I am not advancing that fact that as proof that governments are good. The point is that calling taxation "stealing from the people" is not reasonable, since most people believe (rightly or wrongly) that taxes are necessary and everybody should pay them. 

Of course, many or even most people may think that certain taxes are unjustified or unfair, and that certain government spending is waste.  That does not invalidate the point.

There is no such thing as an "academic in general".  As you must know, they come in all colors - from unrepentant hippies to crypto-nazis.

Just like in the US, the opposition party loves to blast the current government for overtaxing and wasting money.  Only to do even worse when they get to power.   

When they were in power, those neocons who set up the "impostômetro" created a huge public debt by borrowing money at 40% interest per year or more.  Even today, 12 years after they lost the national government, more than half of all the tax revenue goes to pay interest on that debt, which only keeps growing.  (THAT is real armed robbery, because if the government tried to reject that debt, even with popular support, it would probably be toppled in short time.)  Still, "taxing Dilma" stands a good chance of winning a second term, with support not only from the lower- and middle-class "parasites" but from business people in general.

There are some professors in our public universities who think that they should be privatized, and then charge fees that only the rich could pay.  But they stand no chance of prevailing, because that would require a change in the Constitution which was written by a popular Assembly, and would have to go through Congress whose members elected by the people would not risk their voters' wrath by doing that.  On the contrary, politicians who improve and expand public education have had a big advantage in elections.

Guess what: most intelligent people understand that government and public services are a good thing, and that taxes are necessary to have them.  Even if each man would rather pay no taxes himslelf, usually he wants other people to pay taxes, votes for candidates who are in favor of taxes in general, and has no sympathy at all for those who try to evade taxes, no matter how technolgically clever are their tricks.  It is the tax evaders, not the government, who are stealing from the (tax-paying) people.

Well, I believe that my work as teacher, as bad as it is, is infinitely more productive than running internet gambling sites, writing computer games, and many other "private industry" things. 

And, by the way, I did work in industry too (during my undergrad years, and after my Ph.D.) And industry did fund some of my research.

No, don't underestimate the ability of people to completely misunderstand the point of a post.  

(Hint1: it was about how much panic a "totally retarded" post here could cause.)

(Hint2: Consider what happened to the price when Marc claimed that there was a bug in bitcoin.)

Actually they LOVE dirty non-crypto paper fiat money.  They just don't like fiscal notes, and are wary of traceable payment methods like checks or crypto fiat money.  

I agree, it is quite timid.  That was written months ago when I had just learned about bitcoin -- before MtGOX, Neo & Bee, the Chinese market, etc..

How many will go hungry if bitcoin becomes worth a million dollars and you buy a gold-roofed castle in Malibu with your stash?

Whenever I wake up in the middle of the night for having had a bad dream with those hungry kids, I tell myself that perhaps the tax inspectors and the police actually were on their way at that time, in which case the children got to keep their daddy thanks to us, and I go back to sleep.   

Well, if one is arming a scam or has a shady business, being a member of the board of THE Bitcoin Foundation surely helps: makes him appear respectable and authoritative, gives more media exposure, etc..

Rua Santa Ifigênia is the traditional "electronics street" of São Paulo, some 5-10 blocks with tiny to medium-sized shops selling from transistors to consumer electronics, with sidewalks lined with street merchant stalls selling all sorts of accessories, cartridges, software, etc.. A large part of it is contraband, pirated, or counterfeit (you can surely find a "legitimate" copy of Photoshop or Autocad there for a few bucks). Once in a while the police raids the place, confiscates a couple of tons of merchandise, gves out fines and maybe some arrests, just to justify their salaries; but that is all "priced in" as you might say.

Some 10-15 years ago a Ph.D. student of mine bought for her project a Sony camera that had a CD burner built-in and recorded images directly on small 3" CD-Rs.  (There was a short time window when that camera made sense, because flash memory cards had about the same capacity as those CD-Rs but were much more expensive.) She was running out of the original supply of CD-Rs, and could not find then in Campinas; so one day we happened to be in São Paulo we thought of checking at Sta. Ifigiênia.

When you buy anything in Brazil the store is supposed to give you a "fiscal note", an official serially numbered receipt, of which they keep a copy.  Those receipts are used by tax auditors to check whether the state sales tax is being paid.  Obviously street merchants and  stores selling contraband don't give no friggin' fiscal notes, especially for a small purchase like a box of blank CDs; but since we were paying with federal grant money we needed the fiscal notes, and moreover we had to pay with a check from the government account.  We had to walk the whole street, asking at half a dozen computer supply shops, until we found a store that had those 3" CD-Rs, accepted the check, and gave us a fiscal note.

While we were walking back, people started shouting "tax inspectors, tax inspectors" all over the place.  In ten minutes (no exaggeration) half the small shops in the entire street closed their doors, and all the sidewalk stalls had been hastily folded and thrown into vans that disappeared from view.   For, you see, they had spotted two odd-looking people entering random shops and asking to buy some trinket with a fiscal note -- what else could they be?

So: don't underestimate.

Whew! I was worried... 

Didn't read the article, just found the photo amusing:
http://www.btc798.com/article-3321-1.html

This Chinese site has ticker lines for several Chinese exchanges that bitcoincharts and bitconwisdom do not cover: 
bi126
http://www.bi126.com/

Obligatory troll post:


[ click on image for full version ]

You mean the rally was caused by this post of mine:


You'll are welcome. 

Hard to tell who is leading this rally.  OKCoin seems to be ahead of Huobi in the last spurt.

Could it be insider trading?  Each spurt upwards is when a new group of traders gets that insider info?

Is there a site that merges the order books of all major exchanges to get a sense of the overall liquidity of the market?  (Of course the order prices would have to be scaled so that the recent mean current prices match.)

What do you mean?

According to the article, those pictures of the Chinese CEOs were taken at a special meeting of them (two?), possibly arranged by CoinDesk.

The picture of Marc is a frame from a video I believe.  That is what I found in 2 minutes with Google.

I looked for an interview of Danny Brewster too, but after searching for a full 30 seconds I still had no decent picture so I gave up.

My question about revenue is serious. A Chinese article from a week or two ago seemed to claim that their revenue came mostly from fees of leverage trading (i.e. interest from lending money/bitcoins to traders) and from inside trading at their own exchanges.  The former must have bothered the government, the latter may have angered normal customers.  In the "five exchanges" announcement they apparently promised to clean up their act, and they do seem to have stopped leverage trading.  Does that mean that they are now living off their stored fat?

I would very much like to know how their revenue is doing these days.  Of course CoinDesk would not ask such an indelicate question in their interview.

http://www.coindesk.com/chinese-exchange-ceos-regulations-future-plans/

http://tradeblock.com/research/an-analysis-of-the-interview-with-mark-karpeles-ceo-of-mt-gox/

For whatever it is worth, daily volumes in kBTC, Huobi and Bitstamp:

         HUBI    BTST
Sat 10  24.21    4.13
Sun 11  33.81    8.86
Mon 12  23.08    4.58
Tue 13  17.06    5.97
Wed 14  25.33    6.40
Thu 15  24.26    5.50
Fri 16  34.82    3.67
Sat 17   9.28    2.30
Sun 18   9.59    2.50
Mon 19  12.41    4.72
Tue 20  13.06+   4.93+

The last line is only from 00:00 to ~04:00 UTC.