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From $27 To $886,000 In Four Years: Name The Investment
Not Tesla, Not Apple, Not Netflix...
Kristoffer Koch invested 150 kroner ($26.60) in 5,000 bitcoins in 2009, after discovering them during the course of writing a thesis on encryption. He promptly forgot about them until widespread media coverage of the anonymous, decentralised, peer-to-peer digital currency in April 2013 jogged his memory.
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The meteoric rise in bitcoin has meant that within the space of four years, one Norwegian man’s $27 investment turned into a forgotten $886,000 windfall.
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Bitcoins are stored in encrypted wallets secured with a private key, something Koch had forgotten. After eventually working out what the password could be, Koch got a pleasant surprise: "It said I had 5,000 bitcoins in there. Measuring that in today's rates it's about NOK5m ($886,000)," Koch told NRK.
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Koch exchanged one fifth of his 5,000 bitcoins, generating enough kroner to buy an apartment in Toyen, one of the Norwegian capital’s wealthier areas.
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Cue the STACKERS
"If only I'd dropped a c-note..."
That shit never happens to me.
That shit never happens to me.
With Bitcoin, it's happening to the good guys for a change.
When the individual becomes the bank there is a liberation that is like discovering sex for the first time.
Damn. What coin shop are you going to?
Can I get the address?
About that $27 I loaned you....
Ah, finally, some good words and almost no fud in zh comments regarding btc.
So BitCoin ponzi is fully endorsed by the Koch extended brothers. Not a surprise, as BitCoin is a creation by none other than the teutonic uber-bankers, the red shields (whose real name is another, quite common in the teutonic empire).
Spot the bubble...
Oh wait, this bubble is popular on ZH.
I disagree. OR, I believe there needs to be a distinction in what I see as two types of bubbles: there is the "tulip-mania" explanation given in school, which, ultimately, seems like mass-hysteria, fad-seeking, perhaps Bitcoin... AND, asset bubbles that develop as a result of policy. Sept. 10, 2003, Dr. Ron Paul had this to say to the House Financial Services Committee:
"The special privileges granted to Fannie and Freddie have distorted the housing market by allowing them to attract capital they coult not attract under pure market conditions. Like all artificially created bubbles, the boom in housing prices cannot last forever. When housing prices fall, homeowners will experience difficulty as their equity is wiped out. Furthermore, the holders of the mortgage debt will also have a loss. These losses will be greater than they would have otherwise been had government policy not actively encouraged over-investment in housing."
Bubbles form from credit expansion coupled with policies designed to steer resources into industries that "they could not attract under pure market conditions." I can't imagine policies are in place to steer resources into BitCoin.
I'm not sold on BitCoin. Pretty jealous of this guy, that's for sure. I'd still rather have my savings in gold/silver. Might be fun to ride the fad as the incompetent baffoons at central banks around the world grind sovereign currencies into oblivion. I just think it may be a "bad bet." Not a bubble in the same context as housing, student-loans, derivatives, etc... wherein government and central bank policy is directing resources via interest-free money, bail-outs, QE, etc.
Many people still don't believe what's happening with the new global currency, while it in shadow conquers the market. if you still feel uncertain, all I can say is that you are wasting time. Everyone who doesn't own btc will loose money, nothing else.
Ignoring its hyper-deflating properties is a loss in every aspect. No fud or hate will change its HYPER-deflating properties. And it goes to 8 decimals, so pick your target in this situation where every fiat is inflating and gold is being manipulated.
Not hating on BitCoin. Just trying to draw a distinction between bubbles fueled by mania/hysteria and bubbles blown by policies. IF BitCoin were a bubble it would be the first type, not the second.
What do you mean by hyper-deflating properties? I'm literally just above the ignorance level of my dog when it comes to BitCoin.
simply speaking, as the opposite of hyper inflation properties of fiat...
wouldn't go anywhere near comparison btc with tulip/ponzi… even though it shows scary looking similarities it fails to comply in one, perhaps the major one, ponzi's and tulips never reflate in real life…
with this new protocol you can hold international "no limit debit card" in your head, for many still hard to comprehand, uniformly benefficial and advantageous…
They worked out they can sell the beanie babies without having to produce them.
That Silver bubble at $50 burst pretty hard.
Is that because being the bank is like screwing, except you get to screw everyone?
