REIT announces it miscounted beans, stock loses the equivalent of the entire Bitcoin market cap overnight

REIT American Realty Capital Properties, a once $10 billion market cap stock, announced, under the cover of the Fed ending QE3, that it had overstated its adjusted funds from operation, a cash flow key metric used by REITs, from Q1 and Q2 of 2014 — a phenomenon which can only be described as “lolcounting.”

While the amount of money involved was a paltry $23 million, the accounting irregularities resulted in the resignation of the company’s chief financial officer, Brian Block, and chief accounting officer, Lisa McAlister.

The result: a crash in the stock that wiped out nearly 30% or $4 billion in market cap, currently near the same size of the entire market cap of Bitcoin.

So while Bitcoin might seem to be gaining quite a bit of traction, it is currently only valued at the rough equivalent of one accounting mistake at a Real Estate Investment Trust that no one has ever heard of!

The Current State Scum of Alt-Coin Development

Revel in the planned pump & dumps and general scumminess of the logs below, between the Alt-coin developers Prometheus (pr0m3th3us2013 on Bitcointalk) and Smurf (00Smurf on Bitcointalk).

It is a bit of a tragic comedy, watching these people organize scamming routines to fleece people of their Bitcoin from inside Skype chats. Beware. Hold your Bitcoin tight.









Mark Karpeles owns SuckMyGeek.com & TeenB*tches.net

Mark Karpeles - In this moment I am euphoric

While browsing Mark Karpeles’s very own www.Bitcoins.com recently, we were intrigued by a certain PHP script which output a random batch of domain names he is looking to sell.

Needless to say, Mt.Gox creditors can rest easy knowing that Mark is taking the proverbial no holds barred approach to raising liquidity in the face of losing almost a half a billion dollars worth of customers’ bitcoin. Mark offers the following gems for sale, in case you should find yourself with 600,000 bitcoin (luckily they found 200,000 in a random account):

YellowFever.com
TeenB*tches.net
SuckMyGeek.com

Mark Karpeles domain names

Mark Karpeles domain names

Mark Karpeles domain names

and loads more, if you keep pressing F4 on the homepage of Bitcoins.com.

We can all sleep a little easier knowing that Tibanne, the parent-company of Mt.Gox is doing everything in its power to raise capital to reimburse customers.

Don’t buy 1 oz. silver bars until you see this…

Are you a fan of those sealed 1 oz. silver JM bars? Do you fancy the shine of that sealed Sunshine Mint insignia? Well, consider breaking out the trusty scissors and acid test…

I received a tip from one of our readers that there is proliferation of fake silver and gold bullion on the so-called “darknet” markets. If you aren’t aware, the “darknet markets” are websites online where you can buy goods — mostly contraband or illegal — in exchange for the digital currency Bitcoin.

It seems there are a number of sellers offering passable counterfeits … Engelhard, Johnson Matthey, American Pan, Sunshine Mint… “and anything else you can imagine!”

Fake bullion isn’t new. But it’s getting cheaper and increasingly passable. A cursory search of the recently IPO’d Alibaba.com for “1 oz silver bar” yielded a number of results, which also seems to indicate that the market’s sellers are most likely resellers if the Eastern eCommerce giant:

http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Hot-sales-replica-1-Troy-Oz_1926671052.html

http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/2014-high-quality-custom-made-silver_1964115283.html

http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/1-oz-APMEX-Silver-Bar_801243543.html

http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Hot-sales-replica-1-Troy-Oz_1926690528.html

One seller (ad pictured below) even proclaims that these “.999 silver plated bars [are] filled with the EXACT, CORRECT mixture of other metals which will give it the perfect look and feel.” In the ad pictured, one can purchase 100 (1) ounce bars for 2.2145 Bitcoin, which equates to about $800 at today’s prices.

It’s clear that criminals are taking advantage of most stackers / dealers inability to test and verify the contents of every bar. The sheister even warns customers “Don’t let [dealers/pawn shops/craigslist consumers] acid test them. Almost nobody will do this for silver/such a low quantity of silver. But SOME might.”

What can stackers and the community do to protect themselves? Don’t buy from non-trusted sources (avoid Craigslist… the saying about ‘if the deal is too good to be true…’ prevails when dealing with metal). Keep a bottle of acid handy, and try to purchase at least one of each iteration of bar directly from the source or APMEX, so you have a point of comparison.



The counterfeit ad includes these photos, try to internalize the details.

It’s clear this problem will only get worse as prices for metal rise and the potential return on a counterfeit sale increases. It’s often better to pay premium to get one of the government minted coins, for instance the American Silver Eagle or Canadian Maple Leaf, which are far more complicated and easier to spot fakes.

Stay frosty out there and report any fakes you find to the appropriate mint.

The Bitcoin Bearwhale has been Harpooned

Just moments ago, untold amounts of buyside liquidity hit the Bitstamp order book. The day of October 6th is just beginning, and in the wee-hours of the moonlight a cool $5 million worth of cash gobbled up the remaining “ASK” wall on Bitstamp.

The Bitcoin “Bearwhale” as it’s been called, was a person or persons who collectively controlled 30,000+ bitcoins. Said entity flashed their position size on the ask stack earlier on the day of October 5th, prompting a quick and brief selloff to $275, the lowest price Bitcoin has seen all year.

Bearwhale quickly removed the ask stack and lay in wait, until a wall of 25,000 bitcoins appeared on Bitstamp, prompting a flatline in price for almost 6 hours as plankton gobbled and nipped at the Bearwhale’s bounty.

The Bitstamp Bearwhale has been let out to sea

The Bearwhale hits the deck

Bitcoin Fibonacci Retracements – Is a bottom near at $319?

Are you a gambling man? Fibonacci retracements use horizontal lines to indicate areas of support or resistance at the key Fibonacci levels. These levels are created by drawing a trendline between two extreme points and then dividing the vertical distance by the key Fibonacci ratios of 23.6%, 38.2%, 50%, 61.8% and 100%, which are derived from the “Golden Ratios.”

For this chart we consider the valley (low) of $88, which if you’ll recall coincided with the apprehension of Ross Ulbricht in September of last year. The peak (high) is drawn at $1163, from late November ’13.

So what do you think? Will Leonardo Fibonacci, an Italian born in 1175 AD, who discovered the unusual properties of the numerical series (Fibonacci sequence) provide us some much needed support at $319? We’ll all know soon enough.

Spotted in a GRE Prep Book: “Governments are justified in circumventing civil laws when doing so is vital to the protection of national security.”

Satoshi Nakamoto Spotted in Destiny

With his email account hacked, it appears Satoshi has gone into hiding, taking refuge within Bungie’s new online Universe. Tally ho, old sword, tally ho.

Proof of Art: Kialara Bitcoin Bar is Magically Delicious

When a certain post graced the top of /r/Bitcoin 2 weeks ago, all of us over here at Ounce.me knew that the time was ripe to pick up some of these physical representations of our favorite digital commodity. Continue reading

Bitcoin Price Recovering After Playstation 4 Dump

August 30th, 2014, a day that will live in infamy for the factory production line at Sony HQ. Thanks to an epic sale from the good people at Newegg.com, lucky holders of bitcoin can get $150 off a purchase of $500 or more on their website, when checking out with the magical internet money payment method. Continue reading