wachtwoord

No you don't. For every product you buy you pay 4-6% more because of the credit card companies. They give you back a little bit to fool you. There are more ways to get Bitcoin then Coinbase? When I need to buy Dollars I pay more than 1% to my bank (fx fees). You only need to buy Bitcoins once. Yes, and because of that products are 4-6% more expensive (don't forget retailers are low margin businesses). No way are they going to enforce this. Secondly, it's only the USA. You always have inflation risk as fiat currencies are inflated like crazy. It's actually not even a risk, it's a certainty.

If you make the scale logarithmic and the function is a straight line it means the rise is exponential. It went from 100 to 63k in 4.5 years. Compared with a year ago it's increased nearly 8-fold. https://blockchain.info/nl/charts/n-transactions?timespan=1year&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=7&show_header=true&scale=1&address= Hu? Hardly 8-fold and not even close to a double. I don't see why the first 3.5 years are relevant if this growth has vanished over the last year. You would at least expect a few hundred thousands transactions by now to keep up with the exponential growth no? You're right I misread the graph. It's more than a double though https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-popular?timespan=1year&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=7&show_header=true&scale=1&address=

The DNOW spinoff of NOV. If the $22 valuation of Morningstar is anything near correct it's way overvalued (and I have no time to do deep analysis now and it's a small position).

If you make the scale logarithmic and the function is a straight line it means the rise is exponential. It went from 100 to 63k in 4.5 years. Compared with a year ago it's increased nearly 8-fold. And we're looking at the absolute number of transactions now and not the chart excluding popular addresses (on chain gambling that went on for a period) which severely distorts the graph. The rest of your post mostly shows your confusing main points with side points. Shady exchanges, for example, are not part of Bitcoin and people that cannot separate the two are going to miss the best opportunity in their lifetimes. Anyway: carry on ;)

Yeah so flat. What about making it logaritmic to take out the volatility? https://blockchain.info/nl/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=7&show_header=true&scale=1&address= and yes we see it is in fact rising exponentially. And meanwhile bigger and better things are constantly being announced, mostly with investments from venture capitalists and the development of ETFs. Did you also check the SecondMarket fund has continuously been buying large amounts during the bear market? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=337486.0 Maybe also stay of the Buttcoin reddit (extremely low quality content) and read this instead http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoin

1. DDD -46.0% 2. CZR -15.6% 3. CSGP -10.9% 4. JASO -1.9% 5. MU +31.6% 6. NFLX +11.5% 7. SHLD -20.0% 8. SPWR +3.6% 9. TWTR -51.5% 10. UA +14.9% 11. YGE -45.5% Not quite as good -11.8% on average versus rkbabang 's -13.3%, thepupil's -20.3% and Hielko's -32.1% :)

Thanks for mentioning the comparable businesses. Looks like these businesses have moats from scale and network effects the size of which will large determine the valuation. Interesting I would have imagined this business to be more commoditized. Thanks again!

I'm always interested in tickers that show up in the Morningstar 5 star rating and at least a narrow moat screen and APO just made the selection. Any additional viewpoints on this? (price does have a huge influence on the quality of an investment).

I didn't have time yet (and do hold shares in NOV). Is it a moatless commodity business they're spinning off? I bought NOV for the business with the huge moat in providing drilling equipment to oil companies. I believe this is all retained in the parent company?

He's friends with the CEO and various board members. It's easy for us to say he should've rebuked them... As a rational shareholder he still should have and this is terribly weak. I think he just valued the friendship much more than the amount of money he loses because of this (which is negligible compared to his vast wealth).

Self-doubt in absence of results is very human. The trick is to stay rational when experiencing this emotion.

CTRX is the third largest Pharmacy benefit management (PBM) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmacy_benefit_management which came out of a merger between two smaller ones last year. Express Scripts (ESRX) and CVS Caremark (CVS). PBMs are the intermediary between pharmaceutical benefit payers and their members. The primary moat factor in PBM in scale because PBMs make money on the spread and can negotiate with those selling the drugs. ESRX and CVS are both significantly bigger than CTRX. This sector is growing significantly driven by the changes in the healthcare system in the US and I was interested in ESRX in the end of 2013 but too slow to pull the trigger and the prices rose beyond what I was willing to pay. Additionally STRX recently closed a 10-year contract with Signa which is expected to add $0.50 per share starting in 2015. This is not a (pure) value investment as growth is in fact needed to warrant the current price.