Sooooo, all this about BC being in a bubble aside, what are the tax implications? Say I invested $27, and sold them for $800,000, does the US gov tax the balls off me? How do they view it? Long term investment? Do they even have rules for this? Or better said, would they even know? (apart from the NSA)
Silly rabbit, you pay the same rate as you do on silver profits.
So, you mean he pays nothing?
Either the dude pays cap gains or he sits on it.
From what I read, he bought a house with it. Not bad for a $30 outlay.
Bitcoin = Anonymous so what did you buy in at?
Idk about you but I'm taking a $1 loss...
And it acutally says he bought a house with 1/5 of them.
Rhodium eat your heart out.
BitchezCoin....
excuse the stackless....
Bitcoin bitches
Give me my money !!
Any one dealing in bitcoins will have a banker's bullet with their names engraved on it.
Bitcoin IS bullets being shot through bankers.
Don't blame me if you don't properly anticipate the day when some programmer at Goldman Sachs figures out how to spend the same Bitcoin in two places at once with latency exploits or some other malicious technique.
And don't blame me if a thief finds your stash, or a Fed beats it out of you or steals it from a vault where you were sure it was safe. There is always risk in life.
The insanity of these comments is that they make it an either-or.
BOTH BTC and Phyzz are good!
Yes, please, I beg banksters to put a bullet in my head because I participate in the btc protocol, I went through three wars and I'm not even thirty years old.
But I don't think that is true. Since I started taking profits in fiat on my bank account, due to my actions with bitcoins, my banker offered me better treatment. I got gold card, personal 24/7 service, and it leveled up my ratings with them in every aspect.
You sound like an idiot. Pay attention....
EVERYBODY'S name is on the bankers' bullets.
Schmuck, this is one of the best comments I've read. If I may add that we're not talking about bullets, but rather banksters naval carriers which are backing the dolar today.
PETRODOLAR - backed by naval carriers
BITCOIN - backed by math
2+2 will always be 4 and ships can sink.
wow
meh, its only a 3.2 million % return on investment.
feels toto keiser fer me around here fer me , too too. et tu francis?
http://www.rense.com/general96/saving.html
I was skeptical of bitcoin at first.
End of last year I did a lot of research and became a believer. I love bitcoin.
To those who are skeptical: research it. It's pretty amazing once you start understanding it.
I agree that Bitcoin seems like a great idea, but like all currencies, convertibility is key.
What happens if you are no longer allowed to enter marketplaces to transact? That rate at which Bitcoin gains acceptance would likely be offset by government restricting access to it.
It's peer-to-peer.
All you need is a buttonwood tree to sit under. The electronic exchanges are convenient but not necessary.
The convertibility is universal, you can trade bitcoin for whatever currency you want to exchange for it. It's traded globally. Buy a bitcoin in the US and go to Europe; sell the bitcoin for Euro's (with $1 dollar or $1,000,000) it fits on a thumb drive. You can always buy goods/services with bitcoin, more and more vendors are accepting bitcoin every day.
Bitcoins are not considered a 'monetary instrument' anywhere yet. Therefore, the $10k threshold on customs declaration (USSA) does not apply.
Also notable, your average TSA employee (read: University of Phoenix Online graduate) doesn't know wtf a Bitcoin is. But he/she sure knows what gold is. And he/she'll have a hard time getting their hands on the 'can't touch it, don't own it' Bitcoin.
Germany has:
Germany's ministry of finance has formally recognised the digital currencyBitcoin as a "unit of account" which can be used for private transactions – meaning that the ministry will now be able to tax users or creators of the four-year-old virtual money. [ http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/19/bitcoin-unit-of-account-germany ]
"Germany's move does mean that people who have speculated in the online cryptocurrency could be liable for capital gains taxes if they sell them less than a year after acquiring them."
Meet an OTC dealer at your local Starbucks!
Right now Bitcoin is currency... if the govts of the world criminalize its convertibility to cash , bitcoin then becomes money... Either way they lose.
I know it's safer then the digital banking system, but i just don't trust the criminal banksters to sit by and let bitcoin takeover their monopoly. They will emp that shit before letting it go mainstream
BTC is acceptable to purveyors of imaginary media of exchange. It can be centralized; it can be tracked; it can be taxed; it can be controlled, directly or through proxies. Case in point: announcement today on Canadian national news of BTC ATMs. BTC is "acceptable" because, like an ETF, it diverts capital from investment in real things. Anything that postpones the populist move into tangible money is "okay."
