Bitcoin Forum

Just saw that out of all the states in the US, Oregon is #1 in search volume for Bitcoin right now.  Any good reason for that?

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=bitcoin&geo=US&cmpt=geo

Marijuana is legal there right?

No but it is full of alternative minded people.

Only medical mary j.  Not sure why it is popular in Oregon.  I live there and don't know anyone that uses bitcoin.

Stuff white people like:

1) Bitcoin
2) Microbreweries
3) Portland
4) Bikes
5) Camping
6) Pinot Noir

There is a pretty strong libertarian movement going on in Oregon, and bitcoin has infected it.

I just created a meetup.com group for it:
http://www.meetup.com/Portland-Bitcoin-Group/

Only three people are on the meetup group so far, but the meeting this sunday should have many more as it has been passed around a lot in email.

Also, Intel is located in Oregon, and bitcoins are starting to get pretty popular on the intel campus.

Finally "it is full of alternative minded people" is totally right on.

7) Dank nugs

Was thinking the same... I'm in Eugene.

Interesting - I was rather unaware of the happenings in Portland regarding libertarians.  And Intel - is that anecdotal?  Have you heard this from people who work at Intel, or do you work there, or..?

TIL osmosis is single-handedly responsible for bringing Oregon to the top of the Google trends for Bitcoin.

From everything I have seen, Oregon is almost as liberal as Vermont.

You are not even allowed to pump your own gas because the government is so into protecting you from yourself.

7) lil wayne

I was looking for maps where Oregon is in the top ranking, to correlate with Bitcoin use. Besides Bigfoot sightings and breast feeding, I came up with two:

Manufacturing as % of Gross Production:
http://cdn4.areadevelopment.com/static_images/article/manufacturing-gsp-by-state-2011-nam.png

State income tax rates:
http://taxfoundation.org/sites/taxfoundation.org/files/UserFiles/Image/maps/income_rates_2012_large.png

There's also no sales tax in Oregon, so it's a good place to buy stuff retail. It is wise now considering that 48 states can't compete with no sales tax businesses on the Internet.

This.

Same with breast feeding pics.

This! ^^

But not having to pump my own gas is one of my favorite things about living here.

I was going to say the same... I love sitting in my car watching someone else do the work.  ;)

Interesting that Oregon is so high in manufacturing.  I didn't expect that.  State income taxes being high is a given, since we don't have sales tax.

Some of the 'exports' from our state that I'm most proud of include

 - Wayne Morse
 - Ron Wyden
 - Jeff Merkley
 - Peter Defazio

Cannot say I agree with all of them 100% and they are policians after all, but they are a cut above much of the rest of the slime in Washington and out in front on a number of the most critical questions of the day.  Including specifically questioning the morphing of our nation into a fascist kleptocracy and police state.

Look at Montana.  No sales tax and a lower income tax.  Oregon's manufacturing numbers are probably heavily skewed by intel's manufacturing numbers. (good for them)   

We were one of the states where the GOP convention had to be shut down because Ron Paul libertarians were winning every seat down the line.

Yep, I personally have overheard enough conversations at intel about bitcoin and mining from people who I am not connected to that I think that the idea of it is running rampent through the campus.

I yep, OR has some statist policies but hopefully some of that will change. Someone used the word liberal, and I hate that the word that basically has been distorted to go from freedom loving to statist.

And yes, not pumping your own gas is pretty nice, especially in a rainy state like ours. I wish when I visited non-pumping states that the gas stations would take a little extra money to come pump my gas for me.

Bravo Osmosis!  Would you post a Bitcoin address so we can help support your efforts?  And maybe I should talk to you about how to do the same in my home state (SC).

I got to thinking about this a little more.

I've been in a number of environments where I was around people from all over the country and all over the world.  I believe that I do sense an observable difference, as a statistical trend, between people from the Pacific Northwest and other areas.  We do seem a little bit more willing to form our own opinions about things and speak our minds.  Wayne Morse voting against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was a classic example of this.

One thing may have to do with education.  While it is a single observation, my mother had a high school teacher in the late 50's or early 60's who made the students read a variety of media from different sources.  Then the class would discuss the origin of the media and the messages contained within the articles and analyze things from that perspective.  This quality of analysis was probably not typical even for Oregon standards of the time, but it strikes me as reminiscent of the analytic style of a lot of my older and more intellectual friends in the area.

