In the case of BIT at least, it is the authorized participants who buy the bitcoins and give them to Grayscale in exchange for BIT shares, at the fixed ~1:10 rate.  The reverse is the case when shares are redeemed.


Not sure about the "nimble" part... When the fund started, they had promised an open market by Q2 2014.  (And the minimum holding period was only 6 months.)

Fortune, Dan Primack,  2013-09-26
http://fortune.com/2013/09/26/first-bitcoin-investment-fund-launches/

ItBit is not an ETF, it is a completely different business.  AFAIK, SEC's involvement in their approval process was minimal; its was Lawsky himself who signed their charter to operate as a "Trust" (seemingly an "almost a bank" thing).

Even if it has been tested...

Those 15-bit numbers that overflowed in the Ariane V accident were to be fed to the digital-to-analog converters that steered the the engine nozzle, to keep the rocket upright during the ascent.  That software had been more than tested, it had been used successfully in many Ariane IV flights.  But the engineers forgot that the Ariane V was a much bigger rocket, so the forces involved would be bigger, so the numbers would be bigger...

It is not just a bureaucratic process. The SEC has to decide whether they will allow the fund to be traded or not.  It is not surprising that the SEC is still undecided, because it is the first fund whose only backing asset is a virtual currency with no backing asset.

If BIT can convince the SEC that they are better than COIN in some relevant sense, I suppose that they could be approved before COIN.  Or, even, BIT may be approved and COIN denied, or vice-versa.

I am sure that most users would strongly object to spending 1$/month more for the benefit of some company out there.

Either the devices will be a net win for the users (including the hassle of keeping the device connected and collecting the payoff), or forget it. 

One advantage of an ASIC-enabled toaster (or of the Internet of Things in general) is that the cops will know precisely when you are sitting down for breakfast, on the day they come to get you.

Never underestimate the power of a software bug:

https://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/ariane.html

http://www.wired.com/2010/11/1110mars-climate-observer-report/

http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/09/technology/knight-expensive-computer-bug/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

http://www.edn.com/design/automotive/4423428/Toyota-s-killer-firmware--Bad-design-and-its-consequences

http://web.archive.org/web/20071213201037/http://www.gcn.com/print/17_17/33727-1.html?topic=news

OOPS, sorry.  EKN is the altcoin, right?

No, it was a private plan (sorry to disappoint you).  Government pensions have been "adjusted" at times,  but they have been surprisingly dependable over half a century or more, even through bouts of hyperinflation and currency changes, military dictatorships, neocon governments, keynesian-socialist governments, just plain corrupt governments...

Of course, that collapse was indeed a failure of government oversight.  (The military were in power at the time, so the only license that a business really needed was the support of some general, and the only finacial reports that had to be filed were those printed on 2" x 5" pieces of paper.  Not that things have improved much since then.)

IIUC, that is not an altcoin.  It is that Swedish BTC fund; supposed to be like COIN, except that it is traded on the Swedish stock exchange, and is already operational.

EDIT:  Got it totally wrong, it is an altcoin (EKN)

In my 20's, I and many colleagues here in Brazil contributed for a few years to a retirement fund that was supposed to be solid and traditional etc.  But then it goxxed...

The volume so far is impressive, but what is the nominal asset value (NAV)? Each BTC-EKN share = 0.0001 BTC? So it is trading at 60% under the NAV, is that it?

They are discounted when the shares are redeemed, i.e. returned to Grayscale in exchange for the BTC they are supposed to stand for. 

If the mining chips are profitable with normal home electricity prices, then the company will be better off building a mining farm with them in some location where the elecrticity is cheaper.

If the mining chips are not profitable -- meaning that the price of the bitcoins that they mine is less than the price of the electricity that they use -- and their electricty consumption is added to the customer's normal usage, then the customer would take a big loss, while the company and the utility will profit.  

So, any idea that means taking some extra electricity from the customer's feed is a non-stater.  Inserting the chips near the input meter, or at any random place on the home's wiring, would be a bad idea.  Adding the chips to any devices that use electricity to do something other than generate heat --such as battery rechargers, blenders, TVs, computers, microwave ovens, lamps -- will increase the device's consumption, so it is equally bad.

The only devices where the chips could be placed without scamming the consumer are those that resistively convert the electricity to heat.  But chips canot work if they get any hotter than ~70 C; so electric stoves, ovens, grills, teapots, and flatirons are also out.

It seems that only water and space heaters are left.  But someone went through the math, and concluded that the monetary advantage to the customer would be too small to make a difference.

GBTC daily summary:

Date       ! price range (OTQ)  ! price range (alt)   ! volume
-----------+--------------------+---------------------+-------------
2015-05-04 | 37.98 --   42.00   | ??.00 -- 200.00 [1] |     765
2015-05-05 | 55.00 --   94.86   | 50.00 -- 175.00 [1] |     435
2015-05-06 |  N/A  --    N/A    | 65.00 --  68.00 [1] |     125
2015-05-07 | 40.00 --   66.00   | 40.00 --  86.00 [2] |    2844
2015-05-08 | 49.00 --   59.00   | 49.00 --  59.00 [2] |   14807

"OTQ" data from the GBTC quote page at OTCQX.
[1] from this post.
[2] from the Freerealtime site.

India not friendly to Bitcoin:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/35are5/btcxindia_closing/



IIRC, during World War II someone proposed to use trained pigeons to steer bombs or rockets towards their targets.  The pigeon would see the target through some optical device, and would be trained to poke at the steering controls so as to keep the target on the crosshairs. (I do not remember whether this was actually used, or just proposed.)

I have an academic interest in bitcoin, but the part of the protocol that runs on computers is boring. To me, the interesting part is the one that uses humans, like the trained pigeons above, to keep the computers running the right software -- motivated by the occasional (bit)corn.

Yesterday, for example I was discussing on reddit the ticketing policy of the Satoshi Bus Lines.  They have no set ticket prices or reservations.  You just buy a ticket with the amout of money that you feel should be enough, and go wait on the platform.  When a bus pulls up, the driver looks at the values printed on the tickets and decides which passengers he will take.  He is not required to fill all seats, and may even drive off with the bus empty, no matter how many passengers are waiting.  If you are not selected, you can just wait for the next bus, or go back to the ticket machine and top up the value to an amount that you hope may be enough to make you attractive for the next driver.  If the next driver would have let you ride for much less, "sorry for your loss".

I was told that this system is good because it is free market in action.

Is it possible to tell who has been pulling these two rallies?

Could it be people buying bitcoins somewhere else to move them to ITBit?

Or a reaction to the GBTC recovery?  (BTW, what happened to that 50'000 share bid?)

Sorry to interrupt again, but I ran into this "bullish" prediction that I made back in 2014-03-27, when China was bouncing up or down at every PBoC rumor and counter-rumor:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178336.msg5940459#msg5940459


The 70 $/BTC did not happen, of course; but please check what that plot says about May 2015... 

I was reviewing the events of 2014-02-25, The Day That Mt GOX Failed to Stand Still, and found this post:


There! I knew that there was a reason why I am still sticking around...  

Theory is nice, but there is one practical detail: each miner must know how big a block the users, nodes, and other miners are supposed to be capable of handling.  And, conversely, he must beforehand how big a block the other miners may post.  Otherwise a miner may see his work wasted because 70% of the other miners choked on his found block because it was too big.  Or he may cause 20% of the clients to crash for that same reason (and he has no way of knowing about that).  Or other undesirable things. 

So, one can argue whether the limit should be 1 MB or 20 MB or 200 GB; but the protocol must specify a maximum block size that everybody will respect, and that everybody must be prepared to handle if they want to play the game.