Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[rpietila]

blockchains are a friggin database technology, 5 years down I doubt any users will care what the underlying network token is.

Not inclined to take predictions for the next 5 years by someone born in 1994 and who has an obvious stake in one particular outcome.

He is an Internet age person. The WWW existed before he was born!  

Maybe a good thing..

In this particular matter I believe wresting the value out from Bitcoin is a bit hard but there is no lack of trying

[smooth]

blockchains are a friggin database technology, 5 years down I doubt any users will care what the underlying network token is.

Not inclined to take predictions for the next 5 years by someone born in 1994 and who has an obvious stake in one particular outcome.

He is an Internet age person. The WWW existed before he was born!  

Maybe a good thing..

In this particular matter I believe wresting the value out from Bitcoin is a bit hard but there is no lack of trying

One does not need to wrest the value out of Bitcoin because approximately 99.9% of the value is not in Bitcoin.

[uki]

you can see that we formed a proper, highly capitulative bottom on 1/14.  the long term MACD continues to strengthen:
-snip-

Yes, MACD looks very healthy on your chart. I don't mind having some more of the horizontal trend to give me/us some more time to buy a bit more at these discounted prices. Once we get the cross on MACD we may expect things to start rolling.

[cypherdoc]

FED regular BS sponsored by coindesk:

Boston Fed Researchers: We’re Bullish on Bitcoin as a Technology

http://www.coindesk.com/boston-fed-bullish-bitcoin/

Sometimes i wonder what the heck is going on at coindesk.
Promoting scams, craving regulation, and all the insipid piece of article they can come up with..

If you had asked the Fed one year ago, they would have said they were bearish on Bitcoin as a currency and as a technology. I  think their hubris is beginning to falter as evidenced by their need to hedge the technology.

[tabnloz]

Ex Goldman director launches bitcoin derivatives brokerage

http://www.wallstreet-online.de/nachricht/7409696-ex-goldman-director-launches-bitcoin-derivatives-brokerage

[thezerg]

The lack of understanding continues right up to the eve of Ethereum's planned release. No comprehension of the ledger, still thinking in terms of "tokens" and "blockchain tech is the important thing, not the money."

He's simultaneously totally wrong and completely right.  

How he's right:
The concept of a database with per record access protection is incredibly useful.  For example, you'll be able to actually receive electronic financial statements or other legal documents and not worry that they will be retroactively changed without your knowledge, because your private key is needed to change them.  You could even imagine a bank that cannot change your USD balance without your OK...

For many of these databases tokens are unnecessary.  The cost of maintaining the database is simply part of ongoing operations just like databases today.  Ethereum is overly complex for this task.  Bitcoin is overly complex.  You could throw out all the mining logic, most of the scripting, etc because the DB does not need to be decentralized.

How he's wrong:
The killer app for a "database with per record access protection" is money because money is memory.  So Bitcoin.

how is that helpful to society when you, the acct holder, can change/alter them?

multisig...

[lunarboy]

HSBC bosses apologise for 'unacceptable' practices

  BBC

HSBC apologise for getting caught you mean.......Ahhhhh these bastards Send them to guantanamo and throw away the key.  


Meanwhile from ZH

Ukraine Enters Hyperinflation: Currency Trading Halted, "Soon We Will Walk Around With Suitcases For Cash"

its the globally hypocritical double standards the bug me the most.

[rocks]

The lack of understanding continues right up to the eve of Ethereum's planned release. No comprehension of the ledger, still thinking in terms of "tokens" and "blockchain tech is the important thing, not the money."

I think part of the reason this view exists is most people do not properly understand scarcity or what scarcity truly means, largely because western society has not experienced scarcity for several generations. If you don't understand scarcity it is easy to brush off the value of BTC and focus on the Blockchain.

