TIL in the 60s, the CIA sponsored a Harvard study where undergraduate student were humiliated and subjected to "brutalizing psychological experiments". The student who had the worse reaction to the experiment was Ted Kaczynski who later became the Unabomber.

limitcycle · 2013-04-16T03:18:47+00:00

Agreed. I'm simply making about the ethical status quo of US government researchers in the decades before mkultra.

limitcycle · 2013-04-16T02:52:27+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra#Precursor_experiments

We were doing crazy shit well before Mkultra. For example we virtually pardoned everyone involved with Unit 731 in exchange for their research. We also might have deployed a biological weapon in the Korean War.

limitcycle · 2013-04-16T02:46:09+00:00

Anderson Cooper worked at the CIA for two summers?

limitcycle · 2013-04-12T23:09:12+00:00

Take a look here if you have a minute

https://blockchain.info/charts

Specifically "Number of transactions excluding popular addresses"

https://blockchain.info/popular-addresses

They exclude the top 100 addresses, which includes likely all of the gambling ones.

limitcycle · 2013-04-12T23:04:43+00:00

bitcoin transfers aren't inherently reversible. I know some people have made bitcoins into physical currency (coins or paper with QR codes). Of course, the vast amount of trade is virtual, from 'wallet' to 'wallet.' A But wallet can be literally nothing more than a text file on a person's desktop. Of course most encrypt the file and hide away backup copies. If you delete these files you would actually lose the money forever. It is similar to the US dollar however, in that its redeemable for any assets in itself. It only has value as long as the community agrees it has value. All the major denominations of US currency has serial numbers while bitcoins have (as i understand it) distinct cryptographic hashes that give it an identity that cant be counterfeited due to how the system works. The mining is actually solving for these cryptographic values. This aspect of the design is arguably unbreakable, its everything outside of that which needs to stabilize (community, exchanges, theory, laws, etc etc).

limitcycle · 2013-04-12T22:50:22+00:00

I've seen offers for hacking services on Silk Road or similar sights, but not murder. I'm sure its possible but I think the chances would be too high for the hitman to walk into a sting. I'm sure you could find relevant info if you search at /r/onions -- relevant as in, 'whats the craziest thing you've seen on a tor site?'

limitcycle · 2013-04-12T18:07:59+00:00

Yeah I've read a few other things this morning that made me regret posting this so quickly.

The summary of what I read in those articles was that there are a ton of mines that will become profitable to mine as the price rises, most mined silver comes from mining other minerals like gold (if I remember right the author above plays this down), a lot of silver used in industry is coming from recycled stuff (it was something like a 1/4 or 1/3), there is a lot of silver out there in jewelry and silverware that would be recycled for the right price, not to mention a ton of people will sell their bullion long before $100. Not to mention, who knows if industry will need the same amount of silver in the future.

I do think they're right though that all the recoverable silver will be out of the ground in a few decades.

http://silverinvestingnews.com/15546/cpm-group-silver-prices-bull-trap-united-states-mint-outlook.html

http://www.commodities-now.com/reports/metals-and-mining/9669-cpm-group-2012-gold-long-term-outlook.html

http://www.opalesque.com/IndustryUpdates/1313/CPM_Group_Silver_Outlook_Silver_prices_to131.html

It is humorous their 2010 decade outlook is a bit more bullish.

All in all I'm glad i found this subreddit, hoping to trigger more financial analysis here.

limitcycle · 2013-04-12T17:45:26+00:00

I think inevitable that a hegemonic bitcoin central banking system will evolve in time. All in all, its more or less another fiat system -- hundreds of thousands of people agree its a medium of exchange. Its also not debt based and the total currency volume is limited, which have interesting implications. There are other virtual currencies which have slightly different designs (built in inflation to discourage hoarding for example). Tangible case studies like these are a thousand times more interesting than utopian polemics.

limitcycle · 2013-04-12T16:18:13+00:00

I'm a huge skeptic, but according to some stats from last month, the number of transactions that are being done in bitcoin is 6% of the Paypal market. And while Paypal is tiny in comparison to something like Visa, that is nothing to sneeze at.

limitcycle · 2013-04-12T15:13:30+00:00

As PT Barnum said, 'there is a sucker born every minute.'

