My Thoughts on Mt. Gox

I was going to start this article by stating: “Mt. Gox needs to get its shit together.” But its too late for that. Much too late. Mt.Gox has been the dominant Bitcoin exchange pretty much since the beginning. In its brief history, it has suffered several bad setbacks, with the one last spring an incident … Read more

Why China’s Attack on Bitcoin is a Sign of Weakness

For myself and many others back in the 2008/09 period, it seemed obvious what China should to do from an entirely nationalistic perspective on the grand geopolitical chessboard. With the reputation of the U.S. laying in tatters following a gigantic financial collapse and an utterly embarrassing, unlimited taxpayer bailout of the criminals that caused the crisis, the entire world (including Americans) was looking for something else. Something new, something more lawful. Something more just and more stable. The U.S. dollar and the Federal Reserve System had been exposed and entirely discredited in many people’s minds. One of history’s most bold and monumental geopolitical moves was ripe for the taking. China could attempt to back its currency with gold, something I discussed with Max Keiser in a May 2010 interview. Immediately, capital flows would flood into the country, Chinese consumer purchasing power would explode and a rebalancing of their economy would experience a traumatic, but monumental and necessary shift. They could have announced such a plan and then implemented it slowly and with safety nets for manufacturers. It wouldn’t have been easy, but the window of opportunity was open. Instead, they did nothing, and now I think it’s too late.

I think there are two obvious reasons why the Chinese authorities failed to take bold action on the world stage. First, many of the wealthiest billionaires and elites in China have benefited greatly from so-called “free trade” partnerships with the West. The ponzi relationship in which we print pieces of paper and give it to them for manufactured goods has resulted in fabulous fortunes for the Chinese power players. Not to mention their existing personal, social relationships with Western elites. So why rock the boat?

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My Thoughts on Last Night’s BTC Crash and a Guest Post on “Why Bitcoin Will Succeed”

I haven’t seen action in Bitcoin like we saw last night since earlier this year in the spring when the price went from $10 in January to $260 in April, and then crashed down to $50 before stabilizing in the $80-$120 range for months before beginning the latest parabolic move. I was so taken by the action in BTC China last night that I wasn’t able to sleep until 5am Rocky Mountain time, trying to buy what I could at the best prices possible. I saw every single tick. It was a crazy evening.

Yesterday I posted that while I thought BTC was at the lower end of the range at $650, there was the potential for some near-term headline risk. I thought that it might come from the U.S. banking system, but instead it came from China when they banned new renminbi deposits into the leading global exchange BTC China. While I am not saying that the price will now quickly launch to new highs, there was complete and total panic in the air last night. No question about that. In addition I tweeted that:

Now I think we have a much more positive setup going forward, although a similar period of consolidation such as we saw earlier in this year is likely. The news out of China cannot get any worse, and BTC China as far as an exchange and price discovery mechanism is basically dead. The big risk now is that other nations take similar actions, but the sentiment is now sufficiently bad and people expect bad news. Last night represented the most BTC I have bought since the spring crash.

In light of all this, a reader of my blog going by the handle Anon Wibble posted an excellent comment and I have decided to republish it here. Would love to get reader feedback as well. Enjoy!

Bitcoin will prevail. This isn’t just another e-currency, this is an entire framework for communicating information and money unlike no other ever before. This is the biggest revolution since linux and the more you use bitcoin the better and more complex you realise it is.

Look at the following things:

1) bitcoin can do everything a bank can do

2) while it’s true that unlike credit cards, btc has no way to chargeback claims, also consider that in the past chargeback scams have defrauded business through payers likes paypal etc. Chargeback doesn’t prevent fraud at all, it moves the person being defrauded from one person to another. Also consider that escrow services do chargeback for far cheaper than credit cards do.

3) bitcoin isn’t just a currency it’s a protocol that can be used to exchange information, nowhere in the headlines is this even mentioned files and information can be exchanged through bitcoin nobody has even looked at this yet

4) JPMorgan wouldn’t have tried to patent their own version of bitcoin 170 times, if they didn’t think crypto currency wasn’t the future

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Meet “FiatLeak.com” – Real Time Map Analysis of Bitcoin Transactions by Country

This site is pretty sweet. It uses data from the three major Bitcoin exchanges for which data is published, Mt. Gox, Bitstamp and BTC China to show you which countries and which currencies are moving in and out of bitcoin in real time. I really like the table at the bottom which keeps a tally … Read more

Bitcoin’s Biggest Exchange is Now in China as the Price Tops $200/btc

I knew Baidu’s decision to accept Bitcoin for its Jiasule service was a big deal the moment I saw it, but I didn’t expect the move in price upward to be this powerful and this immediate.  There’s a new player in the global Bitcoin marketplace and that player is huge.

China is now not only the number two downloader of Bitcoin software globally, it also hosts the world’s most active exchange. That exchange is called BTC China, and according to Wired now accounts for 33% of bitcoin trades, compared to 23% at Mt. Gox. That’s incredible considering earlier this year it was reported that Mt. Gox had up to 80% of total global trade volume. Meanwhile, apparently merchants on the Ebay of China, Taobao.com, have begun to accept bitcoin.

More from Wired:

A single bitcoin is now worth $200, thanks to a little-known exchange in China that is suddenly pushing the digital currency to new heights.

The exchange, called BTC China, has been growing rapidly for the past few months as demand for bitcoins has surged. Today, BTC China accounts for just under 33 percent of trades. That’s ahead of long-time bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox (23 percent) and another rival, the Slovenia-based BitStamp (25 percent). Mt. Gox has long been the most popular exchange — and the most well known — but it has now fallen behind not one but two rivals.

As you can see in this chart, BTC China has been surging since the Silk Road seizure, and it spiked even higher last week when news surfaced that China’s search giant, Baidu, was now accepting bitcoins. Merchants on China’s version of eBay — Alibaba’s Taobao.com — are starting to accept bitcoins, but the price is really being driven by speculators, says Lee. “I think the Chinese really look to bitcoin as an excellent digital store of value, sort of like the new electronic version of gold,” he says. “The Chinese like the idea of buying bitcoins to allow for deferred gratification from their savings.”

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