Bitcoins - anyone else mining? (1 Viewer)

[identikit]

You must have been taken off ignore, Dr J!

 

[DrJ]

And really another aspect that needs to be considered is why is it "less secure" to use your credit card? Because they want it to be - the amount of theft that happens isn't worth the inconvenience and cost of implementing stronger measures. There have been attempts to make this more secure and the consumer rejected them. They want you to be spending your money.

Your average person isn't interested in security at the sacrifice of convenience. This is the same rule of thumb you use when applying security in a company. Consumers will for the most part reject any attempts at security if it makes their lives more difficult. Another consideration is how much does the security cost? How much risk does this help me mitigate? If it costs more than you gain, well that's clearly a waste of money.

This stuff is entirely inconvenient to hold and spend. So inconvenient that this isn't worth any additional security that it provides. And for the average consumer it's actually less secure because they're responsible for providing many aspects of security themselves. This is also why I don't buy the whole cloud computing security concerns too much for the average person either. You mean to tell me you were doing a better job of securing your stuff than Amazon? Yeah, right... The only argument you can really make is that Amazon is a more target rich environment and no one actually has a reason to try and hack your stupid computer. Until you have a bunch of digital currency you're storing of course.

I see reversibility as a big piece of security from the consumer's perspective.

Another one we could add to this list is price stability. Security is pretty much the act of mitigating risk, and there's nothing less risky than putting your money into something that halves in value by the next day.

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

And really another aspect that needs to be considered is why is it "less secure" to use your credit card? Because they want it to be - the amount of theft that happens isn't worth the inconvenience and cost of implementing stronger measures. There have been attempts to make this more secure and the consumer rejected them. They want you to be spending your money.

Your average person isn't interested in security at the sacrifice of convenience. This is the same rule of thumb you use when applying security in a company. Consumers will for the most part reject any attempts at security if it makes their lives more difficult. Another consideration is how much does the security cost? How much risk does this help me mitigate? If it costs more than you gain, well that's clearly a waste of money.

This stuff is entirely inconvenient to hold and spend. So inconvenient that this isn't worth any additional security that it provides. And for the average consumer it's actually less secure because they're responsible for providing many aspects of security themselves. This is also why I don't buy the whole cloud computing security concerns too much for the average person either. You mean to tell me you were doing a better job of securing your stuff than Amazon? Yeah, right... The only argument you can really make is that Amazon is a more target rich environment and no one actually has a reason to try and hack your stupid computer. Until you have a bunch of digital currency you're storing of course.

I see reversibility as a big piece of security from the consumer's perspective.

One of the main reasons you need reversibility is the inherent flaw in the current credit card system which doesn't exist in bitcoin, fraud. Why do you think it is so easy to steal credit card numbers?

Bitcoin doesn't do anything about the very real possibility that vendors defraud consumers. In fact, it worsens it.

How many tangents are you going to launch? Is it more likely for vendors to defraud consumers or consumers trying to defraud vendors, who has more at stake to lose? There are solutions within bitcoin such as escrow.

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

That would be a welcome change. While he is at it, he can talk about how coloredcoins will enforce contract law instead of just linking to a website about colored coins.

Or perhaps instead of just adding snarky comments in this thread you could contribute, but that's probably too much to ask

I'll take that as a no.

When you buy a share of stock what do you get? Currently the certificate would be more like just an entry in their database or accounting system, or a piece of paper or something. With colored coins, the certificate and proof of ownership is stored directly in the block chain and can be freely traded without need for some sort of stock exchange. How does having a digital representation of that piece of paper change your argument? I'm sure there may be details to be worked out, but if that's what you are complaining about then you are just nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking.

This doesn't at all address the need for having lawyers create and enforce contracts, it just changes the token.

The transition of always needing lawyers to never needing a lawyer isn't 1 -> 0. You keep asserting that bitcoin has no value since it cannot immediately reach its potential today/tomorrow, its a gradual change. You don't need lawyers to do 1 thing and always 1 thing. Hell I have a dozen lawyer friends, whenever I ask one of them for advice 9 times out of 10 they say they cannot help me since it is not in their area of expertise. Let's say lawyers can do 100 different tasks to pick a finite number. All 100 tasks are not going to be replaced by the utility of bitcoin today or tomorrow, it is pointless for you to simplify the transition.

 

[Slapdash]

And really another aspect that needs to be considered is why is it "less secure" to use your credit card? Because they want it to be - the amount of theft that happens isn't worth the inconvenience and cost of implementing stronger measures. There have been attempts to make this more secure and the consumer rejected them. They want you to be spending your money.

Your average person isn't interested in security at the sacrifice of convenience. This is the same rule of thumb you use when applying security in a company. Consumers will for the most part reject any attempts at security if it makes their lives more difficult. Another consideration is how much does the security cost? How much risk does this help me mitigate? If it costs more than you gain, well that's clearly a waste of money.

This stuff is entirely inconvenient to hold and spend. So inconvenient that this isn't worth any additional security that it provides. And for the average consumer it's actually less secure because they're responsible for providing many aspects of security themselves. This is also why I don't buy the whole cloud computing security concerns too much for the average person either. You mean to tell me you were doing a better job of securing your stuff than Amazon? Yeah, right... The only argument you can really make is that Amazon is a more target rich environment and no one actually has a reason to try and hack your stupid computer. Until you have a bunch of digital currency you're storing of course.

I see reversibility as a big piece of security from the consumer's perspective.

One of the main reasons you need reversibility is the inherent flaw in the current credit card system which doesn't exist in bitcoin, fraud. Why do you think it is so easy to steal credit card numbers?

Bitcoin doesn't do anything about the very real possibility that vendors defraud consumers. In fact, it worsens it.

How many tangents are you going to launch? Is it more likely for vendors to defraud consumers or consumers trying to defraud vendors, who has more at stake to lose? There are solutions within bitcoin such as escrow.

Its the same point that you don't address. Bitcoin escrow services charge fees commiserate or higher than credit cards.

 

[Slapdash]

That would be a welcome change. While he is at it, he can talk about how coloredcoins will enforce contract law instead of just linking to a website about colored coins.

Or perhaps instead of just adding snarky comments in this thread you could contribute, but that's probably too much to ask

I'll take that as a no.

When you buy a share of stock what do you get? Currently the certificate would be more like just an entry in their database or accounting system, or a piece of paper or something. With colored coins, the certificate and proof of ownership is stored directly in the block chain and can be freely traded without need for some sort of stock exchange. How does having a digital representation of that piece of paper change your argument? I'm sure there may be details to be worked out, but if that's what you are complaining about then you are just nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking.

This doesn't at all address the need for having lawyers create and enforce contracts, it just changes the token.

The transition of always needing lawyers to never needing a lawyer isn't 1 -> 0. You keep asserting that bitcoin has no value since it cannot immediately reach its potential today/tomorrow, its a gradual change. You don't need lawyers to do 1 thing and always 1 thing. Hell I have a dozen lawyer friends, whenever I ask one of them for advice 9 times out of 10 they say they cannot help me since it is not in their area of expertise. Let's say lawyers can do 100 different tasks to pick a finite number. All 100 tasks are not going to be replaced by the utility of bitcoin today or tomorrow, it is pointless for you to simplify the transition.

So your only answer is that it will find a way to replace those services even if you can't speak to why? You're the one who mentioned it in conjunction with real estate transactions, so it should be expected you can give an answer.

I assert that bitcoin is of no value because it is an extremely volatile currency controlled by its creators. It is a bubble designed to attract people with certain belief sets.

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

And really another aspect that needs to be considered is why is it "less secure" to use your credit card? Because they want it to be - the amount of theft that happens isn't worth the inconvenience and cost of implementing stronger measures. There have been attempts to make this more secure and the consumer rejected them. They want you to be spending your money.

Your average person isn't interested in security at the sacrifice of convenience. This is the same rule of thumb you use when applying security in a company. Consumers will for the most part reject any attempts at security if it makes their lives more difficult. Another consideration is how much does the security cost? How much risk does this help me mitigate? If it costs more than you gain, well that's clearly a waste of money.

This stuff is entirely inconvenient to hold and spend. So inconvenient that this isn't worth any additional security that it provides. And for the average consumer it's actually less secure because they're responsible for providing many aspects of security themselves. This is also why I don't buy the whole cloud computing security concerns too much for the average person either. You mean to tell me you were doing a better job of securing your stuff than Amazon? Yeah, right... The only argument you can really make is that Amazon is a more target rich environment and no one actually has a reason to try and hack your stupid computer. Until you have a bunch of digital currency you're storing of course.

I see reversibility as a big piece of security from the consumer's perspective.

One of the main reasons you need reversibility is the inherent flaw in the current credit card system which doesn't exist in bitcoin, fraud. Why do you think it is so easy to steal credit card numbers?

Bitcoin doesn't do anything about the very real possibility that vendors defraud consumers. In fact, it worsens it.

How many tangents are you going to launch? Is it more likely for vendors to defraud consumers or consumers trying to defraud vendors, who has more at stake to lose? There are solutions within bitcoin such as escrow.

Its the same point that you don't address. Bitcoin escrow services charge fees commiserate or higher than credit cards.

Reversing charges because someone stole your credit card information, something that has happened to me a lot more than reversing a charge because I got scammed by buying something off of Amazon that never shipped are two totally different points.

In the first point credit card companies have higher fees to offset fraud.

In the second point credit card companies don't pay the vendor. Which brings me to what prevents a consumer from saying they never received an item from the Vendor and reversing the charge and not having to pay for it?

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

That would be a welcome change. While he is at it, he can talk about how coloredcoins will enforce contract law instead of just linking to a website about colored coins.

Or perhaps instead of just adding snarky comments in this thread you could contribute, but that's probably too much to ask

I'll take that as a no.

When you buy a share of stock what do you get? Currently the certificate would be more like just an entry in their database or accounting system, or a piece of paper or something. With colored coins, the certificate and proof of ownership is stored directly in the block chain and can be freely traded without need for some sort of stock exchange. How does having a digital representation of that piece of paper change your argument? I'm sure there may be details to be worked out, but if that's what you are complaining about then you are just nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking.

This doesn't at all address the need for having lawyers create and enforce contracts, it just changes the token.

The transition of always needing lawyers to never needing a lawyer isn't 1 -> 0. You keep asserting that bitcoin has no value since it cannot immediately reach its potential today/tomorrow, its a gradual change. You don't need lawyers to do 1 thing and always 1 thing. Hell I have a dozen lawyer friends, whenever I ask one of them for advice 9 times out of 10 they say they cannot help me since it is not in their area of expertise. Let's say lawyers can do 100 different tasks to pick a finite number. All 100 tasks are not going to be replaced by the utility of bitcoin today or tomorrow, it is pointless for you to simplify the transition.

So your only answer is that it will find a way to replace those services even if you can't speak to why? You're the one who mentioned it in conjunction with real estate transactions, so it should be expected you can give an answer.

I assert that bitcoin is of no value because it is an extremely volatile currency controlled by its creators. It is a bubble designed to attract people with certain belief sets.

I'm not the one speaking in very vague terms here. You act like lawyers perform 1 function.

 

[Slapdash]

That would be a welcome change. While he is at it, he can talk about how coloredcoins will enforce contract law instead of just linking to a website about colored coins.

Or perhaps instead of just adding snarky comments in this thread you could contribute, but that's probably too much to ask

I'll take that as a no.

When you buy a share of stock what do you get? Currently the certificate would be more like just an entry in their database or accounting system, or a piece of paper or something. With colored coins, the certificate and proof of ownership is stored directly in the block chain and can be freely traded without need for some sort of stock exchange. How does having a digital representation of that piece of paper change your argument? I'm sure there may be details to be worked out, but if that's what you are complaining about then you are just nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking.

This doesn't at all address the need for having lawyers create and enforce contracts, it just changes the token.

