if the bitcoin are never spent he is doing a good service. He's adding real value to the system and letting the purchasing power benefits be transferred to active bitcoin users.

I wouldn't believe that blog post uncritically.

The poster does have a history of brainstorming potential security issues in Bitcoin, but several highly regarded old-timers have issues with his claims and methods.

See http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178629.0;all for the latest discussion.

Even if this is true, why should anyone care? I don't see any wrong-doing.

If people have something against this, its like being against the first gold miners who found hundreds of kilos by only filtering river water/mud/stones.

Users gmaxwell, jgarzik, and DeathAndTaxes (and others) all have issues with methods used.

Original thread:
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175996.0

Sky: I don't think there's anything wrong or bad about it if true (or substantially true), I just thought it was an interesting analysis and peek into early history of Bitcoin mining.

Deep: thanks for the link, very interesting thread. I assumed that it would be obvious to readers of that post that there were a number of big assumptions made with no real backing evidence, but I still think it's an interesting post for people who find Bitcoin interesting. Especially now that you've provided that good discussion thread.

Just stating that none of my technical analysis is at all based on past history. It is purely based on volume price indicators on LIVE limit orders at different price support levels. I would never ever use "historic prices" as a way of analyzing bitcoin prices. Also my decision to buy on tuesday once again had solid reasoning that proved to be correct. And since yesterday morning I also noted that the market wasn't going to move a lot, and have been correct about that too. It's also not too difficult to predict $6 or so fluctuations in the price, but I have found that it's not profitable to try and take advantage of them due to the high vig on mt gox and the inefficiency of using their trading platform. I tried and can't execute orders fast enough at the right times to beat the vig. I only ended up breaking even.

That said I am still a beginner who has a willingness to trust his gut (something a lot of beginning traders lack.) Take what I say with a grain of salt, but my reasoning is at least logical, and more knowledgeable then a random speculator with no idea about any of this.

I believe the price of bitcoin will reach a point to where the usd dies, no one will know who satoshi is, and earth 2.0 will be created and it will get very bad before it gets better.

Someone please call me an idiot and tell me why im wrong, so i can sleep at night and not worry about ww3

That article is weird, cause I read the thread about it the other day on bitcointalk and it felt like the other guys, like DeathAndTaxes, basically destroyed it by page 2, but then I skimmed that page and it's pretty bad writing that just pulls your eyeballs to the graphs, which are way more straightforward.

This is Grade A linkbait, and I'd bet money that of the next few big media stories about Bitcoin, they start saying stuff like "Bitcoin was invented by a mystery programmer named Satoshi Nakamoto, who is reported to own $100 million of Bitcoin". I'd bet big, big money on this becoming part of the Satoshi mythology for the time being.

As usual with BTC, be extra careful!

From trading thread, posted by lilwhaldo:

"Just giving everybody a warning not to trade with curtains until this is figured out. His account may have been hacked. I sent him a couple of BTC that he has yet to pay me for. He has been giving me excuse after excuse. It's been about 36 hours since I initiated the trade. He was supposed to send me a BOA transfer. I was immediately suspicious after he said he couldn't send an online BOA transfer. Yesterday he was supposed to go to the bank to do it in person. Then he didn't send and I told him if I didn't receive by last night I'd PM the mods and post in here. He told me he had to move the money from another account and said he knew Mike Haven personally. I PMed Mike, and he said he doesn't know him personally, however he did remember the user name.

Not saying his account is necessarily hacked, but be wary of trading with him until he sorts this out with me. He has made multiple posts looking for bitcoins. Regardless, he did not have the money ready to be transferred and has freerolled me, which is pretty scummy."

if satoshi were multiple people, don't you think you'd see patterns where they repeatedly divide the recently-mined stash into consistent-sized portions and distribute it to different wallets?

Yes. I don't think it's a team unless the work done by Satoshi Nakamoto was too much work for one person. Each person that's required to keep a secret increases the chance that someone talks.

I recall curtains as a very reasonable, well-respected user. And he probably knows how to spell "interested". I strongly suspect his 2+2 account has been hacked if what you say is true.

And what if they are just waiting to do that when BTC really breaks trought ?

so you're telling me that the folks who created a digital currency with a philosophy underlying it being that no trust is necessary might have decided for years to trust each other (or one guy) with the account holding all the mining proceeds when it would have been entirely trivial to just divide it immediately after it was mined?

isn't curtains an instructor over at lego? maybe you could shoot them an email that his account is possibly hacked? I wish you the best on recovering your money deep. that blows

there is contact link on the bottom of this page http://www.leggopoker.com/coaches/curtains/

Looking to sell 20 BTC at $100, accept Skrill.

I didn't trade with him. Just saw the post and wanted to draw attn here.

Traded with Alex Wice and completed transaction in few minutes. He sent first. A+

MY ACCOUNT WAS HACKED, DON'T DO ANYTHING WITH CURTAINS! Thanks

Also can someone please let me know why I didn't get any emails about the PM's I was sent? My email address is still registered as my actual email address.

Can someone explain to me how capital gains taxes are supposed to work? Suppose I sell 10 BTCs at a peak and then rebuy 11 BTCs at a lower price do I owe capital gains? If I use them to buy products directly do I owe? Do I only owe if I cash out a profit? With a normal brokerage account my bank figures this out for me and sends me a 1099 at the end of the year, but somehow I don't think Mtgox will be doing this.

taxes are paid on realized gains, in general.

if you buy products directly, i'd think that would count as realized trading gains, as if you broke it down into two transactions, namely: BTC->USD->thing.

and to answer the last part, i think you'd just have to keep your own records, but part of the reason why BTC is so popular is precisely because it makes it harder for the gummint to determine your tax liability, no? aside from bank transfers in/out of mtgox, i think it's basically whatever you say happened.

Bitcoin was announced with a whitepaper before it went live. Even if the group were 3 people, they all had equal opportunity to mine the bitcoins from genesis block. There would be no reason to mine together and continually split up coins.

Maybe one of them felt more strongly about the longterm success of BTC than the others and started mining and hoarding coins.

There's a setting that tells 2+2 whether to send you e-mail when you get a private message. Did that get turned off? (Possibly by the hacker...)

Whoa, yeah, I was wondering how you were apparently offering to trade Stars or FTP money from the U.S. Didn't even think about hacking.