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

[Richy_T]

Gotta hand it to Tera with his/her 666

[seleme]

Gotta hand it to Tera with his/her 666

Except it works as support not resistance.

[aminorex]

* I am not a libertarian.

The merits of the blockchain algorithm as a technology, and of Bitcoin as an investment don't seem strongly related to this point.  I can imagine a libertarian argument in favor of private as opposed to governmental issue of currency, but I don't think it plays a strong role in the ideation of the community here.

There are certainly strong political motivations for Bitcoin advocacy, but they don't seem to me to be tightly coupled with libertarian ideas.  The advocacy of non-politically valued currency can certainly derive from limited government ideas, but those are common to pretty much the whole of the Western Liberal tradition since at least Locke.  Arguably they derive from Constantine the Great.

I suspect that most libertarians would find Bitcoin appealling on some level, but most Bitcoin advocates would not self-identify as libertarian.

* ... lottery ticket ...
* ... lottery ticket ...
* ... lottery ticket ...
* ... lottery ticket ...

You seem to be equating bitcoin with a lottery ticket.  Of course it is not a lottery ticket by any stretch of the imagination.  The value of bitcoin is not determined by chance.  Thus it is difficult to see how this is relevant to your views on bitcoin, unless you have actually confused bitcoin with lottery tickets.  It is not even remotely analogous.  Does it not give you pause when you use an erroneous equation as the dominant plank in your platform?

[KFR]

Two questions... why is the foundation the only group issuing bitcoin-qt updates? In most open-source projects there are people all over the place submitting their own updates.

Also, does anyone think there is truth to the idea that the government is who confiscated the Gox coins, placing the team under a gag order, and thus the reason for the "malleability bug" excuse?

1) Research bitcoin development
 
  Here are a couple of good places to start:
   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4571.0
   https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pulse


2) Not much point speculating further until we have more facts.  Malleability is not a bug; it's a documented characteristic of the way Bitcoin works.  IMHO it is much more likely that they misunderstood malleability and introduced a bug in their implementation than they invented the whole thing to cover other sins.  I still find the scale of the loss incredibly hard to believe however.  That took their bug and combined it with either wilful impropriety or staggering incompetence.

[Hunterbunter]

wow so many people think it'll break $800 this week? How come?

[Richy_T]

Also, does anyone think there is truth to the idea that the government is who confiscated the Gox coins, placing the team under a gag order, and thus the reason for the "malleability bug" excuse?

Not one iota.

[Richy_T]

Gotta hand it to Tera with his/her 666

Except it works as support not resistance.

Potato/potato.

[Nicholas-Carraway]

This is progress: drunkards, poets and ne'er-do-wells becoming the moneyed elite and damn the rest

[virtualfaqs]

Damn 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-04/bitcoin-claims-its-first-real-victim

Wow. That's depressing as hell.  Only 28 too. Too young. Just too young.

[billyjoeallen]

It still shocks me how inept Catholics are at balancing a checkbook. There is a cultural tolerance for corruption rarely found in Protestant countries. I assume Orthodox countries are even worse.

 The Catholic/Protestant thing: I think it's because there's an elaborate system for penance in Catholicism.  You just do what you do, and then get absolution later.  Protestants claim not to seek salvation by works, but they're always on the job, because their only priest is rather far away, and rather long in returning.  I think they just hide the corruption better.  

So Protestants are not less corrupt, only smarter? Bullshit. Some cultures are better than others.  Tolerance of corruption is a cultural value and it makes Catholic nations objectively inferior, poorer and weaker. -but also a lot more fun!

[MikeH]

However, parallels with global warming are not accurate, it's a pity so many sceptics and deniers inhabit this forum but I imagine the US media has a lot to do with this (as well as your education system).

I'm on a ferry on the Tasman strait and can't be bothered producing all the academic references.  But even the 'skeptic' scientists who were employed by the corporate PR companies have jumped ship -- the evidence is now overwhelming.  Hopefully, a few more super-storms will hit the east coast, wake you from your insular torpor.

