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Bitcoin Flash Crashes, Drops By 80% In Seconds
Now that Bitcoin exchange Mt.Gox has terminally discredited itself following the latest, and likely last, withdrawal halt announced late last week which sent the value of Bitcoin tumbling by 25%, Bitcoin traders are left with just two exchange options on which to transact: BTC-e and Bitstamp. And for those using the former to buy and sell the virtual digital currency, things went from bad to worse a few short hours ago, when Bitcoin had its very own "Waddell and Reed" moment, when the price of Bitcoin cratered by over 80% in the span of seconds, after a modest block of just under 6000 Bitcoins sent the price plunging from over $600 to $102.
However, market gymnastics may just be the tip of the iceberg - a far bigger issue, one we have been warning about since the last March surge in Bitcoin's dollar price, is that the crackdown on Bitcoin both in the US (see "Miami Bitcoin Arrests May Be First State Prosecution"), and around the world (in Russia Bitcoin was just declared illegal) is finally heating up. It's only going to get worse in an insolvent world desperate to halt money laundering.
And since digital currency advocates have finally realized they can't hold the electronic 1s and 0s in their hand in a worst case scenario, the biggest winner of the latest Bitcoin crash is none other than the real alternative currency (in Paul Singer's words), gold, which moments ago just hit a one month high and rising.
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This is a large sell of 3k Bitcoins in a single large market order by some stupid fat figered moron.
In fact, she lost a loto of money, and some gained a lot of cheap bitcoins.
Today, we get rid of the last chimps hanging from the braches of bitcoin and we are ready for the next big leg.
Look at the previous high at 266$ and the following months, with a bottom at 60s $.
We know the drill, suckers panic and traders buy.
Is that you, you rascal fonestar?
Agreed , have been waiting for this for a couple of weeks , this is now going to set up for it's next big rally. This is the 5th time I have seen this exact pattern with btc.
Trading would imply both buying and selling. Just buying is not building any wealth. That's the lie the places that take your money for mutual funds tell people. But 'investing' is of no value unless there is a time when you will be able to divest.
Not a moron: the FED. You got fucked. It's deliberate & I warned you having fiat exchanges would lead ONLY to this outcome.
Soon they'll slam it to $5.
Then they'll OWN it as their own wallets are the receivers of all at that price.
You're all about to get ass raped with razor-dildos.
the real money is in the volatility, my son.
ONLY with margined, leveraged instruments with options. BTC isn't one of those, SON.
This is a large sell of 3k Bitcoins in a single large market order by some stupid fat figered moron.
In fact, she lost a loto of money, and some gained a lot of cheap bitcoins.
Today, we get rid of the last chimps hanging from the braches of bitcoin and we are ready for the next big leg.
Look at the previous high at 266$ and the following months, with a bottom at 60s $.
We know the drill, suckers panic and traders buy.
Well that about covers suckers and traders. What about that other drill were ordinary people are protected by sound money, and commerce conducted using the money is stable and reliable? And if that's just a drill I'm fucked if I know what qualifies as the real event.
Bitcoin is still in the early adopter phase. It won't be ready for the masses until the volitility is shaken out by deeper liquidity and larger market cap. If you lump yourself amoung the masses, probably better to stay away for now.
Yawn - usual FUD from MtGox panicked the noobs... then the hawks swooped in and made a killing ... better profits for the savvy than the usual pump/dump tricks. Bitcoin continues, the sun still rises, Gold still glitters (but GLD does not).
Life - until you die.
So what's driving the price GLD or gold?
The COMEX price, or the price behind closed doors where governments trade real bullion?
COMEX drives GLD.... negotiations for oil, wheat, steel, and especially weapons etc drive the deals for bullion where measuring it in USD is not relevant (aka tonnes at a time of Gold, for many tonnes at a time of real things).
Color me clueless
truthfully, almost everything drives the spot price of gold a little. Mostly bonds, real estate, war & currency threat of collapse but... kind of everything.
The biggest winner is the guy who had a bid at $102.
ZH poster fijisailor claimed herein that he/she/it bought at 102.
Funny that no one ever loses on their investments. It's like fucking Lake Woebegone where all children are above average. More likely that the number of liars is distributed here the same as elsewhere.
Maybe that poster was buying all the way down and then back up too, but neglected to mention it.
Me? I've "lost" very low 5 figures on silver that was bought at $24. (offset with much lower cost-basis ounces too thank god). Pretty sure the Studebaker stock is going nowhere.
We need some kool-aide drinking Dope to explain this crash in a third person ...can anyone think of such a bone-i-fide star?
If you watched the price of btc for the last 5 years you will see this pattern is absolutely normal. Each time the btc price has recovered way above it's earlier double top.
Yeah that "pattern" is what we call "really seriously frighteningly unstable". You people continue to amaze me with your devotion to BTC, you need a brain transplant if you think that something that shits the bed and drops 80% like that is a "pattern". The pattern is this: you are a fucking idiot.
