If it doesn't have 5 GHz wifi connectivity it's worthless. 2.4 GHz connectivity interferes with bluetooth (read: music streaming over bluetooth), regardless of what fancy protocols they say they might be running to reduce interference. I have yet to find a 2.4 GHz wifi device that doesn't cause gaps in music playback over bluetooth.

-Matt

Because, really, there was never a 'Facebook' phone in the first place. It was just an annoying app launcher that should never have been bundled with a phone. This also demonstrates the sheer power that the default app launcher has to make or break perfectly fine hardware. Even though the customer can easily replace the launcher, bundling a phone with a messed up launcher basically destroys sales of the phone.

Vendors try to lock people into these sorts of things all the time, it just usually isn't quite so blatant and most people don't even realize that it is happening. Buy a Motorola phone and you get some minor but interesting stuff that is generic but locked into the platform (can't be downloaded and run on other android phones). Same with all vendors, but they have to tread carefully or risk alienating their entire user base. The FB stuff was so in-your-face that even a 5-year-old could turn away from the foul stench.

-Matt

That is totally absurd reasoning. Everyone in the society is responsible for contributing to the upkeep and maintenance of societal structures. You know, like roads and parks and low-cost food and all the stuff you use every day and obviously don't think you have to pay for.

Because our modern society functions with each individual specializing (e.g. I'm a programmer, I don't build bridges or farm crops)... because of that we need monetary and tax structures for each individual to be able to fairly contribute to the society as a whole.

If you are proposing that we revert to a tribal structure where essentially nobody specializes in anything and people contribute to societal structures more directly, then not having taxes will work just fine. Of course, we won't have TVs or cell phones, cheap food, or vacations either! By all means, travel to some deep jungle somewhere and have at it! I'll stay here thank you very much!

Whether you buy and sell stuff with cash or your barter makes no difference.

-Matt

Stick to your roots guys, this isn't a stock forum and 99% of the people here clearly don't know one blessed thing about investing, how companies work, or even what these big numbers actually mean.

Actually its worse then that, but I'm being politic.

-Matt

Huge mistake if you believe that. The value of the dollar is not just in its practical utility, but also and primarily because it is backed by stabilizing factors which Bitcoin does not have. Namely, dollars can be expanded to balance against the economy and contracted through taxes (taxes alone are a huge stabilizing factor and control on the velocity of money in the supply chain). That isn't to say that mismanagement doesn't occur, only that it is recoverable when it does (pretty much proven in the 80's). Huge mismanagement is another story, but mostly non-sequitur to the discussion. In addition to that, disputes (including debt defaults) are resolved in dollars by the courts if you are a US citizen, it isn't something you can choose or not choose to adhere to.

The sheer volume of transactions done in dollars adds short-term stability by virtue of trade contracts and the simple fact that retailers cannot necessarily immediately pass on costs to consumers.

Bitcoin has none of this. It's value is completely unmanaged and unsupported except by trading. It is highly deflationary which from time immemorial has only resulted in one thing: economic instability, then hording followed by a complete collapse as a currency.

Anyone who thinks that increased use in commerce will somehow magically stabilize it is in for a huge disappointment. Bitcoin will fail utterly under those circumstances due to the extreme deflation it would cause.

But it will fail anyway simply due to its lack of ANY stabilizing factor. People seem to think that inflation is the ultimate destroyer of money. That has never been true. Debt without recourse is the ultimate destroyer of money.

-Matt

Only problem here is that at least so far as Bitcoin is concerned, a Bitcoin is NOT a store of the energy it took to produce it. Oops. It's like expending effort to play a video game... all you are doing is adding to the entropy of the universe, that doesn't mean that your effort is worth anything down the line to other people.

-Matt

Try it and see how far you get. It isn't the same thing at all. Stocks have an intrinsic value in the underlying company's economic output, revenue, growth, and profit margins. If a stock is fairly valued and some idiot wants to waste a few million dollars trying to push it down, all that person is doing is giving real investors an opportunity to buy the stock at a discount.

Bitcoin has nothing at all backing it. If someone wants to push the price down the action is merely subject to trader's whims, which means that the price can settle anywhere. There is no 'cheap' for a Bitcoin.

-Matt

Are you joking? Is that supposed to be a joke? You think that explosive growth in commerce using a 'currency' which can't be expanded to fit that growth leads to stability?

Your comment regarding the USD indicates just how ignorant you are about what a currency is supposed to accomplish. If I sell something and get paid in dollars then I can be fairly well assured that as a store of value, those dollars will be quite stable for the few months they remain dollars, before they get invested (or spent) somewhere else. That's the purpose of a currency.

Currencies are not supposed to be used to store value in the long-term, let alone for 100 years. Why should you be rewarded for letting your cash rot verses someone else who invests it or cycles it back into the economy instead?

