dave111223

Just the intelligence value alone would make it an attractive acquisition

Nobody knows who is behind bitcoin. I don't anyway. Anybody have theories or evidence?

Could this already be owned or operated by NSA or CIA?

The people "behind" it would be the people who wrote the original bitcoin client software: http://bitcoin.org/en/development

However it's open source, so you could write your own version of the client from scratch (provided it still followed the same protocol standards) and then you'd be "behind" bitcoin too.

Anyone who runs a bitcoin client (bitcoin software) is part of "operating" the network. So if you download the software then you would be "operating bitcoin" (or if the CIA had some computers with the software then they'd be operating bitcoin too).

No one "owns" it as a whole, but you can own some bitcoins.

Any changes to the system would require majority rule. For example let say you created your own modified version of the software, but it was a bit different (such as faster transaction rates). Your new software is not compatible with the other versions of bitcoin, because you'd changed the protocol standards; this is considered a "hard fork", and one of the following would occur:

1) No one likes your new version, no one uses and it fades into the history books; normal bitcoin continues running the way it did before.

2) Most people like your new version better, and they upgrade to your version, once your version acquires a majority people quickly jump ship to your new version and now bitcoin has changed a bit to your new version.

3) There is a split decision. Lots of people like your version, but lots want to stick with the old version. There are now 2 difference versions of bitcoin. When accepting a bitcoin payment you'd have to specify "I want Bitcoin 1.0, and don't use Bitcoin Cobrasnake version". However the chances of a long term split with 2 viable verisons seems remote as people want to jump onboard with the popular version.

For this reason no one can just change the code, for example creating more bitcoins, or change the code so that 10% of all transactions get sent to them; as no one would upgrade to this new version.

I've been thinking about putting a bit of money into Litecoin too. Plus it's still mineable by normal people (i'm currently earning about $.50 a day mining yay!)

It's basically a different version of Bitcoin which has some technical differences, such as the ability to process more transactions more quickly.

It's value has been steadily rising also and is now worth almost $2 per Litecoin (as compared to Bitcoins $100 per coin).

If you think Bitcoin is funny money I'd be interested to see what you think of a secondary level of "funny money"

..if these visits have only happened by the OP's admission thrice in two years, I don't see the big fuss...

That was BlackPuddingBertha, not the OP.

For those interested in monitoring the price I find this site very useful: http://bitcoinity.com/markets (live bitcoin trading price charts)

From personal experience Fedex sucks, they never take responsibility for their own f***ups. Lesson learned don't use them again.

Love this one:

Sometimes I read a story like this and it makes me so happy that I live in Thailand, where I'm not paying taxes for someone to sit at a desk and debate with lawyers the definition of "ungoogleable"

...European tax *dollars* hard at work.

If, and in whatever form, Cyprus banks re-open, you can bet your bippy that there will be heavy restrictions on withdrawals to thwart a run.

I am very happy to have cash in the US, always remembering that there is a gulf which separates the private from the public sectors. The US has already crashed and flushed out a lot of crap. Banks were either bailed out, bought out, closed with their assets sold to more solvent bank and liabilities eaten by the government...

US banks and other corporations are awash in cash. Banks aren't lending except "safe" loans for cars etc., and you'd need to have the best of credit and at least 20% down to buy a house now. That house has had a lot of surplus value flushed out of it and is priced below replacement cost.

You realize that the banks are in the US are "flush with cash" because the Federal reserve creates sometime like $85Billion per month out of thin air, and gives it to them? "quantitative easing"

RE: Cyprus looks like the banks are going to be closed at least until Thursday...postponed again

That's not exactly how it works. The fed creates the money, and the banks can borrow it at a low interest rate to increase deposits. It then becomes a liability to the bank. That's called getting money at the fed window.

Banks are awash in cash because companies won't spend it, and banks won't lend it. Everyone is afraid to make a move. Corporations are awash in cash. Many of them paid big stock dividends just before year end in case the tax rate increased on Jan. 1. US companies are very profitable right now. Normally they would be expanding and hiring and buying equipment but they aren't. Everyone is afraid of an uncertain future. No one knows what tax rates will do, or what affect Obamacare will have. No one knows for sure where the real estate market or for that matter the economy is going. No one knows what the fed will do with interest rates.

But look at the numbers for corporate profits and bank loan to deposit ratios, and corporate cash on hand (in banks.)

What you are describing is the normal monetary policy, whereby the Fed prints money and then sets the Prime rate (interest rate at which it will lend that money to other banks).

Reducing the prime interest rate will make more people borrow money, however also increases inflation as there is more money available. However what happens when the rate is zero or also zero and you still need to increase spending/growth?

Enter "quantitative easing", which is where you start "creating" (i don't say printed as the money is never actually minted or printed) and buy financial assets (bonds, mortgages etc..)