The transition of always needing lawyers to never needing a lawyer isn't 1 -> 0. You keep asserting that bitcoin has no value since it cannot immediately reach its potential today/tomorrow, its a gradual change. You don't need lawyers to do 1 thing and always 1 thing. Hell I have a dozen lawyer friends, whenever I ask one of them for advice 9 times out of 10 they say they cannot help me since it is not in their area of expertise. Let's say lawyers can do 100 different tasks to pick a finite number. All 100 tasks are not going to be replaced by the utility of bitcoin today or tomorrow, it is pointless for you to simplify the transition.

So your only answer is that it will find a way to replace those services even if you can't speak to why? You're the one who mentioned it in conjunction with real estate transactions, so it should be expected you can give an answer.

I assert that bitcoin is of no value because it is an extremely volatile currency controlled by its creators. It is a bubble designed to attract people with certain belief sets.

I'm not the one speaking in very vague terms here. You act like lawyers perform 1 function.

No. I act like I expect you to expansion how bitcoins replace the function you asserted they would to another poster.

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

That would be a welcome change. While he is at it, he can talk about how coloredcoins will enforce contract law instead of just linking to a website about colored coins.

Or perhaps instead of just adding snarky comments in this thread you could contribute, but that's probably too much to ask

I'll take that as a no.

When you buy a share of stock what do you get? Currently the certificate would be more like just an entry in their database or accounting system, or a piece of paper or something. With colored coins, the certificate and proof of ownership is stored directly in the block chain and can be freely traded without need for some sort of stock exchange. How does having a digital representation of that piece of paper change your argument? I'm sure there may be details to be worked out, but if that's what you are complaining about then you are just nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking.

This doesn't at all address the need for having lawyers create and enforce contracts, it just changes the token.

The transition of always needing lawyers to never needing a lawyer isn't 1 -> 0. You keep asserting that bitcoin has no value since it cannot immediately reach its potential today/tomorrow, its a gradual change. You don't need lawyers to do 1 thing and always 1 thing. Hell I have a dozen lawyer friends, whenever I ask one of them for advice 9 times out of 10 they say they cannot help me since it is not in their area of expertise. Let's say lawyers can do 100 different tasks to pick a finite number. All 100 tasks are not going to be replaced by the utility of bitcoin today or tomorrow, it is pointless for you to simplify the transition.

So your only answer is that it will find a way to replace those services even if you can't speak to why? You're the one who mentioned it in conjunction with real estate transactions, so it should be expected you can give an answer.

I assert that bitcoin is of no value because it is an extremely volatile currency controlled by its creators. It is a bubble designed to attract people with certain belief sets.

I'm not the one speaking in very vague terms here. You act like lawyers perform 1 function.

No. I act like I expect you to expansion how bitcoins replace the function you asserted they would to another poster.

"the function"How many times do I need to say it is not an all-or nothing transition that happens immediately? You are taking something I said and simplifying it to the point of absurdity.

 

[cstu]

If you truly want a digital currency that everyone uses, how about giving - not making people with the most powerful computers "mine" for them - one coin to everyone who signs up on their computer (one per IP address) within a limited period?

So make everyone rich? Sorry your posts just sound like outright jealousy.

I don't care about making anyone rich and the point of digital currency is not to make people rich anyway. Bitcoin has been corrupted from its original purpose.

Do you understand what Proof-of-Work is and why it is necessary?

It's not actually necessary for a digital currency to implement Proof of Work in the same way bitcoin has. The difficulty of mining could be kept extremely easy to everyone could obtain their one coin. The idea that people have to use electricity and computing power to give bitcoins value is honestly ridiculous.

How do you know the dollar bill in your wallet is authentic? Why were so many resources used to ensure it is difficult to counterfeit? The proof of work is utilized in the same way, to prevent easy counterfeiting of the currency. There is no central authority on Bitcoin, the proof of work is used so that nobody has to trust anybody else. That's why proof of work is required. In your example making the problem easy to solve would mean someone could make a chain of hundreds of thousands of blocks to profit off of the block rewards.

Proof of work is a good system but it's unnecessary to increase the difficulty. You may think it matters that computing power is expended in the production of bitcoins but it doesn't.

You'll need to explain this more, I have no idea what you are trying to say. If it was easy to manufacture bitcoins what is to prevent someone from counterfeiting them? Advances in hardware make it easier to counterfeit over time.

The first bitcoins made when the difficulty was 1 are no less secure than the ones mined today with a difficulty over a billion. The security comes from every bitcoin transaction being recorded on a public record.

 

[Slapdash]

And really another aspect that needs to be considered is why is it "less secure" to use your credit card? Because they want it to be - the amount of theft that happens isn't worth the inconvenience and cost of implementing stronger measures. There have been attempts to make this more secure and the consumer rejected them. They want you to be spending your money.

Your average person isn't interested in security at the sacrifice of convenience. This is the same rule of thumb you use when applying security in a company. Consumers will for the most part reject any attempts at security if it makes their lives more difficult. Another consideration is how much does the security cost? How much risk does this help me mitigate? If it costs more than you gain, well that's clearly a waste of money.

This stuff is entirely inconvenient to hold and spend. So inconvenient that this isn't worth any additional security that it provides. And for the average consumer it's actually less secure because they're responsible for providing many aspects of security themselves. This is also why I don't buy the whole cloud computing security concerns too much for the average person either. You mean to tell me you were doing a better job of securing your stuff than Amazon? Yeah, right... The only argument you can really make is that Amazon is a more target rich environment and no one actually has a reason to try and hack your stupid computer. Until you have a bunch of digital currency you're storing of course.

I see reversibility as a big piece of security from the consumer's perspective.

One of the main reasons you need reversibility is the inherent flaw in the current credit card system which doesn't exist in bitcoin, fraud. Why do you think it is so easy to steal credit card numbers?

Bitcoin doesn't do anything about the very real possibility that vendors defraud consumers. In fact, it worsens it.

How many tangents are you going to launch? Is it more likely for vendors to defraud consumers or consumers trying to defraud vendors, who has more at stake to lose? There are solutions within bitcoin such as escrow.

Its the same point that you don't address. Bitcoin escrow services charge fees commiserate or higher than credit cards.

Reversing charges because someone stole your credit card information, something that has happened to me a lot more than reversing a charge because I got scammed by buying something off of Amazon that never shipped are two totally different points.

In the first point credit card companies have higher fees to offset fraud.

In the second point credit card companies don't pay the vendor. Which brings me to what prevents a consumer from saying they never received an item from the Vendor and reversing the charge and not having to pay for it?

They charge higher fees for numerous reason including protecting against fraud, operating the network, attracting customers, profitability and etc. No reason to believe that an exchange or company performing similar services will somehow not charge for them. Or more given the lack of trust in the system and exchange price risk

 

[Slapdash]

That would be a welcome change. While he is at it, he can talk about how coloredcoins will enforce contract law instead of just linking to a website about colored coins.

Or perhaps instead of just adding snarky comments in this thread you could contribute, but that's probably too much to ask

I'll take that as a no.

When you buy a share of stock what do you get? Currently the certificate would be more like just an entry in their database or accounting system, or a piece of paper or something. With colored coins, the certificate and proof of ownership is stored directly in the block chain and can be freely traded without need for some sort of stock exchange. How does having a digital representation of that piece of paper change your argument? I'm sure there may be details to be worked out, but if that's what you are complaining about then you are just nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking.

This doesn't at all address the need for having lawyers create and enforce contracts, it just changes the token.

The transition of always needing lawyers to never needing a lawyer isn't 1 -> 0. You keep asserting that bitcoin has no value since it cannot immediately reach its potential today/tomorrow, its a gradual change. You don't need lawyers to do 1 thing and always 1 thing. Hell I have a dozen lawyer friends, whenever I ask one of them for advice 9 times out of 10 they say they cannot help me since it is not in their area of expertise. Let's say lawyers can do 100 different tasks to pick a finite number. All 100 tasks are not going to be replaced by the utility of bitcoin today or tomorrow, it is pointless for you to simplify the transition.

So your only answer is that it will find a way to replace those services even if you can't speak to why? You're the one who mentioned it in conjunction with real estate transactions, so it should be expected you can give an answer.

I assert that bitcoin is of no value because it is an extremely volatile currency controlled by its creators. It is a bubble designed to attract people with certain belief sets.

I'm not the one speaking in very vague terms here. You act like lawyers perform 1 function.

No. I act like I expect you to expansion how bitcoins replace the function you asserted they would to another poster.

"the function"How many times do I need to say it is not an all-or nothing transition that happens immediately? You are taking something I said and simplifying it to the point of absurdity.

You should just admit you can't explain how they would replace lawyers in the example you gave.

 

[[icon]]

JOJO,

Serious question. I've noticed your responses have become more frantic and agitated in tone. Does the fact that every single other person in this thread feels that Dr J is making far more valid points even begin to make you at least re-evaluate your stance... or have you gone full on ostrich with this one?

I'll hang up and listen.

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

"the function"

How many times do I need to say it is not an all-or nothing transition that happens immediately? You are taking something I said and simplifying it to the point of absurdity.

You should just admit you can't explain how they would replace lawyers in the example you gave.

You should just admit that you are asking for something very vague that cannot be fully explained in a reply to the detail of your satisfaction, I can see why chet ignored you.

The real estate example I cited involved microtransactions, say each transaction was valued at a 1 dollar share of the property. The contracts could be simplified to the point to manage that microtransaction where there would be no profit left for lawyers to invest their time, their services would not be needed. You are asking me to explain the details of this contract, you are asking for the impossible and ignoring the big picture just to provoke. Day 1 you cannot sell a house in a series of microtransactions, it is a gradual process, maybe it is broken into 4 pieces or maybe 10 pieces in this first iteration of this process, maybe the value is such where it makes sense to hire a lawyer to protect your vested interest in this large transaction. If you cannot grasp this abstract concept then I cannot help you.

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

JOJO,

Serious question. I've noticed your responses have become more frantic and agitated in tone. Does the fact that every single other person in this thread feels that Dr J is making far more valid points even begin to make you at least re-evaluate your stance... or have you gone full on ostrich with this one?

I'll hang up and listen.

Yes I have become more agitated in tone, it's pointless to fight mob mentality, I should just leave this thread alone and let you guys pat each other on the back for pointing out Bitcoins is a ponzi scheme which has to be the most ridiculous statement made in this thread.

 

[DrJ]

If you truly want a digital currency that everyone uses, how about giving - not making people with the most powerful computers "mine" for them - one coin to everyone who signs up on their computer (one per IP address) within a limited period?

So make everyone rich? Sorry your posts just sound like outright jealousy.

I don't care about making anyone rich and the point of digital currency is not to make people rich anyway. Bitcoin has been corrupted from its original purpose.

Do you understand what Proof-of-Work is and why it is necessary?

It's not actually necessary for a digital currency to implement Proof of Work in the same way bitcoin has. The difficulty of mining could be kept extremely easy to everyone could obtain their one coin. The idea that people have to use electricity and computing power to give bitcoins value is honestly ridiculous.

How do you know the dollar bill in your wallet is authentic? Why were so many resources used to ensure it is difficult to counterfeit? The proof of work is utilized in the same way, to prevent easy counterfeiting of the currency. There is no central authority on Bitcoin, the proof of work is used so that nobody has to trust anybody else. That's why proof of work is required. In your example making the problem easy to solve would mean someone could make a chain of hundreds of thousands of blocks to profit off of the block rewards.

Proof of work is a good system but it's unnecessary to increase the difficulty. You may think it matters that computing power is expended in the production of bitcoins but it doesn't.

You'll need to explain this more, I have no idea what you are trying to say. If it was easy to manufacture bitcoins what is to prevent someone from counterfeiting them? Advances in hardware make it easier to counterfeit over time.

The first bitcoins made when the difficulty was 1 are no less secure than the ones mined today with a difficulty over a billion. The security comes from every bitcoin transaction being recorded on a public record.

There's really no way to actually counterfeit bitcoins. That statement alone demonstrates a complete lack of understanding behind how it works.

The block chain is going to put them out at a given rate, period, and it's going to give it to the person that solves the problem fastest. And by solving, we mean doing a bunch of random hashes against something until you find the right one. Even the slowest computer in the world acting alone will actually get some bitcoins over time mathematically. He'll have randomly gotten the answer faster than anyone else every now and then - it just happens to be a gigantically long period of time with increased competition and not even worth the electricity you spent during the process. Even at $1,000 a bitcoin. Your odds are better in the lottery.

