Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion

[rafamadeira]

Guess what: most intelligent people understand that government and public services are a good thing, and that taxes are necessary to have them.

Most intelligent people 300 years ago thought people could be owned, leeches were medicine, and that outer space was filled with ether. The logical fallacy you are making is called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum. 

I am not advancing that fact that as proof that governments are good. The point is that calling taxation "stealing from the people" is not reasonable, since most people believe (rightly or wrongly) that taxes are necessary and everybody should pay them. 

Of course, many or even most people may think that certain taxes are unjustified or unfair, and that certain government spending is waste.  That does not invalidate the point.

Boa noite Sr Jorge Stolfi,

Sou brasileiro também, tenho 22 anos e sou graduando de administração na Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Percebi que você tem um bom conhecimento do que é a experiência Bitcoin e que está buscando se informar mais. Isso é muito bom para a nossa mídia, e melhor ainda para quem quer a informação que agrega conhecimento, não só pipoca e circo.

De qualquer forma, acho que tem bastante material aqui de muita qualidade evidenciando falhas no nosso atual sistema e com embasamento teórico e histórico (queda do império romano - por exemplo). Me coloco a disposição para conversamos, caso seja do seu interesse.

Rafael

[1610726494]

1610726494

[byronbb]

You even know what a Nazis is? National socialism...... Show me one crypto coin that is socialist?

Um. Just because they called themselves Socialists doesn't make them socialist.

They were in fact fascists, right-wingers not left-wingers.

[/politics]

Same difference. They had a planned economy and imposed strict societal reform.

[bitcoinsrus]

Guess what: most intelligent people understand that government and public services are a good thing, and that taxes are necessary to have them.

Most intelligent people 300 years ago thought people could be owned, leeches were medicine, and that outer space was filled with ether. The logical fallacy you are making is called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum.  

I am not advancing that fact that as proof that governments are good. The point is that calling taxation "stealing from the people" is not reasonable, since most people believe (rightly or wrongly) that taxes are necessary and everybody should pay them.  

Of course, many or even most people may think that certain taxes are unjustified or unfair, and that certain government spending is waste.  That does not invalidate the point.

Boa noite Sr Jorge Stolfi,

Sou brasileiro também, tenho 22 anos e sou graduando de administração na Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Percebi que você tem um bom conhecimento do que é a experiência Bitcoin e que está buscando se informar mais. Isso é muito bom para a nossa mídia, e melhor ainda para quem quer a informação que agrega conhecimento, não só pipoca e circo.

De qualquer forma, acho que tem bastante material aqui de muita qualidade evidenciando falhas no nosso atual sistema e com embasamento teórico e histórico (queda do império romano - por exemplo). Me coloco a disposição para conversamos, caso seja do seu interesse.

Rafael

Google translated (from Portuguese)
Goodnight Mr Jorge Stolfi,

Also I am Brazilian, I'm 22 and I'm majoring in administration of Federal University of Santa Catarina. I noticed that you have a good knowledge of what is Bitcoin experience and who is seeking to learn more. This is very good for our media, and even better for those who want the information that brings new knowledge, not just popcorn and circus.

Anyway, I think there's enough material here for a lot of quality showing flaws in our current system and the historical and theoretical basis (fall of the Roman Empire - for example). I put my hand to speak, if of interest.

[billyjoeallen]

Some taxes are inevitable, and I won't complain much.  You have to pay someone to keep away all the other people who would extort you if you didn't.  Fine. Whenever I am tempted to think that life sucks, I just consider the alternatives.  There are even some taxes which are used in a socially positive manner.  Okay, not where I think the effort should be expended perhaps, but at least it's not actively evil.  In my (admittedly limited) experience, the lion's share of taxes are either lost to corruption or applied to categorical manifest evil.

When you allow people to cloak themselves with "legitimacy", the gates of hell open.  Precious few people, and no institutions, in history have had the moral fiber not to be corrupted by the power of the state, to kill or let live, according to a whim, and when you convince them that this is the moral high ground, well... what hope then?  We're watching, in real-time, the ongoing simultaneous breakdown of all of the paradigms of legitimacy with their intrinsic restraints AND the checks and balances which had previously restrained abuse by design.  It has all been sold to the highest bidder, and those bidders are NOT interested in buying your children a bright future.

I can see why someone who matured in a developing nation might consider progress to be the current norm.  We can endure so much if we hope for a better future.  It is not.  The peak daylight of human liberty and dignity is over.  It's time to prepare for the night which follows.  Prepare, and defend, in depth.

