No, there is fun enough already in the contest result. 

I was serious.  When analyzing prices of stocks, currencies, gold, etc, it is best to use a log scale because it turns equal relative changes into equal displacements.  For example, a change from 100 to 200 will look just as big as a change from 1000 to 2000 (both being 2x).  Also, a drop from 100 to 50 looks just as big as a rise from 100 to 200 (one is the inverse of the other).

In that sense, 417 is closer to 240 than 135, because 417/240 =  1.73 is less than 240/135 = 1.77.

@fonzie also bet 266$ on June 2, that was disqualified for being only 1 day too late.  
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=553123.msg7086720#msg7086720
It seems that we have now found out who has been controlling the price all along.

There was another bet for 417$ by @Newbie1022, made in August.  In log scale it would be closer to 250$ than 135$.

Rakuten uses Bitnet (a Bitpay competitor) to process Bitcoin payments. Meaning that the customer who opts for that payment method gets redirected to a Bitnet page that displays the total USD price converted to BTC.  The customer sends his BTC to Bitnet, then Bitnet sends dollars to Rakuten USA's bank account. Eventually Bitnet sells the BTC somewhere to replenish their dollar reserves.


Smart guy there.    

Actually it also has the benefit of burning a few million dollars of Bitnet's capital to subsidize the dumping.  

Rakuten offers 30$ rebate for purchases above 100$ paid in bitcoin (via Bitnet).
Valid in US only to 2015-04-08.
http://www.rakuten.com/loc/bitcoin/82406.html?scid=em_Promotional_20150401Daily&adid=18007

The St. Petersburg Bowl has removed all references to Bitcoin from their site, it seems:
http://stpetersburgbowl.com/
The sponsorship contract with BitPay was supposed to be for 3 years.  Seems that it was rescinded?

If the motorcycle runs over a speed bump, will the geese get goosebumps?

I suppose that the old investors are still waiting for their digital certificates or whatever they need in order to put their shares for sale.  

I still got no reply for my second attempt to ask the OTCQX help desk about the unit of "size".

As noted before, the average BIT investor has lost, on paper, about 40% of the money he invested.  Some investors made a profit, some are roughly even, but some lost a lot more than 40%.  I would be very surprised if none of those old investors chooses to sell now.


The difference is 3128 BTC or less than 2.5%.  Could it be the effect of fees?

Isn't it more fun with quotes?

What can I reply?  Bitcoin is working for some people, sure.  Will it ever grow to a significant slice of the economy?

Unfortunately, we have no idea of how many merchants (like you) really accept bitcoin, nor how much do they take by that route.  That, by the way, is one thing that must be keeping serious investors away: there is practically no meaningful data on the state of the bitcoin economy.

We must do with indirect hints.  Right now there there seem to be, worldwide, at most 200'000 merchants who "accept bitcoin" in the sense that they accept national currency from a bitcoin payment processor like BitPay.  BitPay seems to be processing about 1 million dollars of payments per day, but a large fraction of that seems to be miners paying bills.  There seem to be less than 700'000 people who own a significant amount of bitcoin.  Considering that, for a merchant, really accepting bitcoin is more complicated than signing up with BitPay, and that not every bitcoin owner uses it for purchases, I would think that the real bitcoin economy (excluding illegal trade) is still very small.  And we have no ideal of whether it is growing or shrinking.

Amounts of 30-50 dollars per purchase are fairly common in e-commerce using traditional means of payment.  Why do you say that they would be uneconomical in your case?

I wonder how much you would make if you also accepted payment through PayPal or some similat service.  Have you considered it?

Except that, to someone who has no ideological motivations and merely looks at the price charts, BTC looks worse than the Argentinean peso or Russian rubles.  No one will consider BTC an option to escape inflation until those crazy sudden swings stop and the price remains stable for a year.

As for replacing gold: with a 30% loss over the last few years, gold does not look like the solid refuge that it once was.  Still, it has a fairly high rock-bottom price, maybe 100-200 $/ounce, due to its assured continuing demand for jewelry and industrial use, as well as his historical glamour.  So, the price of gold is unlikely to drop by another 50% in the next few years, and any further drop will be gradual enough for individuals to take their money out before losing too much. 

In contrast, bitcoin does not have such floor.  Even the 5 $/BTC estimated for e-payment usage depends on it continuing to to be the main cryptocurrency for that use, which is not at all certain. Bircoin price drops have been sudden and totally unpredictable, so investors would probably have to bear higher losses when trying to run away from them.

Anyway, for everyone who has heard of bitcoin and still has money to invest, the expected value is now less than 245 $/BTC.  They obviously think that the chances for Buterin's scenario are less than 1% (even if they don't make that estimation explicilt or conscious).

That may be a good deal for you, but bitcoiner tourists doing that will not be enough to support a "rebittance" business.

Moreover, their business will depress only the BTC:PHP price in the local market and exchanges, not the BTC:USD price.  Local arbitragers could buy cheap BTC with PHP and re-sell them locally (or to tourists) for USD, at a higher price; but they too will need to change the USD into PHP for continuing operation, which again runs into the conversion fee barrier.

You mean, doing arbitrage by physical transfer.

If your trip costs 2500 USD, and the local market price is 5% lower than the USD market, you would need to buy and sell ~50'000 USD worth of bitcoin to pay for the trip.

To do that you would have to exchange those 50'000 USD to PHP in the US and take the PHP with you, or take the USD and exchange them locally for PHP.  Either way, apart from the cost of the trip, that currency conversion will cost you more than what it would cost for a traditional remittance service; so it would not solve the "rebittance" problem.

There is already a bitcoin-based remittance service for the Philippines: The sender gives them USD in the US, they use the USD to buy bitcoins at the exchanges, then sell the bitcoins in the Philippines for PHP, and give the PHP to the receiver.

Not long ago they posted to /r/bitcoin calling for help, because they had run out of OTC buyers in the Philippines, and they could only sell them on the local open market BELOW the equivalent of the USD market price, hence at a loss.

That is a general problem with bitcoin-based remittance: in order to sustain the local price, there must be a return channel that buys bitcoins at the destination country, with local currency, and sells them back at the exchanges for USD.  Arbitragers could  do that, profiting from the spread between the depressed local price an the USD market; but they would soon need to convert the USD that they get at the exchanges back into the local currency.  But if the arbitragers have a way to do that and still make a profit, then a remittance service could use the same way, and undercut the bitcoin-based service...

How could she tremble, given that she is just a photo, not a gif?

"Hodl" is a real word, used and understood by all citizens of this thread. Googling "hodl" bitcon (with quotes) gives almost 24'000 hits.  Look for it in the next edition of the Oxford Dictionary.

Did you know that, according to Dalí himself, the only difference between him and a crazy man was that he was not crazy?

Well, the donors can still donate to charity themselves.

Several people offered to do so (and I am grateful for the offer), but I do not own any blockchain address, and do not intend to.

As you could have guessed, I sold all of my bitcoins long time ago. Even before buying the first one. 

No, the smart thing is to buy and hold.  More precisely, the other traders buy and hold, while I sell.