Is Forex a Scam? - Forex Education

I’ve been reading these posts on an off for quite some time now and it saddened me to see someone had recently posted their “I quit the game” statement. We all walk through fire to stand in the green valley...and the journey has to be made on foot. And alone. And it’s tough.
In response, I wanted to add a list of pointers for people starting out in this insane game and to address what I’ve learned from over a decade of trading Forex. It’s long-ish but it’s based on reality and not a bunch of meaningless retail junk systems and “insider knowledge” by nitwits on YouTube or some 19-year old “whiz kid” who apparently makes ten billion dollars a week with a mystical set-up that’ll only cost you $1,999 to buy!
I became a profitable trader by keeping everything simple. I lost thousands when I started out, but I look back now and realise how easily I could’ve avoided those losses.
Keep Everything Simple.
For the sake of disclosure, I worked for Morgan Stanley for over a decade in fixed income but learned almost everything I know from the forex guys whom I got to know as good friends. They make markets but there’s still a lot to learn from them as a small fry trader. I got into all this as a hobby after annoying the traders with questions, and all these years later it still pays me. There are still occasional nightmare accidents but they’re far rarer to the point where they don’t affect my ROI.
Possibly the most clear statement I could make about Forex trading in the large institutional setting is actually a pretty profound one: Forex traders are not what you think they are: every single forex trader I ever worked with (and who lasted the test of time) had the exact same set of personality traits: 1. NOT ONE of them was a gung-ho high-five loudmouth, 2. Every single one of them analysed their mistakes to the point of obsession, 3. They were bookish and not jocks, 4. They had the humility to admit that many early errors were the result of piss-poor planning. The loudmouths last a year and are gone.
Guys who last 5, 10, 20 years in a major finance house on the trading floor are nothing like the absurd 1980s Hollywood images you see on your tv; they’re the perfect opposite of that stereotype. The absolute best I ever met was a studious Irish-Catholic guy from Boston who was conscientious, helpful, calm, and utterly committed to one thing: learning from every single error of judgement. To quote him: “Losing teaches you far more than winning”.
Enough of that. These points are deliberately broad. Here goes:

Know The Pairs. It amazes me to see countless small account traders speak as though “systems” work across all pairs. They don’t. Trading GBP/CHF is an entirely different beast to trading CHF/JPY. If you don’t know the innate properties of the CHF market or the JPY or the interplay between the AUD and NZD etc then leave them alone until you do. —There’s no rush— Don’t trade pairs until you are clear on what drives ‘commodity currencies’, or what goes on behind currencies which are easily manipulated, or currencies which simply tend to range for months on end instead of having clear trends. Every pair has its own benefits and drawbacks. Google “Tips on trading the JPY” etc etc etc and get to know the personality of these currencies. They’re just products like any other....Would you buy a Honda without knowing a single thing about the brand or its engine or its durability? So why trade a currency you know nothing about?
Indicators are only telling you what you should be able to see in front of you: PRICE AND MARKET STRUCTURE. Take everything off your charts and simply ask one question: What do I see happening right here and right now? What time frame do I see it on? If you can’t spot a simple consolidation, an uptrend, or a downtrend on a quick high-versus-low time frame scan then no indicator on the planet will help you.
Do you know why momentum indicators work on clear trends but are often a complete disaster on ranges? If not, why not? Do you know why such indicators are losing you tons of trades on low TFs? Do you actually understand the simple mathematics of any indicator? If the answer to these questions is “no” then why are you using these things and piling on indicator after indicator after indicator until you have some psychedelic disco on your screen that looks like an intergalactic dogfight in Star Wars? Keep it simple. Know thy indicator.
Risk:Reward Addiction. The greatest profit killer. So you set up your stops and limits at 1:1.5 or whatever and say “That’s me done” only to come back and see that your limit was missed by a soul-crushing 5 pips before reversing trend to cost you $100, $200, $1000. So you say “Ah but the system is fine”. Guys...this isn’t poker; it doesn’t have to be a zero sum game. Get over your 1:1.5 addiction —The Market Does Not Owe You 50 Pips— Which leads to the next point which, frankly, is what has allowed me to make money consistently for my entire trading life...
YOU WILL NEVER GO BROKE TAKING A PROFIT. So you want to take that 50-pip profit in two hours because some analyst says it’ll happen or because your trend lines say it has to happen. You set your 1:1.5 order. “I’ll check where I’m at in an hour” you say. An hour later you see you’re up 18 pips and you feel you’re owed more by now. “If I close this trade now I could be missing out on a stack”. So what?! Here’s an example: I trade in sterling. I was watching GBP climb against it’s post-GDP flop report and once I was up £157 I thought “This is going to start bouncing off resistance all morning and I don’t need the hassle of riding the rollercoaster all day long”. So I closed it, took the £157, went to make breakfast. Came back shortly afterwards and looked at the chart and saw that I could’ve made about £550 if I’d trusted myself. Do I care? Absolutely not...in fact it usually makes me laugh. So I enter another trade, make another quick £40, then another £95. Almost £300 in less than 45 mins and I’m supposed to cry over the £250 I “missed out on”?

£300 in less than an hour for doing nothing more than waiting for some volatility then tapping a keyboard. It’s almost a sin to make money that easily and I don’t “deserve” any of it. Shut off the laptop. Go out for the day.
Does the following sound familiar? “Okay I’m almost at my take-profit...almost!.....almost!....okay it’s bouncing away from me but it’ll come back. Come back, damnit!! Jesus come back to my limit! Ah for F**k’s sakes!! This is complete crap; that trade was almost done! This is rigged! This is worse than poker! This is total BS!!”
So when you were 50% or 75% toward your goal and could see the trade slipping away why wasn’t $100 or $200 enough? You need more than that?...really?!
So point 6:

Tomorrow Is Another Day. Lordy Lordy, you only made $186 all day. What a disaster! Did you lose anything? Nope. Will the market be open again tomorrow? Yep. Does London open in just four hours? Yep. Is the NOK/SGD/EUR whatever still looking shitty? Yep. So let it go- there are endless THOUSANDS of trades you can make in your lifetime and you need to let a small gain be seen for what it is: ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL PROFIT.

