The Bitcoin Tracking Thread

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Originally Posted by Blink

What a clever way of introducing the masses to pure digital currency. Let them think they made it up to circumvent the banker criminals and once everyones on board, crash it or take it over. South Korea is a recent good example about how easy it is to crash a system...........

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Ya never know!

;D

I am not attached to Bitcoin, hell Bitcoin could be the Devil. I can see a future where banks are in control of Bitcoin by being in control of the miners, which could have been the purpose all along. However, as it stands, Bitcoin is more "honest" than the stock market and the FRN system.

It is funny that a community that consists primarily of IT-type people, nerds living in their parents' basements, and anarchists/libertarians, can play around with an infant "internet money", that initially had a free-market valueof $0.001 per bitcoin, and have now come to command a free-market price of $65 per bitcoin.

People have gone from living off of ramen noodles to being millionaires by running a program on their computer. It's pretty crazy actually. And these people would be the financial elite if Bitcoin were to truly "get big".

3 years ago, 10,000 BTC would buy 2 pizzas, delivered.

Today, you can buy a house for less than 10,000 BTC.

I am not advising anyone to buy/sell/hold bitcoins. I am just discussing them and periodically reporting the free-market price in FRNs.

As for my holdings, I might hold 0 bitcoins, or tens of thousands of them, but I can't have more than 21 million of 'em! ;D

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Originally Posted by Blink

What a clever way of introducing the masses to pure digital currency. Let them think they made it up to circumvent the banker criminals and once everyones on board, crash it or take it over. South Korea is a recent good example about how easy it is to crash a system...........

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Keep in mind the principle is the exact same as bit torrent. They are desperately trying to end that scenario with plenty of lawsuits, laws, new legislation etc...

If people ever get used to using bit coin on a daily basis, the banks will be in a very sad state.

How does one crash, or take over a decentralized phenomena is the question.

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Originally Posted by Shami-Amourae

I honestly don't know. It should have crashed by now but hasn't. If it does crash it won't be to $2 again though since people will buy it up as it goes down, all wanting to get the next bottom. There's many people, including myself who wish we loaded the boat last time it dropped to $2. I think there's strong support in the 20s and 30s now psychologically, but that's just my own guestimation. Too many veterans are waiting on the sidelines to buy up Bitcoins when the price goes down and then there's a crap load of people who know nothing about investing who are buying since the price is going up (what most inexperienced investors do.) I've spoken with the owner of Mt Gox, a Frenchie living in Japan named Mark Karpeles (MagicalTux on IRC). He's done a lot to make sure there are no flash crashes like the last time and has done a lot of work to make the servers suddenly "work slowly" when people seem to be panic selling, if you catch my drift. He works almost 16 hours a day like me, so I believe he has a good handle on things THIS TIME. Paid CIA employees don't work that long and hard, it takes someone who really believes in the cause to do it. The real reason for the last crash I think was since a hacker fucked with the price discovery with the exchange site sending Bitcoins to the value of a penny almost instantly. Mark is the most important person in the Bitcoin community who has the most influence over price discovery. He's on the crypto-anarchist side too (I believe).

I'm hoping when the price drops next time people listen to guys like Chris Duane and they all hate Bitcoin so I can buy it. Just do the opposite of what these gurus tell you since they are almost always wrong. Typically the best time to buy is when no one wants something, and know one cares.

Personally I think Bitcoin will crash one day namely as Don points out that there will be a better cryptocurrency coming down the pike. My biggest issue with Bitcoin is how much damn data the blocks take up till your Bit Client is up to date. I think it's ridiculous and needs to be simplified somehow.

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Interesting a hidden anarchist who likes to regulate market trading. Certainly I have no way of knowing what makes him tick, but it sounds like he is running the interests of those who have a lot of bitcoins those who started mining when it was easy, who are looking to unload at around this time, he aids them by disallowing or slowing down the plebs trading as market turns down, giving the BC aristocracy a limited supply side of the market to sell their shitcoins into. It is also interesting that you think there is a psychological barrier around $20-30 where many are waiting to buy in when the drop comes, I do believe you are correct on this assessment, but it means that the creator and a few of his pals will be able to make $100's of millions, for a couple of years of work, not bad, but it is important to realize this is a zero sum game. Their win is another's loss, and it will be those that are trusting and gullible and the greedy that loses, the fan club if you like, and many among those are the experienced bit coiners that believe $20-30 is the lower limit ready to go full in at that level. It is a pyramid scheme. Possibly the manipulated market price will go up to above a 100, before the plug is pulled, maybe even higher, but it will be pulled!

