But wasn't the use of "that guy" instead of "this guy" a sufficiently clear indication that the  target of the anaphora was not that guy that you thought that I was thinking of, but rather that OTHER guy that that guy had himself quoted?

Why did you think I was referring to DAYAGO?

The joke is an old one as stated, but why did that guy assume that the text was copy-paste?

A classic question penned many years ago by an unknown author, for which no fitting answer appears to have been found yet, was about a young couple of the social climber type (think of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut) who went to play at a posh golf course, and it happened that on his first swing the husband threw the ball over the perimeter fence and smash into the panoramic window of a mansion on the other side, and after the due remostrances of his wife the two of them walked over to the house to make amends; but imagine their surprise when they saw, standing in the living room besides the hearth, a dark-skinned giant, almost seven feet tall, muscular like an upside-down mountain, with a pointed black beard and solid gold bracelets and dressed in a funny red silk robe, holding in one hand their golf ball, and in the other the neck of a broken antique bottle of black glass, who in a thunderous voice asked whether they were the owners of that ball; and imagine also their surprise when, on hearing their timid and trembling 'yes', the giant beamed a broad smile, and told them that he was a genie who had been imprisoned in that bottle for three thousand years, and had long given up hope, but then he was unexpectedly freed by their ball, and so, by the customs of their kind, he was bound to grant three wishes to his liberator; but seeing that they were in two, and not wanting to be unfair, he would grant one wish to each of them, and would keep the third for himself; at which the astonished husband, with words that stumbled over each other, immediately asked for a treasury including a large mountain of gold coins and a huge cellar full of the finest wines and a gold-plated sports car and a fifty-foot luxury boat, and he would have gone on asking for more, but the genie raised his hand as to say 'enough', and turned his face to the ceiling and made a grimace and muttered some incomprehensible words through his teeth, and then smiled at the young man and told him that it was done, the treasury would be waiting for him at his home; and then the woman immediately asked for a huge mansion with Greek marbles and a huge swimming pool and a huge garden and a huge wardrobe with hundreds expensive designer dresses and purses and shoes and jewelry including an emerald necklace with the largest diamond in the world, until the genie finally got her to stop, and after looking again at the ceiling and grimacing etc. he told the woman that her wish had come true too, so that the mansion, with her husband's treasury inside, would be waiting for them where their modest home once was; but when the couple was about to rush out he ordered them to stay, and said that it was his turn now, and told the husband that he surely must understand that after being locked up for three thousand years he had certain manly cravings that he needed to urgently appease, and so his wish was to have sex with his wife, there and then; a request that left the young man furious for a second, but then he thought that it would be unwise to cross a genie, especially considering that he might take back his treasure as easily as he gave it out; and so he told his wife that he was not at all pleased with the idea, but if the genie's wish was acceptable to her he would not object; to which the wife, after scanning the genie again from head to foot, replied that she wasn't happy either, but for the good of their common future she would make the sacrifice; at which the genie took her in his colossal arms and carried her to the bedroom upstairs where they made wild sex for two hours, until finally, exhausted and relaxed, the genie asked the woman how old her husband was, and she said he was twenty-nine, and asked why he wanted to know, but the giant only pondered to himself aloud: amazing, he's twenty-nine, and still believes in bottled wish-granting genii?

Wow, four posts on this page, all four about my person!  Sorry, Fonzie...  

EDIT: damn, ChartBuddy spoiled it. Four out of six only...

Statistics for the 20 pages 7728--7747 (400 posts) of the thread
"Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion"

SUMMARY

           by  qt  op  ap
          --- --- --- ---
   Fonzie   1   0  13   0
   Stolfi  16  27  13   5

LEGEND

  "by.Stolfi" = post by Stolfi, but not about Stolfi.

  "op.Stolfi" = post was ONLY about Stolfi.

  "ap.Stolfi" = post had something about Stolfi but also other matters.

  "qt.Stolfi" = post quoted some Stolfi's text (possibly N levels deep) to discuss
      other matters, but not by Stolfi, about Stolfi, or about Fonzie.

  "about Stolfi" = about Stolfi the person, including insults, taunts, etc.

  "other matters" = any topic other than the persons Stolfi and Fonzie,
      but possibly about the persons of other users
      (aminorex, Mervyn_Pumpkinhead, BitChick, ...).

  Ditto for "by.Fonzie", "op.Fonzie", etc.

RAW DATA

OkCoin daily volumes (in BTC), past 8 days:

  Jul/16 Wed 22394
  Jul/17 Thu 33940
  Jul/18 Fri 32264
  Jul/19 Sat 20720
  Jul/20 Sun 12833
  Jul/21 Mon 16019
  Jul/22 Tue 12056
  Jul/23 Wed  9030

Yesterday's (Jul/23) was their lowest volume since the span Dec/20--Jan/01 when they were without bank deposits and volume ranged in 3020--7759 BTC/day.  Before that, volume was this low only on Nov/03 (5178 BTC) and before.

Huobi's volume for the UTC day that just ended (Wed Jul/23) was only 5830 BTC, even less than the previous day's.  It was again the lowest daily volume since Nov/02 (5512 BTC). 

The last eight daily volumes were

Jul/16 Wed 14138
Jul/17 Thu 19098
Jul/18 Fri 21414
Jul/19 Sat 15092
Jul/20 Sun  8284
Jul/21 Mon 12259
Jul/22 Tue  7783
Jul/23 Wed  5830

Is Huobi shriveling for good, or is it just a temporary lull?  Or is the low volume due to the stable price? Or the other way around?

Because without explanation there would be no explanation?

