How could a pen drive a hard disk get?

But the total daily value of those transactions, in USD, has been pretty much the same since April, and is ~30% less than it was in Jan--Feb:
Estimated USD Transaction Volume

But, anyway, we STILL do not know how much of that traffic is "fake" (between addressed that belong to te same person; e.g. hotwallet/coldwallet flow, tumbling, deposit/withdrawal at exchanges, gambling sites and other "bitcoin banks"...)

True, and this is how Havelock and other bitcoin "stock exchanges" have been working.  But the US would probably go after the foreign ETF if they sell to US citizens/residents.

I don't know, but the SEC presumably wants more than just "it is not illegal".  AFAIK, the SEC was created after the 1929 stock market collapse to bar sale of stocks that are likely to collapse.  That could harm big investors, too. 

So, I would guess that their approval depends on their estimate of the future of bitcoin.  (And they may also consider the likelihood of the fund being goxed, perhaps.)

Someone is claiming that SecondMarket's SMBIT fund is no longer allowing their clients to "withdraw" (liquidate) pending SEC approval of their ETF:  
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=337486.msg9386310#msg9386310

Methinks that the guy is confusing liquidating (selling the shares back to SMBIT, according to the current BTC price) with trading (selling them to someone else).  Clients could do the former after the first 6 months, but were forbidden to do the latter until SMBIT created a marketplace (ETF?) for that, which they promised for Q4/2014.  This market would surely require SEC approval.

EDIT: however he insists that he is NOT confusing the two.

Is he trying to get other questers discombobulated, befuddled, or merely flummoxed?

Actually there were many long-range computer networks before and contemporaneous with the Internet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_Transfer_Mode

Until the late 1980s the Internet was limited to some universities and some large companies; other networks like UUCP and BITNET reached many more hosts than the Internet did.  The latter became the dominating network only after it was opened to general public.  And that was still before the WWW was invented.

So, is Bitcoin like BITNET, or like Internet?
[/quote]

OK, let's put it another way: why are you certain that Litecoin will die, and Bitcoin will not?  Or Dogecoin, or any other cryptocoin, existing or to be created?

Or, said another way: why is Litecoin unsuitable for e-payments, concretely?

Will there be only one cryptocoin?

Whoa. Is that true?  A Roach Motel^TM Fund?

When this thread started, they had a 6-month lock-in period, but after that people were allowed to liquidate (sell the shares back to SMBIT, at the same 0.1 BTC each).

EDIT: back then, clients were forbidden to trade their shares except by liquidating them at SMBIT.  But SMBIT promised ALSO that there would be an open market for their shares, starting Q4/2014.  That market must wait approval by the SEC.  Aren't you confusing "withdrawal" (liquidation) with open market trading?

Define "could"...

If that hypothetical you wanted to hide the very existence of those funds from customers and law enforcement, bitcoin would be a bad choice since the coin transfers can be tracked far enough to reveal that you hid them somewhere.

Things do not look more promising if the goal is to prevent law enforcement from seizing those funds, assuming that they got convinced that you hid them somewhere.  I imagine that the court would order you to return the funds, wherever they may be; and if you did not comply you would be charged with contempt of court, embezzlement, fraudulent management, or whatever. And the police (or the defrauded customers) could keep watch on the funds, even automatically, until you try to convert them to money -- and then seize the money.

It will cure cancer, and ward off evis elvis evil spirits too.

EDIT: typo

Well, I suppose he will put a bounty on you then, as a preventive measure... 

In the blockchain.info chart page, they say briefly that the latter tries to guess which output of a transaction is a changeback, and excludes it.

I suppose it is just a rhetorical question, but anyway: the Bitcoin sites are supported by Bitcoin enterprises, not by individual miners, traders, and  investors.  Running an exposé on one company could result in a dozen others like them to take their ads and press releases elsewhere.

You don't expect to see articles in traditional media that say bad things about products that are (or may be) advertised there.   When that happens, the author or magazine may be tacitly blackmailing the company, "you give us {a free sample|your ads} or we will continue to badmouth you".

EDIT: Many years ago, famous science fiction author used to run a hardware/software review column in the Datamation magazine, where he almost boasted of doing that.  In one issue he would write "I tried the new IBM FooBar PC, it was junk".  In the next issue, "The folks from IBM gave me a Foobar PC as a free sample, and I found that it is actually wonderful."

Depending on what is meant to be paid by the bounty, can be a much worse one.

Making justice with one's own hands is one of the first things that civilized societies have found necessary to prohibit.  Among other things, the victim usually picks a penalty disproportionate to the crime, and rushes to the punishment before the guilty person has been identified with certainty.  Moreover the punishment is usually seen as unjust by the target's relatives and friends, who will then retaliate and start an endless blood feud.

Is that a case of objectophilia, like bitcoinophilia, or just plain obsession, like bitcoinomania?

Well, it is a good question, isn't it?  How will you? 

You should definitely think about it before putting all your savings into bitcoin.  It is the wise investors, not the trolls, who say "don't invest what you cannot afford to lose."


I have let pass countless opportunities when I could have multiplied our money by 10x, yet still have no problem looking my family in the eyes.  Perhaps because there were also many "opportunities" when I could have lost it all, and there was no way to tell which was which beforehand. I could have bought WorldCom or OGX shares a year after the IPO and sold them at the top.  Or could have bought them a coupl of years later, and been unable to sell before they crashed to zero.

I am not sure I understand the logic.  "I may have an oportunity to make more than 1000% ROI in the near future, but since I did not bet on that opportunity before, I will try to prevent that opportunity from arising."

By the way, note that my strategy -- NOT buying a single satoshi -- has put me in a much better position, vis a vis that fabulous possible opportunity, than all those who went "all in" since last November, when I first learned of bitcoin.  In the unlikely chance that I decide to invest now, I will get twice as much return on the dollar than those who bought in January and have been hodling since then.

Hm, that "if" compares the addresses of {charlatan} and {fraudulent}, not the contents. Assuming {fraudulent} was declared earlier, the condition will be false.