Please stick to the fucking day job - dipshit
says the guy who used 5 years as his basis for discovering "normal", when the only thing that could be truly called a market has been around for less than 3 years.
http://blockchain.info/charts/bitcoin-days-destroyed?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=
Says he's seen this same pattern? Pattern? Seriously? How many times has one of the 3 biggest exchanges fucked up this badly? Bet you saw the Bitcoin china event too! And Russia!
The market cap was flat and laughable until less than a year ago, and you want to use a 5 yr claim?
http://blockchain.info/charts/market-cap
Pattern, uh huh. You've seen it go up and down. Brilliant. Absolutely fucking brilliant! Your shrink might want to show you some more Rorschach's and ask what you see. Wild guess is that every one elicits the response, "I see Btc at 1MM USD per, and I see my $25 investment in 0.02 Btc (I bought the FATH) buying me either a used Porsche or a ticket out of mom's basement."
He, and me, could be a fucking idiot, but we are idiots that, in the last year, made at least a x2 return just holding (in the worst scenario).
In the best scenario we did 90x.
The average holder did 10x in one single year.
BTC is unstable? yes.
But is more unstable on the upside than on the downside.
And this is GOOD to the holders.
He, and me, could be a fucking idiot, but we are idiots that, in the last year, made at least a x2 return just holding (in the worst scenario).
In the best scenario we did 90x.
The average holder did 10x in one single year.
BTC is unstable? yes.
But is more unstable on the upside than on the downside.
And this is GOOD to the holders.
.
hmMMmmmmm
I agree, but my experience is that flash crashes only happen to instruments where algorithmic trading is taking place, so what this flash crash really tells you is that the bots are in charge and thus it is just as rigged as the stock exchanges are.
MAYBE someone ought to introduce these junkies to something less heart-attack-inducing and safer for their finances, like pure rock crack.
"it's not shitting the bed, it's INVESTING IN LAUNDROMATS!!"
Lol... Where are all the cheerleaders who kept telling me I was an idiot for sticking with PMs?
People were politely ignoring you then.
Literally no-one ever said that.
We are PM bulls too. Probably bigger ones that you, because we actually understand fundamental analysis as well as history. That allows us to analyze things that are truly new, and seperate them from old scams pretending to be something new (you never saw us advotating Ithica Hours).
Some disinfo in this article.
There are plenty of BTC exchanges. MTGOX is garbage, and has been for a while, anyone who knows anything about BTC has been getting out of it. For months they have been saying they need to manualy wire your money to you, and that it will take up *6 Weeks*.
They also itroduced insane ID checks, which they keep bouncing, each re-application taking about a month. The price they quote for BTC is total *bullcrap*. The reason it is up to 15% higher than other exchanges is that *you can't get your money out of MTGOX!*.
The only sane way to get it out is to *buy BTC at their inflated rates* and transfer it to you BTC wallet. According to the BTC focums, about a year ag,o MTGOX was taken over by some new guy; there has been nothing but trouble since. I am amazed MTGOX has continued to "trade" for as long as it has. Many people in the BTC community are saying that MTGOX is just running a cash grab for as long as they can until they are shut-down.
Meanwhile you can trade on www.kraken.com or many other exhanges. Also I know it's hard for many Americans to get their head around it but, USA does not = World.
Where is the bitcoin Fed when you need them?
No print to press fiat money in BTC, so no fed is needed or wanted.
What actually happened is Gox is blaming their ineptitude on something that has been known about and discussed many times before.
Read carefully into the wording of what they posted:
"MtGox will resume bitcoin withdrawals to outside wallets once the issue outlined above has been properly addressed in a manner that will best serve our customers."
Aka - no timeline until it is fixed
If you read earlier in their press release:
"Bitcoin transactions to any MtGox bitcoin address, and currency withdrawals (Yen, Euro, etc) are not affected by this issue."
They are supporting internal BTC transactions (meaning they never hit the blockchain so its internal to gox - only changing values in their internal system) and fiat withdraws.
Their hope is to crash the price by having everyone panic sell and try to withdraw fiat.
They are insolvent and have been... they are just playing dirty games now to prevent themselves from going under.
Buy cheap coins now if you want them.
http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/2014/02/10/mt-gox-blames-bitcoin-core-dev...
You are - obviously - correct, but it would be too much for people to actually get one ounce of education. The "problem" - if any - reported by MtGox is well known, understood and described for 3 years. If they fell for it (which seems the case) it is anything but utter incompetence.
As an aside on which exchange did this $100/btc transaction happen ?
It happened on BTC-e.
https://btc-e.com/
Thanks
Some of the local traders there had some nice buy orders in to catch this kind of move, I heard one guy crowing he'd picked up 40 BTC at $300 - which is a nice take.
Weighted average would be more useful. I bought 1 BTC from my coworker for $12 in cash today, but this rate does not count as the low. Guess why?
higher than $5 per BTC? Not cheap today.
