BitCoin crashed?

[kidicarus13]

http://news.yahoo.com/bitcoin-exchan...1--sector.html

TOKYO (Reuters) - Mt. Gox, once the world's biggest bitcoin exchange, looked to have essentially disappeared on Tuesday, with its website down, its founder unaccounted for and a Tokyo office empty bar a handful of protesters saying they had lost money investing in the virtual currency.

[Lurch]

^^^^kidicarus beat me to it^^^^

[davsel]

From: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=228803

Mt. Gox Go Boom

Well now, who didn't see this coming?

The one-time giant of bitcoin exchanges Mt. Gox has gone offline, adding fuel to claims of other bitcoin companies that the exchange is about to declare bankruptcy. The exchange’s website was showing a blank white page as of about 10:30 pm ET on Monday evening amid reports on Reddit and Twitter that Mt. Gox had halted all trading.

The rest of the so-called "Bitcoin community" is trying to spin their wheels about this being an "isolated incident" and "one bad actor" (never mind that it appears that any "funds" allegedly at Mt. Gox may be entirely ethereal.)

Uh huh.

Sure it is.

As I pointed out in the Ticker I posted last night I couldn't disagree more. Bitcoin and all other so-called digital "currencies" of similar design share the same basic set of problems:

The only thing they're backed by is your stupidity and inability to do math. The Lotto is often called "a tax on those too stupid to perform mathematics."

The only requirement to "make" one is the expenditure of electricity. Twice, I might add. Once to compute, and again to get the heat out of the room that the computing generates. In some very cold places the second is "free", of course (or even beneficial.)

All of these are designed to be self-extinguishing. They can be "lost" but a lost "coin" can not be replaced or re-issued. "Mining" becomes progressively more-difficult as well. This is essentially identical to claiming that a burning candle has a future value of more than bupkis.

The best part of it is that the people who "design" them take as many of the "easy" coins as they can get away with before everyone else gets to try, which means they profit simply by offering something that becomes incrementally less-profitable for each new entrant. The best part of this sort of racket is that it's legal. Then again, it probably shouldn't be against the law; selling people "pet rocks" wasn't against the law either, but anyone who thought there was actual value in that box (other than a possible tool for use in a riot) was flat out of their mind.
What's amazing isn't that Mt. Gox imploded.

No, what's amazing is that the other "exchanges" still quote a price above intrinsic value -- that is, zero.

[Irving]

Why would the value drop as each coin is more difficult to obtain? Isn't that how gold works?

I have .24 of a bit coin, and a total investment of $111 out of my bank account a few years ago. I haven't really been paying attention. I was able to log into mt. Gox on Sunday.

[Ridge]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/21012...et-attack.html

Bitcoins, other digital currencies stolen in massive 'Pony' botnet attack

In unrelated news, I'm retiring to the Caymans...

[hatidua]

Bitcoin, and the buzz surrounding it, reminds me ever so much of when they interviewed some 19 year old dot.com silicone valley millionaire back during the dot.com boom. The interviewer asked the kid how long he thought the bubble could last and his overconfident words were classic: "it's different this time".

[Ridge]

This makes for interesting reading the past couple months:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin

[kidicarus13]

This makes for interesting reading the past couple months:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin

THIS makes for interesting reading... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronies...My_Little_Pony

I had no idea before today.

[Ridge]

THIS makes for interesting reading... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronies...My_Little_Pony

I had no idea before today.

[Gman]

I'll stick with Kubrick's version.