FYI most the Australian media is very biased regarding CO2 driven climate change - skeptics are rare (or suppressed) normally but they did show David Suzuki to be unqualified to talk on the subject.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hKdmQMVJ70

[derpinheimer]

13 billion USD bidwall:



Anyone who understands localbitcoins, please keep to yourself

[macsga]

Two questions... why is the foundation the only group issuing bitcoin-qt updates? In most open-source projects there are people all over the place submitting their own updates.

Also, does anyone think there is truth to the idea that the government is who confiscated the Gox coins, placing the team under a gag order, and thus the reason for the "malleability bug" excuse?

1) Research bitcoin development
 
  Here are a couple of good places to start:
   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4571.0
   https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pulse


2) Not much point speculating further until we have more facts.  Malleability is not a bug; it's a documented characteristic of the way Bitcoin works.  IMHO it is much more likely that they misunderstood malleability and introduced a bug in their implementation than they invented the whole thing to cover other sins.  I still find the scale of the loss incredibly hard to believe however.  That took their bug and combined it with either wilful impropriety or staggering incompetence.

+1
The only sane opinion of the situation so far; not that I've managed to read all this word-fighting game on this WOT.

[Hypnoise]

Putin Economic Adviser Warns, - Russia Will Sell U.S. Bonds And “Crash” Financial System

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2014-03-04/putin-economic-adviser-warns-russia-will-sell-us-bonds-and-%E2%80%9Ccrash%E2%80%9D-financial-

[JorgeStolfi]

* ... lottery ticket ...
* ... lottery ticket ...
* ... lottery ticket ...
* ... lottery ticket ...

You seem to be equating bitcoin with a lottery ticket.  Of course it is not a lottery ticket by any stretch of the imagination.  The value of bitcoin is not determined by chance.  Thus it is difficult to see how this is relevant to your views on bitcoin, unless you have actually confused bitcoin with lottery tickets.  It is not even remotely analogous. Does it not give you pause when you use an erroneous equation as the dominant plank in your platform?

Bitcoin is not exactly like a lottery ticket, it is a bit better in some sense, a bit worse in other senses.

Bitcoin is just like a lottery ticket in that its price is known (its current market price) but its payoff is not (its value N years from now). 

Bitcoin is worse than a lottery ticket, because its expected value is not well defined.  The odds and prizes of a lottery ticket are known, thus one can compute its expected value.  Moreover most people who know a bit of mathematics will assign the same odds to those prizes, and therefore will agree on its expected value.  For bitcoin, on the other hand, there is no logical way to assign probabilities to the possible outcomes (possible values N years from now). So, there is no consensual expected value.

If N is less than 3, say, "value" can only mean the market price at that time.  One cannot predict the BTC price even 5 minutes ahead of time, much less N years from now.

If "N years from now" is taken to mean "after cryptos are in general use", then one needs to assign probabilities to "cryptocoins will eventually be in general use", "cryptocoins will be used in more than 1% of e-commerce transactions", "the same cryptocoin cannot be used more than N times per day", "X% of those cryptocoins will be bitcoins" and so on.

On the other hand, indeed Bitcoin is a bit better than a lottery ticket, in that it is not demonstrably a bad investment.  The expected value of a lottery ticket is invariably less than its price, so it everybody will agree that it is a bad investment.  Since the expected value of a bitcoin is not defined, one cannot prove mathematically that it is less than its current market price.  But by the same token, one cannot prove that it is a good investment, either.

So, how can one honestly recommend investing into bitcoin as a hedge against a possible dollar collapse, as a way of becoming a millionaire, or whatever the "salesmen" are saying these days?  It is like buying a ticket for a crazy lottery that does not tell its clients what are the odds and prizes, and may or may not be seeking to lose money.

[derpinheimer]

The expected return on a lottery ticket is 50%, just going by the rewards(-taxes)/odds.

How do you calculate that for bitcoin? You dont. So its not like a lottery ticket. A lottery ticket is throwing money away. Bitcoin is betting on the success of a technology.

