Bitcoin as an investment

[soy]

So, perhaps the price had reached its stable low and is rebounding a little.

The latest contact from those handling the MtGox debacle say they've contracted with a company to "recover" stolen Bitcoins.  How I wonder.  Steal them back perhaps?

Only if Mark Karples or one of his employees stole them.

Cold storage is simply an address assigned to a wallet that isn't connected to the internet.  The perp could have purchased a laptop, opened a wallet, transferred the stolen Bitcoins to an address of that wallet, saved the wallet to a thumbdrive, smashed the laptop with a hammer and tossed it in the Seine.

A record of the stolen Bitcoins getting to that cold storage wallet exists in the blockchain but those stolen Bitcoins can't be moved to any other address without bringing that address in the wallet.dat of the thumbdrive back onto the internet and getting it seen by the blockchain.

Any other stolen MtGox Bitcoins that aren't in cold storage would have been mixed into some existing online accounts that don't maintain a history of each and every fractional Bitcoin's history giving the holder the argument he can't tell which are which?  But it can be shown that X number of stolen Bitcoins did enter some account address.  If the mixed Bitcoins are held by a company holding Bitcoins for many users and not differentiating which are which the company claims it's not responsible and not to be held accountable for those stolen Bitcoins that it acquired?

Are there any other places the stolen Bitcoins can be?  I understand the double spending of Bitcoins on MtGox was only a small fraction of those stolen.

[unent]

So, perhaps the price had reached its stable low and is rebounding a little.

The latest contact from those handling the MtGox debacle say they've contracted with a company to "recover" stolen Bitcoins.  How I wonder.  Steal them back perhaps?

Only if Mark Karples or one of his employees stole them.

Cold storage is simply an address assigned to a wallet that isn't connected to the internet.  The perp could have purchased a laptop, opened a wallet, transferred the stolen Bitcoins to an address of that wallet, saved the wallet to a thumbdrive, smashed the laptop with a hammer and tossed it in the Seine.

A record of the stolen Bitcoins getting to that cold storage wallet exists in the blockchain but those stolen Bitcoins can't be moved to any other address without bringing that address in the wallet.dat of the thumbdrive back onto the internet and getting it seen by the blockchain.

Any other stolen MtGox Bitcoins that aren't in cold storage would have been mixed into some existing online accounts that don't maintain a history of each and every fractional Bitcoin's history giving the holder the argument he can't tell which are which?  But it can be shown that X number of stolen Bitcoins did enter some account address.  If the mixed Bitcoins are held by a company holding Bitcoins for many users and not differentiating which are which the company claims it's not responsible and not to be held accountable for those stolen Bitcoins that it acquired?

Are there any other places the stolen Bitcoins can be?  I understand the double spending of Bitcoins on MtGox was only a small fraction of those stolen.

I know Mark Karples "found" 200000 bitcoins down the back of the couch in an old wallet he had "forgotten" about. Maybe there are some stolen bitcoins hidden down the back of another couch.

[AlexGR]

The low Russian ruble and no cash flow into Bitcoin points to a very real loss of confidence in those who have defacto control and the idea itself. 

You could say the exact same thing for Gold and Silver... if Russians aren't buying it as a hedge to the ruble, then PMs are surely "finished". But we are not really factoring in market manipulation and perception management. For Bitcoin in particular, the idea is to have Bitcoin portrayed as the worst investment of the year in a large number of financial and mainstream articles.

[inca]

You could say the exact same thing for Gold and Silver... if Russians aren't buying it as a hedge to the ruble, then PMs are surely "finished". But we are not really factoring in market manipulation and perception management. For Bitcoin in particular, the idea is to have Bitcoin portrayed as the worst investment of the year in a large number of financial and mainstream articles.

Yep, and it will no doubt be effective to a degree. But next year bitcoin won't have to work very hard to put in very high YOY % gains. The cynical in me might even suggest this will be timed to correlate with the opening up in the US of bitcoin to further investment in products such as an ETF or a US based exchange!