Wow i just checked Google Maps and noticed that Canada is right next to the US of A.

So the USA might be the next one banning BTC?

 

Au contraire dear fonz ... GS are notorious for recommending/downgrading assets against the best interests of their clients, for the very purposes of front-running them. Typically on the juiciest of plays.

The very fact GS are covering bitcoin in a report is the news. Their statement that it is "too volatile for serious investors" ... means stay away until we establish our positions first. Volatility is life blood for these guys.

I believe the most important news now is what happened to the 750k btc (+120k gox)

Did they confirm they were in fact stolen and when it happened?

hahahaha Read every second word.

If its true and assuming they refund people's bitcoins, then what will happen is that there will be a lot of happy people. Beyond that, not much will happen. A few people might sell some, but most people will hold. And overall community sentiment will be more positive. Probably not much difference in regards to price.

#3 spotted in the wild!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=554625.0;topicseen

U got fooled, sold at the bottom, and need to buy back higher, lol.

its the market figuring itself out, while being fondled by wall street... its really messed up...

People who try to sell bitcoin as a way to protect one's investment from inflation should be jailed, IMHO.

No, just those who try to swindle others by selling them shares of dry oil wells, water-powered cars, ponzi schemes, etc..

No sane person would invest in cash, unless the money came from some illegal activity, or one is trying to evade taxes.

Real estate, and stocks of large, established and diversified companies are usually a safe investment.  Even if they are overpriced at some point, and may crash eventually, there is a limit to how much they can go down before hitting their fair price.  Since they are material property, their real value will not be affected by inflation.  For those who are too lazy or small to use those investments, there are many bonds and investment funds that are somewhat riskier and offer smaller returns, but will still protect from inflation.

I don't have much to say about gold, except that it seems to be vastly overpriced, and its price charts are not nice at all.

No one can honestly predict the future of bitcoin.  It may rise again to thousands of dollars, or it may be superseded by something else and go down to zero.   It is a big gamble, a lottery ticket with unknown odds.  People should be free to gamble, but must know that it is gambling and not investment.

If the currency is inflating @ 10% a year, and its dollar exchange rate has fallen by more than 50% in 2014?  Let's just say "not very smart."

Bitcoin's exchange rate has gone up infinitely over the past five years.  There once was a time when it was worth exactly nothing.  Extrapolating from that, your future profits should also be infinite.

If you wish to get back to reality, you may consider Bitcoin's performance in recent past.  Since December of 2013, the price has been steadily declining.

If your reasoning proves anything, it proves entirely too much.  It proves that any investment which did well in some distant past is bound to be profitable in the future.  Regardless of its recent performance.

I hope I do not need to dwell on the folly of such assumptions.

Re. "induction as an indicator over time": wat?

time for a long squeeze. 

Well, we've been following a pattern of attempted breakouts to the upside followed by more downward movement for a while now. Since people seem to consider trend continuations more likely than reversals, shorting on upspikes must seem more and more tempting the longer that pattern continues.

And who said there's been no good news recently?

Bitcoin was meant to be an e-payment method (decentralized, trutless, etc.).  A fixed bitcoin supply is not necessary for that goal.  Indeed, bitcoin is being used in that role, in spite of still having 10%/year inflation (and even higher in the past).  And dollars and euros work fine as payment methods, in spite of their "horrendous" 1-2%/year inflation rate.

Thus, the argument that "raising the emission limit would destroy the value of bitcoin" does not sound convincing.  Hoarders would be very unhappy, of course.  Miners, however, may someday find it advantageous, especially by the time they are expected do depend on transaction fees instead of block rewards.  Block reward is steady and predictable, whereas fees depend on transaction volume -- which will probably shrink substantially if fees became mandatory.   People who use bitcoin for payments may not care, or may prefer block rewards because they provides "free" transactions.

It has been argued that, if some miners tried to change the protocol, the rest of the network would stick to the old one.  However, this correction mechanism has never been tested, and it seems difficult to predict what would happen, in all possible scenarios.  (After all, it was "proved", with the same certainty, that altcoins would die as soon as they were born.)  What if those "some miners" had 70% of the hash rate?  What if a large subset of the users became convinced that the change was necessary for the health of the network, or got some immediate benefit from it (such as no-fee transactions)? What if payment processors and merchants accepted only the "new" bitcoin?  

(By the way, some bitcoiners seem to be trying to convince people to adopt bitcoin by telling them that money sucks.  I sense a problem with that marketing strategy: it seems that many people have used money sometime in their lives, and may even have enjoyed the experience -- unlikely as that may sound.  )

For all I know, computer types were first attracted to bitcoin for the pleasure of helping to test a smart solution to an old technical problem.  Then libertarians got interested because they saw in bitcoin a way to build an economy independent of  government and banks.  Then drug users and sellers adopted it as a way to pay for drugs without the DEA knowledge (so they thought).  At some point, others noticed the value going up like crazy, and bought into it as a get-filthy-rich-quick scheme.

