Hm, perhaps the chief officers and/or owners of some other not-so-clean bitcoin enterprises saw the FCC papers served to BFL, finally realized that it was real and could happen to them too, and therefore rushed to convert their ill-gained dollars into bitcoins in order to put them (and themselves) beyond the reach of the law.

(Well, it is a theory, right?)

Didn't we ask this question several times before?

Here is another (admittedly not very convincing) theory for the cause of the rally:  officers and owners of some not-so-clean bitcoin enterprises out there saw the confirmation of the BFL raid, and rushed to convert their dollars into bitcoins in order to move them out of the reach of the law.

March was when the MtGOX collapse hit mainstream media.

Unfortunately that is usually the rule: prosecutors and regulators will step in only when a scam is falling apart.  If they acted earlier, it would be very difficult for them to prove in court that the business *would* cause the clients to lose money if allowed to continue.    It was so with Madoff, with TelexFree in my country, ...

Even now, it may not be entirely trivial for the FTC to prove in court that BFL scammed their customers.  See their "defense" earlier in this thread.

EDIT: see also the court papers of the process that ended with Sonny's parole being extended.  The judge refrained from sending him to prison because he was convinced that BFL could stil make good on their clients.

Like MtGOX.  That is ONE very unethical thing (choosing words carefully to avoid libel) that Mark did: let people deposit money and bitcoin, to the last minute, without telling them that MtGOX was insolvent in a big way.

The rally that started May 20 too consisted of a few episodes of intense buying, 1-2 hour long, that drove the price up  by ~50$ each time; separated by "organic-looking" periods where the price just wandered about, often with a downward trend. 

Could this rally be the  first of another (mini-)bubble like that?

What fine print?

This rally seems to have started in the West, while China was sleeping.

The price started to rise gradually around 17:36 UTC on Bitfinex, BTC-e, Bitstamp, but on relatievly low volume.  Huobi and OKCoin gave no sign of change.

Big buys started at 17:40, and only then Huobi and OKCoin suddenly started to rise.

Actually there are a few people in this forum who are open about their identities.  Methinks they tend to be the best ones. 

Would McLuhan have asked "Who cares about yesterday's questions?"?
 

Federal Trade Commission closes Butterfly Labs - confirmed with official doc:

http://coinfire.cf/2014/09/23/official-ftc-complaint-butterfly-labs-obtained/

Thread about BFL misdeeds:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=150803.msg8938729;topicseen#new

Yes, the FBI would be interested in the DDOS attack on Poloniex (but see my previous post).


The FBI has stated publicly (in the NY hearings, maybe?) that they are not worried about bitcoin, presumably because they can trace it.  I would add "quite the opposite", since, thanks to bitcoin, they undid a well-known international drug operation, nabbed Shrem, Faiella, Ulich, Joop, and who knows who else, and confiscated at least 170'000 BTC of drug profits, worth now some 60 M USD, which will eventually go to the US Treasury -- all mostly from the comfort of their desks. 

Monero is another matter, since it is being developed specifically to address that "weakness" of bitcoin.  I would be surprised if the FBI is as indifferent towards it as it is towards bitcoin.

AFAIK, the PirateAt40 scam was not prosecuted as a cybercrime attack,  but as a classical ponzi: namely that he solicited investments with false promises (it does not matter in what form) and just pocketed them.  I don't know of any case of bitcoins stolen by hacking that has been investigated by the FBI; is there any?  (One big obstacle that I see is proving that a theft took place: how does the victim prove that the bitcoins that were at address X were his property, and that the address Y where they are now is not his?)

Poloniex is indeed registered in Whitefish, Montana, but are the servers located there?  (For comparison, Bitstamp is registered in the UK but the servers are said to be in Slovenia.)   I cannot tell from their registry entry:
https://app.mt.gov/cgi-bin/bes/besCertificate.cgi?action=detail&bessearch=C246785&trans_id=besa14265131454725500
If the servers are outside the US, would a DDOS on them fall within the FBI jurisdiction?

If they own 1% of the total hashrate, they can process any zero-fee transaction with less than 1 day expected delay (if it is not processed by some other generous miner before that).

The article retells Andreessen's scenario of someone paying in bitcoin at the supermarket cashier by pointing his smartphone camera at the QR address on the sales terminal's screen.   Shouldn't the supermarket wait for at least one confirmation before acknowledging the payment?

I think it reveals how disconnected some people in this community are from reality.

I should have added also

You really expect the FBI to help and protect the development of Monero? 

You mean, something like this:

I have read somewhere in this forum that the Bitstamp owners are the richest people in Slovenia.  Is that true (or somewhat close to the truth)?

Can we exclude that possibility between felt toads and alien lizards from another dimension?