I can't decide if I liked Game of Thrones or bitcoin charts more for this evening's entertainment.

Why not up the ante and go with prices in uBTC? Given the global GDP in 2011 was $68,703,917,456,478 and the BTC market should be as large as the global economy by the end of the year, I'm going to go with $5.7/uBTC.

The bid ask imbalance looks a lot like the pre weekend dump setup from last week.

Checksum is for validating bit errors likely to occur in a bit stream i.e. communication channel. It is NOT EVER EVER meant to be used cryptographically!! It is very feasible to modify the file and keep a valid checksum. In fact, CRC was used in the old 802.11/WEP standard as a message authentication code, and we know how well that worked out.

The entire file needs to be signed, or a secure hash (SHA256 hash in this case) that is signed. Signed by whom and validated by whom in which chain of trust is another can of worms best left unopened.

I know that what is actually provided is a SHA256 hash and not a checksum so I'm just being mean :-(

Edit: Technically it should be a MAC like HMAC_SHA256 as a pure SHA256 is vulnerable to a padding based attack, while SHA-3/Keccak in general is not.

It's not likely. This isn't the first time this guy has appeared on a bitcoin-esque panel.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=232950.0

The USGOV approach to crime fighting is highly financial in nature, and just like with the NSA, the Senate et al want to drum up policy that suits these objectives. This guy is mainly a scumbag from what I can tell, but he's not going nuclear on bitcoin, he just wants to be able to track transactions to discourage or prevent child exploitation.

bitcoinity has had some serious lag on CNY lately... I don't know if its btcchina or bitcoinity.

I don't really buy this argument.

http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=CNY&to=USD&view=5Y

Seems to me the logical thing to do is hold CNY. Also it seems pretty easy to wire CNY to pay for tuition in the states for all the foreign Chinese students here. The ones paying their own way also seem to have no problem buying brand new BMW's and Audi's to drive around town.

This may be true to an extent, but there are certainly other ways besides bitcoin for doing this (cross-border trade settlements). Additionally if it was purely to obtain USD, it would be putting downward pressure on gox (not that anyone trusts to see their USD again from there), stamp, etc while inflating btcchina. Buy and hold is the likely thing that can raise the price across the board.

You should check the dump that happened 7-8 hours ago. No one blinked when stamp went from 525 to 471. Who takes that kind of slippage?

I'll add some more just for fun.

Each time a run-up happens the weak hands engage in profit taking. If I started with 40k btc from early adopting or mining I might sell 30K on bubble 1 and take in 300k of profit, 5K on bubble 2 and take in 150k and hate myself for selling before, ... and the people buying during the run-up are not necessarily dumpers. The coins shift ideology with each upswing and downswing from a plaything to a more viable financial instrument. I speculate for no good reason that the bitcoins flowing through CNY/BTC are going to an ideology that is somewhat different from the typical bitcointalk speculator. A much more long haul ideology. The straightforward fact is that people are not willing to part with their coins for 3000 CNY at this time. No sellers are able to satiate the demand, because the demand is somewhat increased, but also because the holders are less willing to depart.

There have been several "flash crash" "bear trap" whatevers on the way up to 3000 and thus 7000 but the flinching is much more reduced, the growth is much stronger than before. Bitcoin is not an investment in the traditional sense, it is more like a commodity on a futures market that has no expiration date but with a fixed supply. The price is set wholly on suspicion of future demand for the strong hands, while weak hands try to do TA and day trade on some market whims.

The fundamental reason for the 3000 to 7000 in 26hr is because some powerful policy people have begun to endorse the currency in one form or the other. The counter balance to future value increase is future value worthlessness which I view can be brought about by large scale government actions to maintain the status quo (fiat), really what are the threats to the vitality of bitcoin. Of particular concern to interested parties is the taint that comes with involving a criminal-infested currency. The start of the rally was around the time of the fall of the Silk Road and subsequent lack of backlash on the bitcoin community. It also provided a marker for the relative size of bitcoin's abuse vs benefit. The hearings today and tomorrow (I guess yesterday and today) involve(d) law enforcement expressing policy concerns, if any, to the US Congress. What came of this was general support for bitcoin, support in the form of advice for improved guidelines and making current laws easier to follow. This amounts to reduced fear that investors use to make decisions, but also speculators of investors to make decisions (why the price increased so rapidly). The run-up today is speculator-driven primarily with the hopes of handing the bag off rather than changing the world in some way. The real growth will come when a few key businesses services come online with that goal.

The ROI on a 7950 is around 1 month with residual value considered at 11c/kWh. If the price halves to around $4 again, expect 2-3 months.

http://i.imgur.com/kwpLtS6.png

Nothing to see here.

If that video keeps popping up and distracting you, add your own rule to adblock plus:

bitcoinity.org##DIV#flash

The benefit of speculation is that when the actual event happens, it's less shocking to the market overall.

It's okay guys, gox is totally solvent now.

http://i.imgur.com/dTiF4XB.jpg

Is this the "pull-n-dump" technique? Where the seller manipulates the market by showing impatience and willingness to accept slippage? So that stamp can go over 579.34 now?

http://blog.blockchain.info/2014/02/25/joint-statement/

It's joint so its across a few places you know.

Edit:

http://www.circle.com/2014/02/24/joint-statement-regarding-insolvency-mt-gox/

This event was already priced in by speculators.

You've obviously never seen a real professor of computer science. Have you seen anyone use emacs to send an email?