The security you're talking about owes itself to the decentralized aspect and no one controlling over 50%. The entity that solves the problem quickest then has to incorporate the transactions into the block chain it seems, and he gets that seeing a consensus from the other nodes. If someone gets over 50% they control the consensus and can start double spending. They still aren't going to be able to print up all of the money, put any new money into circulation or any of that. But they're going to be able to wreak havoc on the integrity of the transactions happening and double spend money and things. This is about as deep as I understand it currently.

So people throwing all of their computing power at this has absolutely nothing to do with any of this. The driver behind that is the deflationary aspect of the currency. There's going to be less and less of this over time, and it's going to cost more and more power to mine this over time due to increased competition, I want to throw everything I can at this right now while it's easy to get relative to what it'll be in the future. Gold or any other commodity you can think of doesn't really function like this. The only logical thing to do if you believe in bitcoin is to throw everything you can at acquiring it and never spend any of it.

But beyond that there are a host of security concerns that our traditional banking system has learned to solve over time that this has no ability to deal with and jojo really has no answer to other than "well, those people were just stupid". How do you protect your entire life savings due to the irreversible and anonymous aspects of the whole thing? People are putting out malware to steal your stuff, and even people that know what they're doing security wise have gotten them stolen. They are far from stupid and understand technology far better than jojo, and they've still been robbed. So now everyone stores them in offline "savings vaults", like the process I linked. Those can't be trusted entirely either, so you need to make about 6 copies (making sure that you remove all sources of power, your battery from your laptop, and other nutty things during this process), put together a novel that only you know and use to encrypt it and recite it every day, send copies to your best friends, make sure that you do this regularly so that bit rot doesn't wipe things out, etc, etc. And storing it offline still doesn't protect you from key loggers, people looking over your shoulder, people that show up with Uzi's. The bitcoin mine had about 15 layers of security including being in a fortress, with armed guards, bulletproof glass, man cages. You can try and put it in a "bank" or someone that claims to specialize in securing these - lots of people have done that and then the bank loses millions with no ability to track down who did it or get them back. And this has happened a bunch of times to a bunch of different "banks, exchanges, etc".

And these also the fact that once someone breaks AES-256 encryption the whole thing is screwed.

 

[Slapdash]

"the function"

How many times do I need to say it is not an all-or nothing transition that happens immediately? You are taking something I said and simplifying it to the point of absurdity.

You should just admit you can't explain how they would replace lawyers in the example you gave.

You should just admit that you are asking for something very vague that cannot be fully explained in a reply to the detail of your satisfaction, I can see why chet ignored you.

The real estate example I cited involved microtransactions, say each transaction was valued at a 1 dollar share of the property. The contracts could be simplified to the point to manage that microtransaction where there would be no profit left for lawyers to invest their time, their services would not be needed. You are asking me to explain the details of this contract, you are asking for the impossible and ignoring the big picture just to provoke. Day 1 you cannot sell a house in a series of microtransactions, it is a gradual process, maybe it is broken into 4 pieces or maybe 10 pieces in this first iteration of this process, maybe the value is such where it makes sense to hire a lawyer to protect your vested interest in this large transaction. If you cannot grasp this abstract concept then I cannot help you.

You made vague claims you can't back up. I get how the microtransactions remove the mortgage company, but not the lawyer aspect. This doesn't describe why bitcoins remove the need for people to create, govern, and enforce real estate contracts.

Chet ignored me because he is a baby who doesn't bring anything besides acting like a condescending #####. Not new shtick for him.

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

"the function"

How many times do I need to say it is not an all-or nothing transition that happens immediately? You are taking something I said and simplifying it to the point of absurdity.

You should just admit you can't explain how they would replace lawyers in the example you gave.

You should just admit that you are asking for something very vague that cannot be fully explained in a reply to the detail of your satisfaction, I can see why chet ignored you.

The real estate example I cited involved microtransactions, say each transaction was valued at a 1 dollar share of the property. The contracts could be simplified to the point to manage that microtransaction where there would be no profit left for lawyers to invest their time, their services would not be needed. You are asking me to explain the details of this contract, you are asking for the impossible and ignoring the big picture just to provoke. Day 1 you cannot sell a house in a series of microtransactions, it is a gradual process, maybe it is broken into 4 pieces or maybe 10 pieces in this first iteration of this process, maybe the value is such where it makes sense to hire a lawyer to protect your vested interest in this large transaction. If you cannot grasp this abstract concept then I cannot help you.

You made vague claims you can't back up. I get how the microtransactions remove the mortgage company, but not the lawyer aspect. This doesn't describe why bitcoins remove the need for people to create, govern, and enforce real estate contracts.

Chet ignored me because he is a baby who doesn't bring anything besides acting like a condescending #####. Not new shtick for him.

By removing the mortgage company that also removes any legal documents associated with that transaction, this is what I meant by gradual. If one can continue to erode at this dependence on legal resources it should be easy to see how the profits taken by lawyers will also shrink. I never said this removes the entire legal system. If something goes wrong and you need to go to court then yes, go ahead and hire a lawyer. The anticipation is you will have to go to court less frequently for very large cases since the property has essentially been broken down into smaller more manageable units instead of 1 extremely valuable unit of ownership that changes hands in 1 large contract.

 

[Maelstrom]

"the function"

How many times do I need to say it is not an all-or nothing transition that happens immediately? You are taking something I said and simplifying it to the point of absurdity.

You should just admit you can't explain how they would replace lawyers in the example you gave.

You should just admit that you are asking for something very vague that cannot be fully explained in a reply to the detail of your satisfaction, I can see why chet ignored you.

The real estate example I cited involved microtransactions, say each transaction was valued at a 1 dollar share of the property. The contracts could be simplified to the point to manage that microtransaction where there would be no profit left for lawyers to invest their time, their services would not be needed. You are asking me to explain the details of this contract, you are asking for the impossible and ignoring the big picture just to provoke. Day 1 you cannot sell a house in a series of microtransactions, it is a gradual process, maybe it is broken into 4 pieces or maybe 10 pieces in this first iteration of this process, maybe the value is such where it makes sense to hire a lawyer to protect your vested interest in this large transaction. If you cannot grasp this abstract concept then I cannot help you.

You made vague claims you can't back up. I get how the microtransactions remove the mortgage company, but not the lawyer aspect. This doesn't describe why bitcoins remove the need for people to create, govern, and enforce real estate contracts.

Chet ignored me because he is a baby who doesn't bring anything besides acting like a condescending #####. Not new shtick for him.

By removing the mortgage company that also removes any legal documents associated with that transaction, this is what I meant by gradual. If one can continue to erode at this dependence on legal resources it should be easy to see how the profits taken by lawyers will also shrink. I never said this removes the entire legal system. If something goes wrong and you need to go to court then yes, go ahead and hire a lawyer. The anticipation is you will have to go to court less frequently for very large cases since the property has essentially been broken down into smaller more manageable units instead of 1 extremely valuable unit of ownership that changes hands in 1 large contract.

The whole micro-transactions for houses doesn't make any sense. It's not that I don't get the concept of what it proposes, but why would someone agree to micropayments over time rather than a check from the bank for the entire amount of their house (minus any existing mortgage of course)? I understand you'll probably say because they would have "bought" a house using micropayments, but someone has to be the first seller.

As to it eliminating lawyers, I don't buy that either. Sounds like someone's wishful fantasizing because they don't like lawyers, rather than something grounded in factual analysis.

 

[Maelstrom]

JOJO,

Serious question. I've noticed your responses have become more frantic and agitated in tone. Does the fact that every single other person in this thread feels that Dr J is making far more valid points even begin to make you at least re-evaluate your stance... or have you gone full on ostrich with this one?

I'll hang up and listen.

Yes I have become more agitated in tone, it's pointless to fight mob mentality, I should just leave this thread alone and let you guys pat each other on the back for pointing out Bitcoins is a ponzi scheme which has to be the most ridiculous statement made in this thread.

The problem is Jojo, this isn't mob mentality. You feel like it is because people have a different opinion than you do, but that doesn't mean the opinions expressed are wrong, they are just different. There have been some really good points made and many times instead of countering them, you ridicule the poster or make fantastical claims, or just post a link and say, go research it yourself. Many of us HAVE been researching it ourselves, and come to very different conclusions than you did. Again, not necessarily wrong conclusions, probably something we won't know for absolutely sure for months, if not years.

This could be a great thread talking about the pros and cons associated with Bitcoins, and in places, has been. But getting defensive or agitated will not help you state your point, and will likely hurt any point you try to make.

 

[DrJ]

Here's kind of the history of the technological advances that have made competition more fierce as well:

1) When this is first released, they don't let you use your full computing power as it was a single threaded application.

2) At some point they updated it to include multi-threading. Not sure on the exact date, trying to find this. This obviously leads to competition increasing by a factor of a couple.

3) People mentioned GPU mining a number of times throughout the early days from what I can tell, but Satoshi said he liked that people could come onto and off the network without needing expensive equipment. (GPU mining is about 50-100X more powerful than CPU mining and makes it impossible for CPU miners to get much of anything). In July 2011 it reaches parity with the US Dollar which causes a buzz and ArtForz starts GPU mining with code he created himself.

4) Public GPU mining code is made available in October 2011 as its crashing.

5) Late 2011 and early 2012 FPGA mining is introduced. This is about the same as GPU mining in terms of power, but drastically reduces electricity costs creating "the first profitable mining operations". Now people are dumping lots of money into specialized mining equipment and an industry is born.

6) Early 2013 the ASICs start hitting the market. These are about 50-100X more powerful than GPU mining, this makes the difficulty skyrocket and along with a giant buzz causes the "value" of them to dramatically skyrocket. The ASICs were so disruptive, that the guy in the mining operation article bought a 20K unit off of ebay for 130K because he knew he wouldn't get enough coins if he waited in line. This was pretty common.

Difficulty was 1 for the first year and only about 10 a year and a half in. In contrast, difficulty was at about 980,000,000 when I first started looking at this a week ago or so, it's already at 1,180,000,000 now. This is what it has looked like over time: https://blockchain.info/charts/difficulty?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

JOJO,

Serious question. I've noticed your responses have become more frantic and agitated in tone. Does the fact that every single other person in this thread feels that Dr J is making far more valid points even begin to make you at least re-evaluate your stance... or have you gone full on ostrich with this one?

I'll hang up and listen.

Yes I have become more agitated in tone, it's pointless to fight mob mentality, I should just leave this thread alone and let you guys pat each other on the back for pointing out Bitcoins is a ponzi scheme which has to be the most ridiculous statement made in this thread.

The problem is Jojo, this isn't mob mentality. You feel like it is because people have a different opinion than you do, but that doesn't mean the opinions expressed are wrong, they are just different. There have been some really good points made and many times instead of countering them, you ridicule the poster or make fantastical claims, or just post a link and say, go research it yourself. Many of us HAVE been researching it ourselves, and come to very different conclusions than you did. Again, not necessarily wrong conclusions, probably something we won't know for absolutely sure for months, if not years.

This could be a great thread talking about the pros and cons associated with Bitcoins, and in places, has been. But getting defensive or agitated will not help you state your point, and will likely hurt any point you try to make.

More people are interested in bashing me than having an intelligent conversation. Take your post above, your bias could not be more lopsided, you are essentially saying everyone arguing against me "has not been wrong" and has "made some really good points" and I am the one doing all of "the ridiculing and making fantastical claims". That is the very definition of mob mentality and I have better things to do with my time.

 

[Maelstrom]

I think the key thing that needs to be figured out for any digital currency is how to secure them. Bitcoins has obviously NOT figured this out, given the things people have come up with to keep their wallet(s) secure (i.e. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+to+keep+my+bitcoin+wallet+secure).

For the average user on the Internet who has "Password1" as their password, even if they take a look at Bitcoin, they wouldn't make it through creating their first wallet.