Sunlot wants to buy MtGOX for 1 BTC.  Not clear whether the japanese court will agree, depends on creditors approval I suppose.

It makes absolutely no sense to me, but most creditors apparently believe that anyone who says loud "bitcoin is great" is totally honest and competent, whatever his penal record says, and they will let him take all their bitcoins without any guarantee whatsoever.

He built a billion-dollar company (IGE) by cornering the virtual videogame currency market.  In that time he built connections in China and other places.  He has long (and successful) experience fighting the law.  In just a few months he pushed his way from almost non-entity in botcoinland to to the board of directors of the Bitcoin Foundation. 

Methinks that those items in his CV make him a more formidable player than anyone else in the community, including Andreessen, Silbert and the Winke Bros.  His launching of heretical Realcoin, without a beep from the Foundation or the bitcoin media, may be a sign of things to come. If I were a bitcoiner, I would be worried.

Yes, YOU were able to do that, thanks to the coins that you bought or mined dirt cheap, and the people who now are willing to pay 600$ each for them.  Will they be as successful as you?  Maybe, maybe not...


Sigh.  Whom do you want me to trust instead -- Shrem, Kapelès, Ver, Brewster, Pierce, Silbert, Winklevum and Winklevee, ...?

Do you really believe that replacing dollars with bitcoins will get rid of thieves and thugs, and give dignity to human beings?  Think hard...

Sigh. JUST LOOK AT THE CHARTS.

The "power of the network" is important for a cryptocoin's utility as a currency. IF BITCOIN IS NOT GOING TO BE USED AS A CURRENCY its network is as good as dogecoin's, or as the UN Agency for Plutonian Development.  if the market price of an item is not derived from some utilitarian demand, and there is no agent that strives to keep it stable, it can drop drastically and unpredictably, even without any external cause.

Gold is a good example of that (Its price already dropped 30% from its all-time high last year, and nothing says that it could not drop another 50%), as is bitcoin (50%) and Rai stones (how much would you invest in one?). 

It does not matter that the item is scarce etc.  You cannot compute the value of gold five years from now, not even by an order of magnitude, from the amount that exists and its other properties. An item whose future value is unpredictable is a lousy store of value.

No they don't.  

Think again about the Pluto land example.  With the premise of UN guarantee etc, it has all the qualities that you listed.  Why wouldn't it be a good investment? The problem is not that a comet may dig a crater in your plot.  The problem is that its value is not pegged to anything.  Therefore it may perfectly go from 1 M$ to 10$ at any time, without any reason.

That in fact is what has happened to Bitcoin in the last six months: its market price has changed drastically and unpredictably, because it is not supported ("yet", you may say) by its use as currency.  The demand that lifted the price at the current 620$  was entirely speculative, and there is no argument that excludes it going to 400$ or 1200$ tomorrow. We have seen it reach both.

Or consider any altcoin, no matter how stupid.  It may never be widely used as currency, but apart from that it has the same qualities that you listed above.  If those qualities were enough, then any altcoin would be just as good an investment as bitcoin.

Huob's volume yesterday (Jul/22 UTC) was only 7.8 kBTC, the lowest on record since Nov/02.

The second-lowest volume in that interval was May/17 (9.3 kBTC), part of a three days' pause before the rise that took the price from ~450$ to ~650$.

At the same time, the price is extremely stable -- even though it is ~12:30 in China, the chart is as flat as it has ever been in the late night hours.  And today's volume promises to be even lower than yesterday's.

This may be another "calm before the storm" like May 17-19.

Or it may be that Huobi is slowly dying, and its clients are perhaps moving to the new BitVC.  One hint that it may be the case is that the volume has been shrinking gradually for a couple of weeks, whereas the May 17-19 "calm" was preceded by normal volume (~35 kBTC/day)

This user seems to be him, or someone similar and close:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=349097
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=349097;sa=showPosts

Those properties do not suffice to make an asset into a reliable store of value. (The last one is in fact a defect.)

Consider real estate on Pluto, and suppose that the UN created a body to manage its property register, with an open reliable market, and everybody trusted them to be up and honest for the next 100 years.  If, on some day, the market price of 1 square km on Pluto were 1 M$, would you invest that money into it?  How would you know that the market price of that land would still be 1 M$ the next day, and not 10$?

By the way, bitcoins CAN be confiscated if the government knows that you have them -- and it will be very hard to invest a significant fortune in bitcoins without the government knowing it.

We are talking of assets of an investment fund (or some other enterprise) that are to be insured against theft.  Some of your comments about paper wallets etc. apply to personal funds,  I have said that safety there is "solved problem" in theory.

I can't think what could be a "legal theft" of a company's assets by a bank.  Loss of deposits due to bank failure is a definite risk, but insurers presumably know how to evaluate that.  And funds should not leave their assets in bank accounts anyway.

"Legal theft" of a fund's assets by the government must be seizure because the fund did something wrong.  In that case they can seize bitcoins just as easily. (Refusing to hand over the keys to legally seized cois would be stealing government's property.)  Or are you thinking of "haircuts" on bank deposits? Again, funds should not leave their assets there.

The key could be be stolen as it is generated, without the officer knowing it. (Think of N non-nerd financial managers who get their wallet software installed by the same Chief Security Officer.) Therefore the officer cannot meaningfully sign the last part of that statement.

I suppose that, each time some coins have to be taken out of cols storage, the affected addresses would have to be completely emptied, due to the risk of the private keys being captured at that time; and any remainder would then be transferred to a new cold address, previously generated.

It will be interesting to see how that works out (if we get to know it).

Yes I know about M of N signatures.  They can be stolen too.

4. "The single most popular topic of posts in the Wall Observer thread"