SMBIT and PBP make some guaranteed money from entry, exit, and maintenance fees.

They can make a lot more money by selling shares of their funds, by definition pegged to the current BTC price, and then buying the corresponding BTC from other sources (such as from big holders of old coins, or from miners on fixed contracts, or whatever) below market price.  The difference goes all into their pockets.

So they will bid X USD/BTC for the coins only if they expect that the price will be higher than X in the future, when they will sell them to their clients, if they expeect hat they can attract clients then.  But speculative traders reason the same way when they define the market price.  So methinks that SMBIT and PBP will bid somewhat below market price.

If I were bidding, I would bid well above market, in order to help the cause by fostering optimism. Unless I was bidding with MY money, in which case I would think a bit more carefully about the idea.

I am using "Google Translate".
Chinese language words were funny? 
我使用谷歌翻译。
中国语文的话是可笑吗？

This question has been asked and answered, indeed. It is on the USMS FAQ, whose link is at the top of the auction announcement.

The USMS will not release any information about the outcome; they will notify the winners that they have won and must send the payment, and tell the losers that they have not won, period.  BUT on the next line they next give instructions on how to submit a FOIA request, BUT BUT they remind readers that there are exceptions to what you can get with a FOIA.

If you still cannot read this answer, try un-ignoring me, just for this post. 

But there isn t much choice for the "elsewhere", especially if all of them are abusing their position.

If "customer regulation" was enough, there would have been no need for government regulation.

One problem is that many of those exploits are nearly impossible to detect by looking at the trade logs.  Their only effect is to make all ordinary clients less lucky.  E.g., the ordinary trader who posts a sell order will have it filled by a buy order at his ask price; whereas, if the exchange were honest, there would have been a buy order at a higher price waiting for it.

Last May, the five largest Chinese exchanges, apparently scared by some government pressure, released a joint note  pledging (among other things) to end leverage trading and put a fee on high-frequency robot trading.  I read between the lines that they were caught doing some dirty tricks (which depend on fast-acting robots), and were scared enough to stop, or cut back on them.

I would even guess that those dirty tricks were responsible for the general downward price trend from February to April, as ordinary Chinese traders were disappointed with their "bad luck" and cashed out, one by one. Indeed, that "five-exchanges" note coincided with the end of the downward trend and a month of steady price.

Thanks, that is the problem: the customer who does not have the bitcoins yet will end up paying more by paying with bitcoins than by paying with dollars.  If any such customer tries to pay with bitcoin just out of curiosity, he will be disappointed.

Therefore those services are not going to help bitcoin adoption; they cater to the bitcoin believers who already have bitcoins and want to spend them.

For one thing, the fact that there are many of them.  Entrepreneurs do not rush to open businesses that are not profitable.

For another, that they have large fancy offices in prime locations, with many staff (Huobi had 50, IIRC). Either Huobi or OKCoin moved to larger offices some months ago.

Finally, they are indeed well-funded, but why would anyone invest in them (10 million US$ just in one of them, IIRC) if they were not profitable?

There are many laws that strictly forbid operators of ordinary stock exchanges from profiting by exploiting their privileged position -- namely, their knowledge of the order book before it is posted to the public -- to trade against their clients.  Those laws do not apply to bitcoin exchanges.  Why would the owners not do those things, if they are legal for them?

That is the MINIMUM revenue (profit is revenue minus expenses, harder to guess).
Bitcoin exchanges can profit in many other ways, that are illegal for stock exchanges.
The Chinese exchanges have zero trading fees, but seem to be very profitable.

Bitcoin price just fell 30$ (5%) in the last 24 hours. 

Can we please stop this nonsense of bitcoin being a hedge against inflation?  It is deceptive advertising...

Let's save that claim for the future, if and when there will be no more risk of the price drpping again like that.

But see the bolded sentence above.  In order to buy the BTC one has to send dollars to Coinbase.  How could that route be cheaper than sending  those dollars directly to the merchant?

The BTC price just fell 10$ (from ~586$ to ~576$) over the last few hours.  Who is going to absorb that volatility? (Whover does it will want some extra margin to compensate the risk.)

Perhaps new addresses, from blockchain.info?

Dunno, did someone create a FIFAcoin already?