So the logical conclusion of this is that people that want to use Bitcoins will use 3rd party services to store and transfer their money. And then we have eliminated one of the largest advantages Bitcoin purports to have, no third-party services. Not to mention opening users up to the kinds of hacks, thefts and scams that Bitcoin is supposed to prevent.

 

[DrJ]

JOJO,

Serious question. I've noticed your responses have become more frantic and agitated in tone. Does the fact that every single other person in this thread feels that Dr J is making far more valid points even begin to make you at least re-evaluate your stance... or have you gone full on ostrich with this one?

I'll hang up and listen.

Yes I have become more agitated in tone, it's pointless to fight mob mentality, I should just leave this thread alone and let you guys pat each other on the back for pointing out Bitcoins is a ponzi scheme which has to be the most ridiculous statement made in this thread.

The problem is Jojo, this isn't mob mentality. You feel like it is because people have a different opinion than you do, but that doesn't mean the opinions expressed are wrong, they are just different. There have been some really good points made and many times instead of countering them, you ridicule the poster or make fantastical claims, or just post a link and say, go research it yourself. Many of us HAVE been researching it ourselves, and come to very different conclusions than you did. Again, not necessarily wrong conclusions, probably something we won't know for absolutely sure for months, if not years.

This could be a great thread talking about the pros and cons associated with Bitcoins, and in places, has been. But getting defensive or agitated will not help you state your point, and will likely hurt any point you try to make.

He even shuns information put out by people that are actually very supportive of bitcoin as a whole. The Falkvinge guy that was suggesting price fixing has actually been very supportive of the currency, believes it's the way of the future, and has suggested they will have a value of somewhere between $100,000 and $1,000,000 - in 2019. He put all of his money into bitcoin in May of 2011. But because he's saying something that doesn't support the agenda he's espousing, he's some silly pirate guy that drinks whiskey.

 

[thecatch]

Jojo is in a flaming house and everyone else is yelling at him to get out and he's yelling back to shut up, the couch is wicked comfy.

It's been awhile since I've seen such a one sided thrashing in the FFA.

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

The whole micro-transactions for houses doesn't make any sense. It's not that I don't get the concept of what it proposes, but why would someone agree to micropayments over time rather than a check from the bank for the entire amount of their house (minus any existing mortgage of course)? I understand you'll probably say because they would have "bought" a house using micropayments, but someone has to be the first seller.

As to it eliminating lawyers, I don't buy that either. Sounds like someone's wishful fantasizing because they don't like lawyers, rather than something grounded in factual analysis.

Have you never heard of rent to own? How is what I am proposing different? Don't like the real estate example, then look at selling shares for a company, think of crowdfunding, there are multiple different applications. It's a paradigm shift that doesn't happen overnight, although with enough moment the changes can accelerate.

 

[Maelstrom]

JOJO,

Serious question. I've noticed your responses have become more frantic and agitated in tone. Does the fact that every single other person in this thread feels that Dr J is making far more valid points even begin to make you at least re-evaluate your stance... or have you gone full on ostrich with this one?

I'll hang up and listen.

Yes I have become more agitated in tone, it's pointless to fight mob mentality, I should just leave this thread alone and let you guys pat each other on the back for pointing out Bitcoins is a ponzi scheme which has to be the most ridiculous statement made in this thread.

The problem is Jojo, this isn't mob mentality. You feel like it is because people have a different opinion than you do, but that doesn't mean the opinions expressed are wrong, they are just different. There have been some really good points made and many times instead of countering them, you ridicule the poster or make fantastical claims, or just post a link and say, go research it yourself. Many of us HAVE been researching it ourselves, and come to very different conclusions than you did. Again, not necessarily wrong conclusions, probably something we won't know for absolutely sure for months, if not years.

This could be a great thread talking about the pros and cons associated with Bitcoins, and in places, has been. But getting defensive or agitated will not help you state your point, and will likely hurt any point you try to make.

More people are interested in bashing me than having an intelligent conversation. Take your post above, your bias could not be more lopsided, you are essentially saying everyone arguing against me "has not been wrong" and has "made some really good points" and I am the one doing all of "the ridiculing and making fantastical claims". That is the very definition of mob mentality and I have better things to do with my time.

Well, make some good points, then? You yourself said that you were getting defensive/agitated, so that isn't something "I said" or the "mob said", it is something you admitted. You have responded to some of my posts with well thought opinions on what Bitcoin could become. And I've taken those posts you made under serious consideration. I don't discount Bitcoin out of hand, and still believe (unlike some others, obviously) that it might have a future. But it has a lot of growing up to do if that is going to happen.

So stop with the persecution complex, at least from me, I'm not attacking you. I just want to know what I should be hopeful Bitcoins succeed rather than implode. Right now, I see them imploding, and you are the one championing them, so you are the one I am asking for more info in this thread.

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

Jojo is in a flaming house and everyone else is yelling at him to get out and he's yelling back to shut up, the couch is wicked comfy.

It's been awhile since I've seen such a one sided thrashing in the FFA.

The last election when "the mob" didn't know what mobilize meant or had never been part of a Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) campaign.

 

[DrJ]

6) Early 2013 the ASICs start hitting the market. These are about 50-100X more powerful than GPU mining, this makes the difficulty skyrocket and along with a giant buzz causes the "value" of them to dramatically skyrocket. The ASICs were so disruptive, that the guy in the mining operation article bought a 20K unit off of ebay for 130K because he knew he wouldn't get enough coins if he waited in line. This was pretty common.
.

And here's my problem with this part - it was relatively easy to keep these propped up at a few dollars a piece, especially when you have almost full control. It's a cool idea and all you really need is a few people willing to sink in a little bit of money, and some drug dealers. Then once you've managed to create machines that amount to digital ATM's off of that pricing and gotten people to sink millions upon millions into this mining gear and wait in line for diminishing returns you've created a whole ton of people with vested interest in this thing continuing to balloon. If it doesn't, people start losing money and the whole thing implodes. Miners lose money on the equipment they buy, mining equipment manufacturers won't be able to sell squat, bitcoin moguls and other early adopters don't get rich. The people that actually have money and are investing in this don't get to see 4000% ROI. There aren't enough "freedom and liberty" types to pile money into this by themselves - we've already seen that for years - to really get people interested you have to make them money. Mining guy turns off his GPU's and tells his wife "yeah, I guess you're right" unless you make him money - he even admits that was his entire reason for caring about it.

Like Slash said - it's easy to understand why a number of people WANT it to be valued like this. It's easy to see how it's created such a buzz. It's really not nearly as clear to understand why it should be valued like this though. Especially with all of these other alt currencies offering pretty much the same features in terms of limited supply, and anonymous and irreversible transactions.

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

Well, make some good points, then? You yourself said that you were getting defensive/agitated, so that isn't something "I said" or the "mob said", it is something you admitted. You have responded to some of my posts with well thought opinions on what Bitcoin could become. And I've taken those posts you made under serious consideration. I don't discount Bitcoin out of hand, and still believe (unlike some others, obviously) that it might have a future. But it has a lot of growing up to do if that is going to happen.

So stop with the persecution complex, at least from me, I'm not attacking you. I just want to know what I should be hopeful Bitcoins succeed rather than implode. Right now, I see them imploding, and you are the one championing them, so you are the one I am asking for more info in this thread.

"Well, make some good points, then?" Really? You don't find that condescending? I get agitated having to constantly defend myself. As far as the persecution complex - have you bothered to read the posts from the peanut gallery chirping in this thread? Why do you think I ignore half of them?

• Control against fraud
• Global accessibility
• Cost efficiency
• Tips and donations
• Crowdfunding
• Micro payments
• Dispute mediation
• Multi-signature accounts
• Trust and integrity
• Resilience and decentralization
• Flexible transparency
• Automated solutions

Link with details on each of the above, here's the snippet on Micro payments:

Bitcoin can process payments to the scale of a dollar and soon even much smaller amounts. Such payments are routine even today. Imagine listening to Internet radio paid by the second, viewing web pages with a small tip for each ad not shown, or buying bandwidth from a WiFi hotspot by the kilobyte. Bitcoin is efficient enough to make all of these ideas possible.

...and before anyone says that all of the other alts "can do that too", they need to overcome the networking effect headstart that bitcoin has built up for the past 3 years which is no small feat in and of itself.

 

[cstu]

JOJO,

Serious question. I've noticed your responses have become more frantic and agitated in tone. Does the fact that every single other person in this thread feels that Dr J is making far more valid points even begin to make you at least re-evaluate your stance... or have you gone full on ostrich with this one?

I'll hang up and listen.

Yes I have become more agitated in tone, it's pointless to fight mob mentality, I should just leave this thread alone and let you guys pat each other on the back for pointing out Bitcoins is a ponzi scheme which has to be the most ridiculous statement made in this thread.

Bitcoins have value but can you not see that their current value makes no sense?

 

[DrJ]

Reading through this entire RSA paper some more. One of their findings (page 12) which is pretty funny considering the 5Kish transactions just a couple of days ago that I traced back and linked here. Like I noted, they appeared to go through a series of money laundering accounts in March of 2011. And sure enough, they saw that same activity.

Keeping Bitcoins in "Saving Accounts".

Another long chain of trans-actions from the beginning of March 2011 can be seen in Fig. 3. This chain is different from the above ones, since at 28 out of its 30 steps, it puts aside 5,000 BTC's in what seems to be "saving accounts". The accumulated sum of 140,000 BTC's has never been sent since. These bitcoins are an example of our discovery that most of the bitcoins are not circulating in the system.

Totally hilarious - I was just looking through the recent block chain to verify jojo's claims that it's way better today, and there they were.

I actually think they are probably overestimating the number of users that control many of these accounts as well:

This can lead to two types of errors: We can underestimate the common ownership of some addresses because there was no evidence for it in the available data, and we can overestimate it if several users decided to pool their activities and to send a single transaction to which each one of them contributes some of the sending addresses. Discussions with several members of the Bitcoin community lead us to believe that at the moment there are likely to be very few overestimation errors of this type, but quite a few underestimation errors. For example, when we tried to use all the available transactions to merge the addresses of a particular large user, we were told that we managed to identify with our methodology only about one quarter of his real addresses.

One example that's pretty clear to me is they found 129 addresses that had received 400-800K of them which they called 76 separate entities. That 400K pile that I followed around accounts for a good portion of these and some of the 200K's, 100K's, etc. So funny how you can find a lot of the data they're referencing just by looking at the a few of the anomalies in the data, like 3-5 million of them trading for a few days for no apparent reason. Nutty stuff.

This whole thing just really looks uglier and uglier the more you look at it. It really looks like there's a small group of individuals that control basically all of the accounts with more than 1,000 of these things with few exceptions. 47 is probably high - if I had to guess I'd say closer to 10 or 20. The 1K plus only amounted to 1032 addresses and "287 entities" at that point by their count, but it's pretty clearly much lower when looking at these transaction patterns. They just couldn't come out and say that because there isn't a method that can entirely prove it.

Paper again, this really should be required reading for anyone thinking about getting involved in this.: http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf

 

[Frostillicus]

I admit that I don't get it, but this reminds me of oneseason.com.

 

[AAABatteries]

Jojo is a Winklevoss relative?

 

[[icon]]

JOJO,

Serious question. I've noticed your responses have become more frantic and agitated in tone. Does the fact that every single other person in this thread feels that Dr J is making far more valid points even begin to make you at least re-evaluate your stance... or have you gone full on ostrich with this one?

I'll hang up and listen.

Yes I have become more agitated in tone, it's pointless to fight mob mentality, I should just leave this thread alone and let you guys pat each other on the back for pointing out Bitcoins is a ponzi scheme which has to be the most ridiculous statement made in this thread.

The problem is Jojo, this isn't mob mentality. You feel like it is because people have a different opinion than you do, but that doesn't mean the opinions expressed are wrong, they are just different. There have been some really good points made and many times instead of countering them, you ridicule the poster or make fantastical claims, or just post a link and say, go research it yourself. Many of us HAVE been researching it ourselves, and come to very different conclusions than you did. Again, not necessarily wrong conclusions, probably something we won't know for absolutely sure for months, if not years.

This could be a great thread talking about the pros and cons associated with Bitcoins, and in places, has been. But getting defensive or agitated will not help you state your point, and will likely hurt any point you try to make.