I suspect that a majority of the people in this forum are from the latter group.  The finite supply of bitcoins is important only for that group, because it is part of the argument that "proves" that the price will be astronomical one day.  But it is not essential, even to them; that argument would have been only a little less convincing if the supply was programmed to increase 5%/year, forever.  So much so, that they are not bothered by the current 5-10% inflation rate.

I'm hoping some big pocket swoops all of them in one set a la Draper and advertises the purchase and its price

Too bad we're not likely to have a leaked list of bidders like last time 

I am 100% sure (lol). No, but really it makes a lot of sense considering the circumstances. This is how you make easy money.

Really?

I've been enjoying the up and downs, and taking advantage when I can, but I've not seen much development taking place. I was getting the impression that it's a dead coin...

pokerstars soon adopting btc ?



http://www.pokerfirma.com/news/pokerstars-bitcoin-poker/274522

sry, it is in german. there is a link to http://gamblingcompliance.com/premium-content/news_analysis/bitcoin-push-gathers-strength-pokerstars-interested

but i cannot access the article.



if this turns out true and works out....   

Seriously?  A great troll is one who finally get put on ignore by everyone?  Hell, I could make a new account and probably achieve that in about 5 seconds flat.  It took him months of trolling.

hah... do you read this thread very closely ? I am certainly not a perma bear, nor a fud spreader lol... but then I am not here to fanfare  either, if there is a chance a 2K block did not sell (or did not get paid for)  then that would be interesting , is all.. and yes I know it sooooundsss FUD like/perma-bear talk, but it ain't , just speculation bro.  Like I said, I tend to lean towards the blocks all selling.


Did the US marshalls say they had 144K of Bitcoins from Ross himself?

so the 99,999 just split into 11 lots (there were 11 bidders?) could have been split 52K back to storage , and 48k sent to winners (the 11 addresses add up to is the 100k and then the 44 K in the address 12pfPVkSNPb49Ez6GDuc4DuDdw4WCDCVef is the remaining of the 144k from Ross??)

I dunno,pure  speculation tbh

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/secondmarket-nearly-sweeps-latest-bitcoin-auction/

186 internal bids from the syndicate

Thanks. I think $320 is a false bottom. Even if it is the bottom, it will be tested several times so there is no need to jump on the train the first time. Don't expect help from the BearWhale's millions above $300.

For those of you who say you're holding no matter what- why are you watching the charts? Do you enjoy pain? Let me spare you the suspense: It's prolly gonna creep up enough to give what-ever's left of the permabulls and the naive a false sense of security, and then we're gonna hammer you again.

Why do you think Monero (XMR) is a scamcoin? Please give some proper arguments if you are going to accuse a coin of being a scam.

"Growing adoption" would be more people buying bitcoin for the purpose of paying for goods and services.  As has been pointed out many times, there is no reliable data on that parameter.

What will friday bring.
https://twitter.com/AdamGuerbuez/status/555289659958628352
(guy who twitted about stamp problems 24h before stamp went down...)

also the news is probably wrong.

It's big enough for me.

My thought is this makes the acquisition of BTC safer, easier, and more available.

But what made them start dumping and killing BTC again??? What's in the news that's taking down BTC?

so the pump is over?

This has been exploited by malicious actor's back when btc was worth $6 to $9

Hence the prolonged bear market and recent shakeouts. That is how Wall Street buys.

That is a bit misleading.  AFAIK there was a single 7170 BTC transaction that cleaned out the cold wallet (minus the fractions of BTC).  This page gives a better view:

http://www.walletexplorer.com/wallet/Bter.com-cold

Apparently the hot and cold wallets were set up so that +15 BTC were typically sent from hot to cold, and -100 BTC were sent (less frequently, of course) from cold to hot.  Perhaps both were automated?  Anyway, the last two -100 BTC transactions are typical, the -7170 BTC transaction is not.

The 7170 stolen BTC have been split into chunks of 1000 BTC or so.  They are worth ~1.7 M USD at current prices.


From the above page, it seems that they had those BTC allright.  Whether it is theft or embezzlement, who knows.

It seems that Bter was mostly into LTC and DOGE trading, and they promised to let clients withdraw those soon.  Let's  see.

That´s the reason why they are considered heroes among Bitcoiners. 

Does anyone else think that Bitcoin is losing its appeal because its anonymity is being called into question and people are gambling on other altcoins with better anonymity?

How odd. They went into the wallet April 9th.. the day of the MtGox lag price crash..

Maybe this is a stoploss? Price is approaching the original buying price?