Maybe one of the reasons people are so keen for mBTC to be adopted as the "industry standard" is that they're scared Litecoin is too attractively priced.

It's just teasing us now.

 :-XHere's a question - considering the Mt. Gox high (at the time of writing) is $985, and as far as I can tell, that's an all-time high and easily the highest of all the exchanges, does that mean that whoever places an order to buy at $1000 will be the first ever buyer of bitcoin(s) sold through an exchange at $1000+?

That's gotta be notable, right?

Awesome. Now that you mention it, I do remember it hitting $1000 in Chinese exchanges, but this is way more exciting to follow.

Thanks for answering!

I'm no economist, but wouldn't most BTC owners be holding right now till the price hits $1000, just out of a desire for the psychological satisfaction of receiving 1000*their stock of bitcoin? It seems odd that the price is hovering as if there's an equal volume of buy/sell offers.

Or, alternatively, everyone's going to sell at $1000 and the price will dramatically fall... don't worry, I'm really hoping it keeps rising too, but I can't shake the pessimistic feeling that it might not.

But enough of that. It feels so right that this is happening just before Bitcoin Black Friday - this could be a few days that go down in BTC history

Are 0% trading fees likely to increase or lower the price?

Wow, this company is based in the city just over from mine. They even have a hashtag for escorts in my city.

Needless to say, I don't intend to use their services. ($10,500 for one night with one of their "elite" ladies? Bargain!)

I'm terrified about actually exchanging my BTC for fiat, but I managed to persuade myself to order a pizza using BTC a couple of hours ago. The place was out of Coke so they gave me a 70p refund when the food arrived.

Did I just sell someone 1mBTC?

We can only dream...

Reckon we'll see a Bitstamp/Gox meeting point somewhere between 1150 and 1200?

This. People too often forget that there is a third alternative- the price may settle.

It seems Bitstamp is the "bottom" and Gox is the "top". The last settlement (as in, the last time the price came close to settling, given how volatile this market is), it was when Bitstamp and Gox prices came to the closest I've seen them since I started following the market a few months ago.

Experienced, wise speculators, does this make sense or am I talking out my ass?

Anybody else really, really surprised by the poll results? I mean, I'm very bullish (despite not really being a trader, just someone who has a non-life changing amount of BTC) and I think there's a small chance indeed that Bitcoin won't be superseded by the time the price is $30,000.

I'm not saying "sell now" at all - I think there's a long way left for Bitcoin - but $30,000 would be my prediction for, like, 2025, by which time I'm sure that there'll be a more dominant cryptocoin around. But as I said earlier, I'm a novice to this game, so please take my comments as mere speculation, not advice to more serious players

The subreddit for Sheep follows the news pretty closely.

Don't act like it makes any difference. Nothing's changed. Just keep this tab open:

and you can pretend the decimal point isn't there, if you insist on reading the price of a full BTC.

This would be a good strategy, assuming the person behind Sheep isn't so greedy that they'll try to keep every single BTC they stole. However, all it would take is for somebody to say "hey, I just received 200 BTC from that wallet, what's up with that?" and as soon as at least one other person confirms it happened, the strategy becomes transparent.

That said, if somebody did the maths and realised that they'd acquired $200,000 in drug money, I wonder if they'd be quite as public about it as I'm suggesting!

The other day I ordered a pizza for 16 mBTC.

Doesn't that sound more natural to you than 0.016 bitcoins? The name "bitcoin", by invoking the noun "coin", just naturally suggests to people that it is an indivisible unit of currency. I could offer you "half a coin" of US currency, and although that's theoretically possible (I could saw the coin in half), it just doesn't really make sense when we consider what's traditionally understood by "coin".

Really, the ideal compromise would be to rename Bitcoin to "Bitgold" or similar - something that doesn't carry connotations of a whole unit by which trade is carried out - but obviously, at this point, that's almost too ridiculous to even consider. "Bitcoin" is here to stay, but if we're going to make people realise that they aren't limited to paying discrete multiples of one bitcoin, then the transition to mBTC as the principal unit of bitcoins is a good way of achieving that. It's also built into the concept of the infinitely divisible currency that we can continue to do this forever.

If and when a satoshi comes close to parity with the dollar, I'll be an advocate of switching to satoshis - and for some reason, I don't think that transition will be taken as poorly as this one has been. For some reason, people just seem uncomfortable with the term "mBTC".

P.S. the pizza thing is true, it was delicious

That seems like a good bitcoin project opportunity - has anybody made a paper wallet service which allows you to change the unit displayed on the printout?