Since the FED was created there has been no scarcity for money and this coincided with both an energy and a technology boom which resulted in an abundance of energy, materials, steel, plastics, goods, etc. We have lived in an age of utter abundance for generations. With that has come a cavalier attitude toward money and basic goods. (Yes we have inequality and people lacking access to both food and money, but because of the central bank printer governments can fund a large safety net, no one really worries that they will starve because food stamps and disability will kick in).

Few today really understand how scarce goods behave, because there are very few truly scarce goods today. Land is another example of a scarce good, but I'm not sure what else.

Bitcoin however is the perfect example of a scarce good. The last bubble started at the same time as ASIC mining took off, which meant that for a while most mined coins were held and not sold. The result was a price spike that no one could stop. That is increasing demand against a scarce good.

That may be part of the reason people don't understand the value of strong hard money. However, it is different from the reason they don't understand why a blockchain without an integrated currency (not subcurencies, tokens, or assets) doesn't work, as Joe Coin explained well enough. That's just ignorance coupled with for example in Vitalik's case bit of wanting to do something different and pray it pays off because its supposedly unfair that it is too late (his words, paraphrasing) to be an early adopter of Bitcoin. That's a rather sad misconception because if Bitcoin works buying at 1000 USD (much less 200 USD) still means a 1 000x return or more.

As you said it is ignorance, and ignorance is a willful choice in today's age.

So one question is why do people choose to be ignorant in seeing value in Bitcoin, and say that only the Blockchain has value. There are multiple reasons. A main reason I think is that Bitcoin derives it's value from scarcity which most people have no experience with.

[NewLiberty]

Sometimes i wonder what the heck is going on at coindesk.
Promoting scams, craving regulation, and all the insipid piece of article they can come up with..

They are selling adverts.
AFAIK, the articles are neither fact checked nor edited.
I like their pricing API though.
I think they were one of the first if not the first to drop MTGox from the index.

[hdbuck]

This Is What Happens To Gold In A Currency Crisis Redux:



> http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-25/what-happens-gold-currency-crisis-redux

sadly bitcoin stays still.

[Erdogan]

The lack of understanding continues right up to the eve of Ethereum's planned release. No comprehension of the ledger, still thinking in terms of "tokens" and "blockchain tech is the important thing, not the money."

I think part of the reason this view exists is most people do not properly understand scarcity or what scarcity truly means, largely because western society has not experienced scarcity for several generations. If you don't understand scarcity it is easy to brush off the value of BTC and focus on the Blockchain.

Since the FED was created there has been no scarcity for money and this coincided with both an energy and a technology boom which resulted in an abundance of energy, materials, steel, plastics, goods, etc. We have lived in an age of utter abundance for generations. With that has come a cavalier attitude toward money and basic goods. (Yes we have inequality and people lacking access to both food and money, but because of the central bank printer governments can fund a large safety net, no one really worries that they will starve because food stamps and disability will kick in).

Few today really understand how scarce goods behave, because there are very few truly scarce goods today. Land is another example of a scarce good, but I'm not sure what else.

Bitcoin however is the perfect example of a scarce good. The last bubble started at the same time as ASIC mining took off, which meant that for a while most mined coins were held and not sold. The result was a price spike that no one could stop. That is increasing demand against a scarce good.

That may be part of the reason people don't understand the value of strong hard money. However, it is different from the reason they don't understand why a blockchain without an integrated currency (not subcurencies, tokens, or assets) doesn't work, as Joe Coin explained well enough. That's just ignorance coupled with for example in Vitalik's case bit of wanting to do something different and pray it pays off because its supposedly unfair that it is too late (his words, paraphrasing) to be an early adopter of Bitcoin. That's a rather sad misconception because if Bitcoin works buying at 1000 USD (much less 200 USD) still means a 1 000x return or more.

As you said it is ignorance, and ignorance is a willful choice in today's age.

So one question is why do people choose to be ignorant in seeing value in Bitcoin, and say that only the Blockchain has value. There are multiple reasons. A main reason I think is that Bitcoin derives it's value from scarcity which most people have no experience with.