Four or five solid but small profits in a day = One Large Profit. I don’t care how I make it, I don’t care if it’s ten lots of £20, I don’t care if I make the lot in a single trade in 30 seconds either. And once I have a nice sum I switch the computer off and leave it the Fk alone. I don’t care if Brexit is due to detonate the pound or if some Fed guy is going to crap all over the USD in his speech; I’ve made my money and I’m out for the day. There will be other speeches, other detonations.
I could get into the entire process by which I trade but it’s aggravatingly basic trend-following mostly based on fundamentals. Losing in this business really does boil down to the same appalling combination of traits that kill most traders: Greed, Impatience, Addiction. Do I trade every day? Absolutely not; if there’s nothing with higher probability trades then I just leave it alone. When I hit my target I’m out for the day- the market doesn’t give a crap about me and I don’t give a crap about the market, if you see my meaning.
I played poker semi-professionally for two years and it’s absolutely soul-destroying to be “cold decked” for a whole week. But every player has to experience it in order to lose the arrogance and the bravado; losing is fine as long as you learn from it. One day you’ll be in a position to fold pocket Kings because you’ll know you’re dead in the water. The currency markets are exactly the same in that one regard: if you learn from the past you’ll know when it’s time to get out of that stupid trade or that stupid “system” that sounded so great when you had a demo account.
Bank a profit. Keep your charts simple. Know the pairs. Be patient. Touch nothing till you understand it inside out.
And if you’re not enjoying the game....STOP PLAYING.
[if people find this helpful I might post a thread on the best books I’ve studied from and why most forex books are utterly repetitious bullshit].
Peace.

TRADE KEY LAB: Learn The Right Ways Of Trading Forex p6

What's your favourite forex "conspiracy theory", and is it actually true?

Daily Trading Thread - Monday 3.5.18

Forex Trading Myths and Misconceptions

How HFT affects FX traders

How HFT affects FX retail traders

GPU mining - Current day explanation breakdown as to why it's not profitable any longer for PowerPayers.

Time	Release	For	Actual	Expected	Prior
10:00:00 AM	ISM Services	Jan	-	59	58.8

Ex- Div	Company	Amt	Yield
BBT	BB&T Rg	0.05	0.02
BRKR	Bruker Rg	0.04	0.01
CTRN	Citi Trends Rg	0.08	0.01
EGOV	NIC Rg	0.08	0.02
ES	Eversource Energ Rg	0.51	0.03
HL	Hecla Mining Rg	0.00	0.00
HSTM	Healthstream Rg	1.00	0.00
KRO	Kronos Worldwide Rg	0.17	0.03
LZB	La-Z-Boy Rg	0.12	0.01
ODFL	Old Dominion Fre Rg	0.13	0.00
TEN	Tenneco Rg	0.25	0.02
TR	Tootsie Roll Ind Rg	0.09	0.01

Company	Release	Est. EPS	Company	Release	Est. EPS
Addus Homecare (ADUS)	Afternoon	0.44	ModusLink Global Solutions (STCN)	Afternoon	N/A
ADMA Biologics (ADMA)	Morning	-0.31	Monroe Capital (MRCC)	Afternoon	0.34
Adverum Biotechnologies (ADVM)	N/A	-0.35	Nautilus (NLS)	N/A	0.31
Aemetis (AMTX)	Morning	-0.25	Navigator (NVGS)	Afternoon	0.15
American Midstream Partners (AMID)	Morning	0.17	NEWTEK Business Services (NEWT)	Afternoon	0.51
American Renal Associates (ARA)	Afternoon	0.16	Otelco (OTEL)	Afternoon	N/A
Analogic (ALOG)	Afternoon	0.68	Park-Ohio (PKOH)	Afternoon	0.81
Armstrong Flooring (AFI)	Morning	-0.19	PDL BioPharma (PDLI)	Afternoon	0.03
ArQule (ARQL)	Morning	-0.09	Petroquest Energy (PQ)	Afternoon	-0.02
Ascena Retail Group (ASNA)	Afternoon	-0.10	Protagonist Therapeutics (PTGX)	Afternoon	N/A
Atomera (ATOM)	N/A	N/A	Quanex Building Products (NX)	Afternoon	-0.04
Avinger (AVGR)	Afternoon	N/A	Red Lion Hotels (RLH)	Afternoon	-0.18
Axsome Therapeutics (AXSM)	N/A	-0.33	Rex Energy (REXX)	Afternoon	-0.88
Biocept (BIOC)	Afternoon	N/A	Rigel Pharmaceuticals (RIGL)	Afternoon	-0.13
Bojangles (BOJA)	Afternoon	0.18	RigNet (RNET)	Afternoon	-0.09
Casey's General Stores (CASY)	Afternoon	0.62	Ryerson (RYI)	Afternoon	0.06
Citizens (CIA)	Afternoon	N/A	Sterling Construction (STRL)	Afternoon	0.13
Communications Systems (JCS)	Afternoon	0.02	Stone Energy (SGY)	Afternoon	0.01
Descartes Systems Group (DSGX)	Afternoon	0.10	T.A.T. Technologies (TATT)	N/A	N/A
Dicks Sporting Goods (DKS)	Morning	1.17	Team (TISI)	Afternoon	0.01
Eagle Bulk Shipping (EGLE)	Afternoon	-0.03	Thor Industries (THO)	Afternoon	1.79
Eastman Kodak Company Common New (KODK)	N/A	N/A	TransAct Technologies (TACT)	Afternoon	0.14
Editas Medicine (EDIT)	Afternoon	-0.75	Urban Outfitters (URBN)	Afternoon	0.61
Euroseas (ESEA)	Morning	N/A	Vericel (VCEL)	Morning	-0.10
Famous Dave's of America (DAVE)	N/A	-0.03	Vital Therapies (VTL)	Afternoon	-0.31
Fate Therapeutics (FATE)	Afternoon	-0.24	Wageworks (WAGE)	Afternoon	0.42
Glen Burnie Bancorp (GLBZ)	N/A	N/A	Western Asset Mortgage Capital (WMC)	Afternoon	0.31
H & R Block (HRB)	Morning	-0.46	WillScot (WSC)	Morning	0.02
Jianpu Technology (JT)	Morning	-0.02	York Water (YORW)	N/A	0.25
Lipocine (LPCN)	N/A	-0.21	YY (YY)	Afternoon	1.71
Michaels Companies (MIK)	Morning	1.17