MtQOX, MtQOX!! A kingdom for my QUATLOOS locked in MtQOX!
And now Gold is breaking out above $1270
Bubble Chronicles: Bitcoin Crashed Down Fast to $500 at Mt. Gox and $102 at BTC-e today.
After all the news about the Mt. Gox and Russia making any transactions with Bitcoin illegal, Bitcoin is crashing fast now with Mt. Gox quoting below any other exchanges at $530 and Litecoin is down to $15.Bitcoin has printed low $500 on Mt Gox and fell as low as $102 at BTC-e today! So much for the crypto-currency reliability as exchange, the "value" of vapour currency can literally evaporate at any moment.
Update:
It's not a critical flaw in Bitcoin, it's a flaw in Mt Gox's shitty in-house wallet software that took shortcuts and got them scammed by some clever social engineering against their customer service department.
Then the critical bitcoin flaw is the user: without a ponzi-station to unload them, no one even WANTS bitcoin for anything.
And now a word from our proud bitcoin backerz....
I told you more then once. Gold is Money and well Bitcoins are not. That's the difference. I do not speak about this wonderful colorful things the central banks, politicians and elites call "money"....
Please enlighten the class as to what makes gold money and why bitcoin isn't money, other than history (citing history just makes it BETTER money--if history is required, then you would never be able to find a new type of money, leaving you completely fucked when we get molecular replicators).
Some time ago, I compared gold, silver, dollars, and bitcoins on a numerical scale of the different properties of money. I determined that bitcoin/crypto was about as good a form of money as silver (downside volatility has since lowered the score by 2 or three points, bringing its total directly in line with silver), and will eventually surpass gold after a few thousnd years of continuous function.
http://www.tfmetalsreport.com/comment/369449#comment-369449
Very easy you can put it into your pocket and you could use it for centuries for paying. You can put your bitcoins on an USB stick but you can not buy anything without having some electricity around. I suggest trying to go down even in the USA, and try to buy for Bitcoins and Gold. I would be very surprised to see bitcoins are more accepted.
Bitcoins are as virtual as fiat-money and well they promise there won't be more than what 21 millions of Bitcoins or so. Well and what happens if we are seeing the 22 millon? Maybe it does work, but maybe it does not. But well it's quite a task to fake gold. Gold will exactly fail on the "money" aspect the day it can be mass produced. The core of Bitcoisn is mass production. You burn cycles after cycles to "dig" them, and it will get stupid expensive over time and well you will have be able to handle a trillionst part of it. Just as comparisan there should be 21 Mio Bitcoins or roughly 0.003 Bitcoins for any of the current living. Seems to be a bit hard to fit everything with so many Zeros in front, but hell may all be. From Gold there are currently 145 000 t or around 207 gr for each living. So that seem to be much more dealable.
Even the central banks keep gold but I've not heard of any hording Bitcoins. But yess if you like take Bitcoin as money. I can live with it just don't force me to use it, that's all I ask for....
Many times you've been told: gold has an atomic nucleus & that gives it properties of conductivity, malleability, catalytic qualities, etc. that no bitcoin ever had or will have. This makes it rare, compact & safe to handle, easy to identify, doesn't corrode & that makes it money.
Bitcoin must do all those things to be money yet because atoms are not bitcoins it never can. Ever.
Currency, commodity, money, who cares how you label it. How it gets used is what matters.
Bitcoin is divisible, durable, recognizable, portable and scarce.
Value is situational and Money is a shared delusion.
but I can't MAKE anything out of it. I can out of every OTHER form of money, even wooden nickels. If I had enough of 'em I could burn them for a fire to cook a meal. I can't do that with bitcoin. An atomic nucleus is what's important.
Also that bitcoin DEFINITELY hit the $140 target I mentioned, you know, in case you felt you should bring it up again that "you're still waiting".
If by "bitcoin" you mean "the btc-e exchange" then yes, a block of 8k coins sold at market price crashed through all bids on that website to hit $102 for an instant.
Consuming money in commodity form defeats the monetary purpose. But if the inability to MAKE anything out of Bitcoin prevents you from using it, I think everybody will be fine with that.
the monetary purpose is delivery of a useful thing: including the money itself.
Monetary units aren't SUPPOSED to live forever, they are just supposed to have INTRINSIC value of their units.
Since consumed gold can be replaced with OTHER gold, or usually recovered to be monetary .9999 fine gold (coin, bar) again, from a prior form, this is a good thing.
A thing which claims to be money yet CAN'T be used for anything else fails to be money too.
THAT is failure.
Silver & gold can always be returned to money after being used for jewelry, teeth, even electronics (though that is harder at this time).
Everyone will be fine with not using bitcoin: we all need real value & that means we all need money made from atoms. Not patterns.
Gold at a ONE MONTH high.Please, if that's all you've got, you should probably not bring it up.
In the real world, gold has yet to recover from the killer inflation caused by Spain's looting of the Americas. The Klondike did a pretty good number on gold's value on the wheat standard too.
