The Future

The Extent of the Bank Run on Mt. Gox

Update -- 2011/06/26 13:24pst: I still can't get to my money, but it looks like they still have at least ~26000BTC left.

From:



It's that large, recurring transaction at the top with the slightly downwards slope. Mt.Gox can presumably pay it's debts until that gets to zero (at least).

I don't have my money yet, but I'm not worried. For now.

Bitcoins are Free!

The Global Bitcoin Stock Exchange (GLBSE) is Live!

It can be found at https://glbse.com (But I get a certificate warining)

See the stock prices here:


A breakdown of some the stocks:

1) GLBSE:UBX

Ubitex makes it easy for you to meet someone in person, and do the transaction face-to-face. And since you pay in cash, face-to-face, fraud is nearly eliminated.

2) GLBSE:SIN

SkepsiDyne Integrated Node is a mining company that is publicly listed on GLBSE.com under the ticker SIN. As of June 19, we've sold 1,547 shares, and sold the BTC raised for over $9,000. We currently have 9 rigs producing ~8.1 Ghash/sec.

Some more stats for SIN

3) GLBSE:DISHWARA

As far as I can tell it's another mining company?

4) GLBSE:OPTIMALBITCOIN

Yet another mining company

5) GLBSE:CM400

CentiMine: Anonymous mini-mining contracts

6) GLBSE:BITFLOWSYS

Another mining company

Assorted Links

1) Meshkit looks super interesting

2) The flashcrash has convinced me it's time for lastpass

3) RantRadio looks interesting

4) LulzSec strikes again!

5) Bitcoin and Agorism

Gavin Andresen reads MarginalRevolution

Awesome.

marginalrevolution.com is my favorite blog. Tyler Cowen's blog (and book!) has (very evidently) been a huge influence in how I approach blogging.

How I feel about the Bitcoin Flashcrash this morning.

Captured perfectly in song by Long Beach Dub All Star (feat. Chall2na)

June 19th 2011: The Bitcoin Flashcrash

In case you missed it:

Mt. Gox Account Compromised. Huge Sell-off.

UPDATE: MTGox Database compromised. That password is no longer secure. Change them!

From their blog:

Huge Bitcoin sell off due to a compromised account - rollback

The bitcoin will be back to around 17.5$/BTC after we rollback all trades that have happened after the huge Bitcoin sale that happened on June 20th near 3:00am (JST).

Service should be back by June 20th 10:00am (JST, 01:00am GMT) with all the trades reversed and accounts available.

The Canadian exchange cavirtex did not collapse, and AFAIK does not need a rollback.

Very Good Rhymes

See some of us are looted with mail and suited as well
But still blind like you're fluent in Braille

-Chali 2na

Bitcoin: What would Milton Friedman Say?

From wikipedia (HT)

Friedman believed that if the money supply was to be centrally controlled (as by the Federal Reserve) that the preferable way to do it would be with a mechanical system that would keep the quantity of money increasing at a steady rate.

Note he advocates a steady rate, if the money supply was to be centrally controlled. I wonder what he'd think of Bitcoin's deflationary nature?

However, instead of government involvement at all, he was open to a "real," non-government, gold standard where money is produced by the private market: "A real gold standard is thoroughly consistent with [classical] liberal principles and I, for one, am entirely in favor of measures promoting its development."

It sounds like he's for private banking backed by gold, but..

He did however add this caveat, "Let me emphasize that this note is not a plea for a return to a gold standard.... I regard a return to a gold standard as neither desirable nor feasible—with the one exception that it might become feasible if the doomsday predictions of hyperinflation under our present system should prove correct.

Inflation like this MIT estimate? An elaboration:

A real honest-to-God gold standard is not feasible because there is essentially no government in the world that is willing to surrender control over its domestic monetary policy

So he was for a steady rate of monetary growth, if centrally controlled. He was for gold, but didn't know how to get there as no government would surrender control.

Now there's the potential to take it back, weather they surrender it or not.

I'm left with more questions than answers.

Ghost Cities

What's wrong with this picture?



No, it's not CG. It's one of many Chinese ghost cities (lots of pics!):.

China plans to build 20 cities a year for the next 20 years. The unacknowledged problem is finding buyers for those hundreds of millions of new homes.

"China consumes more steel, iron ore and cement per capita than any industrial nation in history. It's all going to railways that will never make money, roads that no one drives on and cities that no one lives in."
"It's like walking into a forest of skyscrapers, but they're all empty," he said of Chenggong.

Very Good Sentences

I think Bitcoin and cryptocurrency stands to challenge and has the potential to topple the very notion of unlawful trade, just like the printing press challenged and toppled the notion of unlawful speech.

That's from Rick Falkvinge's (@Falkvinge) piece "Bitcoin’s Four Drivers: Part One – Unlawful Trade"

Very Good Sentences

In fact, Bitcoin takes the denationalisation of money a step further than Hayek did. Where Hayek’s system requires government to remove legal tender laws and Rothbard’s requires governments to return to the gold standard, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have no such political prerequisites. There is no bank to shut down, no specie to seize (the downfall of the ill-fated Liberty Dollar) – nothing at all for governments to aim at, except individual users. And as the war on internet piracy should demonstrate, such a campaign cannot be other than costly and ineffective.

That's C. Harwick's (@thrica) article 'Bitcoin and the Denationalisation of Money'.

Tomorrow (June 15th) should be a big day for Bitcoin

Tomorrow Gavin Andreson (@gavinandresen , Bitcoin technical lead) will give a presentation on Bicoin to the CIA. He'll then join Bruce Wagner (@brucewagner , host of the Bitcoin Show) on onlyonetv for a de-breifing.

Combine that with the bump that's surely on the way from the Economist article and it should make for an interesting day!





Some videos to prime you for the action:

1) Bruce Wagner joins Stefan Molyneux on Freedomain Radio



2) CIA's venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel evaluates Bitcoin

Automatically rename your media collection for XBMC

I havn't tried them yet, but it looks like I need one of these (HT: /r/torrents)

1) Mediarenamer

2) theRenamer

3) TVRenamer

Bitcoin coverage roundup: June 12th

1) Looks like bitcoin survived it's first major correction as an old-timer cashed out. This is a good thing. It makes the market stronger, and lets us pick up bitcoins for a deal. To those yelling 'bubble', lets maintain perspective: this correction only undid 4-days worth of growth.



2) More Bitcoin/Silk-road scaremongering. DEA has yet to say anything definitive



3) IMF is hacked. Maybe someone should tell them about bitcoin.

4) Ripple / RainDrop looks really cool (hat tip: bitcoin sun). Need to learn more.

Bitcoin Browser Extensions

For Chrome

1) Bitcoin Ticker





2) Mt. Gox Peek





For Firefox

1) Bitcoin Prices

Gambling with your bitcoins

Is so much fun.

And so easy

The Bitcoin Show - Episode 2

Discusses TradeHill.com



They need to fix the audio...