Anyone who can hack into a computer where your keys are stored or processed can get your keys.

If your keys go through a computer whose software you can't disassemble or change, the company who provides the software can get your keys.

A while ago someone discovered that most cellphones had a routine instaled by the factory at a very low level, "for maintenance and debugging purposes", that recorded all your button and keystrokes and send them to the manufacturer on demand.

Even if you use an open source OS and software, you can't check the code of every program you download to see whether it contains a trojan.

Perhaps... But I would bet that 95% of the Chinese bitcoin traders (or of all bitcoin traders in the world, for that matter) do not know or care about external factors like the jan/31 deadline, Shrem's arrest, or the NY hearings.  At most, they will look at charts and react to the trends and patterns that they think they see.

Then there are those traders who bought at 6000 CNY and are reluctant to sell at 4800, even if they are aware of a possible crash on jan/31.

Humans are weird creatures.  They will build houses on storm-exposed beaches, on the slopes of active volcanoes, in the path of avalanches and flash floods. And they will invest all their money in "shares" of a "Bitcoin Corporation" that has no assets, no products, no services, no customers, no revenue, no business plans, and will pay no dividends, ever; because they believe that one day it will be worth a million dollars a share.

And the weirdest thing is, they may be right...

Is that even possible? Here in Brazil at least, one cannot sue someone for damages done to a third person.  I bet that there is a Latin term for that...

They already did that, didn't they?  http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/23/4651926/us-government-seized-5-million-from-bitcoin-behemoth-mt-gox

In any case, MtGOX is a Japanese company, so transferring Yen to Japanese banks is obviously much easier and faster than sending them to other countries.

For the same reason, they can be sued by a wronged Japanese client in Japan far more easily and cheaply than by a foreigner located in another country.

Indeed, but MtGOX's CEO is one of the 6 board members of the Foundation:

https://bitcoinfoundation.org/about/board

Novice bitcoiners probably will not be aware of that...

(Two days ago Charlie Shrem was second on that page, IIRC. )

Unfortunately, many novice bitcoin owners will choose to sell their BTC at MtGOX because (a) it seems to offer the best price, by far; and (b) it is still cited in the news, blogs, and chart sites as one of the main exchanges. 

Hard to find fault with this analysis.  Is any exchange above suspicion in this regard?

I had conjectured a month ago that the purpose of the "ping-pong" robot at MtGOX was to give the appearance of an upward price trend on the charts when in fact there was no real trade for hours on end.

Some people point the finger at Huobi specifically, as if it was particularly suspect.  However,  a large legitimate volume is expected anyway from the large market and the absence of transaction fees.

Moreover, Huobi's volume changes with the hour of day as one would expect from a mostly human clientele that either sleeps at night (and turns off their robots), or lacks personal computers and can only access the site during daytime.

OKCoin's volume is smaller but not zero at night, Either half of their clients are outside China and/or have 24-hour internet access, or half of their volume is fake.

But but but... it is fascinating fake data! 

Bitcoincharts.com dropped BTC-e/USD? 

Now its seems that they list only BTC-e/EUR and BTC-e/RUR.  Yet Bitcoinwisdom.com still lists BTC-e/USD.

And they still don't list Huobi or OKCoin, but list BTC-China.  For technical reasons, or political?

Bitcoin went down something like 40% in the last two months.  Explain me why it is a good investment?

Most trade now, in all markets, is done through robots.

Humans like round amounts and prices, but robot transactions are usually determined by formulas and therefore fractional.

Fake trade is when a person (or organization) sells to himself, by hand or through a robot.  As long as the robots belong to competing traders, their transactions are as legitimate as those done by hand.

There may be fake trade happening at Huobi (and at all other exchanges), but the fractional trades do not prove that.  

(Methinks it is foolish to try to outsmart an army of robots without using another robot, but since the price swings appear to be quite random, perhaps the chances are just as good, who knows.)

OKCoin is still up (charts available through Bitcoinwisdom). 

OKCoin has about 1/3 the volume of Huobi, and apparently follows its price closely but some 30 CNY higher.

Anyone know where it is located? 

I have heard from a confident and highly imputable source that there are only 1.2 million people in China, the others were just photoshopped in.

Brazil's "quickening inflation" was ~6%/year last year, 5.4% this year.  Generally below 6%/year forthe past 10 years.

Bitcoin's price at Bitstamp fell today 12% in 6 hours.  How much is that per year?

Investing in bitcoin is gambling in a game where the very rules may change at any minute.

Anyone selling Bitcoin as a safe store of value against inflation is a scammer, pure and simple.
 

Some statistics about MtGOX BTC withdrawal delays by one heavy user (rpietila) : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179586.msg4786238#msg4786238

I can believe that; I had sensed that much from some postings in this thread.

But will the world get that?  Who is going to tell them so?

If the Bitcoin Foundation is not representative of the "Bitcoin community", who is?

How will a honest member of the "Bitcoin community" convince investors and government officials that he is not / will not become "another Charlie Shrem"?

China is beginning to get out of bed (7:15 am) and does not seem to be in a particularly good mood.

Meanwhile at Bitstamp and BTC-e, after a moment of irrational panic, traders calmed down, checked the news, thought it all over, and switched to a deliberate, methodical, coldly rational panic.

Is Gavin Andresen of the Bitcoin Foundation related to Bitcoin investor Marc Andreessen of Mosaic fame?  (Yes, I noticed the different spelling...)

Well, in percentage terms it is about the same distance...

EDIT but you are right: now that we are at 800 USD, 100 is quite a bit closer than 10,000.

This Sunday jan/26 was rather atypical.  Volume was higher than normal in the Chinese exchanges (128 kBTC), especially Huobi, and price shot up by ~200 CNY from 4850 in intense trading, starting at about 22:00 local time. (As everybody noticed, that rally was basically undone today). 

Volume was slightly higher tha usual in exchanges outside China, but price rallied there too. 

China still has roughly 3/4 of the volume that I can monitor.

People have asked what is the point of these reports.  It seems important to compare the volumes, since (all other things equal, and barring major fakery) the higher-volume sites should have more weight in defining the price.  Arbitrage trading, for example, should generally have a larger impact on the market with smaller volume.

It would be nice to have more data about the trades than just the volume; but even if the data is out there, I will not have the time to collect it.