It ain't magic bitchez.
It may be at only a 1 month high, but for all those "the trend is your friend" people out there gold has now broken out of it's downtrend going back to october 2013. This means there should be a good deal of short covering and buying interest now. The next month or two should be very interesting in the PM markets.
Now that's what I call price discovery!
It's a dirty underpants discovery!
OK I'm waiting for the mother of all short squeezes when GLD closes above $1270. Plenty of analysts claim this will happen. Or maybe they just revised their number upwards again.
If the monkey hammers are going to come out they better get on it pronto or it will be too late!
Grab your seat. She's gonna blow!!!!
Bitcoin has been too stable for too long for the comfort of many. There are enough interested agencies out there that wouldn't mind losing some government fiat in order to cause a panic in the cryptocurrency fiat. Interesting games.
all yer bitcoin - it now belongs to us - thanks!
Sincerely,
NSA-FBI-CIA
PS - and we will blame it on China and Iran
Or the Syrian Electronic Army
If you like your b(sh)itcoin volatility, you can keep your b(sh)itcoin volatility. The only way that the weight of my metals will flash crash is if I very rapidly move them out and back in to the earth's gravitational field. You computer currency afficianados have quite a different problem to worry about - computers now operate in the nanosecond realm.
If you can't "stack it", then it's a racket.
Not that I'm anyone of consequence and no one should put any stock in my opinions but I have mentioned on several occassions I would reserve judgement on Bitcoin until the US government made their intentions known on bitcoin. I was hit pretty hard by some folks. It appears the government is speaking now. That being said I don't wish anyone to get hurt financially. I take no glee in the pain, financial or otherwise, concerning another's gain or loss as it does not change my lot in life one iota. I wish any bitcoin investor, gold investor and any other retail guy all the luck/riches in the world. I've been on both sides of the coin, no pun intended, and it sucks being on the wrong side especially when, to a certain extent, you and your investment are a prisoner of government regulation and indecision.
My final thoughts are taken from Sgt Phil Esterhaus from Hill Street Blues when dismissing the cops as they started the day: "Let's be careful out there."
If they ban it, then they are just destroying themselves - they cant afford to ban it, or it would already have been done - banning it will not stop it.
It will go into the black market, and thats where EVERYONE wants to do business - nobody wants to trade in front of a group of criminals who dip their hand into the money stream and grab it out as fast as they can.
I'm putting in a buy order for 10,000,000 BTC at 0$. Next flash crash, I'll be rich! Whee!
Skynet meets bitcoin
Back in my day a bitcoin bought you a 1/10th of a gram of weed oO
Whoever got those coins for that price is fucking laughing their head off right now.
Until it hits $5 on the next flash crash.
That's the thing about bag-holders & a game of hot-potato.
Crypto currencies are not over, have hardly begun.
Disagree if you like but I think bitcoin the beta version, the mule to gauge public sentiment, work out the bugs, determine opposition.
The real player in the cryto currency is yet to emerge but last evening ZH had a post on Googlecoin, since taken down. I look for the real digital currency threat to come from an established entity such as GOOG having incorporated all that was learned from the BC experiment.
It's not over yet buddy , that exat same call was made in 2009 , 2010 , 2011 , 2012 , 2013 , and your calling the 'end' again in 2014 ? At least come up with something original. This is just a setup for its next double top high , could be somewhere around 3-5k judging by the last 4 doube tops in the last 5 years.
Hey, you there with the agenda.
You didn't half ass read my post, DID YOU????
I'm only here to get downvoted. I have no opinion either way.
Larf,as you wish!
People should be put down like that giraffe. A bolt to the head.
all those fucking vendors that trade in shitcoin - have fun exchanging shitcoin for real inventoried assets
...and good luck to goldbugs who will try to cross a border with their assets
Not many had the foresight to buy rounded taels exclusively.
Fit rather nicely in the anus. Hope you have a lot of kids if you are planning to move a lot of money.
Many already have with no problems so obviously you aren't aware. If a Jew can hand gold to a Nazi soldier & exit Hitler's realm to safety with much more gold in pocket, then so can the rest of us any time, any era in history.
Once again, Mt Gox tries to blame their ongoing and incredible incompetence on Bitcoin itself.
I'm placing my bets on Bitcoin surviving long after Mt Gox has gone tits up. Can't happen too soon, as far as I'm concerned.
EDIT: Also, anyone who calls this a "double spend" attack has no idea WTF they are talking about.
some manipulator just wanted to crash gold but got confused and instead crashed bitcoin, look at the chart of gold, the opening NY is (for once) normal today.
Bitcoin lover here. Mt. Gox is no longer the top dog. This was inevitable considering its draconian regulations on adding/withdrawing. People are pulling out their btc frantically. It was predictable, which is why I pulled what I had out a couple months ago.
Mt. Gox is not a bank, it is an exchange. So even if everyone pulled out their btc, they can still operate. They won't be nearly as profitable, of course, but they can survive.
