excell, based on your great idea. "You have an AMOUNT of btc. When price DOUBLE, SELL 25%"

In Excell, you can configure (4 parameters) and can see your wealth based on USD/BTC price

1. btc AMOUNT you wish to spend.
2. parameter "when price (DOUBLE=200%)"  you can configure e.g. 5%, 10% 100% ... 1000% as you wish
3. (SELL=%25) change this setting (1%, 2%, 5%, 10%, ... %20, %30)
4. starting selling price  e.g.  $160

Again GREAT IDEA. Now it is EASY, how much and when to sell. As easy as bot can do it. I'll add few REINVEST parameter  "When price HALVES invest 10% from your profit" :-)   Perpetuum mobile

 

[rpietila]

I told to some of you, I will be organising a conference after 14.5 days. I promised to send the info out 2 hours ago. I did not, since it was not ready. I hope it'll be out soon, if not, then just wait or ignore. Probably only 30 people will get in, but it is not a big deal since I give out all the info here for free if you care to read and understand.

Any time horizon on when you will publicize information on this? I would love to join but I also have some copper to irradiate with 32 MeV protons...

I have reserved this for 9.-12.May 2013.

The parameters are:
- I think it is a great place to have a meetup.
- I have some ideas, many have suggested ideas. There is plenty of time to discuss them even before the event.
- I have sold 3 tickets, the last was for BTC3, incl. full board.
- I have promised that I will always increase the price of ticket, to preserve the early adaptor advantage. Otherwise the bitcoin's volatility will cause people to delay their decision, which will make organising difficult. Only way out is to credibly state that a newcomer will have to always pay more bitcoins than the previous. This will lead to some people signing up rather quickly, which eases my organizing challenges.
- My current thinking is that 30 people would be the maximum, I am fully content with 6 (the current number of guests + 3 hosts) though.
- Howto allocate the admissions, is my problem.

No need to post your ideas, I have been thinking of all possibilities, it is just that I have to make my decision. I cannot alter it afterwards, since that would be unfair. You better be careful when money is involved. This is the reason that my official invitation has been delayed.

[Qoheleth]

Putting aside some differences in the details and granularity, you've basically just described the algorithm that my automated trading script has been using for the past year.

Is it making a profit ?

Depends on what you're measuring against.

I bought my bitcoins at $5, so technically I would have been richer had I just bought-and-held. But if you look at any two points in time when the price was the same, it's definitely profitable, especially in times when volatility is high. For instance, compared to April 6th, when the price was about the same as today, I've made over 10% gains.

[rpietila]

I have reserved this for 9.-12.May 2013.

guys, be careful, it's a trap!

"treatments for the adult taste"

I would've loved to come, but I will very likely have to be somewhere else around that time.

Are we allowed to trade the tickets?

Again you are leaking out sensitive PM info you swedish bastard..

Yes, trading the tickets is allowed, just for the lulz to manifest to the late adopters that a "conference" ticket can actually go to $10,000s when we just send bitcoins to each other.

I am considering, for an additional BTC10 over the ticket, you can send a short wishlist that will be granted to you subject to availability (of the services, not of money, the latter is not limited) For BTC50, you can send a long wishlist.

The last week that I have actively done what I wanted, regardless of price, I have spent perhaps $1,500 in personal expenses, given out $200,000+ of bitcoins, made $30k in trading and fees (this is the most demotivating part right now) and the purchasing power of my bitcoins has increased.

When you have it all, you tend to need very little. Yesterday I spent 60 minutes trying to find water according to my taste. Still it wasn't perfect, but we are getting there... I would pay more for 5 liters of the best water in the world, than for the best champagne. But money cannot buy you good water (for champagne, it does).

[rpietila]

All the local people contacting me to buy bitcoins seem to think differently.  And this is rural West Virginia, where 98% of people are still stuck 30 years in the past.  MtGox isn't that important.

That's even scarier and more consistent with a bubble.

Yeah. When 0.5% of the world is in, the early adopter phase has ended, and there is a mathematical chance of it being a bubble, given that it is a technology which in all likelihood is beneficial to most, such as the Internet, email, mobile phones and Facebook.

In 1999, 0.5% of the world were Internet literate. The "new paradigm" had arrived. There was a huge bubble on valuations of the internet companies, since people were pumping the money in, ahead of the usefulness curve. A mobile operator was trading at $20,000+ per customer. It was delusional, since you cannot extract that much lifetime value out of a customer in perfect competition or even close to perfect competition. To achieve 10% APR, you would have to make $166 per month profit per customer, which you obviously don't, and never will - I am the top absolute heavy user of mobiles, and I hardly pay that much to them in revenue, corporationwide. $10-$20 revenue per month is the norm.

The bubble crashed and the technology stayed, was developed, and has calmly and bloodlessly revolutionized the world.

Bitcoin at $156 per mBTC, as there is 3mBTC per person in the world, actually more like 1mBTC, since many of the coins are yet to be generated (10MBTC), a good number is lost (~0.5MBTC), and I don't think Satoshi will spend his backbone miner position (1MBTC).

