Sigh.  Keep trying, perhaps I will learn to love bitcoin this way. 

Probably it is not Bitstamp that selects the unlucky customers who will get those questionnaires.  There may be some agency that checks all deposits (by hand or through some algorithm) and picks the "suspicious" ones, that Bitstamp is required to question further.

"Artificial intelligence" algorithms are now routinely used by banks to spot possible card theft, and by governments to spot possible tax evasion. 

My preferences are not important.  The point is that a system that does not allow the forcible return of stolen property will not be acceptable to society, except for thieves and other criminals.  In the end, it will be rejected even by the libertarians who now think that irreversibility is a good thing.

My original technical analysis method predicts that at 14:17:02 on September 23, 2018 (UTC), Western traders will begin to suspect that any news that is irrelevant to the Chinese traders has no effect whatsoever on the price of Bitcoin.   

But my TA is often wildly optimistic, beware.

Sorry, I may have confused you with someone else who asked me what I would consider proof of success.  I stand by my reply to that.

As for your question, I can see some merits of bitcoin, like the offline creation of address-key pairs with cryptographically signed "checks", and the totally open ledger.  Other things that you apparently consider merits I see as flaws, possibly fatal.  Like the impossibility of seizing stolen coins and returning them to their rightful owners, or correcting mistakes like sending coins to the wrong address.  (Those who do not see that as a problem obviously never did any real accounting.)  Or the dangerously misleading pretense of anonymity.  Or the intentional inefficiency of mining.  Or the impossibility of proving that you do NOT own an account. Or the fixed supply.

As for the economic model, why does it matter?  The prediction of "going to the moon" and its refutation are based on elementary supply-demand logic.  An economic model that does not include that is not worth considering.

(But I have lived under both monetarist/neocon/reaganomic and Keynesian governments, and I am for the latter all the way.  Like 80% of my countrymen, workers and industrials alike.  Have you been through the 2008 economic crisis?  We heard something about it, yes.)
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Those plots show total wallets created up to a certain date, correct? Which means that the numbers plotted would keep increasing even if actual usage was decreasing?

I won't call it nonsense, the analysis of the database is helpful, and one can see the effect of Markus/Willy on the MtGOX price very clearly.

However I don't agree with the author's theory that those traders/robots caused the 2013 bubbles; I believe that the robots merely copied them from elsewhere (China probably) to MtGOX, by doing arbitrage.

That makes some difference on the possible impact of the report.

If the bubbles were created by Markus/Willy, then, after the closure of MtGOX, the price has been holding itself up by its bootstraps,  and could collapse at any moment -- especially if the market reads that report and agreees with it.

On the other hand, if the bubbles were due to Chinese demand, then the price has been sustained by that demand, independently of MtGOX, and should stay up as long as that demand continues to exist, report or no report.

Again, our computer science undergrad students surely have learned about bitcoin well before I did, and are smart and adult and capable of judging for themselves.  Some may be busy creating their own altcoins or bitcoin-based businesses, scams or not.  I can't do anything about them.  (That "student" I just mentioned is actually ex-grad, from the Mathematics department, who did his PhD last year on an applied math topic.) What bother me are the attempts to sell bitcoins to people who know nothing of computing, much less of computer security.

People may have said "internet corrupts"  in the 90s, but it was bullshit. (The people around me in the 1980s and 1990s certainly did not say that.)  "Bitcoin-related investments are often scams or failures" is not bullshit, unfortunately.

Is it really?

I wonder what the neo-nazis, Aryan supremacists, Ku Klux Klansmen etc. think of bitcoin.  (Any pointers?)

At least some posts I saw on this forum (not on this thread, IIRC) were more than a bit worrying in that regard.   

(By the way, I must say that this thread, besides having the highest "liquidity" by far in this forum (often the only one that shows on my watch list), and the broadest variety of topics, also has overall the best karma.  Most people here are speculators who just want to get rich by outsmarting other speculators -- a goal that I can't find fault with.  Some of the other threads, on the other hand, would provide abundant material for several PdD theses in clinical psychiatry.  I don't like American football at all, but would rather hang out in a sports bar than in a lunatic asylum.  )

Because 90% of what has "bitcoin" in it IS scams or stupid ideas.  Starting with attempts to convince the unwary to buy bitcoins "because they will go to the moon" or "a hedge against inflation" etc..

For example, I  already mentioned a couple of days ago that student of mine who had been offered to join some GPU-based bitcoin mining enterprise.

