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<strong><center><a href="http://www.plurkebalf.us/2600/159/347/1297/2749.10tt74103107AAF1.php"><H3>Medicare enrollment period for 2013. Compare plans before the deadline...</a></H3></strong>
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<td colspan="5" style="font-size: 12px; text-align: center"><br>If you cannot see the below image, please visit us <a href="http://www.plurkebalf.us/2600/159/347/1297/2749.10tt74103107AAF2.php" target="_blank" style="color: #000">HERE</a><br><br><br></td>
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<p style="font-size:xx-small;">aper
signed by Satoshi Nakamoto -- likely a pseudonym -- and the coins
made their online debut in 2009. How the coins are created, how
the transactions are authenticated and how the whole system manages to power
forward with no central bank, no financial regulator and a user base
of wily hackers all comes down to computing power and savoir faire.Or,
as Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist for the ConvergEx Group, describes
it: "genius on so many levels."The linchpin of the system is a
network of "miners" -- high-end computer users who supply the Bitcoin network
with the processing power needed to maintain a transparent, running tally
of all transactions. The tally is one of the most important ways
in which the system prevents fraud, and the miners are rewarded for
supporting the system with an occasional helping of brand-new bitcoins.Those
bitcoins have become a dangerously hot commodity in the past few days.Rising
from roughly $13 at the beginning of the year, the price of
a single bitcoin blasted through the $100 barrier last week, according to
Mt. Gox, a site where users can swap bitcoins for more traditional
currencies.On Tuesday, the price of a single bitcoin had topped $200. On
Wednesday, it hit $266 before a flash crash dragged it back down
to just over $100. By Thursday, bitcoins were trading for around $150.The
rebel currency may seem unstable, but then so do some of its
more traditional counterparts. Some say Bitcoin got
it to the now-unfathomable craze that
saw 17th-century Dutch speculators trade spectacular sums of money for a
single flower bulb."It is rare that we get to see a bubble-like
phenomenon trade tick for tick in real time," he said in a
note to clients.One Bitcoin supporter with a unique perspective on the boom
might be Mike Caldwell, a 35-year-old software engineer based in suburban
Utah. Caldwell is unusual insofar as he mints physical versions of bitcoins
at his residence, cranking out thousands of homemade tokens with codes protected
by tamper-proof holographic seals -- a retro-futuristic kind of prepaid
cash.Caldwell acknowledges that the physical coins were intended as novelty
items, minted for the benefit of people "who had a hard time
grasping a virtual coin."But that hasn't held back business. Caldwell said
he'd minted between 16,000 and 17,000 coins in the year and a
half that he's been in business. Demand is so intense he recently
announced he was accepting clients by invitation only.Some may wonder whether
Caldwell's coins will one day be among the few physical reminders of
an expensive fad that evaporated into the ether -- perhaps the result
of a breakdown in its electronic architecture, or maybe after a crackdown
by government regulators.When asked, Caldwell acknowledged that bitcoin
might be in for a bumpy ride. But he drew the analogy
between the peer-to-peer currency enthusiasts who hope to shake the finance
world in the
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