BTC can definitely be tracked. Anyone can examine a wallet and even see how much is in that wallet.
Who owns the wallet is a different story. No one knows who owns any wallet and no one ever will. It takes 5 seconds to change a wallet address if you're paranoid.
Yeap. It only matters when the time comes to use it. No advantage there. Again, any sort of token that delays the populist move into real money is "okay." It's a wonder that the Chinese and Indian governments don't push bitcoins. Oh wait, no it's not...
"Yeap. It only matters when the time comes to use it."
I can spend or send bitcoin WITHOUT anyone knowing it was me. The only thing that can be seen is that the transfer occured, that's it.
Hmmm. Sounds like using cash. (which I do)
It is like cash. But unlike dollars it is backed by something; MATH.
He means this - in the event of the economic collapse that is coming, how can you be guaranteed to be able to transact in bitcoin? You cannot guarantee this, as bitcoin exits as data only. Yes, this is a positive aspect today. But what about tomorrow? What happens when the internet is interrupted (at any level) by .gov? Or your hard drive fails? Or a business doesn't want to deal in currencies that exist as data only?
Please don't get me wrong, I think bitcoin is useful in helping people to understand the fucked up system we have, and it's been an excellent investment vehicle for those that got in on the ground floor. However, I don't think it is right to advocate that people abandon other currencies (or real money) and transition to bitcoin for these reasons.
And how exactly do you propose all the the billions of computers and cell phones that already exist are going to disappear? You know the ones that already have the ability to p2p network wirelessly built right into them. Fantasizing about possible apocalypse scenarios is good fun and all but if we are going to participate in such activities we need to at least work with the data we have on hand don't you think? I get the slight feeling that maybe you have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to bitcoin. Please feel free to educate yourself.
Since bit coin is data and BC transactions travel the Internet, even with encryption, don't you think the NSA is inside this game?
Silk Road takedown and BC's taken could be an indicator of command and control of bit coin.
Is bit coin a honeypot for NSA?
Please, LEARN about things before posting.
how can we learn if francis_sawyer is banned from commenting??
francis spoke the truth was got kicked off........so go fuck urself
In an economic collapse how can you be sure ANYTHING will be convertable into what you need? That's the real question. In a REAL economic collapse all the fluffed up bullshit fades away and food, shelter with reasonable safety, and all the other things necissary to stay alive become priceless. An MRE is worth everything to someone starving, and even life itself becomes cheap if it means being released from hunger.
You want to do well in the Mad Max economic collapse? Stock up on whiskey, soap, porno mags, food, and the means to defend them. Want to do well in an economic decline? Invest in things that can't be taken by gangs or gov't or that are easy to hide. THAT is what bitcoin is for.
The ATM video, which uses your palm as identification, really turned me off. There has got to be a better way. This is where the "alternative" currency aligns with the interests of the current corrupt savages that run the big show. Perhaps not with intent, nevertheless, there is no excuse for biometric data gathering. Hollerith machines 2.0?
tea party- koch bro.
occupy huff/sorro-post.
greenwald-ebay.
(big up hastings. behold a pale horse dude. and the the strangled by octopus guy ...)
chomsk-mit-i's!
line up fer yer kaiser satoshi's ....
Please take note of the following. Repeat after me...
"Fuck you Government, you are irrelevant!"
If you are so much pissing your pants about governments beating you down take your weasle ass back to CNN
I have read and researched an still cannot understand this stuff.
I do understand it. I also understand banking and Bitcoin doesn't solve a thing.
You might be able to take money from greater fools as the Ponzi blows up but it doesn't mean that anything has fundamentally changed.
- 10 for calling Bitcoin a Ponzi in the same breath as saying you understand it.
FAIL.
Cherished delusions are not to be questioned.
In 2009 a supplier of some specialized computing equipment I use made an offhand comment that it was great for mining bitcoin during off-workload times. I looked into it and went "hmmm." and moved on. Mining a few tens of thousands of bitcoin would have been trivial then.
Ugh, such as missed opportunity. At least I can feel better having bought gold at $270, before the depression about the boating accident sets in.