More people are interested in bashing me than having an intelligent conversation. Take your post above, your bias could not be more lopsided, you are essentially saying everyone arguing against me "has not been wrong" and has "made some really good points" and I am the one doing all of "the ridiculing and making fantastical claims". That is the very definition of mob mentality and I have better things to do with my time.

No, I am trolling you, not bashing you.

Dr J is dropping some fantastic information and you're just violently shaking your head No.

 

[[icon]]

Great article on Bitcoin's computing crisis that might threaten the credibility of the currency

Bitcoin's value relies on people wanting to use it. If the only people who can mine it are the supercomputer shops, it will suffer greatly if not collapse.

Basically either your running a farm of these TeraHash units, or you're not getting any coins.

 

[cstu]

Great article on Bitcoin's computing crisis that might threaten the credibility of the currency

Bitcoin's value relies on people wanting to use it. If the only people who can mine it are the supercomputer shops, it will suffer greatly if not collapse.

Basically either your running a farm of these TeraHash units, or you're not getting any coins.

This is what I've been saying. Digital currency needs to be in the hands of a huge number of people who want to spend it. It also must have some way to increase the money supply to prevent deflation, which leads to hoarding.

The biggest problem with digital currency IMO is the mining concept, especially when it has increasing difficulty levels which benefit these farms. As is, digital currency is nothing more than a giant corporate run scam.

 

[DrJ]

Jojo is a Winklevoss relative?

I doubt it. They went to Harvard/Oxford and their dad was a professor of actuarial science that has a book published. I don't even think anyone in their family could pretend to be that obtuse.

 

[Tom Servo]

Fascinating discussion here; I don't pretend to understand it all, but it's an interesting concept to say the least.

Jojo -

I don't think anybody here is hating on you. Personally, I don't care if this bitcoin thing comes, stays, lays or prays. I probably will not get into it. Having said that, your behavior regarding these things has me puzzled. From what I've read, you don't seem to own any bitcoins, yet passionately defend them as if you've quit your job and are banking on these for your livelihood.

Dr J (among others) has laid out some issues that would be disconcerting to me if I were to get involved. It seems as if there are serious flaws in bitcoins that merit a much closer look. In a technology as new as this, something that happened 3 years ago is pretty much yesterday; whether the questions have been resolved or not will take time - something that this new idea may not get.

Looking at this as a dispassionate observer, it's my opinion that you need to provide the evidence to refute the claims brought forth by J, CSTU and [icon]. Again, I don't have a dog in the fight; I would love to see an awesome discussion on this topic.

Peace.

 

[DrJ]

Here's the data for the past day: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg1ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv

It made this really big jump from about from about 12AM to 3AM. Here's the block chain starting at about 12:00 AM to kick the price increase off. You can see how many need to move to cause such an increase...

Huge flurry of activity between about 12:00 and 1:30 (You'll see why I call this huge as the chain for the next 8 or so hours unfolds)

138 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002b0bfa93bc8b2c2e046f719d595d9f0362ab5444128621151

1219 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002e39a52c93acb5de574d3a0a920c58dd3850766fd1b22a433

871 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000037cc07887858aa50ebf7abec0616cae4b52dac547010cef67

2573 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000027a7c8e79c9f589b2fa791353d91edc4d0cda5643179aa6f7

629 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001cde22896d5dab56239a9bebeca29a5311738d944532a4634

5727 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002d79cd7069cedd05f49716354590bd5518b18a513b3b4d513

398 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000039a99dd09b3da5e206d3c064859c5bbdcb3e34dc2b97adc44

Things fall off quite a bit, but the value just keeps jumping.

422 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block-index/453180

1001 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002f350faf1b5da0c17c676db6cc2dbefe7dfb98114ea069f89

131 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000148c7064fa5d5e58bb4f6abd2bba10873a595393bc3258b6a

107 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001a7e6e46d32ca01bb162818e7849852682a03aab3a7a235dc

124 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002fbe3e0b60cc0d90eaaf06f9951e6fa166e81975e7abbbb33

288 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000ab28586c1dda43f698383e2997f06fff331f974d0baf6dbf

420 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000ab28586c1dda43f698383e2997f06fff331f974d0baf6dbf

108 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000037c84ce6ff1ea3a5851efc95ab3a045f98d284f9699ab3d3f

1112 BTC (at 2:15): https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000037c84ce6ff1ea3a5851efc95ab3a045f98d284f9699ab3d3f

626 BTC; https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002d1d84a8797b6acaad0de6e2239b48cc8bd03019153c874d3

138 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002ab1e410dd69b84aeaf0caedcb7e3bde29e3f755cb68e96db

330 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000c5be02237d2f469449ffe83f7be25b5508d6f17ca0684c3e

28 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000003123ac9532696c737ee0b991513bedc70e437d388a8252298

53 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000031fba1384445b39fa47a4453f00f48ac656f7b808c9bfd337

80 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000020324a496aec65e05cf7f9849efa207c0f360160c5f3b6656

669 BTC (2:45): https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001cc857762f972c7d3189058e41f58ad8b9636518b9649f276

559 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000319549d4774e00bc4a285637f4047e14e512e48410c41bd8b

555 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000643ae657e42898a5daea631c265829c5dc5fb56092baed45

188 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000445a9cc2a0cf645f1c31063ee47fbbcebbad2ad065e2cbf4

1007 BTC (4:00): https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000025ce0b74eb7009aacadf4b29ee0feda04057a0fc45563f150

820 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000c0b2d985b6b8ff8630f35d5c3acae2f628f00ff7e79e938a

235 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000017871bf646ec12c1e2dedacef87dcd357cea0da1ddb0b64b5

254 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000007010e7d490712b361f066d611ec788182baae459eae59b53

123 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000003600425f5be08c99592a7d751adb257721960d5c101b03598

243 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002235e7e62677efd9cf09070507dc48ba4a339722058d64d58

13 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000d1d213c942e7bbe7274c32388422d4b3cce4048bcb360290

811 BTC (4:30): https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000085d0960bb0b128e691d1a47f81cab49429a146d0ee3bd597

445 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000081be5f9c4e1610bee086bbfccb38a7715e543d139db84958

624 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000069c6e0354bc155146d83842ad6b97fd0e5bdf93199322bba

222 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000069c6e0354bc155146d83842ad6b97fd0e5bdf93199322bba

During this time the price has moved from about $630 to 680. Off of just those trades.

Then right around here a lot start trading, you see chains with 1K or a couple thousand relatively frequently for a while:

1190 BTC (4:45): https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000084649a5d02ee86cef3916f355e3b6cfd4191377e8fefd987

.5 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000084649a5d02ee86cef3916f355e3b6cfd4191377e8fefd987

753 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000084649a5d02ee86cef3916f355e3b6cfd4191377e8fefd987

59 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000003629ed4de9785049a92dcba66d3dec6601e3e42a042afc411

149 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000036ae08beae1c2480da24c8528a62619c1eed5848279325619

0 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000157629a69981c52d1f28af221d43cb3c4ef3e532ba304f157

1400 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000c794ec1f9d496aade45e4b5b3869306722c63b5e0dc047fd

971 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000f2ae7a8af47a219a2aff805a297e7223c427bdc4c80bc412

525 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000b0564e9de957b6188bfe767ef6e529f9272dbe870dfcd768

775 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002c29e079e41e426d3805bf60da05606233af4b6ca50d803bc

460 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002e2e3a0fa2c7a5e5dd70f25bd6eff3488904d6171d7b5f07c

1500 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002e2b21502357de14e435616143b2daa0435e7df5d2d935e6e

1007 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000280337cdcc620754266bf0e18f4e73e9802d218b9be643959

1956 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000aaef258bff946de36d6518ac044f68df19e1313f4794d4ba

428 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000301a0a15a4226ff85157c204e44882cae7ef75336c6a11d82

668 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000005ef750a67b2ff8319768c6377860f03665a9ad6feca35c0

538 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000121dcc371f2d88c486aa42b9045cf4199bd3a71ec59575d92

613 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001f55f60acc751dbf3d410cfdd5926332fda24602ee1c5f119

466 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000003bf85d464b6d5020c5d1da6b75025b047151d34fdc1f9944

1081 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000015cc118aaa852a4051bc07f6a65ef91abab8b2eebecfdc29b

82 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000021bf9dcc3ad0548714f757397cd304c850a1dcb0a241c18fd

818 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002f4f065da79ed8ee768bb0612aaefbf9a6d88ce70e119852b

The activity starts to fall off a bit:

54 BTC (8:30): https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000045eac5c7e12b7847e9849df268cf710f02af3cee87cc72d7

60 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000016f5f9a3d13a257a8f2578e4c2ef74dc946c1214089edb750

766 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002826194c7404f6258eb9e649b085a6ea984e53d21842a2c8d

780 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000026bb69288c98287c5a38bdb72c32a4d0cde1850b760fa16b8

124 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000209caeaa80f87ef36cfece4767c3a07a1038ff0b6868ff628

272 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000007d3efae8fd27d1e305399c08534b3d34a3d0149344edf21a

618 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001aa6f04c5a8b5ac65937fdf3b828fd0101803d42429a577df

690 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000003e586cf8198ae464013f958ec6d255e253321bf8ceb8d1ad

318 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000003893d9901ad92bc340c77e21b04312cb3fcce879bd394313b

55 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001a00eb8630b047c74da5cc35564975a2ea5c0ffc27ccdc325

185 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000029701a14046f686c5e8c393bbb9d0470dd631cc7d58f5fbc5

331 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000020b999d3f37394b86b55679af76adccce02d401ccf21270dd

Now, the price has a nice little drop and there's some fierce trading. Interested in looking at the 16K movement closer, I bet it traces back to one of these goofy accounts:

2200 BTC (10:00 AM): https://blockchain.info/block-index/453274

37 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000045eac5c7e12b7847e9849df268cf710f02af3cee87cc72d7

16,210 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001aa6d4ed44160d044fee7d407f2e00aee711c5d4b2abeeda4

254 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001baeb93b046f1bb97319a20cd5fc30a872361049f24115fcd

188 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000242b23a7cbbf812e42f164d1fcee2e24686132257501f94c1

1025 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000027b627d8d27f8aef5601684d4cd9d02764807ecd9f1652ca9

Now, activity falls off a cliff again:

252 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000011edacd861b57b51b12d3ad4cfd412aa9e2a518425d166673

15 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000013251707a02993c39a1ded88fd8c9a1ecadd85af7d9df61d1

38 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000009a586c44ad7e9a5435ac4c281b6bc0edb1d53d86d74dbdac

274 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000035c19d75c2c4dfae9728739a5e8054212fa4095e73f6dbee8

229 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000015e4cfc10ed55a7fb317086d85d2beb1c72ce067035143793

58 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000011d90ac2c6f0fec57011e9ed9d4336acb9a9bb4f1bbc845e5

308 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002b6afc724b88c695cb29c45dd33e0ad65e9c6116f02f5261a

252 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002dde04c5624bc303259d9ee7bd47597218e039d4cd9561659

323 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001e0daf18e25d124b9f7ec6b19c45c201b18c985ef87f8e7d4

573 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001a446c62951ad19bcdb912f72b5864132f79e0954f450544a

398 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000185c9ed1e16f1223c5594c9ab7db5a2ef7d1f7a5f0fa8c70d

207 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000b7e14e26377e58f853fc9c39a59923b5fb5d8f80b10bedbe

95 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001c7b0a93e8f8a8670027043d5a0ee3fd3f6a91f46277211dd

92 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000c42ddcca0448d2f4b4ab0417b735a9c3c66333d0a77a5681

287 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000000787ee6b209b6cf47de1b02ebfdfef6ea639e90a17d0621f

91 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000019c03dbe3ec7b287346669519757009aacfe19aa10ccd184e

456 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000003eb72ee25bbce530f64441b079e2f27009259f59ea03cd81

121 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001550b43cdb8d4798c4f85751b49fc2e224ffc10709c138bbf

359 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000380c81d936f265a748664d899468c14d8d4ba355b12996ae5

468 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001fd4863e9eeccc69fd3a30c2aaa82c6d5738055e5b08b5e98

1031 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000003846bc34ffeae9de82de42dad641ebe9d4ca888e29bb94502

663 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002058dd7129f6c2ae84c4d362d4d089940b434eceed20ecc03

114 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001e9c0c5821a6c9ee42e8b89ed5c390d096d1d1e91f35ae1bf

Yeah, I can see how this is hard to manipulate. You usually have hundreds of these, maybe a thousand moving around at any given point. And some guys with piles of several hundred thousand to play games within this, who seem to be able to move the price some every time a couple thousand of them hit the market.

