The halving won't do jack to price but it might make mining less profitable and used miner hardware very cheap on the market. Unless fees rise to compensate, but fees would have to rise quite a bit before they approach the same level as the reward. We might see fee/reward parity at the next halving, or the one after that.

I think $10k is only possible if the block size problem is solved for good; this might produce enough media hype to fuel an enormous bubble. $10k spike is certainly possible, but it's unlikely to happen very soon. I think the long time average value won't climb to over $600 if max block size stays at 1M. These are interconnected: more demand = more users => more transactions => larger blocks.

A bubble peak of >$10k is possible, although unlikely. Sustained price above $10k is not possible in this time frame, if ever. Would need a very different kind of economy.

Unfortunately the world is full of people who want to get rich quick and we've only seen an infinitesimally small proportion of those. So, the current newbies may leave but there are always more where they came from.

I wouldn't even get my hopes up that every new generation of newbies would be more cautious than the previous.

Did it collapse already?

If you lost your money, don't say you weren't warned.

There have been all kinds of "Is it a Ponzi?" checklists around but the number one evidence it's a Ponzi scheme is that if they have so high returns, why the fuck would they pay out so much? Even an average Joe can take some credit card debt or a second mortage on his house and pay at most low double digits in YoY interest. Why would anyone, EVER want to pay more than that, and even advertize it as an investment opportunity if they weren't a scammer?

Did the Bitcoin Trader ponzi collapse already? I see you deleted the thread.

Show me one single reason ANYONE EVER, especially financially apt people, should have to pay several hundred percent real interest on their loans to finance a profitable business.

This proves it's a ponzi more than anything else. Profitable businesses may seek funding but even risky businesses never pay these kinds of rates.

That it's an "investment" with varying daily "profits" is just smoke and mirrors.

Some people want to believe in a magical money making machine, and other people are smart and greedy enough to exploit that.

Funny thing, many ponzi scammers don't get out when they should. They waste a lot, or maybe even all, of their money continuing their confidence scam until they run out. A ponzi scammer profits most if he gets out immediately when the total sum of actual money he has peaks. I think in bitcoin world it's smartest to vanish when the weekly average of total money is less than the last weekly average. BT scammer, if you're reading this, pay attention. It's far to easy to be sucked into your own scam and to start to believe in your own invulnerability after having tricked a lot of people into giving you their money.

I agree with the OP. Bitcoin is mainstream, and mainstream folks are seeing it as a investment scheme they found out about too late to profit.

The only use cases for Bitcoin where it really thrives are small scale illegal activities. But even bottom feeder drug dealers prefer cash, it's simpler and more universally accepted and more anonymous.

I did the pywallet/Multibit thing (on a backup Linux laptop that's never been used much) and it worked great. Thanks for everyone who responded.

I, personally, hope we won't drop much below $350, because I'm kinda betting on BTC being at least around there early next year. No big deal though, but I would kinda like to pay the capital gains taxes on what I cashed out at around $605 with the coins I have left and not with the fiat I cashed out (so, kinda, drawing out the payment of those taxes every year to the next year until the sum falls below the taxable limit).

Well, whatever. If it drops then I have less money than I thought I had.

I have an unencrypted wallet.dat file from ages ago that I encrypted manually with gpg and I'd like to send the coins elsewhere. I would like to avoid setting up a full node. Is it possible to just import the wallet.dat to some modern client and sign and broadcast a transaction? Which clients exist that would allow me to do that?

That is actually prudent. That way you'll only lose the profits when the scheme collapses.

Can anyone estimate the size of this ponzi? At current rate, assuming it doesn't collapse, when would this top Pirate's scheme in USD terms?

That's how ponzi schemes work. They pay reliably until they collapse. If you are in early enough and manage to get out before the collapse, they can be profitable for the participants. Highly risky though, and the majority will lose all of their investment. And, they're obviously very illegal pretty much everywhere. Those few lucky participants who end up winning could be sued by the suckers for their losses. Also, anyone promoting a ponzi fraud could be considered a co-conspirator.

Why is this thread in Service discussion? This should be in the Lending or Gambling subforums, since this is obvious ponzi scam.

Not selling any coins in Jun 2011 was my worst decision.

Price keeps falling because at these prices there's more supply than demand.

This is a tautology really, but it's true. For whatever reason, there's more money overall wanting out of Bitcoin than wanting in at this price level.

Using PHP for ANYTHING is a recipe for a disaster. (Yes, even using it for the thing it was originally meant for - a simple tool for beginners to make dynamic web content. Ever seen a beginner write PHP code without gaping security holes all around?) Even Perl is much more sane language. Perl at least has consistent block scope.

For web development, I'm strangely drawn toward Node.js at the moment. But anything goes if it does not have to be PHP.

What baffles me more than the loss of BTC is the loss of fiat.

They claim that they have $30 million less than they thought they had, and that they don't know where the money went. This is insane. Just look at the bank statements and add them up. There you see where the money went. Simple as that.

Shorthand for a database on an airgapped system.