The thing is that it is not too late to catch the train. There will only be 21 million issued, so buying 20 coins at $200 is a measly $4,000 investment for nearly a millionth of the bitcoin monetary base.
*IF* Bitcoin captures even 5% of the world's monetary base, which is in the region of $21 trillion (depending how all the M0,M1 etc are counted), say $50k each coin, then 20 bitcoins would be worth a cool $1 million - in real money (2013 dollars, not hyperinflated yellen-bucks of 2020).
Where is the value earned through production of a good or service? Mining is not value. The only value lies in its' anonymity and that is probably a huge facade.This is a ponzi scheme pure and simple.
Just as FED notes are a ponzi scheme or Euros or anything else.
We have lost sight of what money is supposed to be: a system where you trade value for value. Instead we accept paper or virtual exchange mechanisms dependent on faith. Gold, Tobacco, Liquor, Wheat, etc all have value regardless of banks, governments or the internet. Every ponzi participant is a true believer and with bitcoin, it carries the cache of the revolutionary.
Everybody loves riding the wave, until it crashes against thr rocks. I hope all you guys get off in time.
Which is more important to you -- real scarcity or artificial scarcity? Fie on real supply and real demand. Fill your virtual boots!
Bitcoins are mathematically scarce, and their scarcity is backed by redundancy - tens of thousands of computers across the Earth's surface all have copies of the blockchain to validate transactions and amounts. Gold, by comparison, can be discovered in the ground, so we don't really know where its cap of supply is. It's also not redundant, so a government agent can easily confiscate it and that's that - you no longer have your gold.
Another shill working for Jamie Dimon....he must really be desperate. I don´t think he can sell those Yomomma cufflinks in order to pay those billions he´s been slapped with.
>Bitcoins are mathematically scarce
Yes but Bitcoin schemes are mathematically infinite, which is why Bitcoin is fools' gold, literally.
Yep, no one is saying you can't come along and add your own economic ledger to the growing list of fledgling alternative crypto currencies. But, will anyone actually use it to any extent considering that bitcoin came first, has the most widespread adoption, is missing no features, already contains a significant amount of data concerning accumulated wealth, and is working just fine to boot? I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say no. I think your issue here stems not only from a misunderstanding of how crypto currencies work but also a misunderstanding of what money is and how it works in a society. Bitcoin is ultimately a ledger shared and maintained by everyone that keeps track of which accounts have how much, that is all. Sort of like a club where all members have a certain number of points that are kept track of on a list. If you set out to create a new blank ledger that deletes all the data from the current popular one in an attempt to start from scratch and replace bitcoin you are going to be ignored. You might could do this in your own small ecosystem like say a videogame, I could easily see the concepts of bitcoin being applied to create a separate system for something like world of warcraft. Anyways here is a good read on the idea of bitcoin and public ledgers.
You have no idea what money is.
Uh, yeah, there would be enormous financial incentive to create these schemes, should BitCoin prove they could work for a sustained period of time. Big money could replace Bitcoin with its own indentical scheme overnight.
The answer stares you in the face: all that matters is who holds the ledgers -- or, more accurately, who says they hold the ledgers. Because in this world of corruption and psychopathy, truth belongs to the guy with the biggest gun.
Have you never read or watched 1984? Remember "2+2=5?" THIIIIIIINK ABOUT IT.
I understand the scarcity aspect, and it's definitely a positive for bitcoin. But don't go thinking that the government can't easily confiscate them. They would just hold you indefinitely until you gave up the wallet.
whats more important to you, real gossip fence or virtual trolling?
It is almost entertaining to see the bitcoiners' mania, without a peep about what it takes to maintain a currency.
And no, chaos as the foundation doesn't work.
When private capital meets innovation without government interference the sky is the limit.
Industries are being created. Business is being transformed. People are making money.
Stop hating bro.
"Industries are being created. Business is being transformed. People are making money."
What industries are being created?
What business is being transformed?
People are making money how(?)
People making money in the currency business are not creating anything.
Bitcoiner mania is proving itself to be both a symptom, and a cause of how we got here.
"Stop hating bro."
I'm not hating... but I will admit I am sad about the continued exposure of we-are-not-equipped-to-save-the-ship, let alone understand why it's sinking.