As some of you in the community know that I've been around for a little while now, GPU mining was my thing. I'm going to give you fellow miners a break down as to what my thoughts are and reasonings for not mining any longer.
For those of you whom haven't read my previous posts, I started out in 2012 with two 7950's. I mined and made some decent profits, not great due to messing up some trades but still came out ahead and had paid off all my geapower costs and a little extra.
I decided to expand and go big, I expanded to 12 cards and did pretty decent as well. broke even and then decided to expand even further to 53 cards, however for stability reasons I downsized to 46 280x's and removed any other models.
I unfortunately did not come close to breaking even on that last venture due to ASICS hitting the market at the same time I received my shipment of GPU's that was backordered for 4 months.
I've mined with the new system since April and have yet to come close to any ROI. I've been breaking even at best on power costs when averaging what i've mined to the costs of power I've spent.
Here's some reasons why I've failed and or what was going on at the times:
-asics hit the market at the same time and caused panic for GPU miners that were scrypt based.

GPU miners that went to other algo's right away before the asics came, may have done OK. I however was still on scrypt with my 12 cards, it was still a little profitable and seemed OK to be mining still, as the alternative algo's that were GPU only were starting to not be as profitable as some of the scrypt coins were. I still found that scrypt was profitable up to around May. In May it seemed that scrypt was going to be pretty much taken over by asics and GPU algo coins were showing to be more profitable in the sense where the power costs were lower for x11/13/15. However the profits were not that much greater. For instance I paid around $37 a day in power for scrypt and $18~ a day for x11/13/15. Profits for scrypt would be around $5-15 a day and profits for x11/13/15 would be around the same. This way I was spending less on power and making the same profit roughly.
Eventually auto mining I found wasn't working very well, I ended up with a lot of crap coins that I couldn't sell for decent prices and held them too long thinking they'd bounce from a market pop rather than dumping them instantly. (dumping instantly didnt seem to work too well, as I would mine them then go to dump and the price would have gone down %30+ making it not worth selling, leaving me with very little profit to no profit and actually costing me power money).
Rig rentals - I started renting my rigs out which was alright but not great, generally would make only $10-15 a day profit above power costs so the same as auto mining. Very quickly within a month the rental prices shot down so much that i was basically renting the rigs out for a few bucks a day profit to zero profit and losing money on the rentals yet having to deal with all the headache of monitoring my rigs.
I then tried focusing on the new released coins instead of using a auto mine pool, I noticed a lot of people on the forums loved trying to mine the new announced coins then holding them or dumping them instantly. That route didn't work out too well. I would say that out of the 10~ coins I tried mining on launch dates that maybe 3 of the 10 I ended up making decent profits on while the others completely turned into a scamcoin which meant I wasted my power money on them since they couldn't be sold on any exchange due to the communities realizing they were bugged or programmed to be a scam in the first place. I ended up probably breaking even between the power costs of those 10 coins and the profits from the 3. Some of the coins that werent scamcoins just ended up being dead ends that I should have dropped right away rather than hold for a rebound as none of them have rebounded to date.(MAIA coin for instance has yet to rebound to any prices anyone predicted on the forums)
Key points to remember about mining and or trading, whether its stocks, forex, crypto: Next to no one can be trusted, their opinion/word is irrelevant, money is what talks. If people can prove that they've invested in something heavily then their word holds more weight to what you are willing to put your own money down on. I've always taken note to the forums/trollboxes/irc that what's said anywhere is to be taken with a grain of salt. Hence why I've tried so many methods to see what may work and what may not work. I realize also that some of these methods such as auto mining, coin launches etc can work quite well if you are lucky enough to sell at the right times for the right prices(not being too greedy), however there are always going to be times that you'll get burnt in any of the above methods mentioned.