The situation would be different perhaps, were it not for the abdication of parenthood to the state creche.  Decades of propaganda leaves young adults unable to think in a way that is grounded in reality.  It typically takes decades of deprogramming before they are competent to manage their own affairs.  By that time, much of their revolutionary capacity is lost.  By middle-age, one tends to play it safe and restrict ones ambitions.  And the elderly (poor majority) do love the social safety net, so they are thoroughly bought, where one exists.

These unfortunate conditions will be temporary, but I suspect that they may endure for at least a decade, probably two.  The ones which are intrinsic to human nature will endure longer still, I hope (but am not certain).

I don't accept that taxes are inevitable. People once said that slavery had existed as long as civilization and always would. The human capacity to appropriate the fruits of other people's labor will always be with us, but it will not always necessarily be institutionalized. As far as government services go, anything worthwhile can and will be funded voluntarily. The taxers may eventually find that other types of theft and fraud are more profitable.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[NewLiberty]

http://advivo.com.br/blog/jorge-stolfi/cuidado-com-bitcoin

Yes.  Jorge thinks bitcoin is a dangerous ponzi and makes an argument there by first presenting a stawman argument in the form of an extreme false dichotomy.

Is this news?  He has seemed fairly transparent in his views of bitcoin.

I personally think he is wrong.

But who knows?

Statements like the one quoted below get me everytime. Isn't this statement also true for every central bank fiat currency, IE the USD? The USD is only worth what we believe its worth, in that what we are willing to trade for the $1.

The fact is that bitcoins have no value in themselves : they are only worth what people believe they are worth .

If anyone has better insight as to why or how this statement is true for bitcoin, but not for fiat. Please, please let me know. I'm awaiting enlightenment

the bank note is a promise

A promise of what though? Only that they would give you a different US dollar for it?

A promise that they will tax you.

[bitcoinsrus]

http://advivo.com.br/blog/jorge-stolfi/cuidado-com-bitcoin

Yes.  Jorge thinks bitcoin is a dangerous ponzi and makes an argument there by first presenting a stawman argument in the form of an extreme false dichotomy.

Is this news?  He has seemed fairly transparent in his views of bitcoin.

I personally think he is wrong.

But who knows?

Statements like the one quoted below get me everytime. Isn't this statement also true for every central bank fiat currency, IE the USD? The USD is only worth what we believe its worth, in that what we are willing to trade for the $1.

The fact is that bitcoins have no value in themselves : they are only worth what people believe they are worth .

If anyone has better insight as to why or how this statement is true for bitcoin, but not for fiat. Please, please let me know. I'm awaiting enlightenment

the bank note is a promise

A promise of what though? Only that they would give you a different US dollar for it?

A promise that they will tax you.

[Wary]

Show me one crypto coin that is socialist?

Auroracoin? It's airdropped to everybody equally, as a socialist coin supposed to be. And it failed, as socialism is supposed to.  

[hyphymikey]

Julian Assange "Bitcoin could establish a new global consensus"

http://memeburn.com/2014/05/julian-assange-bitcoin-could-establish-a-new-global-consensus-net-prophet/

[hmmmstrange]

Show me one crypto coin that is socialist?

Auroracoin? It's airdropped to everybody equally, as a socialist coin supposed to be. And it failed, as socialism is supposed to.  

I stand corrected. Those air dropped coins could be construed as socialist.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[JayJuanGee]

this time, it's launching from 450

my question to you is, when are you selling?

I have a resolution of not selling any below 2000.

I think that's an easy one to keep because the sell zone in the exponential trendline starts at earliest +0.4 points and we are there earliest mid-July at 4700. If it postpones till August or longer, it also goes higher.

I aim to sell at the top only, probably starting at 3000 and when it feels toppy. Apr-2013 my selling plan had just started the day before collapse. Nov-2013 I was too early (675) but managed to sell in bulk. It is hard to know the shape of the bubble top.

The ambitious plan is to buy back the same number of coins in the following crash, and use the proceeds to finish the castle repairs and miscellaneous expenses.

Thanks for your input. I’m interested to know your thoughts on the relationship between adoption and price and how this may affect your strategy. So far it looks like adoption and price are following each other and with continued adoption it seems highly likely that the price will continue to increase.

So far however, buyers and holders of btc are mainly small time individuals. In the likely event that Wall Street comes on board a few large players could seriously disrupt this correlation between user adoption and price. If you are basing your selling on your trend lines and Wall Street moves in quickly isn’t it likely that you may end up selling before the trend line has been updated?