If bitcoin use becomes more widespread (and is not banned outright), I imagine that the police authorities (FBI, CIA, and their brethren in other countries, Interpol, etc.) will create public databases of "bad" coins, which in their view are associated with tax evasion, crime, terrorism, unfriendly governments, etc.  Citizens of a country would be required to look up any bitcoins they receive in their government's database, and immediately transfer any "bad" coins to a government account, under pain of being suspected accessories to those crimes.  All outputs of any transaction with any "bad" input will presumably be "bad" by definition. 

Such a database, even if it worked only imperfectly, would pretty much end fungibility.  There will be "clean bitcoins", "child porn bitcoins", "drug bitcoins", "Iran Guard bitcoins", "Israeli bitcoins", "Ross Ullbricht's bitcoins", "Wikileaks supporters' bitcoins", and so on.  In particular, that database would allow governments to block bitcoin funds, for practical purposes, and virtually seize them, even if they don't have access to the keys.  If certain bitcoins are officially declared government property, moving them or knowingly accepting them without their permission would be theft of government property.

Note that this schema is viable with bitcoin, which assumes online internet access at every transaction; but not with cash, since it would be impractical to require the database check for every cash transaction.  Note also that the schema does not require control of the bitcoin network or changes to the protocol, and transactions with "bad" coins can be monitored by any government no matter where the parties are located in the world.
[/quote]

The full speech by that Deputy Secretary of the People's Bank of China's Survey and Statistics Department is found here: http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/28rwu9/chinese_central_bank_official_there_is/
It mentions Bitcoin in the third of a list of ten predictions on the impact of internet in the future of money and finance:


The guy's titlte became "General Secretary of PBoC" in the bitcoin press.  Of course. 

I don't think that the Chinese traders were much impressed by that.

¿Indeed, why don't we start with a question mark instead

I agree that the collapse of MtGOX must have been due to a combination of unethical insider trading/manipulation and bad luck.  I disagree on the details, however. I don't think that Mark had the power to create the rally; as you must know already, I believe the rally was real, due to the opening of the Chinese market, and "Markus"/"Willy"  was merely doing arbitrage with China, possibly with non-existent money.  And the crash was due to the Chinese Government's decree.  But I wonder whether we will know the truth some day.

Indeed. I am quite convinced that there were several other people, besides Mark and Gonzague, who knew what was going on inside MtGOX, and profited from it.

Just as there were many people on this forum swearing that all was fine with Neo & Bee, weeks after Danny Brewster had disappeared with all the money that was left.  Some even went as far as claiming that they had flown from Greece to Cyprus, visited the offices, and saw that everybody was still there working as usual.

Hey, what is wrong with telling a few lies in order to convince other people to buy, while I sell?  What is anonymity good for, if not for that?

It is not easy to spot a scammer, because the first requirement for that "profession" is to sound and look respectable to the eyes of the intended victims, whether they be old pensioners or computer nerds.

One way to protect against scammers is to know their identity and check their background for prior scams, lawsuits, failed enterprises, etc.  If the guy wants to remain anonymous, subtract 500 points. 

Another way is to make sure that the guy can go to jail if he scams you.  If the contracts has some "small" holes (like "if X does not work out, we will do as we see fit" or "we promise to try" etc.), assume that the guy will go through them. If the contract leaves some room for interpretation, assume that he will interpret it in the way that maximizes his profit, not yours. If the company is registered in a country where you cannot prosecute them, subtract 500 points. If the company is not regulated, subtract another 500 points.  If it is not audited by professional auditor, or delays due audits, subtract another 500 points. and so on.

There are other symptoms that a scam is in progress, and we have seen them all in MtGOX, months before if finally closed.  The guy starts avoiding customers, gives evasive reassurances that all is well, promises that full answers to their questions will be provided "soon", gives excuses that cannot be verified, throws the blame on others and presents himself as victim, gets angry at those who insist on asking... But by this stage the scam is usually done...

在国外，交易量始终为低电平。

谢谢你的回复。
交易量非常低
在6月23日上午，
之前10:00只能。
然后是正常的。

Thank you for the replies.
Trade volume was very low
on 06/23 morning,
before 10:00 only.
Then was normal.

But... but... but... that is a violation of the protocol -- what happens now?

Are bitcoiners aware that the "hash" used in the bitcoin protocol cannot be smoked?