As of today and for the past month I've found that it's really not worth the time and effort to mine. Between the time I've spent researching what new coins to mine, renting my rigs etc. all the time that goes into what is now this very competitive industry I've found it isnt worth it. For the people whom get free power GPU mining is still barely worth the time. With 46 cards I would be able to make around $20 a day if I had free power and honestly my time is worth a lot more to me than $20 a day, seeing as to make that $20 I have to really put the time in to ensure I'm making good trades/mining the best coins for the day.
Also the price of hardware is plummeting at accelerating rates. My rigs consisted of 280x's and the pricier models might I add, selling them used for the past two weeks I've noticed the majority of buyers are bottom feeders(People that are looking for a dirt cheap price on hardware and want to basically steal them off your hands). Less than 50% of the retail price is what they're asking for. And for myself, 50% of todays retail price is a slap in the face, seeing as my cards are less than 6 months old, have 2 year warranties and have been babied (not OC'd), when I removed them from the mining room, the majority of them didn't even have a spec of dust on them due to the air flow setup I had and as close to a dust free environment as I could get with industrial surge protection ensuring all hardware was safe.
The general public doesn't think to look on craigslist, or the other free to post local services where you'll be likely to post your hardware. Only generally the bottom feeders are monitoring those sites and they will have no shame in offering you prices that are next to ridiculous, even when you state 'FIRM price' in your listing.
Ebay gives you more exposure however ebay takes a cut on the sales. So you want $180 for your 280x? well now you have to put it up on ebay for $206~ due to the fee's from ebay/paypal, and now that $206 card costs the buyer an additional $15-30 in shipping. At the end of the day with ebay you're likely to be selling your hardware for a huge loss due to their fee's.
I've yet to find a good site where you can post your hardware and reach the mass public to ensure a lot of views on your ads while being able to sell your hardware at a decent price. I've found Reddit hardware page also is hard to get decent buyers, a lot of bottom feeders will approach you much like on craigslist.
As a consumer myself, I find it very odd that there's so many bottom-feeder type people out there on these local trading sites. If I was looking for a GPU or other hardware upgrades on the local trading sites, I'd be pretty fine and excited with getting a piece of hardware that is listed with at least a $100-150 savings(lets say retail is 340 after tax and there's an ad for an item at $200) but these bottom-feeders aren't, they want this stuff for far less to feel that they've gotten a 'deal'.
All in all what I recommend for GPU miners and what I see the future of GPU mining coming to(there's a few scenarios):
recommendations:

If you pay for power, sell your hardware while you can, prices are getting lower and lower every week on your hardware due to people trying to get rid of their gear, however try to do yourself a favour and not give into the bottom feeders, it doesn't help anyone when we let these guys get ahold of our hardware for beyond dirt cheap prices. Consider how long your warranty coverage is for, that coverage really does hold value.(how many used products do you buy end up having a warranty? and if they do, how many hold a long warranty greater than a year left? not many! The bottom feeders will be able to warranty the product if it ever has an issue and they'll still be getting a crazy deal after paying for the return to manufacture shipping cost!)
with your cash from your hardware, you can now buy BTC at a lower price than you were likely mining or the same. But now you'll have a lot more cash to spend on BTC rather than mining at such a slow rate. You can then take that BTC and invest it into alt coins giving you a lot more BTC to play with than you would have had with mining.(That's if you still want to invest in crypto after selling the hardware, otherwise keep your money!)

-If you don't pay for power, consider still selling your hardware, look at my setup, 46 cards making $20 a day on average. The time it would take to ROI on my hardware is close to 5+years, and that's with free power! What are the chances that I'll ROI if I kept mining? next to none. Most of you out there have 1-6 cards, you're making peanuts most likely. Get rid of the hardware, re-invest the money into BTC and buy your ALT coins that you believed in mining if you were a long term coin holder. Or just take the cash and spend it on other things in life! The price of your hardware will continue to decline and you're likely not going to make more over time with the mining.
Some arguments to consider:
"Price of BTC may rise to $10000 one day, so mining with gpu's now if you have free power is still worth it!" some people state. Well I can tell you that I've seen it happen multiple times where the price of BTC has risen and the price of ALT's has corrected itself. There have been far and few moments in crypto history where ALT coins have gone UP with BTC especially recently. Chances of your random coin climbing the fiat ladder as BTC rises is very slim. Out of the hundreds of coins out there now, what coin are you going to bet on to rise with BTC while the rest of them stay at their current day fiat prices? For example, a coin lets say you hold now is worth $0.10 cents. When BTC hits $1000, it corrects and is still worth $0.10 cents equivalent in fiat. Not many coins are going to RISE in value alongside BTC.(That's if BTC rises, no one can for sure say if it even will!) Chances of you choosing the few coins that do rise with BTC will be slim.
All in all if you have the spare money to mine, sure do it, it's fun to contribute to the community, but don't expect to make a buck unless you've gone industrial size like myself, and even then you're making such little profit if you have free power.(who's going to get free power at $18 a day running costs? not many!)
What the GPU scene needs is new GPU hardware that can mine way better than anything out today for GPU's(likely not to happen for cheap) and or we need GPU coins to hold value somehow, IE a good marketing campaign where the GPU coin(s) can clearly gain back investors.
I don't see GPU mining being profitable again really for quite some time if ever and thus I'm getting out of it for now. I've been burnt bad enough with the most recent expansion that I wont be able to get into mining again for quite some time. Time will tell.
For now I recommend people sell hardware and buy crypto with the money or instead of buying hardware if you're thinking of getting into mining, just buy crypto outright. Mining right now is a loss for the majority of miners out there. Hope this post has helped shed some light to those that are looking to get into mining or who are in mining and unsure of what's going on and what to do. (and again, take my feedback with a grain of salt, you don't know who you can trust when it comes to you and your investments :P)
Also as a side note my power costs are around .12 to .14 per KWh. Which is supposedly quite cheap compared to many places in the world.

[Table] IAmA: We Are the Hosts of the Let's Talk Bitcoin! Show! We just spent 4 days at Bitcoin2013, Ask Us Anything!

Verified? (This bot cannot verify AMAs just yet)
Date: 2013-05-24
Link to submission (Has self-text)
Link to my post

