Urgency should be directed at the process which is providing that advance and rightly demanding the amount to sufficient and the release quick for the reasons you specify. Instead they are off on their own demanding bailouts and rejecting even the systems set up to protect them in this scenario, demanding special cases and further alienating this entire industry in the eyes of the public. It's beyond embarrassing to watch.
They are doing exactly what they should be doing to minimise impact while letting markets be markets, VCs are just too busy making a big mess in their underpants and screaming about why they should be special-cased to read the details
They have been pretty clear that they want to do this. And the balance sheet as liquidity skewed as it is is healthy, I would be extremely surprised if they get less than 95% back.
These "movements" are folks asking for normal processes to be suspended for the sake of that 5% or whatever and it's going to muddy the waters vs asking for the obvious "give us some liquidity now since you can immediately secure a huge chunk of it and businesses need it"
> And the balance sheet as liquidity skewed as it is is healthy, I would be extremely surprised if they get less than 95% back.
The big question is how much of the "run" has been paid, or will have to be paid at 100% because of transactions initiated before receivership. I also think 95% is a little bit optimistic from the get-go.
> They have been pretty clear that they want to do this.
An unspecified dividend at an unspecified time sometime next week is better than nothing, but it's still pretty toxic.
There is of course hype but the past few months do represent real growth: see [here](http://blockchain.info/charts/n-unique-addresses). Now obviously that's a very gameable graph but there is little incentive to do so (and I was trying to pick something that would remove services like SatoshiDice from the equation since that heavily skews transaction count etc.
There's the fact that the Euro is in trouble. There's the fact that provable odds gambling has been implemented (a powerful factor in the US). There's the fact that ASICs are coming out. There's the fact that it's becoming countercultural and hip to accept them (see Mega and Reddit) There's the fact that every time the price goes up more mainstream articles are exposing people to it's concepts, driving demand by more. Now it could well be bubble mark II and I DEFINITELY expect a correction: it's a volatile market. But there's certainly some massive growth underneath the massive speculation.
I could be wrong, but this looks like an ASIC fueled bubble to me.
Avalon, the first ASIC producer to market, require payment in bitcoin. I believe BFL require payment in bitcoin for orders outside of the US.
This created demand for bitcoin, which raised the price against the dollar. Others saw the rise and were encouraged to buy in or order ASICS, rinse and repeat.
As far as I know the only service that is turning over serious numbers is Silk Road. I guess you could also count Satoshi Dice, but I am sceptical about their long term future.
Due to the nature of bitcoin, it's entirely possible that the black market and wealth transfer functions of bitcoin have grown to support the current value, but the arrival of ASICS is too big of a coincidence for me.
People buy BTC to buy ASICs, but then the ASIC vendor immediately sells the BTC to cover their costs. It should have no net effect on the exchange rate.
It's too late for an "alternative" now. Regardless of your views on the impact of deflation in an overall society, a deflationary currency is always going to be a better store of value and a more attractive option for a consumer. The wheels are set in motion with Bitcoin whether we like it or not (personally I'm unconvinced that deflation causes as many problems as people claim, especially with infinite divisibility).
What happens when someone retires at the same time and tries to cash in their hoard of btc to buy stuff that no one is producing (since they also retired)? Liquidity shock. Years of deflation instantly give way to hyperinflation.
It's not a "feeling" when all evidence points to the fact that, like every security vulnerability ever, a feature was added that had unintended consequences. There's no way it's malicious: Ubisoft can't do anything with this that they can't do everywhere else in the actual applications themselves!
Who says it was malicious on Ubisoft's part? It could easily have been a rogue developer that saw an opportunity to install a backdoor on a ton of machines.
It could also have been the Russians, who planted a mole in Ubisoft's quality assurance division and, over time, laying low in a foreign country gaining the respect of his peers and bosses, slowly worked his way to the top of the food chain...
...where at last he installed his Russian Rootkit.
Or maybe some programmer added a feature that was insecure and they moved on to work on some bug that was crashing level three?
