Buying bitcoins

nm wrote: »

Insolvent, been obvious for a long time. Once the initial news passes this is definitely a good thing.
Gox were single handedly responsible for 90% of the volatility and crashes, some of it on purpose seemingly.
Sorry for those who had funds on there but as for the team and exchange itself - good riddance.

good riddance indeed - we're probably looking at a serious price drop as the market digests this news and nervous people sell.

However given the momentum elsewhere, I think that it's temporary and that it represents the cheapest price you'll ever acquire a bitcoin from now on.

Rojomcdojo wrote: »

BTC is up over 100$ since it's low of 400, but this would scare me:

If you're going to apply that to Bitcoin, it goes more like this:

http://i.imgur.com/nEnQrWl.jpg

See April 2013 in the chart you posted for the last time everyone was posting the bubble chart.

A log scale chart is the best way to view the long term trend: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25zvzl

It'll be interesting to see if it drops lower than 400 in the short term though, a lot of mainstream media thinks Gox owns or controls Bitcoin in general, there's going to be so much FUD and panic over this.

Rojomcdojo wrote: »

True, but it does bear a striking resemblance right now. And one might also think that greed has been replaced by fear for many people. Only time will tell - the real people who've lost out are those with large (and smaller too, I guess) quantities of coin on the MT Gox server.

I'm sure people who don't understand Bitcoin but jumped in to get rich quick are likely to panic for sure - like whoever sold at $400 last night. I'm actually surprised the price is only currently 3% lower than today's opening price on bitstamp, maybe a lot of the panic hasn't even started yet. Time will tell.

The best outcome of this will be for Bitcoin users to realise the risk they take when they transfer control of their coins to a third party, and stop using exchanges as storage wallets. It will hopefully push other exchanges to be more transparent about their solvency either through their own desire to attract customers, or via government regulation (which is coming in the states at least anyway).

Ideally I would like to see completely decentralised exchanges, where no trust of any third party is needed at all, unfortunately we're not quite there yet.

12 element wrote: »

How anyone could think having hundreds of thousands of dollars deposited on a Magic the Gathering card exchange website is beyond me.

OMG how could people have billions of dollars invested in a petro company that was set up to sell seashells ... OMG OMG.

Wait I'll tell you another one ... it'll have you in hysterics, I know some people who bought a computer from ... wait for it ... a typewriter company .. LOLZ

12 element wrote: »

Sure because that is the exact same thing...

Yes it is - a company that is created for some seemingly trivial thing (seashells) can indeed evolve into something else (a petrochem giant)

Once you have trading software, in theory you can apply that software to anything, sure you are dismissive of MTG cards, but there's no difference in trading them that trading any product. As it turns out MTGOX seem to have been incompetent fools, but that has nothing to do with the fact they once traded game cards.

Anyway, to add a bit of perspective to all the "bitcoin is dead" media

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/06/20/so-thats-the-end-of-bitcoin-then/

(Oh wait what's the date on that?)

I guess if you're forbes/bloomberg/LA times/WSJ and you produce a "bitcoin is dead" article for every piece of negative news, there's a small chance of being right once.

"-I want to start off by saying that I've been waiting for this moment for a while. I knew it was bound to happen sooner or later, as soon as we weren't able to withdraw our coins from Mt. Gox weeks ago. I stupidly had my life's savings in bitcoin, and when the price started to fall, I converted to dollars and watched the price plummet. I lost $357,000. Not to try to earn a bunch of sympathy or anything but this was not only my money but it was going to be my 5 year old son's education fund which i took out of fidelity about 1 year ago to mess with bitcoins. I dont know what the **** to do any more. I'm sitting here on reddit looking for comfort or just something but I don't know what I'm going to do now at all. I don't have **** to live for any more and the only thing I have left is just talking about it here I guess. I can't express what I'm feeling right now. THat **** was just sitting there and I couldn't take it out how could this whole shop just pack up and dissapear? I don't know if anyone here knows the facts or whats going on but I want to or if you have any slighest shred of evidence that its possible they arent really gone please et me know here. if im never going to see my money again all of it im going to either kill myself which i dont want to do because i want to live even though i have nothing to live for now, except my son who is now completely ****ed"

One guy ^^

nm wrote: »

I've sympathy but the mt gox situation isn't sudden or new news, it has been all over the media and internet for at least 8 months that mt gox were in danger of becoming insolvent. What kind of an eijot leaves his life savings and sons education fund anywhere that like that? He has had the best part of a year to sort this out, all he needed to do was buy BTC again on gox and transfer it to any one of the countless fully functioning exchanges.

