Tracing the money path could be easier than initialy thought. Interesting saga, long read, but worth it: I just Chased him through a bitcoin tumbler, and when he Came out with 96,000 BTC, I was Waiting for Him... http://www.reddit.com/r/SheepMarket...ust_chased_him_through_a_bitcoin_tumbler_and/ Sheep Marketplace heist â $100M worth of Bitcoin believed stolen as site vanishes from the Deep Web http://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/1...ed-stolen-as-site-vanishes-from-the-deep-web/
Veteran trader's interview: http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMark...y_request_ask_a_veteran_trader_with_nervesof/ "About Me I've been investing/trading since 1997/1998. Mutual funds through the .com bubble. Single issue equities through the bull run of '03 to '08. From '08 to '12 I traded instruments more volatile than Bitcoin, most of the time on leverage. These instruments included option combinations (straddles, verticals, butterflys, etc.) on commodity (eg. oil/gold), fixed-income (eg. treasury notes/bonds), and equities (eg. S&P 500) futures. I feel like everything to date, has prepared me to trade bitcoin. Hedge Fund managers have treated me to meals after stock-tips and cross-country plane rides. I've made and lost more than the median income in the US on multiple occasions, 3x now in a single day (twice in the wrong direction). My net worth is probably only a couple hundred grande above the average man's my age, and my annual salary doesn't max out Canada's income tax brackets. I bought bitcoin under $90, and again at $120. I bought more coin at $300, $400, $600 then after the first top, at $700 and $800. Most importantly, I knew not to buy at $900 - $1200. I've really only used my trading experience to time my "buys". I would say I've done an amazing job so far - given the tape. Of course, within 24 hours I could be proven wrong. I'm a little worried this posting will jinx me, and cause a crash to continue down to my average price. Not to mislead people, I was very young when I started. I'm a CFA charter holder, and I work on an 15 person team which manages $5B in assets for an institution that has almost $5B in liabilities."
Here is a thread where one member (knightmb) who is the top 3 biggest bitcoin owner with 400K coins explains things: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6825.0 "The initial investors never got the concept really. When I first started, when 1 BTC was basically $0.0001, the idea was to generate/buy as many as possible, then use it for payments. So if someone wanted a credit card that could buy $100 worth of stuff, they would insert X number of bitcoins to get that value loaded on the card. To keep the bank current, the credit card would be backed by Bitcoins at the bank basically. They initially though that 1 BTC would never get above maybe $0.20 per BTC, at least that's what I go from them. So they invested about $12k to either generated or buy bitcoins for the first part of 2010. My part was to simply compile some versions of bitcoin that could run on the Amazon cloud service. They rented a ton of CPU time and basically generated BTC non-stop for a while. At the same time, I was buying from members here (they probably remember me buying a ton from them) and then funnel everything into one massive wallet file. After funds ran out, so did the Amazon CPU time and me bugging members to buy what they had generated from the start. Then things sat in limbo for a while, long while. The project went bust and the people I was working with really still had no idea how BTC worked really. Soon, the project turned into zombie status and the initial investors (remember these aren't technical people in the least) though it was worthless or maybe just a fade that was dieing a quick death. Who am I to argue? That's when I offered a buy out back in Feb of this year and they took it finally. I think after a few more stories make it in the news about the BTC value, they will kick themselves for sure. Either way, I'm keeping my BTC in several secure places and the wallet files I'll make sure never touch my PC for security reasons. I look at it as a retirement fund, when I finally get tired of working the 9 to 5 grind, I can tell my boss to shove it with a smile..." --------------------------- In slightly related news the biggest bitcoin day destroyed ever recently has just happened when someone moved 400K 3 years old coins. Most likely the gentleman mentioned above. he might have sold them to a Wall Street firm. Or who knows....
My bitcoin story for this weekend I have bitcoins. I sold fractions of BTC to coinbase on 2 separate occasions few weeks ago. It's very easy. Money goes to my bank account. Just not happy with the length of time, about 7 calendar days. This weekend, wife and I agreed to sell a few hundred $ worth of BTC for holiday expenses, and I was about to login to coinbase, but she said process takes too long and suggested localbitcoins (since i bought most of them from LB sellers). So I posted 2 ads, Moneygram and Western Union, gotta be careful as BTC transfer is one way and most FIAT-based transfers are reversible (Paypal, bank to bank transfers, etc). I priced for 10% above bitstamp prices. bitstamp and coinbase are about equal in price for BTC. My phone started blowing up with offers and I sold out. I was pricing too low. I didn't put my contact info, so many cancelled before I could respond. I adjusted my price. Still at 20% above bitstamp price, I sold over $1500 worth of BTC. I have the cash, no waiting for 7 days. Most of the buyers were US, a couple were from out of the country. I'm buying in some from coinbase to replace BTC amount I didn't intend to sell... May continue buying and selling. We have enough inventory of BTC. TL;DR. BTC are high in-demand.
wish I had began mining in 2009-2011 but so does everyone reading this thread it's going higher though and I own about 38 coins
The owners of bitcoins are busy talking them up but:- Greenspan says it's a bubble China doesn't like them Looks like the average Joes will probably be landed with a load of nothing. The fast Eddies will be long gone and pumping the next fad imho
Bernake "likes" them, Germany likes them... and USA as well if they want to stay the most innovative country in the world (and they will)
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bond-york-real-estate-announces-140000471.html These people will lose money!!! What are they thinking??? accepting these invisible coins... I was wondering why crytpocurrencies were going up today. Another "P&D" news, I see. PS: For people who don't know... I'm long BTC and LTC