If, and in whatever form, Cyprus banks re-open, you can bet your bippy that there will be heavy restrictions on withdrawals to thwart a run.

I am very happy to have cash in the US, always remembering that there is a gulf which separates the private from the public sectors. The US has already crashed and flushed out a lot of crap. Banks were either bailed out, bought out, closed with their assets sold to more solvent bank and liabilities eaten by the government...

US banks and other corporations are awash in cash. Banks aren't lending except "safe" loans for cars etc., and you'd need to have the best of credit and at least 20% down to buy a house now. That house has had a lot of surplus value flushed out of it and is priced below replacement cost.

You realize that the banks are in the US are "flush with cash" because the Federal reserve creates sometime like $85Billion per month out of thin air, and gives it to them? "quantitative easing"

RE: Cyprus looks like the banks are going to be closed at least until Thursday...postponed again

Did you check that you haven't accidentally switched it into offline mode?

In the bottom left corner there is an icon of 2 computers, make sure they are blue color. If they are greyed out with a little X then you are in offline mode, click it to go online.

It's not the spanking as such that is the major problem, no lasting harm will be done if only once in a rare while, but the problem is that parents who are in favor of spanking usually use it because they are clueless, selfish and irrational about their children. It's like how small children misbehave when dragged along for shopping after a long day. How can this come as a surprise? The problem here is not solved by a quick smack, but by not bringing the child to the supermarket. God knows that I as an adult hate shopping groceries and so does children. Let mommy do her shopping at another times and bring your child straight home instead. Another problem of wanting to stay up and watch TV. Try not being a lazy couch potato yourself and only have the TV running when there is something you actually want to watch. The kid who hangs in curtains, hangs in the curtains because he is bored or has too much energy. Solution, go play outside with your kid or play with the dog.

What many are trying to do is fix symptoms of boredom, tiredness, hunger etc with corporal punishment and that is only going to create resentment. Children, even small, have a very strong sense of fairness. They can easily accept and understand punishment if it is just. But it is not fair to get mad at your child because you neglected their needs until they begin acting out.

Don't take them shopping. Play with them actively every day. Don't let them become couch potatoes and don't be one yourself. Bake delicious cakes (children can participate) instead of buying candy.

Kids misbehave because of their parents. If your child misbehaves get your missus to cane your behind because you are the one who is not behaving.

While I can agree with most of what you say, as kids do act out more when tired or bored; I don't agree that this is the only cause and kids "only misbehave because of parents" is flatly wrong.

You say "bring them to play outside", so we go to the park and he immediately starts running to the dog sh*tting area across the street, although all the swings and climbing stuff is on this side, and there is nothing but dog sh*t over there...no amount of telling will make him stay in the park area. Trust me I can give you an example of just about any situation you can imagine.

If you have only had a kid that's is generally well behave and responds to your telling them what to do, then count your blessings. But remember when your parents always used to say "wait until you have kids"...once you get that kid...the kid they were taking about...all children are not the same, i know this because mine are as different as could be.

^ You don't ask your child to stop.

You tell them to.

I have to say after repeating step 1-11 several thousand times

It took several thousand times of asking your child not to do something and you still didn't realize that you didn't know what you were doing?

There I have updated step 2 to better help you understand.

P.S. Experience starting with "GET OFF THE CURTAINS!" instead of "Please don't swing on the curtains" does not alter the overall cycle.

I'm not saying that I use all steps in this order all the time. What I'm saying is these (and other variations) are what I would consider my "discipline arsenal", and if you are missing a physical option in your toolkit then you're really bringing a knife to a gun fight.

Maybe they can provide you with an information packet, containing expected bribe receipts over time, so that you can calculate the ROI

I have hundreds of these bitcoins.

I might add, I didn't buy them at the current price either. Much much lower.

Maybe you can donate some to Naam

Seriously though PM if you want to sell some

Step 1)

Get yourself a bitcoin wallet. This is just a program that runs on your computer, and there are quite a few options: http://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet

Personally I've tried them all and found Electrum to be by far the easiest to use and fastest: http://electrum.org/download.html

Step 2)

Open up your wallet program (and let's assume you are using Electrum) click the "Receive" tab, this will show your "addresses" which are random strings that look something like this: 1GXohrdnWAxqxxAtabYsLZU8HPzoY7i8mv (this is just an example don't send anything to this address)

Step 3)

Sell some stuff for bitcoins, or buy some bitcoins; and have the other party send them to your address.

If you are buying bitcoins you can either:

1) For high volume $, ¥,€, £ (50,000baht up) use Mt. Gox (http://mtgox.com in Japan) by using an international wire transfer (SWIFT/IBAN).

