It has "nothing" to do with BTC itself, but it shows that there certainly is a market for mobile currency, even in an area in which most people do not have bank accounts. If BTC reaches the ease of use of something like M-Pesa, it immediately becomes the best "banking" option for millions around the globe.

I pretty much think it'll go either way. 100 times or zip.

@spidercrab,

Basically what @happy_fish said.

ToothSaber asked for realistic potential base of buyers and possible market cap and I wanted to show that it is possible to reach trillions if BTC is developed in the right direction.

for the Canadians who like some transparency, preemptive compliance and publicly known CEO's.

CaVirtex update: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qETYr2EsiI

Among other things, CEO Joseph David speaks about VirtEx's recently-acquired MSB licence and will be at the Bitcoin expo in Toronto from April 11-13: http://bitcoinexpo.ca/v2/

question about the gox "stolen" coins

are the transactions where the hackers essentially stole the coins not in the blockchain?

The way I understand it, the transactions themselves are in the blockchain. The problem was that Gox was looking for them under different transaction IDs, and when those IDs didn't show up, they were adjusting customer balances to compensate, because they assumed the transactions were never processed.

It's not that simple, these places have rent to pay and workers manually pushing through the payments, they go out of business long before they can do it as cheaply as a decentralized method.

BTC transaction is way less than $1 btw, right now it's between like 6 cents and free, depending if you want to wait a few minutes.

JP Morgan can probably do it pretty cheaply within their own database, but still at some cost, and most of the world doesn't have a JP Morgan account anyways.

so can the transactiosn never be identified as the ones where the coins were 'stolen'?

Totally forgot to reply to that part of the post, but this is exactly what I would have said, only phrased better

Hey Guys, hope you are all well. I was wondering where would be the best place to buy less than one bitcoin. i am looking to transfer 100 pound into bitcoins. but since one bitcoin is 450 or so, what is the best method/site?

Bitstamp imo, but if you don't wanna go through the hassle of getting an account verified (need to send in docs and can take a week or more) then localbitcoins. You'll pay a much larger price for bitcoins if you use local

this is good reasoning, and it's also the reason it's laughable for anyone who has some money sitting around not to invest at least a small portion in bitcoin.

assuming a return of 10%/year (madoff "generated" approx. this amount per year consistently for his clients; this is the reason everyone was throwing money at him prior to the discovery of his scam), $1,000 now = ~$2,600 in the year 2024.

if we assume that one bitcoin will be worth either $60,000 or $0 by the year 2024, the first scenario doesn't need to happen very often in order for bitcoin to be the superior investment (plus, as implied, 10%/year is an absurdly generous benchmark). i just crunched some numbers, and the answer is under 3%.

I (usually) way disagree with the bulls that we're going to see crazy prices anytime soon, but to say that bitcoin is either $0.1 or $10k within 5 years is just laughable to me and really just represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the technology imo.

what are you saying here? that it's not going to be either zero or moon and it's perfectly likely for it to be ~$500 in 5 years?

Pascal's wager ITT

If you ask someone that's been involved since 2010 we have been seeing crazy prices for the last year or more.

not exactly.

Bitcoin has utilities that transcend its absolute value in USD. Those utilities were the same as it were in 2011 as they are today. The difference is the infrastructure of which you can manipulate those utilities today is far greater. Everyday people are realizing it is becoming more and more advantageous to consider Bitcoin as a payment method.

So for people to come out and say that it'll either be worth 0.01 usd or 10k usd just really have no clue what they are talking about.

Bitcoin at $10 in 2011 and 2012 was far far more speculative than Bitcoin @ 600 today.

for it to be worth 0.01usd would basically mean that something catastrophic for it to happen, such as a break in cryptography (which is highly unlikely as Bitcoin utilizes double sha2 and well as other hash functions). Academically, no one has been able to even sniff breaking single sha2.


Bitcoin has a floor, and it's not anywhere near $0.01 or worthless or nothing.

this argument has been brought up before by you in this thread, but you never listed any examples as to what infrastructure exists that will transcend laws in the event of "negative" regulation.

the people saying it will be worth 10k or nothing just mean that bitcoin's success will be binary. it will be worth nothing if america makes it illegal (0.01 USD). it will be worth a lot if america makes it legal (10k USD).

what does the statement of "far more speculative at $10 in 2011 and 2012" even mean? nothing with regards to likelihood of bitcoin's success has changed. the value of bitcoin still mostly comes from speculators that will divest in the event of regulations that will seem to stand in the way of that success.

or america deeming it illegal. which isn't even that unlikely.

america deems bitcoin illegal, let me think about that for a second.

Tons has changed from 2011 to 2014. Now you can actually see the innovation from the community. ATMs, more secure wallets, debit cards. These things were only an idea in 2011 but will now almost certainly see the light of day. That alone makes 2014 BTC less of a speculation, because the 'future' technology is more than just a possibility.

Also, even if America "banned" BTC it wouldn't go to worthless. America is low on the list of markets for BTC. Just like when America banned online poker, it didn't go away.

ok im done thinking:


bitcoin doesnt need america

the more bitcoin-based businesses that can pop up and jobs that can be created due to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies before america makes any decision on the matter will make it insurmountably more difficult for them to go ahead and make it illegal and essentially cut thousands of jobs

While you were thinking, your pony was deemed too slow.

This is also true. If the USA bans BTC companies, it just means they will go elsewhere. There's a reason there's not a US-based exchange, and it's not because people don't want to be based in the USA. Compliance alone makes it not worth the headache unless you have incredibly deep pockets.

lets be very very clear here, america is not going to expressively ban bitcoin.


they can restrict it in a way that makes bitcoin entering america difficult, but expressively banning it takes an unbelievable amount of effort and push that i do not think anyone possesses.