I think it makes sense that in times like these almost all buying is by the more hardcore/fundamental holders. Because of the technical aspect of it, the more people learn and understand the underlying technology, the more fears are alleviated and the more likely they are to make investments based on the health of the actual network opposed to public sentiment.

I don't know if most holders of BTC are well informed, but a disproportionately large amount of BTC are going to be scooped up by the fundamental types whose sentiments in BTC are unaffected by something like MtGox failing. This creates a new higher price floor that BTC will never fall below barring some kind of catastrophic protocol failure.

The majority of the news regarding bitcoin in the past few months has been overwhelmingly positive. 100's of ATMs are coming online, US based regulated exchanges are in the pipeline, the first B&M bitcoin bank in Cyprus, it's just that these things aren't going to get any headlines outside the bitcoin community.

The internet told me BTC would be finished today. Did it happen yet?

Na, I think they are still trading for a ridiculous 70 cents each.

nice post

How would this be possible? If you bank wire money to a broker for trading the global markets you technically have no control of that fiat anymore, you are entrusting the trading platform and the numbers they show on their site to be true,

Its less likely that the brokerage will go belly up like a BTC exchange can but regardless the money you once had control over is with someone else

BTC is the same, once the coins are sent to an exchange it is with them and you're entrusting the numbers on the site to be true

Its pure speculation to think that one person holds all the coins lost from Mtgox through the malleability bug, the leaked documents themselves are speculation not a definite

I'd find it hard to believe that a company would not notice a number like that to be missing without noticing so much earlier unless it was karpeles himself stealing the money and covering, it up which is again speculation

If anything if a single person has 750k btc and sold them all at once he/she would be an absolute moron and I'd be happy to pick up more coins on the cheap if it were to happen but I doubt they would do that when the potential is still very high for growth

This is actually possible. See Open Transactions.

I don't think I saw this posted here before. Apologies if it has been. I thought this was a brief, but effective, discussion:
http://ericposner.com/the-bitcoin-paradox/

Basically, the paradox he describes is that bitcoin can be either:
- a widely-accepted medium of exchange
or
- a medium of exchange that is free from regulatory/governmental oversight

but it can't be both. I thought the last paragraph was a vivid analogy:
This was a new way of thinking to me, but it intuitively makes sense (to me). It would be nice to know whether bitcoin proponents believe that bitcoin will gain popularity because of:
-growing acceptance and ease of use in exchange
-the desirability of having a medium exchange existing outside of the traditional regulatory structure
-something else

I'm not sure which of those items is perceived to bring the most benefit, and most expected value to bitcoin holders. But I do agree with Posner's argument that it can't be all of the above.

This article won't remotely change anyone's mind one way or the other, just thought it was interesting. [I'm a bitcoin skeptic fwiw.]

Asking how its possible then referencing an entirely different system seems a strange way to proceed. Just because you do X with fiat it does not follow you have to do X with BC.

Please start typing BTC instead of BC.

This article is complete trash. Basically he's assuming that you'll always have third party trust required for the average user. That simply is not true and the entire point of Bitcoin, removing that need, being able to control your own assets.

He talks about a wheelbarrow full of money to buy stuff. You don't need a wheelbarrow to take Bitcoin to the store. You need a device that is connected to the internet. That is all.

the biggest impact the gox implosion will have is heavy regulation. the bitcoin protocol is fine. all the hardcore bitcoiners are still gonna hold.

however, if a few people have that large of a % of the bitcoins in existence, it absolutely puts downward pressure on the market. they likely wouldn't dump them all at once, but they could still keep the price lower by selling 10k a month. they could also easily crash the market whenever they want. I highly doubt any exchange has enough liquidity to absorb that kind of coin. so, there might be a chance to buy some cheap btc sometime in the near future. long-term, it should have no impact.

btw, I still don't believe they lost that many btc due to malleabilty. if they are down 750k btc, they must have lost a private key. if this is the case, the price of bitcoin should go up. the outcome of this mt gox business shouldn't impact the long-term viability of bitcoin, but its short-term impact on price could be huge.

Why would people who have a huge position in Bitcoin want to dump? Besides the FBI?

I'm pretty sure this is correct...

The bitcoin protocol accepts some types of incorrectly formed transactions. The transactions aren't encoded totally correctly but correctly enough that they are allowed to go through.

As a result it is possible for a 3rd party to alter a transaction in a way that changes its ID without invalidating it.

MtGox was using the transaction ID to identify and verify transactions. So, someone could alter transactions, changing their ID without invalidating them as far as the bitcoin network is concerned BUT MtGox would then think that their original transaction did not go through. MtGox would then resend the transaction with different source coins. Doh!

MtGox should not have been using the transaction ID to verify transactions. There are other ways to do it that are reliable.

Details on Reddit here.

http://www.businessinsider.com/senat...oin-ban-2014-2

Dont regulate me bro.

This is wrong in that saying they are incorrectly formed. They are formed fine. What changed is non-standard versions of the transactions were rejected by the network at most point. They were still valid, but just were not propagated. Anyone who saw this could "Fix" the transaction so it did get propagated.


This is correct.

This is correct.

This is correct.

OH NOES, THE DEFLATION!

much like all technologies used by the average person, lots of tools will be developed to make bitcoin easier/simpler to use.

here are but two ideas:

payment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu7tMD3ufKI

storage:
http://www.getnymi.com/
http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/04/nymi-bitcoin/

Haha, even I can laugh at that

I was giving an example of a system with similar process, it would be difficult to have a seamless exchange or the like without giving a third party full control of the BTC

You must have not understood me or something if you send fiat to a brokerage which trades securities or other financial vehicles you no longer have direct control over said fiat

If you send your BTC to an exchange you no longer have full control over this BTC, there aren't many ways to have an exchange without entrusting some entity

Apparently the same person asking to ban BTC has tried back in 2011, I doubt Janet Yellen will take something with an 8b market cap seriously, and to my knowledge bitcoin hasn't been banned anywhere other than russia

monkeys like this guy are too stupid to understand that crypocurrencies are here to stay and there's nothing anyone can do about it

maybe put Vietnam on the list

http://en.vietnam.vn/Spotlightview/N...n-Vietnam.html

and therein lies the problem. this image does nothing but play on the emotions of people who will now also think that mark karpeles is an awful webmaster in addition to being a fat frappucino loving bitcoin stealing scammer.

the extent to which he is being used as a scapegoat right now is ridiculous. it's quite sad that everyone in the bitcoin community would rather burn him at the stake given that we don't even know if he is guilty of anything yet other than being incompetent at PR. he is also at least partially right in that transaction malleability is a fault within the bitcoin protocol since the disclosure caused virtually every exchange to shut down temporarily. in doing so he generated discussion and prevented more people from losing more money. but now everyone wants to take a potshot at him at any given opportunity. this image is an example of that.