Actually, I have been giving some thought to this Rpietila plan to NOT sell any BTC below $2,000, which seems to be in some tension with his SSS (smart,simple,sane) plan to rake some profits (such as 10% of BTC holdings) upon the doubling of the BTC price.  My plans to rake some profits from my BTC holdings will kick in around $1,700 or $1,800, but I suppose such a raking of profits plan will vary for me depending upon how quickly BTCprices go up and whether there are any imminent and probable expectations that any large investors would be coming into the BTC space.  Always there are these kinds of rumors about big investors coming in (and some information is more reliable than other info), yet there is also frequently going tto be some closed lipped manipulations of BTC prices, too.

[OldGeek]

http://cryptome.org/2014/05/weev-duns-usg-28296btc.htm

I am owed 28,296 Bitcoins. I do not accept United States dollars, as it is the preferred currency of criminal organizations such as the FBI, DOJ, ATF, and Federal Reserve and I do not assist criminal racketeering enterprises.

So, would you like to speculate on his chances of actually getting his invoice paid?

[greenlion]

Actually, I have been giving some thought to this Rpietila plan to NOT sell any BTC below $2,000, which seems to be in some tension with his SSS (smart,simple,sane) plan to rake some profits (such as 10% of BTC holdings) upon the doubling of the BTC price.  My plans to rake some profits from my BTC holdings will kick in around $1,700 or $1,800, but I suppose such a raking of profits plan will vary for me depending upon how quickly BTCprices go up and whether there are any imminent and probable expectations that any large investors would be coming into the BTC space.  Always there are these kinds of rumors about big investors coming in (and some information is more reliable than other info), yet there is also frequently going tto be some closed lipped manipulations of BTC prices, too.

Rpietila's plan is extremely rational for a long-term investor because it completely takes emotion out of the equation and provides a very simple hedge. You can tweak the parameters (like how often to rake, what %, whether it's a fixed %, whether to prioritize making back the starting investment as soon as possible, etc.), but the underlying concept is very sound to periodically take some profits as a hedge against failure to continue to grow at some point. It provides a completely predictable schedule as far as "if Bitcoin goes to this price, I know I have this".

[bitcoinsrus]

http://cryptome.org/2014/05/weev-duns-usg-28296btc.htm

I am owed 28,296 Bitcoins. I do not accept United States dollars, as it is the preferred currency of criminal organizations such as the FBI, DOJ, ATF, and Federal Reserve and I do not assist criminal racketeering enterprises.

So, would you like to speculate on his chances of actually getting his invoice paid?

I checked his address in the letter.  He received a few btc from some readers.  Maybe a publicity stunt.  And he knew he wasn't getting paid.  He insulted them severely towards the end of the letter.

[kireinaha]

http://cryptome.org/2014/05/weev-duns-usg-28296btc.htm

I am owed 28,296 Bitcoins. I do not accept United States dollars, as it is the preferred currency of criminal organizations such as the FBI, DOJ, ATF, and Federal Reserve and I do not assist criminal racketeering enterprises.

So, would you like to speculate on his chances of actually getting his invoice paid?

I was following him until this line:

"Know that all this wealth will be directed towards a good and charitable cause. I am building a series of memorial groves for the greatest patriots of our generation: Timothy McVeigh, Andrew Stack, and Marvin Heemeyer."

[JayJuanGee]

Jorge retains some fantasy illusion that his posts affect the behavior of some marginal newbies

Rua Santa Ifigênia is the traditional "electronics street" of São Paulo, some 5-10 blocks with tiny to medium-sized shops selling from transistors to consumer electronics, with sidewalks lined with street merchant stalls selling all sorts of accessories, cartridges, software, etc.. A large part of it is contraband, pirated, or counterfeit (you can surely find a "legitimate" copy of Photoshop or Autocad there for a few bucks). Once in a while the police raids the place, confiscates a couple of tons of merchandise, gves out fines and maybe some arrests, just to justify their salaries; but that is all "priced in" as you might say.

Some 10-15 years ago a Ph.D. student of mine bought for her project a Sony camera that had a CD burner built-in and recorded images directly on small 3" CD-Rs.  (There was a short time window when that camera made sense, because flash memory cards had about the same capacity as those CD-Rs but were much more expensive.) She was running out of the original supply of CD-Rs, and could not find then in Campinas; so one day we happened to be in São Paulo we thought of checking at Sta. Ifigiênia.