Questions	Answers
Hi all! I was wondering, what do you think it would take to get bitcoin from a niche currency used mainly by internet denizens to go mainstraim? I know the slow creep of more small companies accepting bitcoin helps, but what do you think that final cusp will be, and will it ever come to that? Thanks for taking the time to do this!	There are several potential tipping points, but my favorite one is a large corporation accepting Bitcoin.
	Amazon has an incredibly small operating margin, less than 1% - They have more than that in transaction costs, so if they were to accept Bitcoins for product and offer Bitcoins as payment to their affiliates it would cause a rush of other companies to jump onboard for the same reasons.
	Once that happens with one large company, it sets a precedent. Doing something new is scary, and when the regulatory environment is uncertain like it is with Bitcoin the choice to accept could potentially cost you a lot of money later if it's retroactively made not OK and the value of the currency plummets.
	But once a company like Amazon or Google jumps in, they have enough political swing and momentum that attacking Bitcoin becomes attacking them, and they'll fight that tooth and nail if it's saving them money.
	Another example of a tipping point would be a country, ANY country, adopting it as their formal currency OR issuing a new currency with Bitcoins as the transparent backing of it. With bitcoin you can have a functional gold standard, because the gold doesn't need to be hidden from sight.
	It is the hiding that makes gold standards dangerous - The people who issue currency with the gold as backing have no reason to issue the correct amount when only they know how much is out there, and how much gold they have.
I guess the Supreme Court has decided this does not apply to taxes, which is crap. Or are you talking about other countries?	Thank you :) I actually mean something along the lines of "It is illegal to trade dollars for any cryptocurrency that does not have a real name and social security associated with it"
Will bitcoins ever be able to be traded like other recognized currencies in similar ways to Forex? More specifically, will there ever be retail brokers offering margin trading accounts that allow you to buy and sell bitcoin with leverage?	There are already really small niche sites you can trade Bitcoin at leverage with, but it's just a bad idea. With a "normal" commodity market, like say chickens, if you think chickens are undervalued and want to profit from them you can buy forward production of say, a million chickens. Then when the option comes due, if you're on the profitable side of the trade you can essentially sell it for cash and the chickens never need to be delivered. In that way, it almost doesn't matter if the chickens ever existed to begin with because you never intended to take posession. With Bitcoin, it's different - Converting a bitcoin options contract into US dollars, yen, whatever actually is more expensive and time consuming than just "accepting delivery" of the bitcoins themselves. You can still sell them for whatever currency you want, but it is at the time of your choosing rather than at the point of settlement. What that means is that if you sell an option and the Bitcoins don't really exist, you could be screwed. You either default or buy them at market price which can be very painful given how volatile the pricing is right now. It is a bad idea to play with leverage in Bitcoin because if you lose, you potentially lose very big. Additionally, it's bad to buy an option because you introduce the possibility of the counterparty (supply) not being able to deliver, whereas if you just bought Bitcoins you have the Bitcoins.
Do you believe bitcoin is important locally as well as on the internet? If so, how are you promoting bitcoin in your local communities?	Cryptocurrencies (of which Bitcoin is the most prominent) are the first real competition to the types of money we've used all our lives. With Dollars, Yen, Whatever - Ultimately there are a handful of people who get to decide how and why the currency should be managed.
	If they did a good job, it might be fine - But the reality is the decision made affecting all users of the currency are to the benefit of a very few , at the cost of the many.
	Bitcoin is different - The rules that govern it, are the rules that govern it. Nobody can break them, and if they're ever broken it's because more than 51% of the distributed power in the system (anyone can buy a mining rig and join this group). For me, that's incredibly important. Rules should apply evenly to everyone because otherwise they're not rules at all.
	Local communities can benefit because it removes payment processors from merchant relationships, removes chargeback risk, and basically acts like Cash on the internet.
What are some of the more exciting things you (each of you?) envision for Bitcoin in the short to medium term?	Discounts :) We've been talking about the deflationary business model, and during this period where the value is going to go up pretty fast (over the next several years) as adoption ramps up, businesses are going to be giving major discounts to those who choose to spend them.
	From the merchants perspective, this is actually a huge win - They get to have lower prices than their US Dollar (or local currency) competitors, and the value of the Bitcoins they receive goes up over time instead of going down with printed currencies. Once this becomes pervasive in the Bitcoin economy, it will mean that even at those discounted prices they are STILL profitable because their suppliers are also offering them discounts to pay in Bitcoin.
	Right now we're at the beginning of this cycle, you can see BitcoinStore.com is attempting it (Disclosure - They have sponsored us in the past, we run a 30s advertisement for them per show) but it's hard to be the first one doing it because it looks like you're sacrificing yourself when really it's just the model that makes the most sense.
Not to be the doom and gloom person but in the future what do you think will/would be the "last nail in the coffin" for Bitcoin?	It depends what you mean by "last nail in the coffin"
How did you meet/find Andreas and Stephanie and how did you persuade them to be part of your show?	I put out a call for staff several months ago, Andreas found me through that and joined the team initially as a correspondent providing expertise and commentary while Mt.Gox was having a lot of problems. Once we re-started the show as a twice-weekly, he graciously offered to join the hosting staff and gladly took him up on it.
	I found Stephanie through her show Porc therapy, and a listener named Justus - He mentioned she did voicework, and I hired her to do some of our early introductions and advertising spots. When we went through the re-organization I offered her an occasional hosting role, and never bothered finding other hosts because I was so happy with our dynamic and varied viewpoints.
	Both of the other hosts on the show are real professionals, and it's been my distinct pleasure to work with them.
Thanks for responding! Andreas is my fave (though I enjoy yours and Stephanie's comments too).	Everybody has their favorite :) I think the fact that we all have people disagreeing with us at times means we're doing the job, and providing multiple and varied perspectives.
What recording tools are you using?	We started off using Skype, Virtual Audio Cables (VAC) and Adobe Audition (creative suite)
	Now we use Mumble instead of Skype, but the rest is the same.