We are also a young part of a young country.  A fair number of my recent ancestors can be traced back to having come here from both Europe and other parts of the country within recent memory, and at a time when it was a pretty raw area.  It is said that settling populations exhibit a noticeable amount of vigor, and it make perfect sense.  It is also said that regression to the mean dampens this within a few generations.  We may have a little more of that left than average.  I dunno.

Lastly, I know a fair number of people who have moved out here within their lifetimes and they exhibit the same sorts of mentalities.  I attribute it to the fact that they are happy to be among others who are of a similar attitude and it may have something to do with their choosing to move here in the first place.

Interesting.

Most areas have a few stations that you can pay for the attendant to pump your gas.  I usually avoid those lanes or pushing the attendant button.

In fact, when I used to commute thru the Willamette valley I had a membership to an unmanned station just so I could pump my own.  :)  I've never banged the pump handle into my vehicle nor broken the filler door by bumping into it...

I found that for as much as the folks around and just north of Corvallis like to tell other people what to do and how to live, they sure don't like it when somebody tells them.  Maybe they are the ones getting into bitcoin.

You can pump your own gas at the Seven Feather's station on I-5 South of Roseburg.  It's got some sort of Indian tribal rights deal going.  But who wants to?  Gas is cheaper in Oregon even with someone else pumping it than it is down the road in California.

I very much like the regulation about having needing an attendant.  It's probably cut the amount of property crime in half by providing some semblance of a job for certain of the borderline retarded inhabitants in the poverty stricken towns.  Of which there are many.  The other thing which makes in possible to service the 1500 square mile county I live in with two or three on-duty sheriff's deputies is that it is rare indeed that a rural home does not have a ready supply of weapons of different calibers handy.  My personal go-to piece is a shotgun.

Forget Oregon, we need to work on Wyoming.

anarchists, loads of them in Oregon. i used to go down there in highschool to see Poison Idea play and hung out in many an anarchist flop house. they're all still operating surprisingly last time i checked the mailing list on riseup.

Oregon also chock full of enviro extremists, hippies, redneck militias, and generally people who hate the fed government and control. First day in Portland I was in a cafe and some rednecks were burning money simply because they hated the feds. "It's illegal to deface money.. fuck the government" <burns his money>. Lol, oregon

Sorry Oregon, but you were just unseated by Utah.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=252721.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=252721.0)

Dang Mormons.

But Oregon is back in the lead now!

Because Orgeon is a smart state

if tipping is no require for letting folks pumping my gas, I'm fine with it. Most other countries have staffs to pump gas for customers and the gas station is responsible for paying them.

No tipping required (or ever given in my experience).  Gas pumpers just make the minimum wage, $8.95/hr.

This is correct, the only states where you can't pump your own gas are Oregon and New Jersey. Talk about a nanny state. The reason gas rates are cheaper is because of lower gas taxes, not because of people pumping gas for you.

Course in Oregon you are allowed to kill yourself medically, so I guess they get points for that.

Orgeon people like freedom

It might be a nanny state, but it's one part of the nanny state I appreciate!  I like being able to stay warm/cool/dry in my car while someone else does the dirty work.

This thread is hilarious! Oregon "rebels" glowing over the "freedom" to NOT be allowed to pump gas. Amazing...

Kudos osmosis

We need more of this in every city around the world

I am also interested in sharing what you have done with our local meetup, PM sent

Is this fake?  I live in TN, and we certainly have no Income tax.

We can't pump our own gas in NJ either, I hate getting gas out of state. I don't know how to use those machines and don't like smelling like gas. :-\

As for why Bitcoin in Oregon, they don't corrode in the rain.

... and cheap electrics too!

I never said it was freedom.  I just enjoy the pump service.

Well, TN is odd... it has striped green and white.  Not sure what that means, since the legend doesn't say.  But I know that for Oregon, it is accurate.  We have income tax instead of sales tax.

From a practical perspective, I pay less for gasoline than in CA.  I usually go into the store and buy something since I don't have to stand at the pump.  In the store, I pay no sales tax.  I own a great deal of property in Oregon and pay less in property tax per year than one month of rent on a crappy apartment in silicon valley.

Operating the pumps provides some economic opportunity for more rural communities lessening the pressure for urbanization.  It also reduces the propensity for crime when more people have something which passes for a job and that reduces the law enforcement expenditures.