When you buy anything in Brazil the store is supposed to give you a "fiscal note", an official serially numbered receipt, of which they keep a copy.  Those receipts are used by tax auditors to check whether the state sales tax is being paid.  Obviously street merchants and  stores selling contraband don't give no friggin' fiscal notes, especially for a small purchase like a box of blank CDs; but since we were paying with federal grant money we needed the fiscal notes, and moreover we had to pay with a check from the government account.  We had to walk the whole street, asking at half a dozen computer supply shops, until we found a store that had those 3" CD-Rs, accepted the check, and gave us a fiscal note.

While we were walking back, people started shouting "tax inspectors, tax inspectors" all over the place.  In ten minutes (no exaggeration) half the small shops in the entire street closed their doors, and all the sidewalk stalls had been hastily folded and thrown into vans that disappeared from view.   For, you see, they had spotted two odd-looking people entering random shops and asking to buy some trinket with a fiscal note -- what else could they be?

So: don't underestimate.

That's a very nice story, Jorge, and it seems to illustrate that if you engage in a pattern of behavior, then people will react (which is probably true), and I suppose you are becoming famous on this thread, too, which could be like the butterfly flapping its wings in Africa causing a hurricane in Mexico. 

Maybe 95% of us will find you incredible (or non-credible), but 5% of the readers may someday believe that you are making some kind of sense, and they will follow you.

 It's like the actor or actress that does NOT know fuck about some political topic, but when they speak, their followers follow.

[JayJuanGee]

People had very good arguments in decemeber why it would go down more so I wanted to see if anyone had the opposite argument for why it might go up.

Have you seen this?

Slippery Slope's Million Dollar Logistic Model

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=366214.0

I am rather sceptical about this. Not because it's a bad model overall, but because I suspect the amount of fiat coming in does not correlate well to adoption. Namely, over-represented speculators must have vastly over-pumped the market, so it's hard to tell where we 'should' be at this point.

I'd be interested in seeing a better model, if there is one.

Anyone can make a model and to argue why the growth curve will follow that model - so instead of having 10x growth, you could have increasingly graduated growth, such as 9X then 8x then 7x then 6.5x then 6.25x then 6x then 5x then 4x then 3.5x then 3x then 2x then 1.5x then .5x then stable .2x into infinity.  There are a lot of variations of such projected growth that could be argued as feasible.

[thezerg]

http://advivo.com.br/blog/jorge-stolfi/cuidado-com-bitcoin

It really is too bad Jorge that you will not take a more active role in Bitcoins and that you discourage your fellow Brazillians from doing so.  Bitcoin would be very useful in Brazil for visitors and Campinas is the perfect spot to start it due to its tech infrastructure.  

I have traveled to Campinas several times over the last 2 years consulting with CPqD and co-located spinoffs and I'll report that I spent a significant amount of my free time acquiring, managing and worrying about money.  The problem is I could find only one ATM that would dispense cash (HSBC) although most of them theoretically were compatible with my card.  And wandering around a foreign country punching your PIN into every available machine has got to be a pretty dumb idea...  

To make things worse,  the one HSBC ATM that worked would only dispense about $100 USD per 24 hours.  Now, Brazil is not cheap.  The hotel is > $100 per night so using cash only is impossible.  But even using it for daily expenses was hard.  The cab ride to and from CPqD was about 20 bucks each way, leaving 60 bucks for food spread over 3 meals.  So $20 a meal is certainly doable, but not at a nice restaurant with beer, or allowing me to pay for others.  Also, I wanted to visit the ocean (6 hour drive) -- luckily I found a HSBC in Ubatuba, or I'd still be there :-).  And at the end of the trip I needed $150 for the cab ride BACK to the airport so I had to actually build that amount up via withdrawals over several days by eating dinner at the hotel.

Credit card fraud (double swipes, etc) is pretty high so I was told not to use my CC at every random store.  Also, Brazil has a couple of CC networks and the only one that worked for me was "Cielo".  But the "Cielo" reader was this handheld "mobile" device that sometimes would fail due to network connection or something... I had to pay one night hotel in cash.  Its nerve-wracking to be in a foreign country unable to speak Portuguese and wondering if your CC will work for gas already pumped or a meal already eaten.  Cash is king in these situations.

If there was a local Bitcoin exchanger it would have been easy.  I could have carried BTC in and exchanged it for a couple days of spending money.

[derpinheimer]

You cant stop like this mini-rally!! GOGOOGOGO