Sweet dreams... may your visions of Bitcoins dance in your head.
I can send millions of dollars to anyone in the world, instantly, with zero transaction costs. Governments cannot inflate my money. SWAT teams cannot run into my home and confiscate it. TSA agents can't detect it when I'm passing through borders.
That's Bitcoin.
>SWAT teams cannot run into my home and confiscate it.
"Dread Pirate Roberts" found out that is not at all the case. And those losing their Bitcoin to hackers are also finding out that the alleged security is illusory.
The claim is that if secured properly, bitcoins are the most difficult asset to steal. If you do your due diligence in locking down your stash the only way anyone is going to take it from you is by drugging and beating you until you give up the passcode. It is somewhat similar to gold, if you hide it carefully and only you know the gps coordinates, it is likely no one will be able to steal it from you unless they drug and beat the coordinates out of you. The difference being that the amount of possible bitcoin hiding places borders on infinity while the amount of gold hiding places are currently restricted to planet earth with a growing population of 7Billion people. You seem to be asserting that bitcoin advocates are claiming that somehow bitcoins are immune to theft automatically without any action needed on the part of the owner, that's bullshit and I don't think anyone has really claimed that at all. If you leave a pile of valuable assets laying around with minimal security someone will take them. This is what happened with DPR and anyone else who got hacked, they didn't take the necessary steps to prevent what happened to them. Your private key must be kept as stated, private.
All your private codes are belong to NSA, just ask Boris.
If I leave a gold brick on my doorstep, the number of potential thieves will be limited to the number of people who walk by.
If I leave a bitcoin on my computer, the number of potential thieves is limited only by the number of people who are on the Internet.
I will never get a gold brick stolen by a 12-year-old in Indonesia running his first script kiddie program. I 100% guarantee you that Bitcoin will be stolen in that way. It very likely already has been.
I know you can do a million things to secure it, but every last one of those things makes it more difficult to use, and you also have the potential of losing it all due to physical or electronic damage.
A new element with the properties gold can't appear overnight. A new system precisely like Bitcoin can.
I look at Bitcoin from a systems engineering point of view but I don't limit my engineering to the software and hardware, but rather I look at the whole system as human beings will actually use it. These and other vulnerabilities in the human-Bitcoin system make the scheme "non-robust".
I mean, hell, we haven't even seen HFT type manipulation in Bitcoin yet. You simply cannot replace the simple, robust virtues of physical gold. It can't happen, it's literally physically impossible in this universe.
If you are going to create analogies at least try to attempt to align them with reality. I can only assume you make these errors due to a lack of knowledge concerning how the bitcoin system works. A bitcoin exists as nothing more than a random number in an unfathomably large pool of possible numbers. No one can simply guess this number, they will have to learn it from you. You seem to be suggesting that it is some kind of huge problem that bitcoin gives too much new freedom and that it can screw you over if you are stupid and don't know what you are doing. So what if Jimmy Bob gets his bitcoins stolen because he chose a 4 character password and his computer is full of porn ad viruses. A lot of technology starts out like this. These are early days and user friendliness is nowhere near end game. You are right bitcoins have been stolen in this manner, once again, who cares? It's the failing of a user not the system.
As far as ease of use going against security, this is pretty much the case with anything. Gold in your pocket is less secure yet easier to use than gold buried at an undisclosed location.The thing with bitcoin is people tend to forget that it is still a newborn, things are in the works to solve issues that are still currently present and being digital allows some creative solutions. Your secret number can be stored in a myriad of ways. On a piece of paper, in your brain, engraved on a tungsten brick and buried. Needless to say physical or electronic damage is off the table. This can't be said of gold as it is possible to lose your gold since you can't exactly make a backup copy of it.
Coming soon are special purpose devices that have no operating system and no internet connection and therefore can't run script kiddie programs. These devices consists of nothing but a one time programmable microcontroller, a small display, and a few buttons. It contains your secret number but the number can not be retrieved from the device in any way. To use your bitcoins from this device you plug the device into the computer, create the transaction in the bitcoin software after providing your software password, the computer sends the requested transaction to the device. The device then prompts on its own screen and asks the user to verify the transactions by physically pressing a button. This is pretty near foolproof and could even be done wirelessly. You now have both a password, which can't easily be stolen by local thieves in the area, and a physical token which can't easily be stolen by a script kiddy on the other side of the globe. Having access to both the password and the physical token is the only way you can spend the bitcoin on this device. I would say that's a pretty well rounded trade off between ease of use and security. You would have to cite some specific examples for me as to what is not "robust" here.
