But the customer still has to transfer all the dollars of the multiple purchases to the exchange (or BitPay, Coinbase, etc.) in order to buy the bitcoins.  So the route dollars-->bitcoins-->merchandise cannot incur in less fees than dollars-->merchandise.

Besides, the BTC price is still not rising, and may as well fall.  At this time, buying bitcoin is not a sensible medium-term investment.  That includes buying a bunch of bitcoin now in order to make multiple purchases over the next weeks or months. 

At this time, paying with bitcoin only makes sense if one already has bitcoins that were mined or bought for investment, and has decided to sell them.  If the merchant actually accepts bitcoin, the route bitcoin-->merchandise would incur in less fees than bitcoin-->dollars-->merchandise.  However, most bitcoin payment processors like Bitpay actually do the latter, so the dollar transmission fees must be paid by someone sometime.

Methinks it depends on whether (a) the sale price will be disclosed or not, and (b) the coins will be bought at about the current market price, well above it, or well below it.

If the sale price will not be disclosed, then:

* if all the coins are bought near or well above market, then there should be no effect on price, maybe.

* if some of the coins are bought 30% below market (say), the buyer may be tempted to dump his coins even if it makes the price fall 25% below market.

If the sale price gets disclosed, then:

* if all the coins are bought well above market price, that would generally make people more confident, so the price should rise;

* conversely, if some of the coins are bought well below market, that will make people less confident, and the price shoudl fall.  Morever,
the buyers may dump, as per above.

* otherwise (some coins bought near market, none well below market) it should have no effect.
 

Can't believe it, did you actually read 4552 posts before daring to ask that question???

But how do you eat them?

I don't think the Chinese government wants to shut it down necessarily.  There is a sizable bitcoin mining industry that depends on it and generates export revenue, and also many investors, big and small, who would lose money and get mad if they did.  They just want to make sure that it is not used as a currency in commerce (which they mostly did already) nor a payment medium for illegal trade, bribery, and foreign subversion (which they still seem to be worried about) or as a way for a few smart people to suck money from unwary investors and traders (which they may worry about once enough victims start complaining).

If it were a floppy drive, would he use a spoon instead?

Why?  If they bought MtGOX with the blessing of the courts...  And the evidence to be used in court presumably would be the bank withdrawal records, which they would obtain legally once they know whom they want to charge with what.  The database itself could have been doctored, so it might be used in the investigation but would not stand in court anyway.

That said, I do not believe that the FBI would use this convoluted trick just to get access to the database.  They could get if they wanted through the Japanese police and courts (and they may already have done that), or by putting pressure on some staff, or hacking into their computers (as they did with Silk Road, if I am not mistaken).  To me the Sunlot proposal is just a plan to pocket the best part of those remaining 220'000 coins.

What?

Only deposits via banks or payment processors are blocked.  Withdrawals via banks are still working, and the exchanges have found alternative not-so-convenient deposit channels.  But further restrictions are still possible.

Another possible explanation for this drop is that the late-May rally was due to some Chinese traders getting wind of great news soon to come from OKCoin, and those news finally came out this Saturday (see their note posted earlier), and those people found them disappointing.

One possible argument for this theory is that the rally was in the form of a few isolated buying spurts (each individual learning about impending great news?) and this drop seems to be driven by a few isolated selling spurts (each of them realizing that it was a flop?).

Dear @walsoraj, could you please tell @ShroomsKit to un-ignore me so that I can tell him to un-ignore you so that he can see your link to that article about Chinese IPOs?  Skanth...

没关系。它是移动了。
Never mind. It is moving now.

Even in their sleep?

I don't get it, do you mean the chips for a bitcoin ATM?

If the coffee house refuses to give you the coffee, you can call the cops etc..  That is what keeps the frequency of coffee scams to a fairly tolerable low level in real life.  Exchange owners have no such deterrent.  They can do, without risk of punishment, everything that lawyers lawmakers and regulators have found necessary to prohibit to stock exchange owners, over the last 100 years.  Why should't they do it?

EDIT: wrong word

Aren't you thinking of the fetus-implanted ASIC mining chips?

In a finance article posted earlier today by @walsoraj, it said that the Chinese amateur speculators are getting disappointed with bitcoin and moving on to the next fad, IPO stocks -- which are becoming available again in China, after a moratorium.  That could explain it, I think.

Not to defend that Minerals coin (terrible name, it deserves to die for that, if for nothing else): but, looking at 120 recent posts to this forum, I found that 45% of them were about bitcoin proper, and 45% about other coins (the rest being about  gambling or off-topic threads).

Could it be because people are not born with a built-in RFID chip yet?

Bogart Pediatric 2009 Wine Aficionado Dinner
Bogart Pediatric 2010 Wine Aficionado Dinner

For those who did not recognize the people in the photos above, that I posted here on 2014-06-10, some basic info:
Wired article about Brock Pierce's previous venture IGE, from 2008:
http://archive.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/magazine/16-12/ff_ige
Video of talk by Autumn Radtke on virtual currency trading:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzVxRmvipVY
Local news article on Autumn Radtke's death:
http://news.asiaone.com/news/singapore/cleaning-supervisor-who-found-body-dead-ceo-there-was-foul-smell

Brock Pierce seems connected to the Chinese suppliers of KnC, not sure how.  He may also have been part of the group who was sought by Mark Karpelès as possible MtGOX buyer, shortly before he declared bankruptcy.  Sunlot is now trying to buy the corpse of MtGOX, including the remaining 220'000 BTC, for 1 BTC (and thus stop its liquidation by Japanese courts, and thus make it less likely that there will be a police investigation of the collapse).  Under the proposal, those 220'000 coins, minus some expenses, will be distributed to the former clients BUT they will remain frozen in the new MtGOX for a year.  Sunlot already made a deal with the MtGOX clients who were suing Mark in the US to retract their lawsuit, promised immunity to McCaleb and Gay-Bouchery, and intends to consider former MtGOX management on par with other clients if and when they distribute the remaining coins.  BP was recently elected to the board of The Bitcoin Foundation with the help of KnC, which had just joined the Foundation.

Autumn Radtke was a very close friend of BP until 2010 at least.  By early 2014 she was CEO of First Meta, a company based in Singapore that traded virtual currencies of various kinds, such as game points and (planned) airline bonus miles.  First Meta did not sell crypto, but she was a bitcoin fan, having invested in the currency and convinced others to invest. She had struck a deal between First Meta and GoCoin, a Bitcon/Litecoin payment processor co-owned by BP, whose office was a rented room in her home.  GoCoin's CEO Steve Beauregard was the last person to see her alive.  On the morning of Feb/26 her body was found by a cleaning staff worker near the base of a 22 story building, not far from her 3-story home.  It could be a suicide, but AFAIK no plausible motive has been advanced that could have led her to that.  It has been claimed that GoCoin had had some coins in MtGOX, and she died after Mark halted withdrawals (Feb/07) and sought Sunlot for possible acquisition  (Feb/??), and a few days before the filing for bankruptcy on Feb/28.

For those interested, user @Phinnaeus_Gage (the user with most posts to bitcointalk.org) and a few others did some sleuthing about the case: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=628000.0  (You better grab a few rolls of tinfoil.)