So, in short this is a perfect time to put USD into Mt. Gox, but cheap btc, and wait until market forces pressure them to adjust their add/withdraw restrictions.
This June you'll see another spike in the btc price which will easily exceed any btc price seen before. Feel free to quote me! The stacker 1-track nitwits will lose out on another btc opportunity hehe. BTFD, invest when there is blood in the streets.
I make it early July rather than June ... but for the same reading of the tea leaves that you obviously see.
"So, in short this is a perfect time to put USD into Mt. Gox"
If you lived in Japan, and could physically go to their offices and bust their kneecaps with a crowbar should they mess with your money, then maybe, but otherwise, no: Mt Gox, not even once.
"invest when there is blood in the streets"
A giraffe in the zoo told me that.
Call me old fashioned, or what you will, I still prefer having something real in my hands like Au/Ag.
I agree with Kunstler on this one, I'm not gonna invest in an algorithm.
Do computers have to work in order to get your "Money" ? Then it ain't YOUR money.
It is not an either/or choice .... as DCRB points out - diversify - and balance the parts of the portfolio to suit your preferences. But even being very risk averse, a small percentage of held in Bitcoin could be a good long term bet. Au and Ag in different proportions.
"It's only going to get worse in an insolvent world desperate to halt money laundering."
EDIT: "It's only going to get worse in an insolvent world desperate to enforce capital controls and confiscate wealth."
Saying that 6,000BTC was a modest sell on BTC-e is totally disingenuous - that sale equates to about the entirety of open bids - it is a monster sell on BTC-e - which when dumped as a block crashed through the bids. It was either total panic, complete stupidity, a tragic fuck up, or an attempt to crash the exchange. I doubt that anyone who understands the potential for crypto-currencies is surprised by the escalating attacks on utility and credibility - we know this is a war, and expect to see blood spilled. For myself, I am happy to shed some blood because I know the PRIC's (Psychopaths Really In Charge) are about to start bleeding as well - and they know it.+10 - it will be real blood - for many, many folks
Completely intentional, probably. The flash crashes on the regular markets are also completely intentional, algorithm-driven events. They shake out the people with stop loss orders and steal their shares, then the exchange steps in and makes it all better, but the transactions all stand. Then there is a massive apology and they get set up for the next take down.
Unless you can code, you should not be trading at all.
Well that will certainly enhance confidence in digital currencies. 80%.
See my vote collection post above. The BTC bots have greater than 90% confidence.
MT GOX is intentionally spreading FUD to short the Bitcoin Market. They can buy Bitcoin on their exchange for $500 a coin and sell if for $700 a coin outside the exchange. THen turn around and buy more Bitcoin for $500 a coin. They are simply shorting the market and will continue to do this until the price of MTGOX BTC is near Zero. At that point they will proudly announce they have fixed the problem and let peope withdraw their Bitcoins. There will be no bitcoins left in anyones account because they will have all sold them.
OT:
what is really needed is Politicoin. Issue a coin to every eligible voter when he votes. Use the coins to pay wages of politicians what they are worth.
Ironically since the value is so low the bitcoin will do fine for this purpose.
BTC will have it's flash crash Hindenburg omen triple dead cat Fibonacci moment all at once. A bit patience.
http://bit.ly/1aDH4Q7
What's the going price for bitcoin on bitstamp right now?
~670 USD per http://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitstamp/btcusd
On a percentage basis the price of bitcoin should be available for purchase at $311 if the price action is to mirror that of last year.
Words are words and beliefs are beliefs. Technology will do to people what it does despite their best efforts to control it. Bankers are crypto-currency slaves--bitchez.
But can I still trade my Magic cards on Mr. Gox? That's what I want to know.
You can but first you need to put your Beaniebabizilla into play & tap into 4 green mana to gain access.
THEN you need 3 of any kind of mana per turn to keep access with the Beanibabizilla in play.
B-zilla is unable to be removed against your will UNLESS faced with a Leroy Jenkins, leading to instant defeat.
Good article by Jim Willie on Keiser.com
The solution within the global currency reset is the launch of the new American Dollar, for its own usage, no longer a global reserve currency.
The United States is fast racking up characteristics of a Third World nation. Its finances are Third World. Its president is Third World. Its banking integrity is Third World. Its absent industry is Third World. Its decaying cities are Third World. It urgently begs for a Third World currency, but that is soon to be remedied. The nation has been a freeloader on the global reserve currency for too long.
That is about to end.
Read more at http://www.maxkeiser.com/#goVT2y84w67654us.99
You neglected to mention the relative status of its military, and if it ever comes to measuring the importance of that, then it is the only thing that matters.
History has precedent of empires collapsing, but none this large or upon which so much of the world depends.
It hasn't exactly been a freeloader; sustaining that global currency status requires that it run trade deficits and in turn the export of its industrial base. Few in the USA would trade for those "cheap" electronics and sneakers had they 20/20 foresight. Many did have that foresight. Lazy intellects and traitorous media and politicians drowned that message out.