Until recently no system like gold could be created. This is what bitcoin is, the first system like gold that has been created. Sure you can make clones of it now, but if you consider this a problem for bitcoin then you would also have to consider it a problem for gold. No one is trying to replace gold. Bitcoin and gold can exist at the same time and, gasp, you can even own both. Bitcoin could crash and burn tomorrow due to some unforeseen flaw in the system that somehow destroys it, it's extremely unlikely but it could happen. Thing is as you pointed out a new system would appear to replace it. There is no turning back now that people have figured out how to create a system of unique and finite assets stored in a completely distributed ledger. There are many things that cyrptocurrency can do that gold can't and not much of anything that gold can do that cryptocurrency cant.
The Au - BTC debate misses one vital point.
The starting assumptions governing what sort of society we will have to use them in. What percentage of the population will the digital divide be dividing?
Does everyone remain digitally connected?
Or does the world fragment divide and become more localised?
In a more localised world where transport is expensive, conveying large amounts of wealth to the other side of the world might not be of the highest priority to someone who just wants to put food on the table?
If I were walking to a local farmers market and wanted to get produce before the rush, do I take Au Ag or do I take a thumb drive?
My crystal ball is cloudy and I can't make out the future, but my gut tells me that Au will always be número uno.
Having said that, I still like BTC.
Why the hell did we ever stop dealing in beaver pelts, they were so much simpler!
Don't piss off the Statists who are unable or unwilling to change their world view or push their IT skills beyond blogging.
That's like teasing a guard dog on a leash. Site stats show that ZH readers have less education than you'd expect, which surprised the hell out of me. But, judging by some comments, perhaps I shouldn't be.
/s
Silly Boob, ZH readers are still educating themselves, unlike those Boobs who have doctorates and cannot tie their shoes.
www.bitpay.com (just did their first $1,000,000 transaction today)
www.coinbase.com (has over 300,000 accounts)
bitcoin ATM's are being MANUFACTURED and distributed throughtout Canada. http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/10/bitcoin_atm_gallery/
www.bitdazzle.com
www.bitpremier.com
www.bitmit.net (kinda like the ebay for bitcoin)
Look at the market for ASIC mining hardware - that in itself is making millionaires.
BAIDU started accepting bitcoin (China's) Google
I could spew out a thousand new businesses a day that are accepting bitcoin (and benefiting due to close to 0% transaction fees)
How about this organic farmer in Argentina that was able to get crop to the market with the help of bitcoin?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBLpx6gQtUU
And of course evil speculators (investors) in bitcoin are becoming wealthy as they provide the lubrication to allow this free-market machine to operate.
It's incredible what bitcoin has done.
You can always place your faith in an entity that spent a BILLION dollars designing a website that doesn't fucking work. Bitcoin is free and look at what it has accomplished.
"It's incredible what bitcoin has done."
It is not incredible at all, but serves to demonstrate how self-absorption reigns, and in this case, highlights nothing more than an underground currency passed among those hoping to profit from its passing, or pretending to bypass control, all the while neglecting the real issues.
so an industry like paypal being recreated without all their baggage isnt an industry?
and I guess SilkRoad for all its ups and downs wasn't a force either... bitcoins is freeing the marketplace in many many ways.. soon microtransactions will be a reality since the transaction costs per transaction is a tiny fraction that you can't get away with by using paypal/visa etc.. too much overhead
gambling sites are popping up too...
anyway.. $200 bitches
The Microchip Mark Of The Beast (666)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l39XsMcyvgA (9:22)
Damn he invested $27 kroner and got back a $ 886,000 boner.
The angle of dangle is equal to the throb of the knob, provided the sag of the bag is constant.
Hmm, I was told it was "the heat of the meat, and the square of the hair!"
"Not Tesla, Not Apple, Not Netflix..."
*Not subject to the purview of a central bank.*
It's a free market...and it's flourishing.
If the NSA can confiscated 150k bitcoins from the Silk Road founder.. they can take yours also
His password was so secure he had to write it down.... Either that or the waterboarding
First, it was the FBI, not the NSA.