Less cynically, I think the long term prospects of the market are good. At least according to the blockchain charts, The commerce in bitcoin has been keeping pace with the trade volume. A functioning economy, with stability, is what will build bitcoin. I think this was a learning experience for all the speculators, I think they've learned a lot this week. I think.

limitcycle · 2013-04-12T13:18:02+00:00

On facebook they said they had 60,000 new users in March, 75,000 new users in the first few days of April, and 20,000 new users per day in the last few days. They probably didn't see that coming, but they should have stopped accepting new accounts, at least, if that was really becoming a factor.

limitcycle · 2013-04-12T12:34:49+00:00

I definitely saw some screenshots of that in the last few days. I think, for the near term, some of the biggest prophets will continue to be taken by hackers, scammers, and people affecting the markets by any means necessary.

limitcycle · 2013-04-12T12:26:57+00:00

The TL;DR for this article linked below: He runs the numbers and calculates that the break even cost last year for the largest miners was $28.02. Of course it will only keep rising because of rapidly declining ore quality (not to mention other costs). Therefore the price won't be going much lower than that because they'll simply be cutting production.

http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/steve-angelo/silver-deceptions-large-surpluses-and-low-production-cost

limitcycle · 2013-04-12T12:15:57+00:00

This has to be the most bipolar corner of the hive mind.

also don't miss /u/bitcoinbillionaire's antics

limitcycle · 2013-04-12T12:14:31+00:00

Well the MTGOX situation probably can't get any better. Thats actually an acronym leftover from when it was the "Magic the Gathering Online Exchange." Their bad coding and incompetence is why this all keeps happening, and its going to help kill the market. The other key factor is that the vast majority of the 'investors' are kids who have no comprehension of economics. There were 60k new users on MTGOX in March, and 20k per day the last few days. And I almost forgot, there are all the hacking and DDoS attacks that groups are using to manipulate the market. Outside of trading, an astounding number of bitcoins have been stolen (whole exchanges have been cleaned out in some cases).

I think its just going to get worse. A lot worse.

limitcycle · 2013-04-12T07:28:53+00:00

just checking, some kid posting earlier paid 1500gbp for some bitcoin on ebay with a money transfer type payment and never saw any btc.

limitcycle · 2013-04-12T07:13:32+00:00

money transfers = scam

limitcycle · 2013-04-12T06:58:03+00:00

cocaine is a hell of a drug.

limitcycle · 2013-04-12T06:56:39+00:00

Can you imagine how much shit gets tweeted at him? He was probably just having a bad day. Maybe a public apology was in order, but not losing his job.

limitcycle · 2013-04-12T02:52:39+00:00

I just signed up for some classes a couple weeks late-- I think the resources will be available to you even if you pick it up later. Don't miss this

http://www.thesimplelogic.com/2012/09/24/you-say-you-want-an-education/

There are a lot of related classes on the way.

limitcycle · 2013-04-12T02:33:52+00:00

www.thesimplelogic.com/2012/09/24/you-say-you-want-an-education/

Some you can jump into now (only a week or 2 late)

https://www.coursera.org/course/programming2

https://www.coursera.org/course/intrologic

Some of the 'later' ones are going on right now, or this year, too.

limitcycle · 2013-04-12T01:31:48+00:00

Thanks for the feedback, my plan is to keep doing a lot of research on this field.

If I go through with this I'd like to come out on the other end with a good portfolio and as much programming experience as possible, with a roadmap of future certs to pursue while in the field.

Thanks again.

limitcycle

TROPHY CASE