Analogies to Rome circa 100 AD versus Rome today aren't fully valid either because the USA - unlike Rome - has the single largest expanse of diverse natural resources in the world. That much will remain even after the exportable jobs are gone. Left will be The Leftist leaders, a decaying military, and a people clamoring for a revolution moreso than the quiet voices do today. The leaders' will need to find deep memory holes and they've been laying the groundwork for that dig for decades, so maybe they'll sustain in office. The uberwealthy will have moved on. Little to steal or exploit, and no military to bully their prey. The kosher class upper eschelon will have moved on to a new host.
So it was bullshit that killed it in the end, i always thought the fact that the business model can be replicated with ease would be the thing to end it. The whole concept is just one big fucking nightmare of gobbledegook...good luck to those who took a few quid from it though, and i hope you put your cash into something a bit more stable, like a furnace or a blender.
Killed what, Mt Gox? Because Bitcoin is very much alive.
Yes, fonestar, tell us all how it is you fucking lunatic! Your exit strategy is non-existent.
I've banged on about the possibility that governments could simply make trading in BTC unlawful.
That might not kill it off for a range of murky transactions, but it sure would prevent it ever becoming a fully blown currency to equal fiat.
The full legalisation of BTC for trade, retail and any other transaction is the only way it will survive.
What we see happening in the flash crash is a direct consequence of BTC's unofficial status.
All that will happen is the same as prohibition. The mob will make a fortune providing the money transaction services now like they did with providing liquor.
They can't make it illegal once you decentralize the trading platforms which is exactly what is happening when you iterate the blockchain itself into a cypto-currency aka contract that the ledger keeps track of on top of bitcoin for example. Anyone through a modified wallet aka trading software can buy/sell, etc.
It is already happening.
The only value centralized exchanges bring to the table right now is they also function as money transaction servers aka btc to USD via wire services. Once the decentralzed exchanges and decentralized wire services are worked out Mt Gox and other things like NYSE are going to die a slow inconsequential death and their ain't shit no one can do about it even the banks and governments at that point. We know what happens when governments declare war on things like drugs.... Take one out 2 more pop up.
Agreed mostly, but relegating the use of cryptocurrencies to the underground pretty much thwarts its growth and one of its putative raison d'etres - widespread and transnational use.
In the event of a ban, I don't imagine many e-tailers will advertise "We accept Bitcoin". That applies to not only the USA but other countries as well. Shutting down the node at the other end of that "We accept Btc" advertisement is not difficult.
I can buy some good dope and moonshine close to my home, but the purveyors don't advertise widely. The local constables won't wink and turn a blind eye in the same way as did their 1930's counterparts. "Elliot Ness" is far more in charge now than the corrupt "Chicago police and judges" were then.
All it takes is one country. The money will flow one way or the other regardless of what any a-hole sitting on a throne pontificating that it can't.
No, that's for high-value tangibles. For something intangible it must be many countries with secured communications grids or it's a no-go.
Using real life examples, let's say that "one country" is Iran, and let's say that the Group of 7 or whatever imposes an embargo.
That worked out pretty well for Iran, eh? So we'll end up with the USA orchestrating trade sanctions and then violating them. (sarc to continue with that real life example).
btw, Does Iran have it's own Internet? Nope. Even if they did, could you access it from your desk in "Kansas"? Nope. I'm operating of course under the very sound assumption that you are not your own ISP and that you do not have your own satellite. Your hypothetical countermeasures kinda fall apart then.
A second btw - what country could possibly both accomplish and have an interest in accomplishing what you're proposing? China? They're gonna go it alone and eschew trade from the other 147 (?) countries, and all to accomodate the Btc cc folks? Doubtful. Even if they were the regulatory agency (that Btc'ers profess to abhor); doubtful.
Exactly. Thanks for articulating my own thoughts so well.
Bitcoin is to fickle for investment and not sustainable long term due to a finite amount of coins "mineable." The increased attention and expanded grid computing should atleast be put to better use while it remains popular. Protein folding or mapping genomes are just a few areas that could use the computing power. Their results may benefit society opposed to the current unapplicable "math" problems being solved.
http://waxingwealth.com/ecurrency-bitcoin/
When the media is and everyone is done fear mongering about bitcoin and Russia. Here is the actual ruling from Russia itself not third party mouths pushing agendas.
In Russian (for native Russian speakers or if people want to do their own translations)
http://genproc.gov.ru/smi/news/genproc/news-86432/
Translated to English
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fg...
Key point.
...
In accordance with Art. 27 of the Federal Law "On the Central Bank of the Russian Federation", "the official currency (currency) of the Russian Federation is the ruble. Introduction on the territory of Russia and other monetary units issue money substitutes is prohibited. " Certain distribution received anonymous payment systems and kriptovalyuty, including the most famous of them - Bitcoin are money substitutes and can not be used by individuals and legal entities.