Second, they waited for him at the coffee shop he logged in from, and waiting until after he had logged in. This is what gave the FBI access for the necessary key files. They couldn't do it without his logging in.
Third, so far they only seem to have managed to get about a quarter to a third of what he's believed to have made from Silk Road.
Lastly, it's pretty clear the owner of Silk Road was sloppy in a lot of respects. If you keep your bitcoin wallet offline and encrypted, no one will be taking your bitcoin without you giving up the keys.
And that could be anyone....
Win...EPIC.
Good for him I'm glad he came out so far ahead!!!
Thats a gain worth Taxing.... Ooops. old .gov gots some work to do
er uh TWTRQ, uh Mutti's blood pressure, Assad's chances of remaining in office, whatever, forming a bullish base, ready for a real breakout?
Oh, Bitcoin.
William Shakespeare - All The World's A Stage - Monologue - Poetry Reading
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmN9hr2wxUg (1:48)
I could single handedly bring the whole thing down. All I've got to do is go all in.
I see .gov opening silkroad 2.0 and selling shit for Bitcoin until they've collected most or all of the Bitcoin. I know I know, the Bitcoin they don't own goes up in.value.
No.
You.
Couldn't.
Does Norway have a capital gains tax?
If so, why tell anyone about his "surprise".
Update:
Capital income is taxed at a flat rate of %28. Ouch!
That's the same rate as gold is taxed in the US.
Only if you can retrieve it from the bottom of the lake...
He's an absolute idiot for announcing it to the world, then. Wow.
I love hearing stories like that. Hopefully he doesn't blow it all on coke and hookers, or get eaten alive with capital gains taxes.
i'm sure he'll tell the taxman he lost it in a virtual boating accident
There is no gain as long as the asset is not sold or traded. I am certain that he owes Capital Gains on the Apartment that he bought. But he left 4/5ths of it in Bitcoin. So there is no Capital Gain until he cashes out.
Is he a fool for being honest? NO. Since the Government has no idea on what the Purchase Price was then he might have told he that he had bought in at a later date and at an increased amount. Capital Gains Taxes are only due on PROFITS.
But it is much better to be HONEST. That way you do not have to look over your shoulder and cover up any lies if you are DISHONEST. (It does not matter that the Government Officials are lying sacks of shit. That gives one no excuse whatsoever to become a lying sack of shit.)
Besides you have to look at yourself in the mirror every morning.
As I am already too ugly for that then why shall I make it worse?
I believe Norway taxes based on how much you own, not based on profit. So if you own something worth $800,000 then every year you pay based on owning that.
Our numismatic experts stand ready to help you value your bitcoins, call now
I've got a ten kroner, a five kroner, a twenty kroner..
No, wait.. that's another ten kroner...
Good for him. He sold the tulips before the bust. All the problems we have with unsound money these days and there are people who champion rampant speculation in an alternative currency, a large portion of which was just confiscated by the FBI? Yes, The Onion will need to shutter it's website....
*He sold a fifth.*
How are the tulip bulbs doing that you hold? Ya know - the dollars that have declined by 95% in value over the last 100 years due to reckless and out of control government spending?
Bitcoin can't be printed or counterfeited.
@one and only
Unfortunately, you are not the one and only who who is ignorant about the problems of inflation AND deflation.
I am only a cog in the wheel. I love any market that is free and I will support it.
I love any market that attacks the US Dollar as a destruction of that currency is what I really want to see. The US Dollar is nothing more than a FRAUD built upon a Ponzi Scheme.
If it is Gold, Silver, or Bitcoin then I really do not care. The US Dollar is Toilet Paper and is valueless. Why I was told that by a Santelli-Fama Interview today.
A wind down of QE is no problem...if they set the value of the US Dollar to zero as it is "Value Neutral".
as long as they are in a free market, inflation and deflation work their way out
your move central bank boy
@dark pools of soros
Show me a "free" market and I'll show you a unicorn...oh, and if you think Silk Road is/was a "free" market, please explain why the so-called "Dread Pirate Roberts" and his bitcoin stash is in federal custody. Your move, naive little prick....