I don't know that, but we are on the offensive proposing that bitcoin and the blockchain are inseparable, and that the money is the main part.

So I would like to take a good amount of salt and rub it in their wounds, by proposing that the point of the blockchain, sometimes called a public ledger, is not that of a public ledger. We don't want it to be, and it seldom is. A partial proof is that it has not been possible to track diverse thiefs, where the starting address is known. If someone wants their transactions to be public and verified, they have lots of tools for that, some including use of cryptography. To be of use in forensics, most outputs must have a known owner, over time and across the world. How large a percentage is needed to say something about any owner and any address, I don't know, but it must be a high percentage of registered addresses to the total addresses. There is an analogy with the serial numbers on the fiat notes - they are probably registered when you take them off an ATM, and sometimes if you spend them in a store with the new note-reader cash registers. But with a bunch of notes, it will seldom be possible to connect a holder of a note with a crime with any certainty.

So the point of the blockchain, seen from the perspective of money, is solely to make the bitcoins verifiable. The loss of fungibility is strictly accidental, and we should use the system in a way that suppress this problem, and I think that will be the end result for all practical purposes.

[marcus_of_augustus]

This Is What Happens To Gold In A Currency Crisis Redux:



> http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-25/what-happens-gold-currency-crisis-redux

sadly bitcoin stays still.

no, you haven't plotted bitcoin versus hryvnia, it's not unlike the gold plot

[hdbuck]

This Is What Happens To Gold In A Currency Crisis Redux:



> http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-25/what-happens-gold-currency-crisis-redux

sadly bitcoin stays still.

no, you haven't plotted bitcoin versus hryvnia, it's not unlike the gold plot

hryvnia, ruble, euro.. pretty much the same weight of paper. ^^

[silverfuture]

Opinion: Stock-market crash of 2016: The countdown begins

Dow will drop 50% as market replays 2008, 2000 and 1929

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/stock-market-crash-of-2016-the-countdown-begins-2015-02-25?mod=MW_story_recommended_default


Any thoughts?

[molecular]

Opinion: Stock-market crash of 2016: The countdown begins

Dow will drop 50% as market replays 2008, 2000 and 1929

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/stock-market-crash-of-2016-the-countdown-begins-2015-02-25?mod=MW_story_recommended_default


Any thoughts?

It's always next year...

...until it's NOW.

[uki]

Opinion: Stock-market crash of 2016: The countdown begins

Dow will drop 50% as market replays 2008, 2000 and 1929

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/stock-market-crash-of-2016-the-countdown-begins-2015-02-25?mod=MW_story_recommended_default


Any thoughts?

It's always next year...

...until it's NOW.

very true. Waiting for Godot...

[Pruden]

Opinion: Stock-market crash of 2016: The countdown begins

Dow will drop 50% as market replays 2008, 2000 and 1929

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/stock-market-crash-of-2016-the-countdown-begins-2015-02-25?mod=MW_story_recommended_default


Any thoughts?

It's always next year...

...until it's NOW.

Not NOW, mind you. Conditions have improved a lot in the last few weeks, the bull market could easily survive 2015. In any case, this will end in a crash. Of course. Median stock valuation is higher than in 2000, when the huge, yet-to-be-reached-again overvaluation was concentrated in a couple of sectors. This, on the other hand, is the bubble of everything, as NYT aptly headlined.

[_mr_e]

Could someone explain what is happening here: http://mempool.info/pools

A few weeks ago that chart was starting to look really good, now this massive unknown chunk is coming out of nowhere.

[justusranvier]

With as many people predicting a stock crash, I wouldn't be surprised to see another QE appear just in time to screw everyone who is sensibly short.

[sidhujag]

With as many people predicting a stock crash, I wouldn't be surprised to see another QE appear just in time to screw everyone who is sensibly short.

No sense in qe right now as economy is seemingly stable.. it will happen once usd goes parabolic