[KFR]

So, how can one honestly recommend investing into bitcoin as a hedge against a possible dollar collapse, as a way of becoming a millionaire, or whatever the "salesmen" are saying these days?  It is like buying a ticket for a crazy lottery that does not tell its clients what are the odds and prizes, and may or may not be seeking to lose money.

You can't sell lottery tickets or exchange them for goods and services at any time.  You can't transmit lottery tickets securely around the planet within minutes.

OK now I get it.

You are just trolling.  

 

[Solarstorm75]

on high volume days stamps can trade over 100K coins
pretty sure >90% of depth is off the books
dont worry about it

No, I don't think so.

On volatile days I had several trades (high volume). On other days I had no single trade (low volume). That's all.

[aminorex]

So Protestants are not less corrupt, only smarter? Bullshit. Some cultures are better than others.  Tolerance of corruption is a cultural value and it makes Catholic nations objectively inferior, poorer and weaker. -but also a lot more fun!

Certainly a national Catholic culture is correlated with corruption indices, relative to a national Protestant culture.  If you got any argument on that, a quick resort to public data would remove any reasonable question, and corruption indices seem a pretty good measure of the impact of some kinds of corruption on productivity and growth. (They don't capture what is meant by the term "corruption" in ordinary language.)  That is roughly the extent of my agreement.  I won't voice my disagreements.  It would be a pointless imposition.  But I will say this:

One brilliant, shining thing about Bitcoin is that it enforces its rules so well, without bias or favoritism, and they are very clear rules.  Despite the arguably pandemic corruption in the Bitcoin ecosystem and culture in recent years, the organizing kernel is remarkably pure and removed from all of that.  It is designed to be, yes, but what is truly remarkable is the degree of its success in fulfilling that design, and so creating a level meritocratic playing field.

[hmmmstrange]

* ... lottery ticket ...
* ... lottery ticket ...
* ... lottery ticket ...
* ... lottery ticket ...

You seem to be equating bitcoin with a lottery ticket.  Of course it is not a lottery ticket by any stretch of the imagination.  The value of bitcoin is not determined by chance.  Thus it is difficult to see how this is relevant to your views on bitcoin, unless you have actually confused bitcoin with lottery tickets.  It is not even remotely analogous. Does it not give you pause when you use an erroneous equation as the dominant plank in your platform?

Bitcoin is not exactly like a lottery ticket, it is a bit better in some sense, a bit worse in other senses.

Bitcoin is just like a lottery ticket in that its price is known (its current market price) but its payoff is not (its value N years from now). 

Bitcoin is worse than a lottery ticket, because its expected value is not well defined.  The odds and prizes of a lottery ticket are known, thus one can compute its expected value.  Moreover most people who know a bit of mathematics will assign the same odds to those prizes, and therefore will agree on its expected value.  For bitcoin, on the other hand, there is no logical way to assign probabilities to the possible outcomes (possible values N years from now). So, there is no consensual expected value.

If N is less than 3, say, "value" can only mean the market price at that time.  One cannot predict the BTC price even 5 minutes ahead of time, much less N years from now.

If "N years from now" is taken to mean "after cryptos are in general use", then one needs to assign probabilities to "cryptocoins will eventually be in general use", "cryptocoins will be used in more than 1% of e-commerce transactions", "the same cryptocoin cannot be used more than N times per day", "X% of those cryptocoins will be bitcoins" and so on.

On the other hand, indeed Bitcoin is a bit better than a lottery ticket, in that it is not demonstrably a bad investment.  The expected value of a lottery ticket is invariably less than its price, so it everybody will agree that it is a bad investment.  Since the expected value of a bitcoin is not defined, one cannot prove mathematically that it is less than its current market price.  But by the same token, one cannot prove that it is a good investment, either.

So, how can one honestly recommend investing into bitcoin as a hedge against a possible dollar collapse, as a way of becoming a millionaire, or whatever the "salesmen" are saying these days?  It is like buying a ticket for a crazy lottery that does not tell its clients what are the odds and prizes, and may or may not be seeking to lose money.

How does fiat compare to a lottery ticket?