Everyone rushed to sell their coins around 7-9 hours ago. They're probably getting DDoS'd right now; it isn't their fault. Even paypal went down when they were getting DDoS'd enough (let's face it, paypal is way bigger).

I haven't been back into bitcoins for a while, so I'm unfamiliar with how many coins they manage.
It seems like they're handling it the way they should with the case-by-case claims system.
I personally don't trust online wallets; I'd only use mtgox when cashing out.

Edit: My guess is that after the 90 day claim system is done, they'll resume operations (if not before then for generating and using new wallets).

Hmm not familiar with that; could you provide a link/source? I don't see how that could be implemented properly...

I personally don't see anything wrong with it; without them none of this would be possible. They were all very inteligent in making and managing this amazing system and should be rewarded for that.
They won't screw up their own system and try to sell all of them at once.


Haha yeah we need more geeks in the world and less idiots.
Natural selection doesn't work for humanity as well as it should considering we're the smartest animals on the planet (although I have doubts sometimes).
The ability to become rich and/or ensure the survival [and number] of your offspring doesn't necessarily mean you're intelligent.

I hope you get those BFLs soon; they seem to have a shady track-record when it comes to delivering what their customers paid for.


Yep, autopilot of anything is great.

Bad idea; its best to just allow the worth of bitcoins to be based on the faith of the consumers & service providers - that's pretty much what any currency is based on. As someone already pointed out, gold is physical and therefore controllable by those who have it. They'd become like puppetmasters of the bitcoin market.

Edit: If you think about it, the silver that goes into making those high performance mining rigs kind-of already ties silver to the system via MINING, but since difficulty goes up over time that becomes less and less valuable.

Even if something catastrophic happened and bitcoins dropped down to the single digit range, I'd still be interested in them. The concepts behind are just too damn desirable. In a few years I'm sure the pirce-per-coin will be high enough that volatility will become non-existent.

One thing I've noticed more than anything with this currency is its resiliency. Yeah the price may go up and even "crash" at times, but it always seems to recover within 1-2 weeks (if it even takes THAT long).
I only wish I could've foreseen SOME sort of increase instead of selling off my bitcoins a year ago :/

The only service you can really "trust" (at least relatively) are the massive ones (like mtgox).
But even then, banks in the real world get "too-big-to-fail". It's a good thing these currencies are decentralized so that doesn't happen: a service provider will fail or it won't.

I'm a computational biologist. I've used bitcoins before, but sold them all a year or so ago; I'm starting from scratch again.

I remember having some money aside a year ago and contemplating buying one of their rigs; glad I didn't. I don't think it's a scam, but I think they may have gotten in over their heads. Perhaps they should've decreased the maximum orders that they would've taken to a more practical amount. Though I'm sure the money sent by other people (even if refunded later) helped them develop the product more.