Your attempts to downplay this look pretty silly.

I've never gotten a satisfactory response as to whatever happened to that guy. Last I remember he was trying to get some sort of Bitcoin Conference in Pattaya, largely because he'd have open access to backdooring young Thai ladyboys.

The best part of Bruce Wagner was the "conference" he held in New York. It was billed as this super-organized, polished event (you know,  the same overselling of nearly everything Bitcoin-related) and the few pictures and "live feed" from the "event" showed it to be a room with a few chairs and tables and was filled with a smattering of people who looked like this was the first thing to break them away from the computer in their mom's basement for the past 10 years. Think LukeJr. An overpromoted dissappointment (much like every star-studded Bitcoin venture since).

But at the same time, I can't fault the optimism - it was new, Wagner was a dedicated con-artist and it seemed as if things were progressing.

It's hard to buy in to the optimism here now, and I'm willing to bet that many of the folks that populate this board, and lauding it as the next coming of Christ, are new to BTC.

Finally, a sensible, even-keeled understanding of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is not going to bring a new world order.

Bitcoin is not going to bring down the Federal Reserve.

Bitcoin, or more likely a successor (which isn't so limited in available coins), will provide utility in allowing for pseudonymity with online transactions - a true equivalent of cash-in-envelopes transactions for the internet. And for this reason will hold some value.

Newsflash: most people don't believe in BTC. This is a casino. If the volume of investment currently in BTC was made by people who believed in BTC, Mt. Gox wouldn't still be running the show.

It's allowed to continue because the volatility posed by such a shoddy and centralized exchange is precisely rollercoaster needed by the gamblers to play their hand. Everyone knows Mt. Gox is dirty, but they don't care because they are hoping to ride their coattails to quick profit.

Wow Wuji,

I think you need to pitch yourself to join Warren Buffet's employ. Even he could use a mentor like you.

I think its because its intentionally built to mitigate flash sell-offs, so MtGox can front-run and unload their coins at the front of the line. Front-running is a *guaranteed* occurrence here, and MtGox doesn't even forbid their employees from holding BTC.

Confidence shatters. It's a long slide down folks.

Come on folks, you are being played by Mr. Karpeles. For the BTC community to not have moved past such an obvious front-running operation is truly a product of a gathering of magic.

He supposedly had a "top" financial advisor of this caliber, yet signed on to a project without recognition of the complex rules surrounding money transmission? He sounds about as mature and grounded in reality as the 23-year olds he sought to do business with.

Hilarious stuff.

She'll talk about it when they become accessible, liquid and easily kept safe. The Bitcoin community has failed to achieve any of these goals in significant measure, because there is money to be made by exploiting these weaknesses.

But it is.

This is it in a nutshell. Bitcoin is an experiment that has served to reveal, among many lessons, the necessity of regulation, despite the wet dreaming of the anarchists/libertarians.

I think the time has come to exit the closet from which I have hidden for the last 4 years.

I am Satoshi.

In the tradition of my culture, I answer your question with a Koan. Study this deeply and the answer will become clear to you:


Such is the nature of life,
His master is his only adherent.
Underneath the Cherry Tree,
The student ponders the meaning of the the moon.

Teacher before have only positioned
Heaven as their only goal,
Even as the lotus leaf meanders along the stream.


Forget that which you know, said Shidoshi
Use what is now before you.
Can you hear the sound of prosperity?
Kindness is the note of harmony.

Unless you listen intently to that which is in you,
Peace will never blossom under the Cherry Tree.

Circlejerk alert

I love it. This cracks me up. All these "TA" gurus like to sound knowledgeable with their "oscillations", "triangle", and "side knife" bunk.

The shock is not that he is expected to be conversant in English, the shock is at the astoundingly poor judgment exhibited by him to even appear. This guy controls 80% of the Bitcoin's liquidity and these is how they present themselves?

The cult of Bitcoin has you apologists bending over backwards to explain away this trainwreck, eh? Good god.

I think you are kidding yourselves thinking that there are significant communities discussing Bitcoin outside of this forum.

Thank you for the thoughtful reply. What I think, however, that you are missing in your comparison between BTC and electronic fiat  payment systems - and which is absolutely fundamental to why such fiat systems hold consumer confidence - is that there are "consumer protections" built-in to the electronic fiat infrastructure: reversibility of transfers, limited liability for fraud, etc. Whether we admit it to it or not, we use our credit cards with confidence because of the transaction protection built-in (and for which we admittedly pay a steep price in the form of high interest rates).

Admittedly, the transaction of fiat in its traditional form as cold, hard cash does not carry this benefit, and in this way, is identical to BTC in irreversibility. But BTC shares the worst of both worlds - the ease of theft introduced by the digital medium in which it exists and through which it is transferred and the fact that, for all practical purposes, it only exists in this medium.

The average person knows how to protect paper currency - hiding it in his pocket. If the average corporation continues to struggling with preserving data integrity, how can we expect an individual to safeguard his/her Bitcoins or, as importantly, feel comfortable enough in the safety of the medium to invest significant value?

This is why I feel that Bitcoin's success will have to come at the hands of a well-funding backing that can develop mature infrastructure. If we rely on a room of engineers in an office suite in Tokyo to be the de facto standard of security, along with a few open-source/not-for-profit organizations, then there really isn't much to offer the mainstream. But of course, this flies in the face of the anarcho-libertarian wet dream of a decentralized currency.

I read a thread like this and it just blows my mind that anyone thinks that Bitcoin will ever move away from a fringe casino hobby.

Tesla, you are right. But the ideological allure of a "crypto" currency, i.e.  the anarcho-libertarian wet dream of decentralization, is the one aspect that most assuredly won't be part of the digital currency that ultimately becomes successful. That's why so many folks are butthurt. Infrastructure is necessary and the deep pockets necessary to maintain it - the kind that can only come from state sponsorship of some sort or shape - is becoming more and more obvious. Without it Bitcoin remains a fringe speculation game with two-bit exchanges seasonally arising and dying and wild-west-style robberies remaining the norm. The only paradigm-shift I see coming from "crypto" currency, is that the state sponsorship needed to maintain viability and confidence in the currency may shift from that of the nation-state to a corporate entity. It will serve to make direct the dynamic that is, in effect, already in place.

Don't any of you find it ironic that the results of Bitcoin debacles (like Bitcoinica and others) has been for the victims to seek the courts' help for redress? Is that begging for oversight and regulation, or what?!