To be honest this is good news. For me BTC is a long term (2yr) investment. My speculation is that it will gain massive amounts of value when the world's fiat currencies decline in lieu of too much quantitative easing and the inevitable rise in interest rates which will hit global economies hard. People will turn to something that governments cant touch and something that is easy and cheap to transfer, which is a specification that BTC fits.

This news also allows other countries to gain a foothold in the emerging BTC market which China dominated but now seems to have now seceded. The US may jump all over this as they had previously admitted their control of the BTC market was minor compared to China and Russia.

BTC will now be much more affordable to stockpile from what its previous price was, which is great news for long term speculators like myself.

I honestly believe to accumulate and or protect wealth Gold, Silver & Bitcoin are sound investments.

I just read an article by one of my favourite bloggers:
Why You Should Probably Buy Bitcoins - Tynan

And I'm looking in to buying 1/2 a bitcoin... I'll report back.

Good read, I heard about it a while ago, when everyone was going a little crazy about the "gun printers", but never really thought it'd be what it is now. With the issues with the Chinese exchange, I'm still a little apprehensive, but I will be purchasing a small amount just to see where it goes, just waiting on confirmations from OKPay to buy some from BTC-E.

get on dogecoin easy money to be made at the min

Rumours of a Bitcoin merger with Google could send the price through the roof.

Google Is Exploring Bitcoin - Business Insider

It wouldn't be a merger, its just a rumour of the possibility for accepting payments or some level of integration, however Google do have a history of experimenting with new tech and playing with idea's, this isn't however to say that it would be long lived as they also have a history of killing off non-profitable products or services which cause excessive complications. And with bitcoin in such a state of flux I wouldn't expect to see anything for a good number of years, it's value isn't stable enough for any of the big players to put much into it, and when it does get to that stage it's not going to be feasible to make any money on it. By all means its worth getting in at the ground floor, hence the investments but I would believe that all the big bucks have already been claimed.

Also, does anybody else find it extremely difficult to get any real time transactions in the UK?

I bought £250 worth of bitcoins on Sunday through https://localbitcoins.com. From memory I got 0.4675 bitcoins. I paid by bank transfer, it took around an hour.

What do you mean by real time transactions? If you're exchanging bitcoins for other electronic coins, you can use an exchange like bter.com or cryptsy.com and its instantaneous.

But yeah, if you want to exchange for cash its an illiquid market and it takes around an hour. Try:
https://localbitcoins.com
https://bitbargain.co.uk
https://quickbitcoin.co.uk
https://bittylicious.com/‎

https://localbitcoins.com has the option of meeting a seller in person to do the transaction.

Merger was the wrong word for me to use but you make a good point. I seriously think Cryptocurrencies and precious metals will be huge in the next few years considering the likelihood and another global financial catastrophe.

Check out Joe Rogan's podcast with Peter Schiff to get an idea of the potential scale of things to come.

I have also used localbitcoins.com for my transactions and have nothing but good things to say about them.

I hear ya man but to be fair I'd never listen to a Peter Schiff interview for his opinions on the environment. I also think his opinions on the free market make a lot of sense.

Schiff's a businessman and knows business inside out. He accurately predicted the 2008 market crash and has made correct predictions on Forex and stock market movements. A friend of mine has been a Schiff proponent for a long time and cites him for making him a lot of money over the years.

Very interested to listen to the latest JRE podcast. I find Andreas very concise and the guy most certainly knows his shit about Bitcoin.