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Originally Posted by Neuro

Possibly the manipulated market price will go up to above a 100, before the plug is pulled, maybe even higher, but it will be pulled!

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Out of curiosity, how will the plug be pulled, and who will pull it?

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Originally Posted by madfranks

Out of curiosity, how will the plug be pulled, and who will pull it?

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If what is said about the block sizes increasing indefinitely to huge sizes, it may at some point become impractical for the average person to use bitcoins. Having to download terabytes of data just to buy something for $2 online wouldn't be attractive.

What would happen is that intermediaries would be set up that would take care of holding your bitcoins for you, and you just use them like a debit card is used today.

In that case it won't be as competitive anymore with other currencies, so it will probably not become the dominate currency, but the oldest and used for certain purposes only.

Then people will slowly start accepting only newer and more advanced crypto currencies because they are simply easier to deal with. The combination of third party brokers and a dwindling places to spend it will cause it to go extinct one day.

So basically the free market will determine when it's time is up.

What MagicalTux is doing is a good thing in my view. You could say he's biased for the large holders of Bitcoin, but I think that's more of a side effect of wanting people to want to invest in Bitcoin. It's in his incentive that Bitcoin becomes an established free market currency. All of the formal/corporate style businesses who have tried setting up exchanges have failed. Basically it's just a dude in an apartment hunkered down over his computer all day. The only reason he pulls it off is since he's one guy who works basically non-stop on the net. That's the same way with my virtual business. Professional corporations have tried to mimic stuff I do solo and failed miserably. It's the future of virtual business frankly where the corporation has less and less influence and power.

The plug won't be pulled. Basically you need enough people to think the price is going down so they all sell sell sell sell until people start buying like crazy and that restores confidence. I thought that it would happen at the $50 level but I was wrong, but no one could have predicted what happened in Cyprus. A lot of people in Southern Europe are buying Bitcoins, and the Bitcoin market is still relatively tiny so just a tiny percentage of a population now putting their wealth in Bitcoin pushes the price up. I would ideally buy in again in the sub $10 range, but I believe psychologically since the price has gotten so high then the new bottom is in the $20 range. I have no technical analysis or mathematical formulas to back this up. It's just my opinion based on what I've seen and based on the psychology of the people (gut feeling); however, I tend to be wrong as much as I'm right with Bitcoins. This is the closest thing we have to there being a free market.


I wouldn't buy any Bitcoins at this price unless I felt the market was stabilized and there were more things to buy with it. The exchange that I used to sell into with my business funds got shut down so I cant do the tax loophole trick anymore. Kinda sucks. Frankly Bitcoins was setup as an alternative currency, and lets be honest, it's a trading platform really. Merchants are afraid to use it since the prices are so unstable. If you wanted to see the price drop down to $1 I think you'd need to directly attack the Mt Gox website and drive the prices down by some serious hacking but goodluck with that. The security is now super beefed up to surpass those of professional banks.

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So basically the free market will determine when it's time is up.

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Kind of like what the market is trying to do with central banks for the last decade or so yet they keep hanging on.

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Originally Posted by vacuum

If what is said about the block sizes increasing indefinitely to huge sizes, it may at some point become impractical for the average person to use bitcoins. Having to download terabytes of data just to buy something for $2 online wouldn't be attractive.

What would happen is that intermediaries would be set up that would take care of holding your bitcoins for you, and you just use them like a debit card is used today.

In that case it won't be as competitive anymore with other currencies, so it will probably not become the dominate currency, but the oldest and used for certain purposes only.

Then people will slowly start accepting only newer and more advanced crypto currencies because they are simply easier to deal with. The combination of third party brokers and a dwindling places to spend it will cause it to go extinct one day.

So basically the free market will determine when it's time is up.

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Yeah I personally believe that's the number one flaw with Bitcoin, but I never hear it addressed, even by the major critics (who typically don't know WTF they are talking about.) Try downloading the original Bitcoin client and downloading the blocks. You'll be lucky if you finish downloading after a week with a cable modem. Now that's with only a fringe minority of people actually using Bitcoin. If the masses tried to use it it would be impractical. That's why I think Bitcoin won't be the first successful cryptocurrency, but the father of them that will spawn newer and better cryptocurrencies. The second one of those takes hold I recommend investing quite liberally in one. You could become very, very wealthy indeed with just a few hundred dollar investment and patience...

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Originally Posted by madfranks

Out of curiosity, how will the plug be pulled, and who will pull it?

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The few originators of Bitcoins, those who have millions of them, will decide to get rid of them, when the prize is right...

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Originally Posted by Neuro

The few originators of Bitcoins, those who have millions of them, will decide to get rid of them, when the prize is right...

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Most got sold at the last rally IMO.