...
More importantly Article 27 from the Federal Law for the Russian Central Bank. (In English)
http://www.bu.edu/bucflp/files/2012/01/Federal-Law-No.-86-FZ-of-2002-on-...
To paraphrase the Ruble is the official currency the issue of any other currencies and money substitutes is illegal within Russia.
The ruling is right in line with the article like it or not. It is not the payment system part of it that violates the charter. They consider it currency period.
Unlike the financial terrorism bullshit they spin in the media here the reason in press release is using quasi-currency violates the courts in Russia's ability to maintain property rights of individuals and organizations because of the anonymity of the transaction process.
That is horseshit though because they most certainly could from a legal standpoint if the individuals and organizations use wallets that are officially tied to a Russian Bank to transact quasi money or not. The courts can easily deal with property rights because of the block chain and it's ledger system without either side being able to cheat and lie to the courts when a transaction goes wrong and someone doesn't deliver.
These things are always about Centralized Control and power doesn't give up control easily, the Russians are no different in that regard.
Why all the BTC hate??? Did you get raped by a BTC??? I just don't understand it. Also all the hate is coming from people who know nothing about BTC. Its early, its going to have growing pains, get over it. Your stupid for not trying to understand it. Are you all statists?? Do you hate liberty???
"Why all the BTC hate???"
Legitimate technical or financial objections do not equal "hate."
"all the hate is coming from people who know nothing about BTC"
This is not true, and I'm sure you know that. The BTC opponents have posted much more technical detail than the pumpers, who either post cheerleading one-liners, or ad hominems, just as you have done.
"Your stupid for not trying to understand it."
I have studied it, downloaded software, run several different wallets of Bitcoin and other alt coins, and performed many small test transactions. I have seen the weaknesses of the software, the network, and the overall system, and decided that crypto currencies cannot be trusted for use with "real money."
"Are you all statists?? Do you hate liberty???"
Perhaps this is your real objection. You expect a bunch of chumps like myself to fund your political goals, while in the meantime you pick up some profits for yourself. No thanks!
what weaknesses? you are a tool talking crap as usual.. an old exchange with short sighted custom wallet being exposed is not the fault of said crypto
facts are your enemy
Facts? You dare to invoke facts? When have you ever posted one on this subject? You're as much the ad hominem king as the OP to which the poster was replying.
endless facts that do not support your blind ignorance
can't help that your brain only accepts fecal matter as input stream
so you want to say that bitcoin's protocol is the issue or Mt Gox's lazy custom wallet and weak accounting?
if it was a fault of the protocol then the price would be zero correct? other exchanges are fine.. we will have a price slide as more and more ways to sell/spend bitcoin outrun the recent clamps on inflows due to AML/KYC restraints.. again thats facts..
also, I posted a few weeks ago to sell bitcoins in the $800's and buy gold since that was a good switchover period.. it doesn't mean I think bitcoin will die .. and when I sold gold for $1900 I didn't think gold would die either...
facts...
"endless facts that do not support your blind ignorance".
facts nay in evidence counsellor.
"can't help that your brain only accepts fecal matter as input stream".
non-responsive your honor.
"so you want to say that bitcoin's protocol is the issue or Mt Gox's lazy custom wallet and weak accounting?"
Bullish strawmen
Aside from that, your, ahem, facts were enlightening.
I do, however, appreciate the effort and the change of pace from your usual unsubstantiated bullshit. Check your posting history. You almost invariably leave it to the others to post facts or even hypotheses.
you didn't even say shit..
it was Gox's error with their custom wallet.. they goxxed themselves and try to blame bitcoin protocol on a known avoidable issue.. just like when BATS went south and got played..
Hatred as nothing to do with it; the crux of the matter has always been that bitcoin --being unpacked by anything physically real-- is fundamentally, in its current form, just another monetary fad. The concept is elegant, but unless it becomes fungible with actual commodities, it will remain nothing but a honey trap for the young and clueless.
way to shift the conversation.. do you even know what the event was today?
of course you dont but somehow still want to feel like you are part of the conversation
Try to learn what words mean before you use them.
"Fungible" means that a currency is divisible, and does not lose value due to division (you can substitute one part for the other).
Thus, gold is fungible (do you care which 25g chunk you get?), whereas dimonds are not (shattered dimonds and not worth the same as the larger gem, and each smaller gem is off a different, unique value).
From wikiperdia,
Fungibility is the property of a good or a commodity whose individual units are capable of mutual substitution, such as sweet crude oil, shares in a company, bonds, precious metals, currencies, or pistachios.
"It refers only to the equivalence of each unit of a commodity with other units of the same commodity. Fungibility does not describe or relate to any exchange of one commodity for some other, different commodity."
Your statement about it bitcoin needing to be fungible with comodities is therefore an oxymoron!
Ah Jesus, bring back paper money.
Natural value incoming
One truth to Bitcoin.
No internet, no bitcoin.
