Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

usmarshals.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 424 posts

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#201

Post by Ologn »

ThomPete wrote: post #122
Ologn wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoins are absolutely worthless. If there is any sign of a tech bubble, it is these worthless hashes that people pay hundreds of dollars for. One of the genius aspects of the Bitcoin scam is the limited output and increasing difficulty as it goes on. This keeps the scam going longer. If it were like tulip bulbs, or subprime real estate, or pets.com type stocks, the bubble would eventually burst. With the types of b…

I didn't downvote you because it's important that people realize why you are wrong. The value of any fiat, piece of gold, diamond etc isn't falsifiable either. You are assuming that other types of currency has inherent value. They don't.

What's falsifiable is the theory of value.

With my theory of value, Bitcoin has to collapse. Keynes talked about how markets could remain irrational longer than he was able to remain solvent, but that said, with my theory of value it has to collapse. So my theory of value is falsifiable.

The theory which says Bitcoin is valuable is "its valuable because its valuable". It's not really falsifiable. They say it's valuable because people find it valuable. If it loses value, they'll say it was because people stopped finding it valuable. How is that theory falsifiable? Whether it goes up or down, they can claim they were right. It's a tautological argument.

Gold is valuable because it is useful. It can be used to fill teeth, it can be used in electronics, for industrial purposes etc. Geologists spend time looking for where gold might be, then speculators spend time looking there, and if they're right, miners spend time mining it. As gold has a use, and has been useful for thousands of years, investors have a fairly certain (but not absolute) idea that they can exchange the gold they mine for other things.

Gold does have an inherent value. Compare an ounce of gold to a 1971 dollar. The 2014 dollar is worth a fifth of what the 1971 dollar was. An ounce of gold did not have it's value removed. Gold has an inherent useful value. The Papiermark, dollar etc. depend on the shifting winds of governments. The US government can fire up the printing presses and half the value of the dollar in a few days. You can't half the value of gold as easily, you'd have to make some kind of major scientific breakthrough.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#202

Post by smtddr »

vijayboyapati wrote: post #196

This is good in a way. It's yet another tacit admission of the legal legitimacy of bitcoin by USG. It's not like USG would seize 20kg of cocaine then sell it into the market in an auction!

"This is actually good news!" -- http://thisisactuallygoodnews.com/

But seriously, I'm a bit suspicious about what gov would do with the list of all the people willing to buy those coins.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#203

Post by baddox »

Ologn wrote: post #201
ThomPete wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't downvote you because it's important that people realize why you are wrong. The value of any fiat, piece of gold, diamond etc isn't falsifiable either. You are assuming that other types of currency has inherent value. They don't.

What's falsifiable is the theory of value. With my theory of value, Bitcoin has to collapse. Keynes talked about how markets could remain irrational longer than he was able to remain solvent, but that said, with my theory of value it has to collapse. So my theory of value is falsifiable. The theory which says Bitcoin is valuable is "its valuable because its valuable". It's not really falsifiable. They say it's valuab…

> With my theory of value, Bitcoin has to collapse.

There's absolutely no risk to a vague claim like that. It's unfalsifiable. Either we witness Bitcoin collapse, in which case you made an amazing prediction, or we don't witness Bitcoin collapse, and on your deathbed you can be proud that you haven't been proven wrong yet.

To make a meaningful prediction, name a time (preferably within most of our expected lifetimes) and a market price. Of course, if you could do that with any confidence, you should also trade with that same confidence.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#204

Post by smoorman1024 »

They could probably get more value out of the bitcoins by selling them slowly in the market rather than issuing a block sale. That's like Ackman running to the market and yelling for sale 20,000,000 shares of JCP. He instead slowly acquires or divests his stake.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#205

Post by WarriorOTL »

from https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=650311.0

Miners, now it is your turn.

A US-tax-funded violent underground organization is about to sell Bitcoins which got robbed from a innovative San Francisco startup, a marketplace which was creating a better because more peaceful world! A marketplace which put users, transparency, safety and quality first and not outdated laws and bureaucracy. A marketplace which enriched our private private lives and helped us having a better time together in love and peace. A marketplace which was ultimately against violence, guns, corruption, distrust and obfuscation.

Quote Silk Road Reduced Violence in the Drug Trade, Study Argues - http://www.wired.com/2014/06/silk-road-study/

America's war on drugs is lost. We all know it! It is time to stop it before it does further harm to the people of this world.

Let's face it. Most likely only two people have the power to block the silkroad coins (https://blockchain.info/address/1FfmbHfnpaZjKFvyi1okTjJJusN4...) from being sold. They are the operators of the biggest pools: Ghash.io and BTCguild. Together they have more than 51% of the networks hashing power. If they do not want to (because they might be already saturated) all we need to do is to convince the majority of the miners to join other pools which do following...

