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[x3sphere]

Why not invest that money to the actual stock market instead. Even if bit coin were one day to become legit with regulations and all that stuff, its too scary to go head first into that right now. Like that guy who supposedly lost 300k + because Mt. Gox went down... kidding or not, I would not doubt some folks have lost a considerable amount of money due to investing into this currency. Why not just gamble with the stock market instead with actual currencies? Or am I missing something here?

If you take proper precautions it's difficult to lose your money. Anyone who wired 300k to MtGox in the last few months didn't do their research. Or greed drove them to do it - they saw the lower price of Bitcoin on Gox, and thought they'd actually get coins at that price. I think that definitely applies to some speculators. I don't worry about losing my holdings because I keep majority of them in cold storage, on a machine disconnected from the internet. I keep a separate wallet for coins I can afford to lose or plan to spend.

At any rate we're still in the early days, I don't think Bitcoin is ready for the mainstream yet. It will be made a lot easier to use, there will be more reputable exchanges. By then, the price will likely be much higher as well. High risk high reward.

 

[Chichikov]

I think it's the willful blindness thinking that somehow it's still a secret society that isn't on the mainstream radar which somehow makes it immune to the issues with any other speculative market.

You can find volatile commodities/investment tools with pretty much any risk profile you can think of in much better regulated markets that at least offer you some protection (and therefore allow you to do a serious risk analysis, something that is quite impossible to do with bitcoins) not to mention allowing you better risk spreading.
There is money to be made riding bubbles and day trading, I think it's risky (not to mention provide no benefit to society, you're effectively a parasite if this is how you make your living) but it's doable. Not by everyone, since it's mostly a zero sum game, but if you'r smarter, luckier or better connected than the average player in said market, you could be making money for nothing (and chicks for free).

Bitcoin does however has the appeal of being deflationary and in constant bubble mode, so you don't need to look for the next bubble in your penny stocks on whatever, just wait for it to form. But I don't know, I think the cons outweigh the pros there - if you're dead-set on speculating, there are better avenues.

 

[Blackhead]

I chalk it up more to the insane volatility of bitcoin giving a higher potential for returns in the short term if played right (and everyone thinks they'll play it right).

I'd wager that APPL has been more volatile over the past 5 years (besides now paying out a dividend and doing stock buybacks)

 

[Rocket Scientist]

It don't think it's possible in the same sense of what it means in Wall Street.

High frequency trading relies on observing someone else's buy order, purchasing the thing he is trying to buy at a lower price before he can get it, then selling to him at a higher price. It relies on the HFT being able to complete a purchase faster than the time it takes for the original order to find a seller.

That doesn't mean that automated trading is not feasible, just that the conventional mode of HFT isn't.

It is difficult to achieve those requirements in the world of Bitcoin, because there is a high latency in completing a transaction, since it must be verified by the block chain. Transfers sometimes take upwards of an hour, which is orders of magnitude too slow. You can effectively pay to speed up transfers in Bitcoin, but this would cut into the slim margins of HFT, and would probably still be too slow.

Aha, yes that sounds right. HFC is lightning fast and if bitcoin transfers take that long it wouldn't work.

 

[Coreda]

Welp, Mt. Gox just 'found' 200,000 bitcoins in one of their wallets...

TOKYO—Major bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox announced Thursday it had discovered 200,000 missing bitcoins in a wallet that the company no longer uses, reducing the total number of bitcoins still missing to 650,000 from 850,000.

"We believed there were no bitcoins left in old wallets, but found 199,999.99 bitcoins on March 7," Mt. Gox chief executive Mark Karpelès said in a document released Thursday.

Mt. Gox said it reported the discovery of the bitcoins to its lawyers on March 8, and moved the discovered bitcoins to offline storage between the March 14 and 15.

The exchange filed for court protection on Feb. 28. At the time, Mr Karpeles told a news conference it had lost 750,000 bitcoins owned by users and 100,000 held by the company, citing the possibility the bitcoins had been withdrawn without authorization.

The exchange was shut down Feb. 25.

Had it lying around all this time, unbeknownst to them. Wow.

 

[Blackhead]

Bitcoin Falls Below The $400 Mark, Down More Than 60% From Its All-Time High