SMS are good enough.
even packet radio data
"SMS are good enough. even packet radio data"
Agreed. As are smoke signals. But this is hardly conducive to the advancement or sustainability of a widespread and borderless transaction medium.
btw, there's no need to shut down the Internet; only specific nodes thereof - for example those that advertise: "We accept Btc (or other cc)." Without THOSE nodes up and running you can start eulogizing Btc for all PRACTICAL purposes and it will be relegated to exactly what it inherently is - small potatoes traded as credits amongst a very small group of people.
If China can effectively block searches from loading pictures of "tank man," Google, Apple, ATT&T, Verizon, Comcast, etc. in conjunction with the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. etc. can surely figure out a way to block any unauthorized (eg registered) BC transaction moving through the system.
Yes, you could still play secret squirrel by handing-off jump drives in a dark alley - but that is not going to encourage widespread adoption.
nope: blockchain is too big for SMS. SMS are very small, not multiple hundreds of gigabytes. The network carrying SMS can't handle the capacity to send it ONCE in an entire day from ONE person.
FFS you dont need the blockchain on every device to make transactions.
yeah, it is enough if central banks hold the blockchain for us.
You do to prevent fraud.
whew! i'm so thankful they've restored order.....now back to my regularly scheduled bit mining operation.
Wake me up when the usd mimics this. The waiting (on the beach) is tedious
Honest question here. If everyone starts to use BTC can the network manage to update all the ledgers. We are talking like 100K trannys in a second kinda stuff. would it not be like a DDS attack on a website.
Yes , despite what some flat-earthers on here say bitcoin can scale up to VISA/MasterCard/SWIFT speeds , the more nodes that are added the more it scales , there is a stream of files called the blockchain which holds all historical transaction data , this will grow to Multi Terrabyte per annum size but could still be held across millions of nodes without centralisation. Hard Drive and network capacities will in fact move faster than the required storage size of the blockchain files.
NO, those of us who are real computer scientists understand you are NEVER deploying hardware at an exponentially growing rate yet you are ALWAYS expanding the blockchain at an exponentially expanding size. Bitcoin is TOAST.
It's a huge flaw to have a blockchain: transactions SHOULD NEVER be reported pubclicly, this validates nothing. WORSE to have it growing exponentially. Utter fail.
I'm not a flat-earther, my Computer Science degree says I know better & I'm pretty sure you have nothing comparable.
You require EXPONENTIAL hardware rollouts to BREAK-EVEN with speed & today it can still take 20 minutes to fully validate ONE transaction, maybe 5 if you wait only for 2 or 3 people to validate the transaction in the blockchain which is NONSENSE: anyone else could produce ALTERNATE blockchains in that time.
Fail, fail, FAIL.
I just waited 21 days for a $ bank transfer from a European country to the UK. Just sayin.
Did that cause the bank's blockchain to fork?
Was it possible to double spend during that time?
There was no fork , just Gox's wallet got in a twist , their wallet software is customised and contained bugs which meant they could not verify who they had sent payment to so some customers were asking for their payment to be sent again which Gox then did , they then blamed their error on the bitcoin protocol , which is in fact totally rock solid.
- MeelionDollarBullshit . Okay clever cloggs. I will walk you right through TCP/IP and then right down into 8 bit low level machine code programming if you want me to. Hardware and data storage capacity will only need to be deployed in an S-Curve manner , not Exponentially. The size of the blockchain will grow at an S-Curve rate , not exponentially. Google S-Curve images to get an insight on what that actually means. Once the transaction rate has levelled , the blockchain will grow at a very steady rate , do you remember when a 1MB Tape-2-Tape streamer was the size of a big american fridge or a 5MB hard drive the size of a large washing machine ? Well soon 1000 Terrabye Sold Sate Hard drives will be the norm , they will hold enough capacity for years of blockchain data running at VISA / Mastercard transaction speeds. Just think one High Definition TV channel streams 7 times more data than the blockchain would expand if bitcoin was making 10,000 transactions per second which is way above VISA / Mastercard burst speeds. That is the equivalent data transmission of just ONE HD TV channel , you think the total global bitcoin network could not handle just 1/7th of the bandwidth of a single HDTV channel ? Grow a brain.
https://www.google.co.uk/#q=s+curve+images
Jackass, I've been around a long time, far enough back to when the TRS-80 & C64 were "home computers" and used them.
I'll dare you to explain UNENDING exponential expansion of both storage space & transmission capacity.
If it's 1 terabyte per second tomorrow it better be TWO terabytes per second THE DAY AFTER tomorrow or you CAN'T SUSTAIN BITCOIN.
That's the math.
The 1000 terabyte drive will not be enough: you'll need a MILLION terabyte drive & you'll need it 30 DAYS after the 1000 terabyte drive just barely is enough to handle the blockchain BY ITSELF.
You can't make the hardware fast enough, due to limitations of physics.
This is where we get into the problem of linear restrictions vs exponential & NP-complete problems to solve.
You're done.