We also send legislators to Washington who actively fight against the 'turn-key tyranny' of the federal surveillance state which basically exists mainly to support bankers and war profiteers at this point.  DeFazio, Wyden, Merkley.  I think it no coincidence that the same people who vote for these types of people are also especially interested in constructs such as distributed crypto-currencies.

It is worth note that as a state we are not financially well off since we are at or very close to the bottom of the money we extract from the military industrial complex and probably from the banking infrastructure.  We cannot afford to implement counter-productive policies on some vague assertion that they align with some libertarian principle or whatever.  Since the rest of you don't seem to be saving much money for exercising your God-given right to pump your own gas, I would say that it is a fair guess that your money is going straight into the pockets of your politicians, corporate executive's bonuses, and lobbying firms.

Oregon, Utah and New Hampshire are the top states in the US. I guess this means that states around those states could become the quickest adopters of BTC in the US....

But, other than that, what do they have in common? Not too much other than they are on planet earth...

https://www.goldsilverbitcoin.com/what-do-oregon-utah-new-hampshire-have-in-common/

Read the text.  TN has an income tax on interest and dividends, not wages.

There are pros and cons to living in any state or country. The issue I find humourous is not among your distractions: how much land you own, how much tax you pay, what you pay for gas in CA, or where my state spends the money I pay for gas (that I may choose to pump myself, BTW).

The issue is folks claiming to be rebels, anarchists and devout freedom lovers who then get warm fuzzies over not being allowed to choose the simple act of pumping one's own gas, a freedom they used to have which was lost @1950 or so. I'm not much of a rebel, anarchist or freedom fighter but this irony is too much to let it go unnoticed.

Oregon may be a fine state. More power to you rebellious lot. At least your motorcyclists have some balls:
http://oregonmotorcyclist.com/misc_page.php?page=pumpgas
http://mentalfloss.com/article/18812/why-cant-you-pump-your-own-gas-oregon-and-new-jersey

Meanwhile a timid Californian grandmother apparently has more balls than an Oregonian steel worker. I have heard tales of teams of fearless Hollywood grannies mustering the courage to pull into any local gas station, get out of their old Cadillac Sevilles and pump their own gas. In public, no less!

I pump my own gas in Oregon on a regular basis.  It's fine in certain situations.  I also now pay cash as recently there is a fee for using credit and debit cards.  I don't think the big bad government had much to do with that, but I also don't care.  I prefer cash anyway...and did even when PRISM was just a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory to most.

I'm guessing that you probably bounce around from one failed state to the next to avoid oppressive government mandates like all Libertarians/Anarchists who actually believe their own rhetoric?  Or maybe not as you seem to be able to access the Internet and have power for your computer.  Or is it solar powered?  I keep hoping that eventually a Libertarian utopia will pop up but for some reason it never quit seems to materialize or last very long.  What's up with that?

I live in Oregon :)

I see zero correlation between ball size and whether I want to pump my own gas or not.  It's a matter of comfort, not of gonads.

The issue isn't a choice of pumping your own gas or not.  It is a choice of living in a state where you have to pump your own gas vs living in a state where someone else has to pump your gas.  As far as I am aware of, there isn't a state where you can actually choose which one you want.  Maybe a rare gas station here and there that gives you the option, but no state has them as an option on a regular basis.

EDIT:  Nevermind, turns out I was wrong.  It is a shame that we have lost this freedom then.  If I could save money pumping gas myself, I would.

Oregons got the best pot

I once drove from NJ to CA there are numerous states where you can pump your own or have someone do it at a higher price.

Alright then, I have never met such a station, but I also don't travel a whole lot so I'll take your word for it.  I redact my prior point then.

Hang on, I think I have a chart around here for that.

Actually, it did.  The CC companies, which of course charge merchants a fee for each transaction, used to forbid passing that fee on to customers.  Merchants were not allowed to charge CC users more than cash/check customers.  The credit reforms that were passed a few years ago put the kabash on that practice.  I don't know why the practice of discounting cash purchases has not become more wide spread.  The only reasons I can think of are 1) that merchants, as a group, really want people to use credit so that they buy more than they can really afford, and 2) the infrastructure needed to support credit surcharges (cash discounts) to customers needs to be developed and that is taking time.

This is great. How are you addressing to the public the legal ramifications of business owners dealing in BTC? They will all need federal MSB registrations and Oregon Money Transmitter Licenses. Otherwise they can all be shut down anytime.