http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/before-sentencing-ulbricht-begs-for-leniency-please-leave-me-my-old-age/

bitcoin Founder and kingpin Ross Ulbricht, who at one point amassed as many as 150,000 bitcoin, begs for his life before a judge, his once proud bitcoin fueled arrogance reduced to pathetic groveling

"I’ve had my youth, and I know you must take away my middle years, but please leave me my old age." the broken shell of a man cries to the judge.

Haha, oh Ross, you should know it makes no functional difference how long your sentence is for your various bitcrimes. One year, ten years, one-hundred, you will die in prison no matter what you do, forgotten by all save for your fellow jailed bitcrimers. Your daily routine will consist of rapings by various gangs, none of which have any concern for bitcoin, being used as drug mule by various gangs, none of which use bitcoin as a medium of exchange, and being stabbed by various gangs, none of which will except bitcoin as protection money. If you are lucky, and shut up about fradulent bitcoin for long enough, an enlightened gang member may adopt you as his wife, or a guard may throw you in  solitary to go insane after you cry enough. Needless to say, one bitcoin or one million will not help you in the least.

Let this be a lesson for all bitcoiners deceived by the scammers and fraudsters, despite what you hear, bitcoin's only novel purpose is an illegal black market exchange, used to fund drug dealing, murder for hires, and of course, every bitcoiner's favorite, ISIS support and child pornography. Get out of bitcoin while you still can, it's not to late to escape a life of crime and punishment. If you don't, you will be left to die alone and forgotten like bitcoin kingpin Ross Ulbricht. Cheers! 

I come back after three months to see if bitcoiners had given up and gotten jobs yet, here is bitcoin news summary of the three months:

1. No news (other than bad)

2. Lot's of news (none good)

3. Scams, wasteful and inefficient mine losses continue as they always do, and always will until zero. There is not even a point enumerating them, like counting cavities in a meth mouth

4. bitcoin remains confined largely to darknet uses such as child pornography, drug and weapons sales and human trafficking funds for ISIS

5. The vast majority of people (99.99%) when asked, "do you bitcoin?" respond "huh?" whereas the remaining: "yes that's an obvious fraud" (0.009%) or "yes I have been defrauded" (0.0009%) or "yes I am a Chinese/Ukrainian/Silicon Valley hacker that defrauds with bitcoin" (0.0001%).

Let's see...forgetting something...oh yes, price is 10% lower. Cheers! 

Just briefly glancing through here it seems like anywhere from 15-25% could be diagnosed as morbidly paranoid, with 5% of that as full bore schizophrenia. There's also a great deal of mania in this forum, with the other subforums exhibiting mania/depression or both depending on the subject. It's difficult to parse through a forum but it just seems like an unusually large number of posters here are suffering from some combination of narcissistic/victim personality disorder, either resulting from social isolation, autism spectrum diseases, substance abuse (perhaps bitcoin's primary use) or PTSD.

Has anyone elucidated the link between bitcoin and mental illness? How many people here got involved in bitcoin because you couldn't function in the normal economy, or in society at large? I'm seriously asking because the idea of a currency that specifically draws the unstable members of society is fascinating from a social psychology perspective. There are certainly a very high number of sociopaths leading the bitcoin community (which explains the continuous scams and thefts of the beta member resources). Anyway if there are any normal members here you might want to commission a social worker to survey this forum for potential suicide/homicide risks or a psych researcher to try to and determine what factors of the bitcoin system are selecting for dredges. Cheers! 

Bitcoin is used by terrorists to fund their murder and kidnappings, child molesters their child pornography, drug heads their poison. The only practical use for bitcoin is highly illegal and immoral activity that no mainstream bank would want anything to do with for legal liabilities. But bitcoiners don't understand cost benefit analysis which is why many of them end up in jail or broke with a condo full of fried GPU's. Anything practical or productive done with bitcoin can be done with currencies (actual money) at 1/1000th of the transaction cost (or zero) and 1000X the security and fraud protection. Bitcoin, the currency for suckers and criminals, which one are you? Cheers!   

Bitcoin, the currency of terrorists, drug dealers, and child pornographers! Also subject to 50-90% loss, total illegality and arbitrary robbery/destruction of all transaction mediums instantaneously and simultaneously! (and that's when it's working correctly) Bitcoin - throw your money away today! It's just (ten thousand) clicks away! Cheers!  

Despite claims of revolutionary technology and growing acceptance, as bitcoin price collapses it becomes increasingly clear that the only novel use for bitcoin is for child molesters and sex offenders.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-09/bitcoin-payments-by-pedophiles-frustrate-child-porn-fight.html

“The emergence of bitcoins as payment for child sexual abuse represents the newest challenge in the fight” against child pornography, said Sarah Smith, a researcher at the IWF. “This is just the beginning.”

The currency provides “commercial child sexual abuse website operators with a method to revitalize their payment stream,” said John Shehan, executive director of the U.S. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Virginia.

So congratulations bitcoiners, at best you are strengthening a system widely used to sexually victimize children, and at worst you are actively aiding and abetting sex offenders. Please be advised bitcoiners, "Ayn Rand and Satoshi told me it was okay" is not a legal defense in court. Cheers! 

A year or so ago, I remember bitcoin being above $1000, the Guardian ran many positive stories. It seemed every day bitcoin had a positive spin - bitcoin million dollar thumbdrive found, bitcoin beer sold, bitcoin hoarded by Chinese. I mentioned the obvious fact - that bitcoin was a (pointlessly) elaborate Ponzi scheme, whose obfuscations and complexities only served to mask the extremely obvious truth - the vast majority of bitcoin is valued 1 cent or lower, and the only job of the founders (Ponzi leaders) is to in entice new users (dumb money) into the bottom of the Ponzi pyramid. It does't matter at what point the dumb money came in - $1 or $1000, to the tip of the pyramid it's pure profit, even if they manage to liquidate only a few bitcoin to actual money (a difficult task even in the most stable periods) they would reap pure profit and the dumb money would instantly (I mean instantly) become permanent bagholders (once a ponzi begins unraveling, the momentum is always down).

When I pointed out the simple truth (truth is always simple, unlike fraudulent bitcoin) of the ponzi scheme, I was shouted down by waves of scheming pump boilers. They all came out of the woodwork at once. "You don't understand X" "The protocol means Y" "Satoshi and Ayn Rand told me Z" on and on and on. Wow, I was shocked, I'd never seen such coordinated efforts to boil up a price. I only hope that those guys were near the original buy in, otherwise they became suicidally trapped bagholders. $300? $500? $1200? Who knows the depth of their ruination.

Moral of the story - to the founders, congratulations, you defrauded, and continue to defraud, tens of thousands of people who I'm sure thought they were very clever and ahead of the game (usually the dumbest people in the room). And to the bagholders - I won't say it's not too late, because at this point liquidating any bitcoin volume in any meaningful significance will lock up the remaining "market" and lead to an instant crash or more likely simply the termination of "market" function in totality. But you can resolve today to put your savings in actual assets valued in actual money, money backed by hundreds of trillions of physical assets, enforcement agencies, and transparent, fraud resisting systems that are continuously improved day by day. You've been victimized, but you can learn from your mistakes and make sure other friends and family are not defrauded by cyber criminals and ponzi pumpers. Cheers!