So by that token, if I ask about the value of gold to the dollar, I mean the collective USD cost of every single ounce of gold on the planet? "BTC/USD" doesn't imply the quantity of BTC or the unit in which you're dealing. "1 mBTC" is still a BTC value.

I certainly don't; I'm from the UK. However, since the BTC/USD rate is pretty much the entire focus of the speculation side of bitcoin, and the only way I've ever seen "non-tech" people comprehend its value, I think it's just the most convenient currency to use in this case. I guarantee there'll be nothing like the celebration there was for 1BTC:1000USD when 1BTC hits Ģ1000, or 1000 of any other currency you like.

One final point in the BTC vs mBTC debate - if you just like to be able to say you own 100 of something that costs $1200 a pop, doesn't it sound even more impressive to say you own 100,000 things that cost $1.20 a pop? Changing to mBTC is a win for people new to bitcoin as well as for people who've already established their fortunes. Showing off your material wealth is the only reason I can possibly think of why people would be resistant to switching.

First we've got to pass that bloody $1200 for longer than an hour

At least try to be a little less transparent, Mr Bear

I think Pokerman definitely doesn't regret panic selling and definitely isn't trying to buy back in 

This is great!

Nearly 25% down... I hope this day doesn't become the "Black Thursday" for Bitcoin.

Aaaaaaand we're coming back up!

Sigh... China isn't cracking down on it. Read a translation rather than just going by what random people tell you this means for Bitcoin.

Sooooo the Chinese government making a statement explicitly allowing its citizens to trade in Bitcoin as they would in gold or silver is apparently a "massive blow" to bitcoin?

Lol. All the panic selling is by westerners who simply don't understand the news. At worst, this news means literally nothing for Bitcoin, and at best it'll result in a steep price climb once people actually comprehend the news from China.

From the reddit post I linked, a Chinese person commented:

"This means major Chinese bitcoin exchanges like BTCChina will stay. You just won't see any Chinese bitcoin >ETF anytime soon."
http://en.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1s5ckc/first_official_document_from_chinese_government/cdu381s

According to some articles I've read, it's to do with the government's fear that the CNY will become devalued if business in China begins to primarily use the Bitcoin. So the things to take home are:

1. The Chinese government doesn't hate Bitcoin, but it would rather businesses used its own currency (as all nations with fiat would prefer)
2. The Chinese government wants exchanges to comply with anti-money laundering regulations (US/Japanese exchanges already do this, and it doesn't affect the price of Bitcoin)
3. Individuals are free to trade in Bitcoin, and companies are free to profit from Bitcoin, but Bitcoin is not going to become the Chinese currency anytime soon (who really expected that to happen, anyway?)

Please tell me, with complete 100% clarity (not just bearish hyperbole), why this is bad news for bitcoin.

I'm going to bet that you won't be able to do that.

(edit: bearish, not bullish. forgive me!)

I'll translate this for everyone else:

"I have no idea"

Please ignore this. This is news from July. nocturnal is trying to cause a further crash by posting to the BitcoinTalk forum, which in itself is hilarious.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100923551

I see, sorry for accusing you of bearishness. You can never be too careful

Oh my god, you don't get it, do you? We "bulls" (as you call us) have explained why we think this is good news. If you want to argue, you need to explain why you think this is bad news. If you can't do that, we're going to carry on ignoring you.

Please explain why this is going to destroy bitcoin. Banks are definitely, definitely not why bitcoin has historically been valuable in the US or in China. This is less relevant than if, for instance, they'd banned fancy dress costume shops from using bitcoin.

This is only an issue if the person who stole the coins sells them all at once, which would be a really stupid idea since it would give away their identity straight away. I think the coins will be slowly sold off. Very slowly.

This isn't the Sheep stolen coins wallet, it's a BTC-E wallet.
http://www.reddit.com/r/SheepMarketplace/comments/1s2upf/the_sheep_market_scam_address_does_not_actually/

You've misunderstood a little. They banned banks from trading it as a currency (as they would with CNY, USD, GBP, EUR etc etc). This wasn't a source of value for bitcoin in the first place - no banks, anywhere in the world, engage in FOREX transactions in BTC - so beyond this initial wave of panic sales, this shouldn't affect bitcoin's value in the long-term.

So nearly there!

I don't blame you, I'm sure it must be nerve-racking to be an investor and to see the price sinking, but learn from this - never sell until the price is at a consistent downturn (i.e. for longer than 12 hours)!