Problem solved.

I find it hard to believe anyone could be that stupid but if it is true, he's no one but himself to blame, sorry.

Even more so, you don't need to keep bitcoins in an exchange at all, there are a number of options but by far the safest is to transfer them to paper wallets, or a secure offline wallet like armory.

If true it's a sad story, but in many ways the correct response (in terms of this thread) is "So what?". How many countless similar stories could be told by Madoff investors, or indeed holders of many Irish bank stocks recently.

There are many lessons to be learned but the irony here is that in many ways bitcoin is the *solution* to all this, it allows people take total control of their cash assets in a way that they're not beholden to anyone and can spend/send their own money with vary little interference from anyone else.

TiltedBrain wrote: »

"-I want to start off by saying that I've been waiting for this moment for a while. I knew it was bound to happen sooner or later, as soon as we weren't able to withdraw our coins from Mt. Gox weeks ago. I stupidly had my life's savings in bitcoin, and when the price started to fall, I converted to dollars and watched the price plummet. I lost $357,000. Not to try to earn a bunch of sympathy or anything but this was not only my money but it was going to be my 5 year old son's education fund which i took out of fidelity about 1 year ago to mess with bitcoins. I dont know what the **** to do any more. I'm sitting here on reddit looking for comfort or just something but I don't know what I'm going to do now at all. I don't have **** to live for any more and the only thing I have left is just talking about it here I guess. I can't express what I'm feeling right now. THat **** was just sitting there and I couldn't take it out how could this whole shop just pack up and dissapear? I don't know if anyone here knows the facts or whats going on but I want to or if you have any slighest shred of evidence that its possible they arent really gone please et me know here. if im never going to see my money again all of it im going to either kill myself which i dont want to do because i want to live even though i have nothing to live for now, except my son who is now completely ****ed"

One guy ^^

I've got a few sympathetic private messages come through, this is not me, maybe I should of added 10 quotation marks.

David Smith doesn't seem like he's a very impartial source:
http://www.benzinga.com/author/david-smith

Here's another article on bit coin: http://brokenlibrarian.org/bitcoin/

The whole article is really funny

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2331308/senator-joe-manchin-wants-to-ban-bitcoin

"Due to Bitcoin's anonymity, the virtual market has been extremely susceptible to hackers and scam artists stealing millions from Bitcoins users."

""I am most concerned that as Bitcoin is inevitably banned in other countries, Americans will be left holding the bag on a valueless currency.""

Good news for Bitcoin fans in Ireland. An ATM is set to be installed in Hippetys Cafe in Temple Bar next week. And it should be ready to be used shortly after.

The group in charge of the machine also intend to open another machine in Waterford.

Link

I'm surprised that Waterford has been chosen instead of one of the bigger cities. Not complaining though since I live here

12 element wrote: »

What use is a bitcoin ATM exactly?

They have a bank note reader and can provide a print out of a bitcoin address with value (or indeed transfer it directly to your wallet if the ATM itself is net connected). Depending on whether the machine is net connected will determine if they provide an up to the second price, or sell from a daily loaded price.

Basically they change physical euro notes into bitcoins relatively easily.

AFAIK the one's being talked about here have permanent net connections and can scan a QR code to get the wallet address.

Much less common are ones that can dispense cash in return for your bitcoins, which as far as I know these bitvendo ones cannot do.

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/technology/mt-gox-files-for-bankruptcy-protection-in-tokyo-1.1708243

Surely offline wallets are the way to go.

martyoo wrote: »

It's irrelevant how secure Bitcoin is because servers, websites and computers can all be hacked in some cases very easily.

It's an interesting idea but it's not an investment or a replacement for fiat at least not in it's current form.

You realise most fiat exists as a number on computers too? and that Bitcoin transactions can be created on offline computers, and Bitcoin private keys can be kept in physical form such as on paper, until they are ready to be spent. Bitcoin provides the ability to secure money in ways that never existed before with multi-sig wallets, though I haven't yet seen a user friendly wallet software offering this, only a matter of time though.