 

[GroveDiesel]

At this point, the only two conclusions I can come to are that Jojo is either somehow in on the scam or that he ate paint chips as a child.

 

[DrJ]

Interview with Ulbricht from August: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/meet-the-dread-pirate-roberts-the-man-behind-booming-black-market-drug-website-silk-road/

I have to say, I kind of like this guy until you get to the illegal weapons and murder for hire part. Personally I support most of what Silk Road is about - if you're selling weed, hookers, crack, heroine, whatever you're providing an actual service and it should be up to the people if this is what they want to do with their time. This site and the way it operated was entirely genius - a feedback system like ebay, holding the funds in escrow and offering ways to protect from the volatility of bitcoin. Really ####### impressive.

But bitcoin itself is a big scam. Totally awesome theoretically, but a big scam the way it was actually implemented and seemingly manipulated.

 

[cstu]

Great work in here, DrJ.

 

[DrJ]

Great work in here, DrJ.

Thanks guys, it's actually been fun for me obviously. This totally appeals to my libertarian and tech geeky sides and I could definitely see myself going for something like this when it's more mature, is designed to function more like a real commodity rather than a deflationary Ponzi scheme, isn't ridiculously difficult to secure even for someone like myself, and it isn't likely I'm going to lose all of my money to some sharks (whether that be the guys that have most of it, or the worldwide network of hackers that put my security knowledge to shame).

Next up, I'm really curious as to how some of these other coins have gone about solving those problems. Litecoin is basically the same thing, so I dislike that one as well. A giant deflationary spiral makes no sense to me, even if they might have the coins spread a little more. And I'm not certain a bunch of bitcoin guys don't have most of those either. It was designed so you could mine both Litecoins and bitcoins on the same hardware - starting with being able to use your CPU on your GPU miner and eventually giving those GPU rigs a purpose when the ASICs hit. Now there's a shortage of GPU's in the world again thanks to their rise.

Dogecoins have gotten a lot of recent pub and have a cute dog on them, which has that going for them but I don't know much else about those.

One of these has to have come up with a more equitable system. At the same time, how much more equitable is really possible when you're giving tech geeks and those with resources an inherent advantage in getting all the wealth? So most of the world who can't afford powerful computers get none of the wealth? I suppose that's no different from today to an extent, but how exactly is that better?

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

Here's the data for the past day: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg1ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv

Spoiler

It made this really big jump from about from about 12AM to 3AM. Here's the block chain starting at about 12:00 AM to kick the price increase off. You can see how many need to move to cause such an increase...

Huge flurry of activity between about 12:00 and 1:30 (You'll see why I call this huge as the chain for the next 8 or so hours unfolds)

138 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002b0bfa93bc8b2c2e046f719d595d9f0362ab5444128621151

1219 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002e39a52c93acb5de574d3a0a920c58dd3850766fd1b22a433

871 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000037cc07887858aa50ebf7abec0616cae4b52dac547010cef67

2573 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000027a7c8e79c9f589b2fa791353d91edc4d0cda5643179aa6f7

629 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001cde22896d5dab56239a9bebeca29a5311738d944532a4634

5727 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002d79cd7069cedd05f49716354590bd5518b18a513b3b4d513

398 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000039a99dd09b3da5e206d3c064859c5bbdcb3e34dc2b97adc44

Things fall off quite a bit, but the value just keeps jumping.

422 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block-index/453180

1001 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002f350faf1b5da0c17c676db6cc2dbefe7dfb98114ea069f89

131 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000148c7064fa5d5e58bb4f6abd2bba10873a595393bc3258b6a

107 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001a7e6e46d32ca01bb162818e7849852682a03aab3a7a235dc

124 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002fbe3e0b60cc0d90eaaf06f9951e6fa166e81975e7abbbb33

288 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000ab28586c1dda43f698383e2997f06fff331f974d0baf6dbf

420 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000ab28586c1dda43f698383e2997f06fff331f974d0baf6dbf

108 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000037c84ce6ff1ea3a5851efc95ab3a045f98d284f9699ab3d3f

1112 BTC (at 2:15): https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000037c84ce6ff1ea3a5851efc95ab3a045f98d284f9699ab3d3f

626 BTC; https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002d1d84a8797b6acaad0de6e2239b48cc8bd03019153c874d3

138 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002ab1e410dd69b84aeaf0caedcb7e3bde29e3f755cb68e96db

330 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000c5be02237d2f469449ffe83f7be25b5508d6f17ca0684c3e

28 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000003123ac9532696c737ee0b991513bedc70e437d388a8252298

53 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000031fba1384445b39fa47a4453f00f48ac656f7b808c9bfd337

80 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000020324a496aec65e05cf7f9849efa207c0f360160c5f3b6656

669 BTC (2:45): https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001cc857762f972c7d3189058e41f58ad8b9636518b9649f276

559 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000319549d4774e00bc4a285637f4047e14e512e48410c41bd8b

555 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000643ae657e42898a5daea631c265829c5dc5fb56092baed45

188 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000445a9cc2a0cf645f1c31063ee47fbbcebbad2ad065e2cbf4

1007 BTC (4:00): https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000025ce0b74eb7009aacadf4b29ee0feda04057a0fc45563f150

820 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000c0b2d985b6b8ff8630f35d5c3acae2f628f00ff7e79e938a

235 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000017871bf646ec12c1e2dedacef87dcd357cea0da1ddb0b64b5

254 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000007010e7d490712b361f066d611ec788182baae459eae59b53

123 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000003600425f5be08c99592a7d751adb257721960d5c101b03598

243 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002235e7e62677efd9cf09070507dc48ba4a339722058d64d58

13 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000d1d213c942e7bbe7274c32388422d4b3cce4048bcb360290

811 BTC (4:30): https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000085d0960bb0b128e691d1a47f81cab49429a146d0ee3bd597

445 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000081be5f9c4e1610bee086bbfccb38a7715e543d139db84958

624 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000069c6e0354bc155146d83842ad6b97fd0e5bdf93199322bba

222 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000069c6e0354bc155146d83842ad6b97fd0e5bdf93199322bba

During this time the price has moved from about $630 to 680. Off of just those trades.

Then right around here a lot start trading, you see chains with 1K or a couple thousand relatively frequently for a while:

1190 BTC (4:45): https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000084649a5d02ee86cef3916f355e3b6cfd4191377e8fefd987

.5 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000084649a5d02ee86cef3916f355e3b6cfd4191377e8fefd987

753 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000084649a5d02ee86cef3916f355e3b6cfd4191377e8fefd987

59 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000003629ed4de9785049a92dcba66d3dec6601e3e42a042afc411

149 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000036ae08beae1c2480da24c8528a62619c1eed5848279325619

0 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000157629a69981c52d1f28af221d43cb3c4ef3e532ba304f157

1400 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000c794ec1f9d496aade45e4b5b3869306722c63b5e0dc047fd

971 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000f2ae7a8af47a219a2aff805a297e7223c427bdc4c80bc412

525 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000b0564e9de957b6188bfe767ef6e529f9272dbe870dfcd768

775 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002c29e079e41e426d3805bf60da05606233af4b6ca50d803bc

460 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002e2e3a0fa2c7a5e5dd70f25bd6eff3488904d6171d7b5f07c

1500 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002e2b21502357de14e435616143b2daa0435e7df5d2d935e6e

1007 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000280337cdcc620754266bf0e18f4e73e9802d218b9be643959

1956 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000aaef258bff946de36d6518ac044f68df19e1313f4794d4ba

428 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000301a0a15a4226ff85157c204e44882cae7ef75336c6a11d82

668 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000005ef750a67b2ff8319768c6377860f03665a9ad6feca35c0

538 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000121dcc371f2d88c486aa42b9045cf4199bd3a71ec59575d92

613 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001f55f60acc751dbf3d410cfdd5926332fda24602ee1c5f119

466 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000003bf85d464b6d5020c5d1da6b75025b047151d34fdc1f9944

1081 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000015cc118aaa852a4051bc07f6a65ef91abab8b2eebecfdc29b

82 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000021bf9dcc3ad0548714f757397cd304c850a1dcb0a241c18fd

818 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002f4f065da79ed8ee768bb0612aaefbf9a6d88ce70e119852b

The activity starts to fall off a bit:

54 BTC (8:30): https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000045eac5c7e12b7847e9849df268cf710f02af3cee87cc72d7

60 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000016f5f9a3d13a257a8f2578e4c2ef74dc946c1214089edb750

766 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002826194c7404f6258eb9e649b085a6ea984e53d21842a2c8d

780 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000026bb69288c98287c5a38bdb72c32a4d0cde1850b760fa16b8

124 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000209caeaa80f87ef36cfece4767c3a07a1038ff0b6868ff628

272 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000007d3efae8fd27d1e305399c08534b3d34a3d0149344edf21a

618 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001aa6f04c5a8b5ac65937fdf3b828fd0101803d42429a577df

690 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000003e586cf8198ae464013f958ec6d255e253321bf8ceb8d1ad

318 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000003893d9901ad92bc340c77e21b04312cb3fcce879bd394313b

55 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001a00eb8630b047c74da5cc35564975a2ea5c0ffc27ccdc325

185 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000029701a14046f686c5e8c393bbb9d0470dd631cc7d58f5fbc5

331 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000020b999d3f37394b86b55679af76adccce02d401ccf21270dd

Now, the price has a nice little drop and there's some fierce trading. Interested in looking at the 16K movement closer, I bet it traces back to one of these goofy accounts:

2200 BTC (10:00 AM): https://blockchain.info/block-index/453274

37 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000045eac5c7e12b7847e9849df268cf710f02af3cee87cc72d7

16,210 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001aa6d4ed44160d044fee7d407f2e00aee711c5d4b2abeeda4

254 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001baeb93b046f1bb97319a20cd5fc30a872361049f24115fcd

188 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000242b23a7cbbf812e42f164d1fcee2e24686132257501f94c1

1025 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000027b627d8d27f8aef5601684d4cd9d02764807ecd9f1652ca9

Now, activity falls off a cliff again:

252 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000011edacd861b57b51b12d3ad4cfd412aa9e2a518425d166673

15 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000013251707a02993c39a1ded88fd8c9a1ecadd85af7d9df61d1

38 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000009a586c44ad7e9a5435ac4c281b6bc0edb1d53d86d74dbdac

274 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000035c19d75c2c4dfae9728739a5e8054212fa4095e73f6dbee8

229 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000015e4cfc10ed55a7fb317086d85d2beb1c72ce067035143793

58 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000011d90ac2c6f0fec57011e9ed9d4336acb9a9bb4f1bbc845e5

308 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002b6afc724b88c695cb29c45dd33e0ad65e9c6116f02f5261a

252 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002dde04c5624bc303259d9ee7bd47597218e039d4cd9561659

323 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001e0daf18e25d124b9f7ec6b19c45c201b18c985ef87f8e7d4

573 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001a446c62951ad19bcdb912f72b5864132f79e0954f450544a

398 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000185c9ed1e16f1223c5594c9ab7db5a2ef7d1f7a5f0fa8c70d

207 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000b7e14e26377e58f853fc9c39a59923b5fb5d8f80b10bedbe

95 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001c7b0a93e8f8a8670027043d5a0ee3fd3f6a91f46277211dd

92 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000c42ddcca0448d2f4b4ab0417b735a9c3c66333d0a77a5681

287 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000000787ee6b209b6cf47de1b02ebfdfef6ea639e90a17d0621f

91 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000019c03dbe3ec7b287346669519757009aacfe19aa10ccd184e

456 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000003eb72ee25bbce530f64441b079e2f27009259f59ea03cd81

121 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001550b43cdb8d4798c4f85751b49fc2e224ffc10709c138bbf

359 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000380c81d936f265a748664d899468c14d8d4ba355b12996ae5

468 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001fd4863e9eeccc69fd3a30c2aaa82c6d5738055e5b08b5e98

1031 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000003846bc34ffeae9de82de42dad641ebe9d4ca888e29bb94502

663 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002058dd7129f6c2ae84c4d362d4d089940b434eceed20ecc03

114 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001e9c0c5821a6c9ee42e8b89ed5c390d096d1d1e91f35ae1bf

Yeah, I can see how this is hard to manipulate. You usually have hundreds of these, maybe a thousand moving around at any given point. And some guys with piles of several hundred thousand to play games within this, who seem to be able to move the price some every time a couple thousand of them hit the market.