	I edit the host segments for content (sometimes we go on and on and on) and I edit the interviews for presentation, rarely removing any content. Many times the skillset that enables you to have a really smart idea is not the same skillset that lets you present that idea, perfectly, the first time. Our interview subjects tell me all the time "I love how smart I sound" and I get to say "You are smart, I just removed the brain processing noises"
Assuming bitcoin reaches critical mass, how does bitcoin cope with the criticism of rewarding early adopters? Do you see a potential uproar about inequity?	Is there outrage against people who bought Apple stock at $30? Bitcoin is a currency that right now, and for the next few years, acting like an IPO. People who got in early got in cheap, but there was a whole lot of risk because people weren't using it much, there wern't vendors accepting it, so the use case is much more speculative.
	We're very much still in the early adoption phase right now - Less than %.01 of internet users are Bitcoin users, as that number grows while the number of coins being added to the total pool grows at a much slower rate, the price per coin has to go up. If Bitcoin fails and everybody abandons it, this works the opposite way - but it actually solves a number of problems (microtransactions, fees, international money transfers, automated payment systems) so I'm not super concerned about that.
	One of my favorite quotes, by Douglas Adams.
	>It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent >blindingly obvious. The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very >popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't, and a very >significant and revealing fact it is too.
What do you make of the download trend of the bitcoin client software in China? Isn't this a big story?	China has lots of restrictive controls on their local currency, so Bitcoin has a real use case there. This is one of many scenarios where given even 1% adoption, the price must go very much above where it is now.
You commented on a recent episode about how Satochi Dice was going to block US traffic to the site due to uncertain regulations. Can't bitcoin work around that? If you send bitcoin to the addresses of the various bets - it still works right? Thanks for your show - I await each new podcast.	Yes, if you already have the specific betting addresses it doesn't matter where you are in the world. It is only the website that does not allow US IPs, they did this to be very clear they were trying to respect the US gambling laws.
	I spoke with Erik Voorhees about this among other things at the conference, you can find that interview here Link to letstalkbitcoin.com
I'd like to thank all three of you for doing this podcast, it's always thought provoking and fun to listen to. Plus, Stephanie does have a very sexy voice... But I do have a question,	Right now, I don't know the answer to that question.
How do miners determine which transactions will be confirmed first and which get put to the back of the line? Shouldn't they be confirmed in a 'first come, first serve' basis?	But the development team has made it clear they're moving towards a market-based mechanism where Miners set the minimum transaction fee they will accept, and process on a first-come/highest-fee model. People who want their transaction to process fast will put a higher fee and it will be prioritized, while people who don't care about delivery time will be able to send no fee and be subsidized by those paying higher fees.
*edit: As well, do you still plan on using some time on the show to go into more detail about mining? I think it was mentioned a few weeks ago that the topic might be explored in further detail.	There will be fewer miners who accept free or very low fee transactions, so there you go.
How would Bitcoin change our financial system as we know it?	In the same way the automobile changed the horse-and-buggy system as they knew it. If you play out the logic, one functionally obsoletes the other. I was talking with a financial reporter the other day who has been coming around to bitcoin, and he said to me "You know, if they were building the banking system from scratch today I think this is pretty close to what it would look like"
	Andreas answered a question below about bitcoin and self driving cars, fixing spam on the internet by using Bitcoin addresses with tiny amounts of BTC in them to prove you're a real person and not a single-use bot, there are so many crazy and impossible things that become actually probable when you're talking in the context of a world built on decentralized, rules-based, cryptographically secured, instantly transmittable, person to person internet cash.
	I have never been so hopeful for our future as I am now that I've thrown my days into bitcoin. Bitcoin 2013 was a fine conference and a wonderful experiance, so many very smart people have quit their jobs or left their studies to do the same thing I have.
	We know we're building the future, and it's a better one than we have today.
Have any of you heard about how in Africa much of the exchange in value is done with mobile phone minutes? It seems to me - whatever the US attempts to do with Bitcoin - there will be other places that it will bubble up in. What about Argentina and other places where they actually understand what damage a desperate government can do to a currency?	I would agree with you. Until recently it's been impossible to use Bitcoins on a "dumb cell phone" - That changed recently with Link to phoneacoin.com and others.
	Bitcoin solves problems that the world has had for decades, it takes the power to destroy the currency away from government so they cannot do it no matter how much they want to, or how desperately they think they need to.
	No government wants to destroy a currency, they just don't want to acknowledge they've trapped themselves with debt and have no way out.
Who invented Bitcoin? What is to stop whoever did so initially issuing themselves the equivalent of $79 zillion in Bitcoin currency prior to it taking off? Is there commission charged on each transaction that occurs? If so, how much, and who receives this?	The true creator is not known, he went by a false name "Satoshi".
	He actually holds about 250,000 coins if I recall correctly because he was the first miner. Bitcoin is a protocol, a set of rules. It's open source, and anyone who wants to look at it can see that there is not a mechanism to just create more coins by typing in a magic word. There are no commissions, although there are fees that go to the miners who process and verify transactions.
Great podcast, can't wait for the next one!	It depends on the mesh. If the mesh was never connected to the internet, it would be a parralel Bitcoin network able to transact with itself but if it was ever connected to the larger network any conflicting transactions would be "lost" as the two ledgers (the big one, and the disconnected one) try to reckon their differences. Only one winner, so that means there is a loser.
You discussed mesh networks in 3rd world countries and how bitcoin could be used in such a scenario. If the [mesh] network is disconnected from the internet, how would transactions on the blockchain be verified? Couldn't the time the mesh network was disconnected make it vulnerable to hacking the [mesh network's] blockchain?	More interesting might be disconnected communities running their own fork or version of Bitcoin, that way if they're ever connected it can be an exchange process (trading their coins for "bitcoins" rather than a reckoning (Seeing who has a bigger network and canceling out transactions on the smaller one that conflict)
