The thing is, he probably had a ton more anyway. Yeah, it sucks, but he could get the last laugh if it becomes worthless.

my pony by a nose

You dont feel like something happened around April to make the story more interesting?


Also - didnt silk road only recently became difficult to access? Like within the last couple weeks.


Aside from silkroad - what vendors are doing well accepting bitcoins? I truly think the black market legitimized the currency - because its a real reason to use BC instead of the dollar.

people think it could be very useful in the black market in the future, but hardly anyone is actually using it for that now- not sure of the exact history of silk road but i would assume it has always been pretty stealth, and there are only like 7 people on the only bitcoin poker site at any given time.


the bitcoin guys have claimed they don't like silk road and would like to see it shut down- if silk road got shut down tomorrow do you think the bitcoin market would crash?

that could even be a good sign for it, to go more mainstream and possibly be able to partner with law-abiding big internet vendors

there are tons of reasons to use BTC instead of dollar or other local currency aside from blackmarket purposes, many of which have been discussed in this thread

the intro to bitcoin video has 300,000 views, and this thread has 30,000, so i suppose black friday has driven more people (myself included) to this thread and to look into bitcoin, so it has been a big driver but probably not the primary one, and its not like poker players find out about bitcoin and then use it to play poker, they find out about it and see the potential for worldwide usage in a multitude of ways

Brahm Cohen (creator of bitTorrent) is apparently not impressed with Bitcoin

http://twitter.com/#!/bramcohen

Winning!

he might be right that bitcoin could turn out to be a complete failure, but trying to say libertarians know diddly about economics is so blatantly wrong its ridiculous.

maybe you (or he) disagree with their views on economics, but the highest % of economists are libertarians, the party who has studied econ the most is the libertarian party, and if libertarians know diddly about econ which party has the econ wizards? the marxists?

Not to mention that saying some unspecified fiasco is going to happen and then everyone will regret being involved is a great way of being able to say "I told you so" when anything bad happens.

He makes it seem like there is some hole or problem that he's going to expose.

But he implies it's related to economics rather than software.

I think he means "libertarians" as in ron paul/internet posters and not Milton Friedman.

It's hard to say for sure, since the authority you appealed to this time presents no argument at all.

What authority did I appeal to "this time"?

Yeah, who knows. I really don't value his opinion on any economic or political matters any more than I value a Stephen Hawking's opinion on software. Not only that, but he comes across as one of those egotistical types that thinks because he is a genius in one area, he is a genius in all areas.

Could of got in at .50 and strongly considering it

At least got in for some at $5

Re: if new competitors don't start popping up soon
here comes TradeHill

site looks pretty slick, not sure where its based out of, and plans to support tons of different currencies, which is awesome.

from @tradehill on twitter:
(i'm not affiliated obv)

Looks nice. One odd thing is in their FAQ they have:

I thought they were TradeHill, not Bitcoin Exchange Services, which is another exchange: http://www.bitcoinexchange.cc

Maybe they just copied their FAQ.

Any bitcoin investing success stories itt?

I see when this was started the bitcoin was going at .7 the USD now at just around 30x, so a 43xish increase = fairly good ROI. After skimming most of the thread I see a lot of people who bought some early than sold than bought some more later when they realized it was gonna hit a spike...

Anybody who bought a decent amount in the beginning and is now in really good shape?

Also, surely the increase in bit coins now is just because of their recent exposure and at some point in the near(?) future we should see a leveling off or decline?

not this thread, but this early adopter now has >$10 million in bitcoin

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=6825.0

very interesting thread on the bitcoin forum.

Cliffs on thread
-guy mines/purchases 371k bitcoins last year with the help of some investors that invested 12k. Project went dead when they ran out of money and bitcoins were worthless basically. Guy offers to buy out project earlier this year for 5k, original investors accept deal recently, apparently clueless to what is happening with bitcoin. Guy has 371k bitcoins currently worth over 10 mil all to himself.

Sorry, hadn't refreshed browser since Valhalla's post, Ill leave mine up since it has cliffs in it

What exactly distinguishes Bitcoins from play money when talking about the legality of poker or sports betting? Anything? If so, what exactly?

CCuster, I've spent around $700 on my BTC stash (~$8 each on average) and I've got around $2,400 worth now. I'm sure others on here have made much more, but as a small-timer it's pretty great. What's funny is how quickly I adjust to the gains. At first making $50 seemed crazy, then a couple hundred felt awesome, and now it barely registers that I'm ahead close to $2k.

Here were my first trades on mtgox:

12/24/10 10:24 Bought BTC 149.03 for 0.2449 149.025 -36.495
12/27/10 13:37 Bought BTC 293.08 for 0.2537 293.083 -74.369
12/27/10 18:31 Bought BTC 417.27 for 0.2567 417.27 -107.1
12/27/10 23:36 Bought BTC 74.51 for 0.2667 74.513 -19.875
12/28/10 14:06 Bought BTC 47.69 for 0.2629 47.688 -12.537
12/28/10 14:07 Bought BTC 129.16 for 0.2629 129.155 -33.956

Of course I have sold a few, and actually bought a lot more closer to $1.

But 1,110.74 BTC for $284.35 is not too shabby.

You think it is hard to fund mtgox now...back then it was liberty reserve and bank wire only, and bank wire took some days playing email tag with Jed, haha. The good old days.

I agree with some of your ideas, but part of the reason some people have adopted bitcoin leading to its popularity is because the supply is fixed. I think a lot of people here know bitcoin is in a bubble and will either crash or become a whole lot more useful. In any case, the price will be stabilizing eventually after this early adopter phase.

Regarding your improvements to the currency: Have you considered the possibility of a digital psuedo-anonymous currency whose value is tied to the dollar?

Apparently it's still a percentage based rake. From reading the faq it's not clear how much he is charging, quoting a range from .25% to .75%. Also the spread there is 3btc hahaha.