Why do you assume every transaction is a trade? More than half of these anonymous transactions that actually have readable text say SatoshiBones 50pct or pinballcoin which both sound like gaming/gambling the other half that have no text there is no context of what the transactions are. What I am getting at is how are you able to reconcile any of these transactions as relevant trades for USD to correlate with the 1 link I left in your post showing trading activity?

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

This is pretty cool, you can now tip people Bitcoins via twitter - anonymously, similar to how people tip each other BTC in Reddit for making interesting posts.

http://www.tippercoin.com/#/

 

[DrJ]

Another funny thing - a lot of these miners actually seem like they're just the little pawns in the game. It would be interesting to see bitcoin mining guy's amounts that he laid out and the amount of coins that he got out of it. For instance, when he bought the machines for 130K, he probably could have gotten 6,500 bitcoins at that day's rates. At 7 million or so at the peak, he cleans house. There's no way this guy got a 5000% ROI on these machines. Especially with all of the electricity outlays and all of that. He's spent what seems to be 10's of millions on global infrastructure, electricity, fortresses with armed guards, mancages, and bulletproof glass, people to run it, customer service, etc, etc. And the entire operation is getting about 200 coins a day (and shrinking), worth about 125K at today's prices. And he's going to have to just continue to throw millions and millions as new hardware rolls out just to sustain that sort of rate. Depending on where you got your equipment, your milage will vary. Some probably have a miniscule profit margin or lose money and have shut down.

In the bitcoin mining thread, one guy's mistake was that he bought 4K worth and invested 4K in a mining rig. He'd have way more bitcoins if he had just bought up 8K worth he said. I bet this holds true for most of these guys. Yeah, they've made some money helping these guys run up the price. They've got to toss something to these guys or the whole thing crumbles. But not nearly as much as you'd make buying up the coins and hording them - or just hording them from the start.

 

[DrJ]

Here's the data for the past day: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg1ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv

Spoiler

It made this really big jump from about from about 12AM to 3AM. Here's the block chain starting at about 12:00 AM to kick the price increase off. You can see how many need to move to cause such an increase...

Huge flurry of activity between about 12:00 and 1:30 (You'll see why I call this huge as the chain for the next 8 or so hours unfolds)

138 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002b0bfa93bc8b2c2e046f719d595d9f0362ab5444128621151

1219 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002e39a52c93acb5de574d3a0a920c58dd3850766fd1b22a433

871 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000037cc07887858aa50ebf7abec0616cae4b52dac547010cef67

2573 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000027a7c8e79c9f589b2fa791353d91edc4d0cda5643179aa6f7

629 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001cde22896d5dab56239a9bebeca29a5311738d944532a4634

5727 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002d79cd7069cedd05f49716354590bd5518b18a513b3b4d513

398 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000039a99dd09b3da5e206d3c064859c5bbdcb3e34dc2b97adc44

Things fall off quite a bit, but the value just keeps jumping.

422 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block-index/453180

1001 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002f350faf1b5da0c17c676db6cc2dbefe7dfb98114ea069f89

131 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000148c7064fa5d5e58bb4f6abd2bba10873a595393bc3258b6a

107 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001a7e6e46d32ca01bb162818e7849852682a03aab3a7a235dc

124 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002fbe3e0b60cc0d90eaaf06f9951e6fa166e81975e7abbbb33

288 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000ab28586c1dda43f698383e2997f06fff331f974d0baf6dbf

420 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000ab28586c1dda43f698383e2997f06fff331f974d0baf6dbf

108 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000037c84ce6ff1ea3a5851efc95ab3a045f98d284f9699ab3d3f

1112 BTC (at 2:15): https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000037c84ce6ff1ea3a5851efc95ab3a045f98d284f9699ab3d3f

626 BTC; https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002d1d84a8797b6acaad0de6e2239b48cc8bd03019153c874d3

138 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002ab1e410dd69b84aeaf0caedcb7e3bde29e3f755cb68e96db

330 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000c5be02237d2f469449ffe83f7be25b5508d6f17ca0684c3e

28 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000003123ac9532696c737ee0b991513bedc70e437d388a8252298

53 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000031fba1384445b39fa47a4453f00f48ac656f7b808c9bfd337

80 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000020324a496aec65e05cf7f9849efa207c0f360160c5f3b6656

669 BTC (2:45): https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001cc857762f972c7d3189058e41f58ad8b9636518b9649f276

559 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000319549d4774e00bc4a285637f4047e14e512e48410c41bd8b

555 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000643ae657e42898a5daea631c265829c5dc5fb56092baed45

188 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000445a9cc2a0cf645f1c31063ee47fbbcebbad2ad065e2cbf4

1007 BTC (4:00): https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000025ce0b74eb7009aacadf4b29ee0feda04057a0fc45563f150

820 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000c0b2d985b6b8ff8630f35d5c3acae2f628f00ff7e79e938a

235 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000017871bf646ec12c1e2dedacef87dcd357cea0da1ddb0b64b5

254 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000007010e7d490712b361f066d611ec788182baae459eae59b53

123 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000003600425f5be08c99592a7d751adb257721960d5c101b03598

243 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002235e7e62677efd9cf09070507dc48ba4a339722058d64d58

13 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000d1d213c942e7bbe7274c32388422d4b3cce4048bcb360290

811 BTC (4:30): https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000085d0960bb0b128e691d1a47f81cab49429a146d0ee3bd597

445 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000081be5f9c4e1610bee086bbfccb38a7715e543d139db84958

624 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000069c6e0354bc155146d83842ad6b97fd0e5bdf93199322bba

222 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000069c6e0354bc155146d83842ad6b97fd0e5bdf93199322bba

During this time the price has moved from about $630 to 680. Off of just those trades.

Then right around here a lot start trading, you see chains with 1K or a couple thousand relatively frequently for a while:

1190 BTC (4:45): https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000084649a5d02ee86cef3916f355e3b6cfd4191377e8fefd987

.5 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000084649a5d02ee86cef3916f355e3b6cfd4191377e8fefd987

753 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000084649a5d02ee86cef3916f355e3b6cfd4191377e8fefd987

59 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000003629ed4de9785049a92dcba66d3dec6601e3e42a042afc411

149 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000036ae08beae1c2480da24c8528a62619c1eed5848279325619

0 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000157629a69981c52d1f28af221d43cb3c4ef3e532ba304f157

1400 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000c794ec1f9d496aade45e4b5b3869306722c63b5e0dc047fd

971 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000f2ae7a8af47a219a2aff805a297e7223c427bdc4c80bc412

525 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000b0564e9de957b6188bfe767ef6e529f9272dbe870dfcd768

775 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002c29e079e41e426d3805bf60da05606233af4b6ca50d803bc

460 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002e2e3a0fa2c7a5e5dd70f25bd6eff3488904d6171d7b5f07c

1500 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002e2b21502357de14e435616143b2daa0435e7df5d2d935e6e

1007 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000280337cdcc620754266bf0e18f4e73e9802d218b9be643959

1956 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000aaef258bff946de36d6518ac044f68df19e1313f4794d4ba

428 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000301a0a15a4226ff85157c204e44882cae7ef75336c6a11d82

668 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000005ef750a67b2ff8319768c6377860f03665a9ad6feca35c0

538 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000121dcc371f2d88c486aa42b9045cf4199bd3a71ec59575d92

613 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001f55f60acc751dbf3d410cfdd5926332fda24602ee1c5f119

466 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000003bf85d464b6d5020c5d1da6b75025b047151d34fdc1f9944

1081 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000015cc118aaa852a4051bc07f6a65ef91abab8b2eebecfdc29b

82 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000021bf9dcc3ad0548714f757397cd304c850a1dcb0a241c18fd

818 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002f4f065da79ed8ee768bb0612aaefbf9a6d88ce70e119852b

The activity starts to fall off a bit:

54 BTC (8:30): https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000045eac5c7e12b7847e9849df268cf710f02af3cee87cc72d7

60 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000016f5f9a3d13a257a8f2578e4c2ef74dc946c1214089edb750

766 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002826194c7404f6258eb9e649b085a6ea984e53d21842a2c8d

780 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000026bb69288c98287c5a38bdb72c32a4d0cde1850b760fa16b8

124 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000209caeaa80f87ef36cfece4767c3a07a1038ff0b6868ff628

272 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000007d3efae8fd27d1e305399c08534b3d34a3d0149344edf21a

618 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001aa6f04c5a8b5ac65937fdf3b828fd0101803d42429a577df

690 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000003e586cf8198ae464013f958ec6d255e253321bf8ceb8d1ad

318 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000003893d9901ad92bc340c77e21b04312cb3fcce879bd394313b

55 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001a00eb8630b047c74da5cc35564975a2ea5c0ffc27ccdc325

185 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000029701a14046f686c5e8c393bbb9d0470dd631cc7d58f5fbc5

331 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000020b999d3f37394b86b55679af76adccce02d401ccf21270dd

Now, the price has a nice little drop and there's some fierce trading. Interested in looking at the 16K movement closer, I bet it traces back to one of these goofy accounts:

2200 BTC (10:00 AM): https://blockchain.info/block-index/453274

37 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000045eac5c7e12b7847e9849df268cf710f02af3cee87cc72d7

16,210 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001aa6d4ed44160d044fee7d407f2e00aee711c5d4b2abeeda4

254 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001baeb93b046f1bb97319a20cd5fc30a872361049f24115fcd

188 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000242b23a7cbbf812e42f164d1fcee2e24686132257501f94c1

1025 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000027b627d8d27f8aef5601684d4cd9d02764807ecd9f1652ca9

Now, activity falls off a cliff again:

252 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000011edacd861b57b51b12d3ad4cfd412aa9e2a518425d166673

15 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000013251707a02993c39a1ded88fd8c9a1ecadd85af7d9df61d1

38 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000009a586c44ad7e9a5435ac4c281b6bc0edb1d53d86d74dbdac

274 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000035c19d75c2c4dfae9728739a5e8054212fa4095e73f6dbee8

229 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000015e4cfc10ed55a7fb317086d85d2beb1c72ce067035143793

58 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000011d90ac2c6f0fec57011e9ed9d4336acb9a9bb4f1bbc845e5

308 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002b6afc724b88c695cb29c45dd33e0ad65e9c6116f02f5261a

252 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002dde04c5624bc303259d9ee7bd47597218e039d4cd9561659

323 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001e0daf18e25d124b9f7ec6b19c45c201b18c985ef87f8e7d4

573 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001a446c62951ad19bcdb912f72b5864132f79e0954f450544a

398 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000185c9ed1e16f1223c5594c9ab7db5a2ef7d1f7a5f0fa8c70d

207 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000b7e14e26377e58f853fc9c39a59923b5fb5d8f80b10bedbe

95 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001c7b0a93e8f8a8670027043d5a0ee3fd3f6a91f46277211dd

92 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000c42ddcca0448d2f4b4ab0417b735a9c3c66333d0a77a5681

287 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000000787ee6b209b6cf47de1b02ebfdfef6ea639e90a17d0621f

91 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000019c03dbe3ec7b287346669519757009aacfe19aa10ccd184e

456 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000003eb72ee25bbce530f64441b079e2f27009259f59ea03cd81

121 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001550b43cdb8d4798c4f85751b49fc2e224ffc10709c138bbf

359 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000380c81d936f265a748664d899468c14d8d4ba355b12996ae5

468 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001fd4863e9eeccc69fd3a30c2aaa82c6d5738055e5b08b5e98

1031 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000003846bc34ffeae9de82de42dad641ebe9d4ca888e29bb94502

663 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002058dd7129f6c2ae84c4d362d4d089940b434eceed20ecc03

114 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001e9c0c5821a6c9ee42e8b89ed5c390d096d1d1e91f35ae1bf

Yeah, I can see how this is hard to manipulate. You usually have hundreds of these, maybe a thousand moving around at any given point. And some guys with piles of several hundred thousand to play games within this, who seem to be able to move the price some every time a couple thousand of them hit the market.