HOWTO :: Technically speaking the ming pool operators need to (1) block all new transactions which are descendants of the silkroad coins which were located once on 1FfmbHfnpaZjKFvyi1okTjJJusN455paPH and (2) do not accept new blocks which contain such transactions as part of the longest chain (which you mine on).

The Bitcoin protocol remains unchanged and allows by definition such interventions. It is time to use them for the benefit of our society. And it will be a race. Let the longest chain win!

MINERS UNITE! It is finally time to stop violent tax-funded underground organizations like the FBI from exploiting the people who they were once supposed to protect! Do not let people who stay totally in dark take away more of your wealth for themselves and projects which will further limit your freedom! Join mining pools which block the silkroad coins until the legitimate owner gets access to them back or at least a fair and public trial happened!

@ Developers :: Build patches for mining pools which follow the HOWTO. Build also patches for the wallets which consider transactions invalid which originated from the FBI address or at least warn users after having received such transactions. Make it easy for people to express their opinion on this topic through software!

The blockchain is not neutral.

It would not exist without hard working people.

People who love freedom and honest behavior.

Good people.

It is time for your vote.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#206

Post by rbobby »

joosters wrote: post #58

Isn't this a bit presumptuous? Ross William Ulbricht hasn't yet been convicted of anything. I know that they aren't selling his personal bitcoins, but in the (highly unlikely) event that he is found innocent, wouldn't that mean that the Silk Road assets need to be returned to him? How then can they sell them now?

Meh... a bitcoin is a bitcoin is a bitcoin. If in the future the gov't is ordered to return X number of bitcoins they can simply go to the marketplace and buy them.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#207

Post by ThomPete »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #176
ThomPete wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't downvote you because it's important that people realize why you are wrong. The value of any fiat, piece of gold, diamond etc isn't falsifiable either. You are assuming that other types of currency has inherent value. They don't.

Gold and diamonds have inherent value - they're both used industrially. Bitcoin perhaps doesn't have less inherent value than a non-backed currency though; but even being decades passed gold standard, and such, currencies that have a "reliable" government as support are still pretty reliable.

no value is inherrent and it makes no sense to talk about it from that perspective.

You are confusing historical with universal facts.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#209

Post by sillysaurus3 »

baddox wrote: post #178
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people offered to sell bitcoins at a certain price, and other people decided to accept that offer. One side decided that they prefer x USD to y bitcoins, and the other side decided that they prefer y bitcoins to x USD. So they agreed to swap. This is tautology, though. It's just the definition of a market. The couple hundred I refer to are those who (a) have thousands of bitcoins, and (b) enter and exit the market wi…

Of course it's the definition of a market. Why is that a problem? Nothing in your comment contradicts what I said, although I don't agree with everyone you said.

My apologies. In retrospect, my comment was curt. I only meant to continue the conversation, but it probably sounded like I was arguing.

I'd love to get your thoughts on the parts you disagree with, if you have the time. What do you think about bitcoin?

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#210

Post by PeterisP »

SolarNet wrote: post #193
PeterisP wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The increased [bit-]money supply doesn't explain the observed price drop - it would explain a price drop, but much, much smaller than this one; those 30k bitcoins is a rather tiny part of the whole bitcoins in circulation; so obviously some other reasons dominate this particular price change. If US treasury prints a billion dollars, then that doesn't trigger a 10% drop in value of a US dollar - it's a comparably tiny…

Well, that's market information sort of thing. Note that there are many more bitcoins in federal custody. And that the prospect of large amounts of bitcoins re-entering the market will cause some investors to dump their bitcoins. To add onto your analogy, if they government did print billions more than normal, then investors would project that behavior out, try to figure out what was wrong, and exasperate the effects…

If USA government starts printing extra tens of billions every single day, then investors project that out and that has a significant effect; it was called quantitative easing.

Similarly, if USA government had now started to do sales like this (and larger) every other day, then it would be grounds for some major effects - but they are not; the government does not have many more bitcoins in custody, they have a few limited amounts like this one of less than $20m. Why should such a comparably small sale cause any market disruption? If some $20m re-entering the market does that, then that's a sign of a very, very small and illiquid market.

If any real scale business would start using BTC, gets a few thousand BTC in sales, and wants to swap them to another currency - do they have to think of themselves as 'market influncer' that should be careful on how to sell them so as not to rock the boat; instead of simply immediately getting the current exchange rate for that?

Post reply on HN