Now lets see how Bitcoin stacks up. A virtual commodity that isn't a currency, highly unstable with no stabilizing factors, can't be used to store wealth for even a few seconds without potentially losing its value. Deflationary and thus subject to hording and the fate of all other private currencies in history (that is, complete failure).

Did I miss anything? Oh yah, the EUR/USD exchange rate... only problem there is that the US has not seen any significant inflation, meaning that goods and services cost about the same so why should I care what the exchange rate is? I'm not taking any vacations anytime soon. Besides, the ECB is printing almost as much as we are, they are simply disguising the printing as 'loans' which nobody actually believes will ever get paid back. Europe's economy is in a huge mess because of their attempt to hold the value of the Euro constant.

How is something like Bitcoin supposed to react to a major recession or depression? You do realize that the dollar's peg to gold lengthened the great depression, don't you? It wasn't a good thing, and neither is Bitcoin with its built-in deflation.

For currencies, the most important event right now is what the Japanese are doing. They are basically forcing a very fast devaluation of their currency to boost commerce and clean up their massive debt. Japanese with their money under a pillow or sitting in a bank account are getting screwed. Even there, a Japanese citizen could be invested in Japan's stock market to essentially become immune to the devaluation, if he or she desired.

Which leads to another point regarding currencies and governments fleecing their own citizens: There are plenty of ways to protect yourself from currency devaluation already. Bitcoin is *NOT* one of them.

-Matt

The BTC market is so shallow that even small sales can drop the conversion price significantly. While watching the realtime last night I saw numerous single-transaction sales of less than 10BTC drop the conversion price by over 2%. In one transaction.

I saw all sorts of manipulation. It's totally obvious to anyone who actually has any real experience working markets. I saw bid probing (a HFT algorithm), bid-ask range clearing (to create areas of weakness that can cause step functions later on). Cycling to squeeze money out of unsuspecting investors (where BTC is sold almost at the market, forcing prices down, and then re-purchased using limit orders on the way back up). Front-running due to mtgox allowing too fine a fraction in bids and asks. Out of order transactions that were clearly delayed, sometimes off by several dollars verses where the market actually was.

All clearly computer driven or caused. And trivially accomplished, I might add, because there isn't even a fleeting intrinsic value to a bitcoin that makes any one conversion price more or less appropriate than any other. It can swing wildly in any direction for any reason.

And then I saw what were obviously ordinary investors doing tiny little transactions that looked like market orders, getting taken to the cleaners over and over again by the speculators.

Do people actually believe that their BTCs are worth what they pay for them? Honestly, how can anyone think this is viable? Tons of real money is clearly being squeezed out of the system, leaving less and less for the investors left behind... and people don't seem to understand just how fragile the conversion value they see quoted on their screen is.

I see absolutely nothing stabilizing Bitcoin. There are no stabilizing factors at all. Zero. Not the mining (the rate of BTC generation is just too small and is too disconnected from supply-demand), nothing to stop massive deflation were it to be adopted (which is extremely destabilizing to any economy), nothing to stop inflation brought about by value crashes (Fiat currencies at least have the fact that you have to pay taxes, meaning that ultimately you have to convert proceeds from your goods into the Fiat currency in order to pay those taxes). Nothing to control the velocity of money in the Bitcoin universe. Retail transactions are not stabilizing because there is no mandate to require BTC use. Bitcoin is worthless as a store of value.

Basically, Bitcoin is an out of control freight train doomed to massive instability until it eventually gets shut down or goes out of favor. It is a virtual commodity. It is NOT a currency or anything even remotely resembling a currency.

-Matt

Kinda hard when the conversion price of bitcoin can changes by 2% in less than a second. Let alone all the transaction costs. Good luck with that.

-Matt

Interesting paper, but there won't be much visibility for the BTC held in Mtgox or other exchanges. Presumably they are not creating a new entry for each trade but instead just holding the bitcoins on the Mtgox servers. Only deposits or Withdrawals will record a new entry. I'm guessing here, someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Since the manipulation can just use the balance of BTC in the account, it would not be readily evident from the chains. That is, the number of BTC remains constant, but the manipulation drains dollars from the exchange. It is the dollars which are withdrawn, not the BTC.

From the looks of the volume it looks like a manipulative sale only requires 20K BTC or so. Maybe 35K BTC to the bottom after that, then tons of horizontal volume which gave the original seller plenty of time to buy it back at a lower price. So, $4.5M or so in sales, cause panic, then spend $3M buying it back for a profit of $1.5M or so, just off the cuff of my sleeve.

Also looking at the real time it only seems to take ~25-50 BTC (barely $8400) to seriously move the USD price. e.g. $172->$168 w/a 50 BTC sale, which amounts to a 2.3% move in BTC's value in a SINGLE transaction. That is extremely unstable and should scare anyone.