1) The price for one Bitcoin seems to fluctuate quite a bit. The most successful currencies remain relatively stable over time (e.g. the Dollar). Will Bitcoin ever need to reach a certain level of stability to be a successful unit of trade? and if so, what do you think needs to happen before then?	1 - Yes! Once everyone who has purchased Bitcoin has purchased them, the price will stabilize. In practice this will start happening long before absolute stability, and as soon as people start thinking about prices in terms of BTC instead of their local currency it almost doesn't matter.
2) If Bitcoin ever becomes a widely accepted form of payment (seems a lot of businesses already accept it), how do you think the US government will proceed/react/regulate/etc. considering that technically only the feds can issue currency?	2 - "The Feds" are not the only ones who can issue currency - They have legal tender laws which mean people MUST accept their money, but nothing prevents you from circulating a voluntary currency like Bitcoin.
Do you foresee companies like paypal incorporating bitcoin into their businesses in the future as a more credible exchange than these ones that are currently running?	No. Paypal again is the proverbial horse-drawn-buggy manufacturer- Sure they might go to the worlds faire and while observing the new fangled automobiles say to themselves 'we might integrate this into our existing machines!' when the fact is that it obsoletes those existing machines.
	Paypal makes their money by standing in the middle of transactions collecting fees, Bitcoin serves its function by connecting people who want to do commerce directly to one-another, and what fees are paid are a tiny fraction of what Paypal does. If paypal accepted Bitcoin, it would not be Bitcoin any more because they would have mechanisms to freeze accounts at the very least to mitigate risk. That is not possible with Bitcoin by itself.
Thanks for the well thought out response, I genuinely appreciated that you took the time for this! I do have a follow up question, how does one get bit coin in an easy way? Lets say I have 300$ that I want in bit coin.. whats the best way to approach this?	Probably a company like bitinstant.com, bitstamp.com, or btcquick.com - For larger amounts they don't make too much sense but at that level its your best bet.
Not to be rude, but how do you expect for a currency without a standard like gold silver etc. to not crash down in a blaze of glory?	What standard is your currency backed by?
Hi There. I was at the San Jose convention hall last weekend attending Big Wow Comicfest and that's where I saw Bitcoin2013!	Mostly Bitcoin 2013 was an opportunity for people building the future of Bitcoin to meet each other and network. There were speakers talking about a wide variety of issues, and vendors of Bitcoin services who were showing their latest innovations and systems.
What information was presented at this event that couldn't be done justice disseminated over the internet?	The information will eventually be online, but the probably 200 people I got to meet in real life will not (in real life)
What resources do you think I should review as a total newbie to bitcoin? Or if possible, what's the one sentence pitch to get a newb involved?	For people brand new, www.weusecoins.com is a good place to start For people who want to learn how it works, www.letstalkbitcoin.com/learn will direct you to the Bitcoin Education Project, which is a series of free and very high quality lectures that will tell you everything you ever wanted to know and more about Bitcoin, How it works, and all the little sub-topics that you'll eventually want to learn about.
	The pitch is "It's like cash that lives on the internet, and is as easy to spend on the internet as buying a candybar in a store with a dollar"
Would any of you hazard a guess at the bitcoin exchange rate at the end of 2013?	Sure, i'll make a wild guess.
	$1000.
	If and when a large user comes onboard, I think thats the next price at which we'll bounce around for a while, just like 100 became the sticky point after the last major bout of adoption.
How do bitcoins relate to the law? For example, what would be the crime if somone hacked your account and stole your bitcoins? It's not exactly theft of money, or is it?	Bitcoins are your property, it's illegal for someone to steal your property whether it is money or not. Right now there is little that can be done about theft, but eventually I expect a class of "Blockchain Forensic Investigators" to emerge who will track down your stolen coins for a % based fee.
On your last show you mentioned the diversity of the Bitcoiners who attended BitCoin2013 - which nation was most represented in your opinion? Were there any Chinese nationals present (we've heard that they've suddenly gotten the bitcoin bug in the last month)? Did the other nations talk about regulatory problems or is that just a US concern?	I met the gentleman from BTC-China, but other than that I actually didn't see any obvious chinese nationals. We saw lots of eastern europeans and south americans.
	Other nations are not talking about the regulatory issue as far as I can tell, it seems like everyone is waiting to see what the US does, which is not abnormal in a very new situation like this.
Isn't having an inherently deflationary currency a terrible idea? How is bitcoin different from geeky goldbuggery?	Because you can't divide a gold coin into .0001 without incurring cost and expense. That's not the case with Bitcoin, so the deflationary aspect of it is largely moot.
	There is a tendency to listen to modern "economics" which makes this arguement, saying that the money supply must expand because otherwise it drives down profitability in a race to the bottom.
	I think in practice we'll find that people don't work against their own best interest, and while during the initial adoptions stages of Bitcoin there will be significant discounts offered to those who pay with Bitcoin vs. legacy currency, once the market becomes saturated and the price levels out those discounts will be scaled way back.
	Right now it makes sense to heavily discount, because the expectation is that the value of the Bitcoins will go up during this period of adoption, that won't always be true and the discount is a reflection of anticipated future returns.
	Was it bad when people saved money in banks that paid 10% interest? No, that's called capital formation. There is a thought that given a deflationary currency nobody will spend any money, that's nonsense. Just because your currency gains value over time doesn't mean that you no longer have costs that must be paid for. What Deflationary currencies do is say "Ok, you could spend it on that, but is it worth it relative to what you'll gain by not?"
	That's a good thing. Our system right now works on the opposite theory - Spend money NOW because if you're dumb enough to keep it in the bank it will actually lose value over time between the couple points of "official" inflation and less than 1% artifical interest rates. The situation is like this now because the fed is trying to make people spend as much money as possible with the hope that the flows will "restart the economic engine"
	Too bad this isn't how things work, not that it'll stop us from trying it over and over again.
In the 2008 financial crash, govts bailed out the banks because there was no other way to maintain the whole financial ecosystems of payrolls, invoices and trade, all of which go through the banking system.	Honestly? No. Bitcoin would be great in this role, but governments around the world rely on their ability to expand the money supply (print money, or sell debt) in order to fund their deficits. They also manipulate interest rates to be low so that debt is very inexpensive.