Bitcoin's supply can't be expanded. It's capped. Governments can't shut it down, because it's decentralized. It costs fractions of a penny to send millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin to anyone in the world, instantly. Bitcoin can't be detected by metal detectors at borders. SWAT teams can't confiscate it. Your Bitcoin wallet can be accessed anywhere in the world, from any computer.
It's no wonder Bitcoin is valuable.
When Gartman starts buying bitcoin in Dong I'm cashing out.
"Koch exchanged one fifth of his 5,000 bitcoins, generating enough kroner to buy an apartment in Toyen, one of the Norwegian capital’s wealthier areas."
The lad bought an apartment for $177,000 in one of best neighborhods in town?
$177,200
Guess it goes farther than the green toilet paper in the U.S.A.
I believe it was the $ equivalent in Norwegian koruna. My point was that 177k, or 177.2k as you so meaningfully corrected, would not buy a parking spaqce in LDN, Paris, NYC or LA.
I would assume he took out a mortgage for substantially more than that based on the current value of his liquid net worth and current salary, same as everyone else. As long he keeps his job and the and bitcoin market doesn't tank then the debt ponzi can be maintained.
So he didn't buy anything with the Bitcoins, he exchanged something he bought with Kroner for substantially more Kroner four years later. Making Bitcoin a greater fool speculative investment, not a new form of currency.
The world doesn't need any more get rich quick schemes.
That is why Bitcoin jumped in value, people believe if they invest $10k now it will become $100k. That makes Bitcoin no better than any other worthless momentum traded stock.
Investing in Bitcoin doesn't create anything of value. You think you are hurting the global banking cartel when you trade dollars for Bitcoin for the sole purpose of having someone giving you more dollars later?
That mentality is no better than Blankfein taking Benny Bux from Bernanke.
did you miss SilkRoad the past two years??
The sheeple is strong here
You obviously don't have a clue what you're talking about.
I like the part where he had trouble remembering his password. That would kill me.
I was paid $2500 to design a product that to date has generated over $30 million in revenue. That is just one product out of hundreds that I have designed over the past 14 years.
That's a pretty good investment, and you actually get a physical product.
This "physical trumps virtual" screed only gets you so far. And the only "best case" is if civillization totally goes to shit, which isn't a great scenario.
You must be the life of the party at the Veteran's Lodge.
Wait a minute.
You were paid $2,500 to design a product that generated $30,000,000 in revenue?
Sounds like someone sold you short son.
You of all people need to buy bitcoin before the FED debases that $2,500 into the equivalent of a glass of concentrated orange juice.
You were paid $2,500 to design a product that generated $30,000,000 in revenue?
Sounds like someone sold you short son.
--------
Obviously you don't understand contract work.
He might of been paid $2,500 to design a Jay-Z album cover and Jay-Z made $30,000,000 selling it to dickweeds.
How is he being paid short? Might only taken 2 days to make the artwork and $2,500 is pretty good at that rate.
Why would Jay-Z offer him a percentage of the album sales when there's a 1,000 people who would design the cover for $2,500 or less?
Calm down homeboy.
If I had an integral part of generating $30,000,000 in sales and I only received $2,500 than I would feel like a failure. But I'm a capitalist, so you do you booboo. You do business however you want. I work on a different level of business.
Who or what is a Jay-Z?
Hillary's broker has a new retroactive trade to recommend....
THAT DOES IT! I'm rolling out a Bitcoin ETF...........(send me all those worthless dollars you guys have laying around out there, and I'll remit to you a nice new, pretty, freshly printed stock certificate in the mail for your "shares" in BITEME (Nasdaq symbol for my new Bitcoin ETF). Don't anyone steal my idea!! This has gotta be the BEST thing to come along since toilet paper! Hunh?.....................let me see, worthless paper backed by hot air, for another pretty piece of paper backed up by some imaginary digital code. sounds like it'll fit right in todays financial circus...................
Do I buy and risk being considered a terrorist?
If you're reading this, you're already considered a terrorist.
No, not us...
If you leave a trail, they will find you. While i dont think they can hack your coins, they can and will track you....and that goes for everything.
do you leave your trailer much?
@dark pools of soros
The so-called "Dread Pirate Roberts" probably wishes he could go back to his trailer....
fuck me...
Big BC media push. I even heard it on the TV news today.
Apparently, somewhere in Canada they opened BC ATMs.