For that matter, there is no guarantee that BTC balances are being backed by actual BTC (though presumably people have enough trust in Mtgox and other exchanges that it isn't a big issue).

-Matt

I shouldn't have to point out the obvious here, it will clearly fall on deaf ears considering the vast amounts of stupidity revealing themselves in postings on this topic. But hell, if it brings just one person to their senses I'll count it job well done.

First, nobody is forcing anyone to hold their savings in US Dollars. You can hold your savings in whatever form you want, it's called a BROKERAGE ACCOUNT. Buy a commodity-tracking ETF if you desire, and keep just enough dollars around to service your monthly needs. The dollar, after all, is very definitely stable in the short-term. One month isn't going to destroy its value. Realize, though, the price of everything in real terms fluctuates. Someone who bought gold at $1900 is sitting on a 15% loss of value in dollar terms right now, for example. Real commodities generally maintain their value over long periods of time. Are you worried about buy/sell fees? If you are, then you don't have enough savings to even be AFFECTED by inflation in the first place.

Second, Bitcoin isn't a currency. It's a commodity with a limited supply. Not only is it a commodity with a limited supply but it is a VIRTUAL commodity with a fixed supply. It isn't even real. It's not something you can touch. It doesn't even behave like a currency fod gods sakes! It may not be possible to counterfeit, but that doesn't stop anyone from creating their own virtual commodities and competing. In fact, there are MANY virtual currencies already in existance, primarily used in games, which are already far more stable than bitcoin.

Third, Bitcoin's 'value' is fleeting. It's like tulip-mania but worse. It's worse because the market is so shallow it is trivial (and obviously trivial) to manipulate. Heavy manipulation by people selling high slowly, causing a panic, and then buying low. Rinse and repeat.

I'm guessing that a large percentage of the exchange volume is from rinse and repeaters and very little is actual investment purchases or sales. It creates the illusion of decent volume when, in fact, there actually isn't any. Each time it cycles the manipulators are removing more real money from the system, leaving everyone else holding the bag.

Think about what this means, folks. It isn't rocket science. Whatever cash was injected into the system by real investors is being leeched away by the manipulators. There is LESS real original cash remaining, yet all the remaining real investors believe that a Bitcoin is worth at least as much as they originally paid for it, because they see that magic exchange value in $USD 'Oh look, 1BTC is worth $166 BTC!'. What these investors do not understand is that they cannot ALL get that price if they were to sell. They can't get it even if they all paid that price going in because the manipulators have already squeezed out a considerable amount of cash from the system.

The very definition of a Ponzi scheme. This will only end in tears.

-Matt

On those Android phones which have user SD card slots, I wouldn't mind allowing the phone to page memory to the card at all if it saves on bandwidth. For internal flash... definitely not.

I already cycle about a gigabyte a day through my 16G microSD card just from DogCatcher. Another few hundred megabytes wouldn't make a dent and those cards are pretty cheap anyway.

However, allowing paging on any machine can lead to big trouble in the form of thrashing. It probably isn't reasonable to implement that sort of feature as a default on a consumer phone.

At least in the case of browsers the default memory limits can clearly be increased.

-Matt

EYE-FI SD cards are cool, but storage capacities trail what you can get with a straight storage card. So for example you can get a 16G EYE-FI card, but a SanDisk Extreme SDXC card comes in capacities up to 128G.

EYE-FI has other problems, including fairly slow WIFI transfer speeds. WIFI tends to drop out unless you are transferring to a storage device on your belt, and a 4G hotspot setup doesn't work very well when you are taking RAWs. I would not rate EYE-FI as a professional-level product, frankly.

Sometimes quality and dependability trump convenience. My preference is to stick to normal storage cards and not have to worry about some WIFI snafu messing up my ability to take pictures. EYE-FI has its benefits, but it also has a lot of moving parts (software-wise).

-Matt

Not unexpected, but its kinda hard to take candid photos from a hijacked camera when the lens cap is on. And those WIFI systems are not generally left on anyhow.

I don't understand why they used a 1Dx though, which would require an external WIFI adapter to even have a WIFI capability. I would be more interested in penetration testing something like the Canon 6D which has the WIFI built-in. I fully expect there to be holes, Canon's WIFI software has always been quite primitive and even the new stuff is still quite primitive.

But if we make enough noise and Canon will fix it in a software update.

Currently I only use the 6D's built-in WIFI to be able to review pictures in-camera from an android tablet... quite a useful feature. I'm not particularly worried about hijacking there since the Camera's WIFI transmitter has rather limited range. And most of the time the WIFI is turned off anyway since it eats the battery otherwise.

-Matt