Can you envisage another financial crash in the future where govt says, "We don't need to do a bailout, as we've got this alternative payment system" and then instructs businesses and employees to just get themselves a bitcoin address and work through the Bitcoin system?	Bitcoin doesn't have a central control mechanism, so there is no group or person who can say "OK - the interest rate is 1%" - If that's really what the interest rate wants to be based on market forces, it'll be that - But if not, there isn't much anyone can do to stop it.
What type of notes and agenda does the team coordinate on before a show?	We use Basecamp, and it really depends. Right now we have a show prep thread that has 30+ posts in it for episode 11, we'll probably use 5 of those.
	The agenda is really basic - As we get near recording time topics are selected (generally by me, but I like to get the other hosts to do it since they provide most of the commentary in Host segments) and I form a schedule, then we run through the recording session hitting each topic.
	Over the last weeks we've brought two researchers onto the team, so that has helped a TON.
I first learned about Bitcoins on an episode of The Good Wife. The one with Jason Biggs as the creator of BitCoin. Have you watched that episode and how accurate does that episode portray what's happening with Bitcoin in terms of legal stuff?	Not having seen it but knowing TV, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say "not very well" Satoshi has not been identified, was a throw-away identity that was cryptographically secured, so probably never will.
Are there any conferences in Chicago anytime soon? I think a Q&A in public would be helpful for your show as well as bitcoin.	I'll be speaking at an event in NYC on July 30, there will be one or two meetups while I'm there. There is also an event in October in Atlanta. I remember talking with a guy at Bitcoin2013 wearing a shirt that said "BitcoinChicago" so I'd suggest looking for a user-group.
	We're planning on doing Q&As often, but none of us are really near Chicago so it's tough. Happy to do virtual Q&As over skype, live or recorded.
Oh dear. You're not all perfectly grammatical orators on the first try? I'm crushed!	I really value my own time, and I know other people out there do too. I try to make the show as information dense as possible, thats the criteria we've been operating under from really day one.
	We're actually talking about cutting the show in half and releasing it more often (still recording the same amount) because people can get tired of listening to such dense content for an hour or more.
US Treasury recently issued a directive stating they would be monitoring any entity attempting to exchange virtual currency for USD (or any other currency, goods, or services), indicating that federal authorities take a dim view of what amounts to private coinage. Do you anticipate a Supreme Court case here defining what is and is not private coinage? 2.And given bitcoin's noted extra-legal uses, do you have any indication it is being decrypted by NSA? 3.Taking it a step further, do you think it could be a national security-sponsored international sieve for money laundering?	It may eventually go to Supreme Court.
I think the market has done fine for bitcoin so far. I think the market will continue to take care of bitcoin. The idea of giving in willingly to regulation makes me cringe.	There are two camps. Some people think that regulation is inevitable, and since it's going to happen anyways it's better to participate in the process and try to make it less bad. The other side thinks that by participating, you accept their authority to regulate it when really they have no right to regulate money and have proven to do a very bad job at it now for quite a number of years.
Thanks so much for doing this, I love the Bitcoin system, but hate the volatility. How do you recommend dealing with that? I've heard to convert it quickly to the currency of choice after any exchange has been made to avoid any more changes to the price.	The easy solution is just buy and hold - If you need to buy something, do it when you need to and not before. Do not pre-order anything.
What is your prediction of the price for 1 btc in USD, exactly one year from now? Just for fun, since I know it is impossible to even guess the day to day price swings.	As a wild guess number I'd say $1000 or less than a dollar. Very little middleground because if it's regulated out of existence it will still exist, but be hard to find and cheap - If adoption continues to path the price should accelerate with wild spikes up and down.
My partner is buying into bitcoin as well as litecoin. Any advice for him? (I personally don't understand it)	Don't panic, invest for the long term, and don't buy any more than you can afford to lose 100% of because there are still things that could dramatically reduce the price of bitcoin (mostly regulatory stuff, I answered this elsewhere in the thread)
Hello, I just wrote a long post about the functions of using BTC to facilitate a 'free bank' using the principals of free money, similar to the WIR bank. Link to en.wikipedia.org Do you think that something like this would be possible using Bitcoin?	Probably. Not really my area of expertise.
Why did bits take a dive at the same time gold took a tank?	I don't pay attention to price, sorry.
We take full credit for any rise and blame others for any decline. Feel free to tip us from your gains!	Lol.
Just wanted to say I love your show. I encourage you to please continue making high-quality podcast episodes. Thank you.	I'm really excited to be able to be a journalist in such an exciting field in a time when journalism is under attack. Not sure if you've been following the so-called "AP scandal" but now is a weird time to be trying to report the truth in this world, and we couldn't have picked a more controversial topic to the global macro picture.
Bitcoins are the stupidest investment anyone could ever make. Pass.	Link to static.quickmeme.com
Unfortunately, quickmeme doesn't let you copy image urls directly.	Link to i.qkme.me
Yes, but they started being worth a set value. bitcoin was never backed by anything so its value was kind of made up. how do you expect to make a non goverment currency anybody with a computer can print to retain value?	Because the pie is only so large, the more people who have computers devoted to the work just each get a smaller and smaller piece.
	The rate of issuance for Bitcoin is currently 25 bitcoins every 10 minutes. Only one person or pool gets the whole 25 bitcoins, it's a race to find them. If there are 10 people looking, chances are pretty good you'll find some. If there are 100,000,000 people looking, chances are much less good that you'll find them first, but if there are that many people looking those 25 coins are probably worth a whole lot more.
	The system is self balancing in this way, unlike the government currency system where they create 65 billion USD worth of new value every month to buy mortgage backed securities for face value to try and prop up the market. With more than a trillion USD being added in this way each year, how can a government currency retain its value?
Because the governments "pie" does infact have limits to making it, and only dropped gold standard after over 150 years of the doller having a defined worth, unlike bitcoin, where a random hacker can just print endless money.	I'd direct you to security researcher Dan Kaminsky. Link to www.businessinsider.com
	You'll find it's a little harder than you're describing. Like, impossible.

Last updated: 2013-05-29 11:06 UTC
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