Sold 40% of my INTC (which i had been holding since <$20) @ $27 and bought CTRX @ $39.50 with the proceeds.

That can be said for anything that has ever existed.

I'm exactly the same although I would not call it cheap. I just want to get things for an honest price (or cheaper) or I'll feel ripped off. I buy almost anything I want online for this very reason (except clothes and shoes as I need to try those on). If I buy something for more than I think it's worth (because of situational lack of alternatives) I actually enjoy whatever I bought less because I feel a little ripped off.

I consider banks and financials to be the most complicated businesses to analyze (and don't consider myself sufficiently knowledgeable) and therefore tend to avoid them even if they look cheap.

Sold out of NVS after holding a little over 2 years and replaced it with PKX <$64.

;D You've got to be kidding me, man. What, you think the thieves stole the BTC and then just retired them, like they were buying back stock? They stole the BTC and then sold them back on the open market for MONEY, because that's the point of stealing them. The supply doesn't change. This has already happened and is therefore already price in. The people needing to replace their lost coins however, is not yet priced in.

Oh absolutely. Mt Gox finally dying has nothing to do with the viability of Bitcoin. If Microsoft discontinues Hotmail do you give up on email? I think MT Gox going down might well be the trigger for another growth spurt in the price. I think it's highly unlikely for the price to be below $1k by the end of the year by any means. Why is everyone calling for regulation "to keep fraudsters in check"? "Yes, let's stop using Dollars because people sometimes pickpocket each other" would be the equivalent. I fail to see how a company discontinuing an underutilized email service is in any way analogous to 7% of the outstanding Bitcoins being up and stolen from a major exchange. The real damage will come if 60 minutes or some major news program does a story on this that reaches the masses. That's what I'm focused on. You don't want an image of risk and shadiness associated with cryptocurrency amongst the general public. At some point cryptocurrency needs to emerge from the underground. Sure, Mt. Gox situations can be avoided if you read Bitcoin message boards all the time, but how viable is Bitcoin for most people if they have to closely follow message boards just so they can be confident their coins don't get stolen during the night... Okay, how about Google discontinuing GMail? Same thing, e-mail won't stop and neither will Bitcoin. What makes you think "shadiness" being connected or disconnected to Cryptocurrency by media have any long term effects whatsoever? Fraud is possible with anything that holds value, so I'm glad fraud's possible with Bitcoin. The money being stolen is actually good news for the Bitcoin price as the real supply is actually 850,000 BTC less than what the price was apparently based on.

Interesting how nobody in this thread said a word against Mt Gox until 2 weeks ago. Hindsight bias is a powerful thing. I never made a new account after they were hacked and lost their entire database of user data in the summer of 2011 (and they reverted a few hours of trading). If you ever read the Bitcointalk forums you would have known they have been a shitty exchange always, and have been illiquid for many months. Everyone knew this. If you had money in MTGox you speculated and lost.

Isn't the USA the country where they lock you up you release evidence of war crimes to the public? To me they have lost any and all right to speak after that.

Oh absolutely. Mt Gox finally dying has nothing to do with the viability of Bitcoin. If Microsoft discontinues Hotmail do you give up on email? I think MT Gox going down might well be the trigger for another growth spurt in the price. I think it's highly unlikely for the price to be below $1k by the end of the year by any means. Why is everyone calling for regulation "to keep fraudsters in check"? "Yes, let's stop using Dollars because people sometimes pickpocket each other" would be the equivalent.

Do you think other countries should have suspended financial dealings with the US when we invaded Iraq? Our military has killed a lot more people in the past decade than Russia has. Ethically yes, logically no.

Haha, I'm definitely saving this to quote you later ;)

Only if you believe MTGox is still liquid. Looking at the price it seems like most don't. I wouldn't trust MtGox, they've been quite shady.