Spoiler

Why do you assume every transaction is a trade? More than half of these anonymous transactions that actually have readable text say SatoshiBones 50pct or pinballcoin which both sound like gaming/gambling the other half that have no text there is no context of what the transactions are. What I am getting at is how are you able to reconcile any of these transactions as relevant trades for USD to correlate with the 1 link I left in your post showing trading activity?

Great, so there's even less trades happening on exchanges to drive the prices up and down. Some of them are transactions that have no effect on the price. That actually makes it worse.

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

Here's the data for the past day: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg1ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv

Spoiler

It made this really big jump from about from about 12AM to 3AM. Here's the block chain starting at about 12:00 AM to kick the price increase off. You can see how many need to move to cause such an increase...

Huge flurry of activity between about 12:00 and 1:30 (You'll see why I call this huge as the chain for the next 8 or so hours unfolds)

138 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002b0bfa93bc8b2c2e046f719d595d9f0362ab5444128621151

1219 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002e39a52c93acb5de574d3a0a920c58dd3850766fd1b22a433

871 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000037cc07887858aa50ebf7abec0616cae4b52dac547010cef67

2573 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000027a7c8e79c9f589b2fa791353d91edc4d0cda5643179aa6f7

629 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001cde22896d5dab56239a9bebeca29a5311738d944532a4634

5727 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002d79cd7069cedd05f49716354590bd5518b18a513b3b4d513

398 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000039a99dd09b3da5e206d3c064859c5bbdcb3e34dc2b97adc44

Things fall off quite a bit, but the value just keeps jumping.

422 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block-index/453180

1001 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002f350faf1b5da0c17c676db6cc2dbefe7dfb98114ea069f89

131 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000148c7064fa5d5e58bb4f6abd2bba10873a595393bc3258b6a

107 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001a7e6e46d32ca01bb162818e7849852682a03aab3a7a235dc

124 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002fbe3e0b60cc0d90eaaf06f9951e6fa166e81975e7abbbb33

288 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000ab28586c1dda43f698383e2997f06fff331f974d0baf6dbf

420 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000ab28586c1dda43f698383e2997f06fff331f974d0baf6dbf

108 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000037c84ce6ff1ea3a5851efc95ab3a045f98d284f9699ab3d3f

1112 BTC (at 2:15): https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000037c84ce6ff1ea3a5851efc95ab3a045f98d284f9699ab3d3f

626 BTC; https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002d1d84a8797b6acaad0de6e2239b48cc8bd03019153c874d3

138 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002ab1e410dd69b84aeaf0caedcb7e3bde29e3f755cb68e96db

330 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000c5be02237d2f469449ffe83f7be25b5508d6f17ca0684c3e

28 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000003123ac9532696c737ee0b991513bedc70e437d388a8252298

53 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000031fba1384445b39fa47a4453f00f48ac656f7b808c9bfd337

80 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000020324a496aec65e05cf7f9849efa207c0f360160c5f3b6656

669 BTC (2:45): https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001cc857762f972c7d3189058e41f58ad8b9636518b9649f276

559 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000319549d4774e00bc4a285637f4047e14e512e48410c41bd8b

555 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000643ae657e42898a5daea631c265829c5dc5fb56092baed45

188 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000445a9cc2a0cf645f1c31063ee47fbbcebbad2ad065e2cbf4

1007 BTC (4:00): https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000025ce0b74eb7009aacadf4b29ee0feda04057a0fc45563f150

820 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000c0b2d985b6b8ff8630f35d5c3acae2f628f00ff7e79e938a

235 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000017871bf646ec12c1e2dedacef87dcd357cea0da1ddb0b64b5

254 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000007010e7d490712b361f066d611ec788182baae459eae59b53

123 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000003600425f5be08c99592a7d751adb257721960d5c101b03598

243 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002235e7e62677efd9cf09070507dc48ba4a339722058d64d58

13 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000d1d213c942e7bbe7274c32388422d4b3cce4048bcb360290

811 BTC (4:30): https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000085d0960bb0b128e691d1a47f81cab49429a146d0ee3bd597

445 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000081be5f9c4e1610bee086bbfccb38a7715e543d139db84958

624 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000069c6e0354bc155146d83842ad6b97fd0e5bdf93199322bba

222 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000069c6e0354bc155146d83842ad6b97fd0e5bdf93199322bba

During this time the price has moved from about $630 to 680. Off of just those trades.

Then right around here a lot start trading, you see chains with 1K or a couple thousand relatively frequently for a while:

1190 BTC (4:45): https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000084649a5d02ee86cef3916f355e3b6cfd4191377e8fefd987

.5 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000084649a5d02ee86cef3916f355e3b6cfd4191377e8fefd987

753 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000084649a5d02ee86cef3916f355e3b6cfd4191377e8fefd987

59 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000003629ed4de9785049a92dcba66d3dec6601e3e42a042afc411

149 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000036ae08beae1c2480da24c8528a62619c1eed5848279325619

0 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000157629a69981c52d1f28af221d43cb3c4ef3e532ba304f157

1400 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000c794ec1f9d496aade45e4b5b3869306722c63b5e0dc047fd

971 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000f2ae7a8af47a219a2aff805a297e7223c427bdc4c80bc412

525 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000b0564e9de957b6188bfe767ef6e529f9272dbe870dfcd768

775 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002c29e079e41e426d3805bf60da05606233af4b6ca50d803bc

460 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002e2e3a0fa2c7a5e5dd70f25bd6eff3488904d6171d7b5f07c

1500 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002e2b21502357de14e435616143b2daa0435e7df5d2d935e6e

1007 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000280337cdcc620754266bf0e18f4e73e9802d218b9be643959

1956 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000aaef258bff946de36d6518ac044f68df19e1313f4794d4ba

428 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000301a0a15a4226ff85157c204e44882cae7ef75336c6a11d82

668 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000005ef750a67b2ff8319768c6377860f03665a9ad6feca35c0

538 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000121dcc371f2d88c486aa42b9045cf4199bd3a71ec59575d92

613 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001f55f60acc751dbf3d410cfdd5926332fda24602ee1c5f119

466 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000003bf85d464b6d5020c5d1da6b75025b047151d34fdc1f9944

1081 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000015cc118aaa852a4051bc07f6a65ef91abab8b2eebecfdc29b

82 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000021bf9dcc3ad0548714f757397cd304c850a1dcb0a241c18fd

818 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002f4f065da79ed8ee768bb0612aaefbf9a6d88ce70e119852b

The activity starts to fall off a bit:

54 BTC (8:30): https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000045eac5c7e12b7847e9849df268cf710f02af3cee87cc72d7

60 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000016f5f9a3d13a257a8f2578e4c2ef74dc946c1214089edb750

766 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002826194c7404f6258eb9e649b085a6ea984e53d21842a2c8d

780 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000026bb69288c98287c5a38bdb72c32a4d0cde1850b760fa16b8

124 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000209caeaa80f87ef36cfece4767c3a07a1038ff0b6868ff628

272 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000007d3efae8fd27d1e305399c08534b3d34a3d0149344edf21a

618 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001aa6f04c5a8b5ac65937fdf3b828fd0101803d42429a577df

690 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000003e586cf8198ae464013f958ec6d255e253321bf8ceb8d1ad

318 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000003893d9901ad92bc340c77e21b04312cb3fcce879bd394313b

55 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001a00eb8630b047c74da5cc35564975a2ea5c0ffc27ccdc325

185 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000029701a14046f686c5e8c393bbb9d0470dd631cc7d58f5fbc5

331 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000020b999d3f37394b86b55679af76adccce02d401ccf21270dd

Now, the price has a nice little drop and there's some fierce trading. Interested in looking at the 16K movement closer, I bet it traces back to one of these goofy accounts:

2200 BTC (10:00 AM): https://blockchain.info/block-index/453274

37 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000045eac5c7e12b7847e9849df268cf710f02af3cee87cc72d7

16,210 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001aa6d4ed44160d044fee7d407f2e00aee711c5d4b2abeeda4

254 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001baeb93b046f1bb97319a20cd5fc30a872361049f24115fcd

188 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000242b23a7cbbf812e42f164d1fcee2e24686132257501f94c1

1025 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000027b627d8d27f8aef5601684d4cd9d02764807ecd9f1652ca9

Now, activity falls off a cliff again:

252 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000011edacd861b57b51b12d3ad4cfd412aa9e2a518425d166673

15 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000013251707a02993c39a1ded88fd8c9a1ecadd85af7d9df61d1

38 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000009a586c44ad7e9a5435ac4c281b6bc0edb1d53d86d74dbdac

274 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000035c19d75c2c4dfae9728739a5e8054212fa4095e73f6dbee8

229 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000015e4cfc10ed55a7fb317086d85d2beb1c72ce067035143793

58 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000011d90ac2c6f0fec57011e9ed9d4336acb9a9bb4f1bbc845e5

308 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002b6afc724b88c695cb29c45dd33e0ad65e9c6116f02f5261a

252 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002dde04c5624bc303259d9ee7bd47597218e039d4cd9561659

323 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001e0daf18e25d124b9f7ec6b19c45c201b18c985ef87f8e7d4

573 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001a446c62951ad19bcdb912f72b5864132f79e0954f450544a

398 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000185c9ed1e16f1223c5594c9ab7db5a2ef7d1f7a5f0fa8c70d

207 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000b7e14e26377e58f853fc9c39a59923b5fb5d8f80b10bedbe

95 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001c7b0a93e8f8a8670027043d5a0ee3fd3f6a91f46277211dd

92 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000c42ddcca0448d2f4b4ab0417b735a9c3c66333d0a77a5681

287 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000000787ee6b209b6cf47de1b02ebfdfef6ea639e90a17d0621f

91 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000019c03dbe3ec7b287346669519757009aacfe19aa10ccd184e

456 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000003eb72ee25bbce530f64441b079e2f27009259f59ea03cd81

121 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001550b43cdb8d4798c4f85751b49fc2e224ffc10709c138bbf

359 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000380c81d936f265a748664d899468c14d8d4ba355b12996ae5

468 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001fd4863e9eeccc69fd3a30c2aaa82c6d5738055e5b08b5e98

1031 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000003846bc34ffeae9de82de42dad641ebe9d4ca888e29bb94502

663 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000002058dd7129f6c2ae84c4d362d4d089940b434eceed20ecc03

114 BTC: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000001e9c0c5821a6c9ee42e8b89ed5c390d096d1d1e91f35ae1bf

Yeah, I can see how this is hard to manipulate. You usually have hundreds of these, maybe a thousand moving around at any given point. And some guys with piles of several hundred thousand to play games within this, who seem to be able to move the price some every time a couple thousand of them hit the market.

Spoiler

Why do you assume every transaction is a trade? More than half of these anonymous transactions that actually have readable text say SatoshiBones 50pct or pinballcoin which both sound like gaming/gambling the other half that have no text there is no context of what the transactions are. What I am getting at is how are you able to reconcile any of these transactions as relevant trades for USD to correlate with the 1 link I left in your post showing trading activity?

Great, so there's even less trades happening on exchanges to drive the prices up and down. Some of them are transactions that have no effect on the price. That actually makes it worse.

Huh? You keep posting these links upon links of blockchains and expect everyone to believe you that these are trades happening on exchanges - why are you doing this? There is no context of what these transactions represent so you cannot draw conclusions off of them.