2) a) Meet people in person via: https://localbitcoins.com/postal_code/TH/Bangkok/

b ) Buy from a local online exchange such http://bitcoin.in.th or http://bathcoin.com for THB bank transfer

Step 4)

After you have received some bitcoins you'll see them in your wallet balance. You can then use the "Send" tab to send them to anyone elses address (they must provide you with the address you cannot search for peoples addresses)

Here's a simplified "how it works":

And here's a more detailed video:

And I don't think you should confuse being a parent with being knowledgeable in the field of appropriately educating or disciplining a child.

Is that you're way of saying you don't have young kids, but you think you know best about how to raise/handle them?

Speaking of which time to go and pick them up...enjoy your armchair

hi Dave

does this news cause any potential problems?

Web Money Gets Laundering Rule

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324373204578374611351125202.html?mod=djemalertNEWS

Initially I thought this would be a problem (ie a crackdown/clamp down) in the US. However after reading more on the new regs. it just means if you exchange virtual currency (such as bitcoin) for fiat currency in the USA, of more than $1000 per day, then you must register as a MSB (Money Service Business) with FinCEN.

Again initially i thought "oh no registration, that's probably a ton of paperwork and fees", after more reading it's actually as simple as filling in a free registration form: http://www.fincen.gov/financial_institutions/msb/msb.registration.html within 180 days of opening your exchange business. And you have to keep a list of the people you do exchanges with. Really pretty basic stuff as far as I can see.

Personally I don't see it as a good thing, as personally I'd rather have as little to do with government and "registrations" as possible, but it's not a bad thing for the other all Bitcoin economy either.

Basically the only tangible change this would have is when you buy/sell bitcoins in the US you will probably be required to give a name/address to the exchange, (instead of just doing it based only on an email address or something), if the exchange is operating on the up and up.

Digging up articles from 2011? on a "crackdown"...do you base your stock picks on 2 year old info too?

P.S. It doesn't make sense that there would be "financial statements" as there is no company running bitcoin.

You can see every transaction ever made though: https://blockchain.info/blocks each "block" contains about 10 minutes of transactions, click on any block to show the transactions within.

Pretty poor; good warning.

Also a Ponzi requires that you continue to increase the number of investors, in order to continue to keep paying back the previous investors + return; otherwise the scheme implodes (al bernie madoff). Whereas with Bitcoin if there was no new investors and the price did not increase or even started decreasing this would not cause a problem, or the system to implode.

Might be a Ponzi scheme. Good luck.

It doesn't really make sense to use the term "Ponzi scheme", as there is no central controller and no opacity.

For example if all the initial developers and early adopters decided to sell their bitcoins and cash out, they'd get fiat money out and it would probably drive the price down (if they all did it at the same time and had considerable holdings), but with a Ponzi scheme at that point the scheme is over and everyone else loses, but with Bitcoin seeing as the initial developers and early adopters do not have any central control over the system, so the Bitcoin protocol would still continue to operate without them.

Bitcoins is also 100% transparent, anyone (with some C++ programming knowledge) can download a bitcoin client in open source and look at every line of code and see "what is happening", and every transactions is broadcast publicly to the world.

You can even get involved yourself in writing code improvements, or talk with code authors to try and convince them to write code changes for you (if you are not capable). There is no curtain, everything is an open book.

If you think it's a conspiracy to enrich the early adopters, it would be more akin to a stock pump and dump.

IMHO even if Bitcoin were to dump to zero and lose all confidence (and basically cease to exist, and I lost my investment), the writing is already on the wall for fiat currencies. Make no mistake the concept is ground breaking: http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

If Bitcoin dies another improved reincarnation will replace it.

At the heart of it "money" is nothing more than society agreeing "Bob has $10", "Jane has $20" if no one could lie and everyone could just remember how much everyone had there would be no need for physical money at all, but unfortunately humans are not capable of this, but computers now make this possible in the form of virtual currency.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Mt.+Gox

Price Now: 1800

Good thing I stuck in a large investment at 900, not a bad way to double your money in a couple of months.

question:

assuming you have invested 1 million which has doubled in the meantime and you would like to have your money back in cash... what is the exact procedure?

Send the bitcoins to my Mt. Gox account (almost free transfer). Put in an exchange ask, trade gets executed once offers meet my price with USD. Then wire transfer the money to my SCB account (700THB transfer fee).

However there is no way I'm trading them in. I'm riding this all the way; ie never going to sell at any price, I'm going to use a couple of them directly once Ferrari starts accepting them for payments

When you considering that the total market cap of bitcoin is only $600,000 million there is still a long way for it to grow to approach what I think it can become (the first global currency)

Price Now: 1800

Good thing I stuck in a large investment at 900, not a bad way to double your money in a couple of months.