I have to check who is on the board of the Brazilian Bitcoin Foundation.  I would almost bet that the creator of the BitcoinRain ponzi is there.

I don't think that is a good analogy for this thread...  

Rather, a bar where a couple hundred random football fans are watching a game on TV and betting on it?  

Obviously I argue while I believe I am right.  If a reply is convincing, I let the poster have the last word.  Isn't that enough?

But there are MANY reasons why I am skeptical of bitcoin's success, and many of the replies that I get are not only unconvincing, thet are just countering facts with statements of faith:

   Me: "Goevernments can effectively ban bitcoin, see China for example."
   Them: "Bitcoin is like the internet, it will find a way around any obstacle."

   Me: "Bitcoins may be scarce, but there are plenty of cyptocoins with equivalent or better protocols"
  Them: "Cryptocoins will die and bitcoin will not."

   Me: "Bitcoin is now more prone to theft and fraud than credit cards, see the numbers."
   Them: "Bitcoin will be much safer when it matures."

   Me: "Mining is already concentrated in a few companies, they may form a cartel and become like the bankers."
   Them: "It is a free market so that will not happen."

   Me: "The Satoshi 2009 blockchain already assigns XX% of all the money to a few thousand people."
   Them: "Wealth distribution will improve with time."

And so on and on.  Obviously I am not convinced by such answers, but how can I argue with statements of faith?

That newbie is not me.

The Bitcoin Goddess is NOT PLEASED.  Guess what She does when She is not pleased.

That is fake user (note the spelling). IT IS NOT ME.

I am skeptical that bitcoin will succeed in the long term, but I do not yet see its origins with that pessimism.  Not all the time at least. 

I may have missed it, but in Satoshi's paper I did not see any goal stated, other than creating a payment system without a central trusted authority.

I have not read Satoshi's conversations with his "Prophets", but the sense that I get from the Writings by the latter is that, when bitcoin was being implemented, the goal had become, more explicitly, create an economy that governments and banks could not control, within the broader libetarian goal of creating an anarchic society etc.

More recently (especially since the 2013 bubbles) bitcoin was run over by an army of crooks and scammers, attracted by the promise of huge gains, by the (presumed) anonimity of accounts, by the lack of legal rules, by the rich but gullible public, etc.  These crooks are motivated by profit, although they may be (more or less reluctant) agents of the government too.

As far as I know, they still have withdrawals, but not deposits, via bank-to-bank transfers.

Huobi however has a "recharge card" system (it is on their homepage), clients put money into the card somehow and then use the card to deposit CNY.

OKCoin has a few "broker" clients who have large accounts in the exchange, or some special way to move money in.  Ordinary clients send money to the brokers, without involving OKCoin, and get from them "recharge codes" that entitles them to transfer money from the broker's account at OKCoin to their own.

I do not know about other exchanges.

I do not know whether those arrangements are acceptable to the government (PBoC is only one of several agencies concerned about bitcoin and the exchanges).  Several banks and payment processors have posted a standard notice that they will close any account that is used to trade bitcoin, and ask the public to denounce any such thing.  On the other hand, it is possible that the exchanges got some respite, permanent or temporary, with their joint promise (in early May) of cleaning up their act.

In any case it seems that deposits are still possible, although perhaps not as convenient as before.

That is what I understood of the situation until recently, I don't know if there have been recent changes.

Let me say it again: if I believe that the medicine you are selling is snake oil, why should I give you a mailing list of people for you to send them free samples and advertising?

And that is what I wrote.

And even worse, having to scroll through dozens of replies to every post of mine, by people who have nothing useful to say about bitcoin, but think it is important to discuss my person. 

If I am fairly skeptical (to put it mildly) that bitcoin will succeed, why should I HELP you get other people into it?

I am not preventing you from doing anything, and in fact (unfortunately) there are already plenty of bitcoin "salesmen" here in Brazil.  Surely all our students have learned about bitcoin, and well before I did.  I hope they are smart enough to see through the hype, but they are adults and will make their own minds. (The "salesmen" are after other kind of people, however.) Brazilian hackers have created at least three altcoins already, and we have a good choice of bitcoin scams, popped or ongoing.

Slow there... I am sure that even half of the truth will be stranger and scarier than a triple dose of fiction.

EDIT: is that Elvish script at the top and bottom of the seal?  Could there be a connection to Mordor too?