Most bitcoin holders that I know, keep, or plan to keep 80% in paper wallets (6.5MBTC out of 8MBTC). Some (1.5MBTC) play with their stash, though, but these generally lose bitcoins over time, and are replaced by others. It is a giant casino, where nearly everyone wins on fiat and loses on bitcoins, (hope thay have fun).

The active traded stock of bitcoins, 3MBTC, is in accordance with the analysis. Half of it belongs to the trading positions of the long-term holders, and they can increase their stash at several pips per hour. Bitcoin price in the last 8 days has risen 50 pips (0.5%) per hour.

The highest "tear speed", which I define as "increase in Bitcoin market cap"/"net investment demand" can be measured at about 10. Expect "bitcoin shortages" to resume, so that there is no meaningful sell side in the exchanges. "Physical"/OTC premium did skyrocket to 25% in early April, it will go back, and higher.

In my short 7 years career as a silver dealer, physical silver was maximum at about +150% compared to spot. Even now it is about 30-50% over.

I am selling Casascius at 1.50 per BTC1, 6 per BTC5, and I am planning to increase the premium. 3 weeks ago I cleared the Casascius supply of the leading Finnish merchant, because of their terms allowed me to buy the casascius' at 3% over melt, and pay with fiat at the close of the second bank day following (T+2). So, I bought like Saturday morning, paid on Tuesday evening, and made 20% in fiat/BTC rate appreciation, instead of losing the same amount by trying to make my money clear in the exchange.

This kind of madness cannot go on for much longer. The ones making money (like I have sporadically done), are making too much of it, and it is pressuring the supply side of bitcoins.

When I was mentioning the "event horizon" yesterday, it is the point of no return, and we are in it right now. NOW bitcoin is the most undervalued during its history, since the wisest brains in the world cannot think of a scenario, that it would not go to $millions in the bubble pop. Therefore they buy in, in the most epic forward escape that the world has seen so far. Since there is still a 100,000% gain available, and the risk has dropped to virtually zero, all the money in the world tries to enter into bitcoins, and the endgame can be rather quick.

Your wallet is safe. If someone understands and accepts what is written above, he can just buy bitcoins and be rich in a few weeks. If he doesn't, he is not interested or capable in stealing your wallet anyway.

I expected blood in the streets and shortages of food when the fiat economy ends. But we did not see either, when Internet, email, and Facebook proliferated. Perhaps I will still be able to buy my weekly bottle of Riesling, and even be able to choose the brand, in relative comfort, despite the fact that I own more money than I ever can realistically dole out.

I can make BTC10 or more, every phone call I take, since people want to buy bitcoins with their fiat, gold, silver, cars and whatever they have, and I can just select what I need.

You can call me if you want, my number is +358-50-3235950. You can talk to me for BTC10 per hour, prepaid. Granted, it is much fiat, but why would you care. You mined your blocks solo, and now you can talk to me 5 hours for the price of one. Realistically, if more than 3 people call me per day, I will need to increase the price due to scarcity of my time available, and the fact that I spend most of my day internet trolling anyway and don't have too much interest in making money anymore

[rpietila]

How many % is your trading position, i.e. what percent have you been most short?

I'm not sure the question applies. If it does, I don't know how to answer it. I'm certainly never "short" anything.

I started off by going long - buying a couple thousand USD worth of BTC at $5/bitcoin. Then, as the price moves in one direction or the other, I set exponentially more distant bids and asks from my last trade - buying if the price goes down, selling if it goes up, such that my BTC holdings "equal" an imaginary USD pool which began at the same size as my buy-in money. As the price fluctuates, this equals "buy low sell high" over the long term (and also ensures that, despite my lack of certainty that BTC will reach any particular price, most of my money will be denominated in it in the scenario that it wins big).

Yeah, that is for the lazy one.. I also advocated it previously. But now I think the best strategy is to sell on/after the tipping point of an intraday move, and buy back at a flat rate which is set at the 61% fibonacci retracement point of the previous upmove. Increase this limit bid by a faster hourly rate than usd/btc growth (the latter is 0.50% per hour over the last 8 days, so a 0.7-1.0% should do fine).

Yesterday I sold to strength, rather than after the top, and still made money (=more btc in the evening) with this.

Sniffing the top is the difficult part, buyback is automatic.

By short I mean that you hold fiat, after having the bitcoins. It is not short in a traditional meaning of the word, but it is willingly giving up the bitcoins that you could have held instead.

[rpietila]

By short I mean that you hold fiat, after having the bitcoins. It is not short in a traditional meaning of the word, but it is willingly giving up the bitcoins that you could have held instead.

lol @ what bitcoin does to meanings of some terms: initially "to short" meant to "sell borrowed stuff". Later it came to mean just to "sell stuff" and now it means to "hold fiat". lmao, priceless!

In general I think that buying/owning anything, in anticipation that you can buy more bitcoins with it later, is shorting bitcoin. While this may be a good strategy, we are yet to see the emergence of commodities that can appreciate in value in bitcoin terms. (Casascius coins is the only example that I know of so far.)

We cornered not only the available supply of Casascius coins in Finland, but also the available supply of suites in Hotel Kämp, the premier in Finland: