Bitcoin Forum

Hey All,

BitInstant is sponsoring the 3 day Money2020 conference in Las Vegas this week.

I'm also doing a panel on Virtual Currency and Payment Monday evening.

Erik made sure we got placed next to Paypal  :P

http://imageshack.us/a/img5/8993/photo7e.jpg

L to R: Roger Ver, Charlie Shrem, Erik Voorhees

Other vendors here:

- Mastercard (booth right behind ours)
- Discover
- American Express
- Google Wallet
- inComm
- Western Union

We also came across David Birch this afternoon here. He's a continuing "skeptical fan" of Bitcoin and had the old Bitcoin android client on his phone (you know, the one that downloads the entire blockchain). We got him situated with Blockchain.info's app and he'll be coming by our booth tomorrow to get a coin :)

Hahaha! That's great!

That's so sweet...  You guys getting evil glares from the PayPal guys or are any of them interested and talking with you?

I certainly hope you'll manage to present Bitcoin as a useful tool and an opportunity, and not a threat. I also hope, for same reasons, that no one from the companies mentioned above read these forums.

Show hasn't started yet but I assume we'll have some fun chats with them tomorrow.

Honestly I don't think anyone at PayPal yet understands the true threat posed by Bitcoin to them. They likely view it as an interesting, complicated, and weird new niche tech (which it is).

Let us know any interesting stories.

 
PP's booth says "enabling commerce" seems more like governing, restricting, leeching commerce
 

I was going to say, I thought that looked like the Aria.  CityCenter was built, in part, with very progressive oil money.  So maybe you will have a receptive audience.  Just remember, Bitcoin is digital gold.

Where / when / I want to meet you guys.  I live here.

You Guys are so awesome.

Congratulations and huge success.

And don't see that PayPal guys as competition. They are doing this way longer I'm pretty sure there are still things you can learn from them (and then improve and apply it).

Edit:

Your text on the page, nice:

Wow this is spectacular and I wish you the best of luck in your presentation!

Don't forget to get investment tips from the guys at Bain Capital Ventures.   ;D

this  ;D

Bain Capital started with help of offshore investors (http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/19/nation/la-na-bain-creation-20120719)


What is that, nearly 2% per week?  They could almost give pirate a run for his money.

Epic!

Nice! Good to see Bitcoin presented so professionally. I love that the PayPal folks have no choice but to stare at Bitcoin the entire show.

Classic! Good luck.

I feel honored to get to work this booth the last half of the days.

Guys, you rock!   8)

Congrats !
Finally something positive after all these "scam-threads".

Keep us updated and good luck !  8)

This is so, well, evil! : D   I  LOVE IT!

Nicee :)

http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/204/096/epic-win.jpg

Excellent!

Some of my colleagues who are attending this week noticed you guys on the speaker list and asked me about you. They were a little disturbed by LadyBit's video on your website, though, haha.

MEET HELL! Record a video. (and make sure Yankee looks at the camera and is wearing a Bitcoin tie--and cut for high card at the end of the video, showing the paying off to the winner via a smartphone)

http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/8700/picture1wtr.png (http://img90.imageshack.us/i/picture1wtr.png/)

You should be snickering and pointing at PayPal in the photo..

:P :P :P
lolz

For every bitcoin sent to my address, I will make sure one rotten tomato makes it across the isle into the paypal booth. takers?

j/k

Bitinstant, you are definitely going to great places.

Well done guys, nice to see Bitcoin in the same room with the big boys.

Keep making money, and stay classy ;)

Great to see an actual bitcoin business that stands up for itself and presents itself in a decent manner.

You guys can go far with this...

I bet you could smuggle some interesting stuff into this country after buying a foreign company and moving their hard assets here.

Give em hell guys.

Awesome placement!  Have a great time!

Paypal should change its name to Gaypal after this, because they gonna get "Fucked" by bitcoin.

Bitinstant - you should have on top of the booth put a list on how bitcoin is better to accept then paypal and list why - i would LOL'ed
or Show 3 bitcoin users on a poster aganst paypal "100 million customers" then then turned around it shows like 100,000 anonymous users with that anonymous face mask, and then paypal's "100 million users" will have every one in 5 saying "Account Status: Limited" LOL

What is the bounty up to, for a pic of a Casascius coin being handed to someone wearing a PayPal shirt?

Wow, good luck.  Would love to stop by but not in Vegas this week, damit.

 ;D, I want to see that

As much as all of us here understand the clever ideas behind Bitcoin, and as much most of us have vested interest and biases, we should try to see things from outsider's perspective. Presently Bitcoin is an obscure, niche experiment in p2p networking and economics. Smart people from PayPal and and similar corporations, even from governments, will appreciate and embrace the underlying innovations only if we help them to.  Bitcoiners bashing on big guys at this moment seems pathetic and laughable, and in case is not productive.

Yankee,

I want to underline that i always liked the professionalism that you put in presenting yourself.

You are one of the best PR we have.

Awsome,

simply awsome!!!

Good luck guys!

spiccioli

WOW, you are great.

Charlie, Roger, Erik ... I love you and I want to give you money.

I agree with this niko.  We won't be throwing tomatoes or anything at them, don't worry ;)  We're here to make friends, not enemies, because we'll have enough enemies as it is.

The booth looks great!

Heading over the Aria now, can't wait to meet you guys

Great strategy guys!
We do this with our competition too at conventions.  They hate it!
Good Luck!

I have never been to the Aria, but hear that all the rooms are outfitted with a commercial version of a home automation system called "Control4", another pet hobby of mine.

This is great. great publicity. I am soon going to venture into the UK market with a bitinstant concept and I hope one day I will have a "meanwhile in UK" picture of the exact same thing. This is what bitcoin needs, some positive publicity that it is a meaningful currency without a single cannabis leaf insight.

It's amazing!!!

This Again.
Congratulations this is amazing.

Very cool! I'd wish I could be there to meet you  :-[

Agree !

You guys work hard for sure, this is so awesome, you must keep up with the hard work !  Bitcoin community needs you, and more peoples like you, that gives everything for the success of BTC !

You rule !  have a nice time there :D

nice gfx of Charlie here :)   (From featured speaker)

http://s9.postimage.org/467445pdr/image.png

Being close to PayPal was a fantastic idea. They have a HUGE customer base. I would imagine being close to them further legitimizes BitCoin, and peaks a lot of interest. Plus, it gets you closer to the people of influence. I hope you guys get a lot of attention. Very well executed!

Awesome shit boys.

The bitinstant boys were certainly busy and this time, unlike CES, I noticed most of the people coming up and talking to them really knew what they were talking about.  Maybe I got lucky, but a guy asks about limits, claims he already has bought bitcoins, wonders what they think the price in the future will be, etc.  Another had bitcoins in a blockchain.info wallet and was firing them on satoshidice while we watched the live feedback from both a laptop with recent bets streaming and his phone-wallet.  Others inquired about bitinstant merchant services - from the short time I was there it seems to me like the buzz around the room was there, something I didn't feel in CES.  Again, small sample size, and this conference seems more likely to have bitcoin on the various entities' radars, and bitcoin maybe grew up that much more since whenever CES was.

Having a bitcoin presence in these conferences make me very happy.   Seeing an increase in understanding of bitcoin was even more awesome.

going to have Charlie Sherm on representing the bitcoin foundation on DD radio on the 31st of this month, was glad to meet him.

obv the Paypal giant super-booth that you have already seen:

http://s13.postimage.org/kj3j8f1lj/IMG_1491.jpg

and "Mastercard worldwide" on the other side:

http://s13.postimage.org/8rfnxm6zb/IMG_1493.jpg


and obviously just for the lulz

http://s13.postimage.org/rnpxv6y8n/IMG_1490.jpg


Was awesome to meet Erik, to shake the hand of the blockchain blower-upper himself, and of course the operator of the most popular BTC gaming product ever. 

Keep spreading the BTC gospel boys!  Awesome setup, hope bitinstant prospers and anyone needing to make SealsWithClubs deposits I always refer them to bitinstant first.

This conference is a huge success.
I can't count how many VC company execs and decision makers at various payment companies I spoke with today.
I set up more blockchain.info (http://blockchain.info) mobile wallets than I can count, and gave each person 0.01 BTC to get them started seeing how easy it was to use.
Everyone was super interested and were brainstorming ideas on how they can use Bitcoin in their current business model.

I am sure lots of new products will come into existence thanks to this conference.

http://i50.tinypic.com/hwy92h.jpg

memorydealers and bitinstant, you are doing us proud :D

Very awesome! Keep up the good work!

Most exciting updates, keep up the excellent work!

That is awesome guys, keep up good work.   ;)

https://i.imgur.com/MTOgX.png

BitInstant: That 20K BTC buy-in. :) Know anything about that? ;)

I heard rumors, it might have been the bulk of deposits that first came in on Monday morning through MtGox to fill open orders.

Great move. Best of luck educating VCs about Bitcoin. BTW, I do kinda like the unpretentious logo compared to the huge paypal one. Maybe a big rotating Ƀ at the top will catch eyes next time even if it isn't *your* logo.

awesome, in 2030, someone will look at this photo and say:

"wow, look how young they look. And: who is paypal?"

This is great!

awesome ;D

*affixes bull horns on head with superglue*

Seriously, I don't know if I'll ever go bearish on Bitcoin again after hearing the description on how the conference went.

whatever

paypal can die in a fire

Does that sign say Bain Capital? Like Mitt Romney's company?

Is it just me or does Erik look like the Caucasian version of

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTJ3nYTYWJsY_7TCyDp0vpaUxEK-PPR37fDGsb_EeXtFoGISnS_ZnXY9w

Like this one …
http://www.levchin.com/images/PayPal/first-company-picture-ever.JPG

Bad ass presentation IMO:

https://twitter.com/ErikVoorhees/status/260775296268111872

Erik Voorhees ‏@ErikVoorhees
Sending $20,000 instantly from China to US via #Bitcoin at #PaymentsForum. True innovation! #FZB #spon http://feedzebirds.com/pu90i


Erik Voorhees ‏@ErikVoorhees
Presenting today at Payments Innovation Day. We'll be sending $20,000 from China to a mobile phone on stage instantly. pic.twitter.com/WPpY1k0N


awesome.  Sending $20k from China to a mobile right on the stage.  In the Aria.  Absolutely bad ass bitcoin gospel preaching IMO.  These cats are on the front lines, directly showing other important humans this technology, directly contributing to greater world-wide understanding of bitcoin.

hats off indeed.  

Yup, they actually took us to breakfast yesterday morning.

The president of Bain Capital Ventures has the blockchain app and loves Bitcoin!

Odds are, between this and the extortion letter, Romney knows something about Bitcoin.

It's Bain Capital Ventures - the VC arm of Bain. We met with one of their guys yesterday morning for breakfast. Really cool guy, excited about Bitcoin. He now has a Bitcoin on his phone ;)

Your snowflakes are forming a snowball friends.

Watch out...just a few huge players need to take a modest interest in bitcoin and it can explode.

Actually this was not at the Aria.

Charlie/Roger/Me did Money2020 Conference on Monday (at the Aria in Vegas) and then Charlie and I flew Monday night to Phoenix for ATM & Prepaid debit conference. Today (Tuesday) we gave our presentation here in Phoenix and did the $20,000k transfer stunt with the help of our friend Yifu ;)

Since we had to leave Money2020 two days early, we flew Ira to represent us there last night and Jesse Powell and Julian Tosh are also there to help (and Mr. Micon came by to say hello yesterday, very cool to meet him). So we've got both huge conferences covered with Bitcoin propaganda this week :)

Also this is pretty awesome... so before our presentation this morning here in Phoenix, the moderator of the talks came up to us and said, "hey you guys are AWESOME, I'm a BIG fan of Bitcoin. I have to pretend to be impartial but you guys are already my favorites."

The audience is right now voting for the winner of these presentations. There were about 10 who presented... I'm really hoping we win!  I mean come on, we just sent $20k across the pacific ocean from China instantly with no fees and sent it to a mobile phone on stage. ;)

Well (Community), lets not overreact. (I know it hard)

BitInstant, congratulations to what you have done there.

Spreading awareness about Bitcoin is one good thing for the Community.

For you it's most important, that you have shown presence and have made some business contacts.

There are few things so important in the business you are in than knowing the right people and it seems you have made a major step to accomplish that.

Also, by going to http://money2020.com/ and looking on all the companies, I just noticed what a cool logo you have. Nice.

I wish you great success, if anyone really deserves to get filthy rich with his BTC business, it's you guys.

Great news guys! Congrats!

I'm getting the sense that, at least right now, Bitinstant is more important to advancing Bitcoin than the Bitcoin Foundation...

charlie is the vice chairman of the bitcoin foundation.

Wow! I never realized until now just how crowded the playfield is. Look at the ocean of logos and descriptions... From a quick look it seems that the only really innovative and disruptive technology is Bitcoin. Others are just rehashing the same-old, with a grain of innovation here-and-there. I feel good!

Hopefully everyone realizes that it will take numerous Bitcoin companies working numerous shows over months and years to build the reputation that Bitcoin needs. Fortunately, there are many amazing people who are ideologically (and financially) motivated to do this all over the world. At first it is an uphill battle for us... and eventually it will be an uphill battle for them.

I encourage everyone to keep designing, building, experimenting, networking, and making connections in all the myriad ways that have been occurring over the past year or so.

It's working.

I feel like I'm a high school student sitting in a 4th grade class.

All of these companies are trying to solve problems that are causes by the problems in the old rails systems.
So essentially, they are just adding layers and middlemen and painting over to create solutions to the problems caused by the crappy monetary and fiscal system we currently have. However, they are not even seeing the inherit problem which is what Bitcoin solves!

They will in due time.

The Bitcoin booth would be overflowing if only LadyBytes were there. And if the lady from Butterflylabs assembly line simply hung around the PayPal booth donning an I accept PayPal button. Something to think about come CES time which, by the way, is just around the corner.

Great work, guys.

~Bruno K~

But but but...it's all the pimps that have all the money. See all them pimps at the show?

During the first debate (sorry don't want to search out the timestamps):
-Mitt Romney

It made me think he was anti-bitcoin

But think about it.  Why does he say that?

Bitcoin is a perfect example.  What has happened to many of the unregulated banks and trusts and investment opportunities here?  They've turned out to be scams, or at the very least, not very honest about their money management.  Lots of people have lost a lot of money investing in these "banks", and a variety of other "business opportunities".

I don't like the idea of regulation, and I don't like the idea of protecting people from themselves.  I think part of intelligence and learning is being able to decipher the good from the bad, and that includes learning what investments are good and what investments are bad.  Heck, I've made a couple of bad choices with Bitcoin that have lost me significant portions of funds, but I have learned from that, and am now smarter because of it.  I won't make the same mistake twice.

One could argue that regulation would allow for users to not have to even think about their investments, and I think that's the goal entirely, but for me personally, I would rather have the option to research and make prudent investments wherever I see fit, not just where the government thinks is a safe place.

All of that said, I agree with Mitt that at least some level of regulation is necessary to prevent people from getting scammed left and right, because some people just don't learn.  And I don't see any reason why Bitcoin can't work with regulation, either.

But today is an entirely different day!   ;D

There's nothing wrong with regulations as long as they come strictly from the consumers i.e. the free market. Most of the scams in the Bitcoin world can be blamed on two factors IMO: 1) people are used to be taken care of by the nanny state with their FDIC insurance and whatnot so they first need to learn how to look after their finances but also 2) some of the services are not using all the tools that are available for scam prevention such as identification or DRO contracts because there is this small gang of thugs that would like to hurt most of them if they could find them.

This isn't a failure of freedom or lack of government regulation, it's a failure of learned complacency and a mafia terrorizing the consumers.

Oh and let's not pretend regulations prevent scams because we all know there are plenty of those far far more massive scams in the by the government mafia regulated world too.

Quoted for awesomeness  :D

Thanks!

I needed some good news after all (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=115308.0) the (http://bitcoincard.org/) vapor (http://bitcoinwireless.com/) ware (http://www.butterflylabs.com/order-form-bitforce-sc-mini-rig/) :)

Seriously, with all this announcements stuff and people screaming "prepare for massive run on bitcoin", it feels like a huge pump and dump thingy. Some pictures of people actually bringing to live something is a refreshing contrast, although the people behind the one and the other might overlap …

From what  obamaloney says  he has Romnesia so it could be true lol

That cannot be emphasized enough.    There are services that I would like to praise from the rooftops, but because what they are doing is possibly regulated activity none of these service's operators have revealed their identity (or had that identity they provided verified).  And thus they are not getting the attention they deserve including attracting customers where they grow into a more widely used and successful service.   I'm about as confident as I can be that the operator isn't planning on running but with a service that is operated anonymously there is always that risk, and therefore I can't extend my full trust.  

If there were two identical services side-by-side, one whose operator's identity is known and can be verified and the other run anonymously, I wouldn't touch the latter.

I don't have that choice and because I do want to participate, I rationalize the risk by limiting the amount of funds involved to an amount low enough enough that if the operator does run or otherwise scam that I'm not negatively impacted to any significant degree.

But because the threat of action from a regulator keeps the operator from revealing identity, I am then putting myself at risk of getting scammed further than I normally would.  And that makes it easier for scammers to "fit in".  And having to swim in the same pool as the scammers makes it harder for the good operators protecting themselves with anonymity to compete.  

Thus the existence of needless regulations actually increases the risk of me being scammed.

bah! bitcoin is absolutely regulated and the right way... in a globally distributed consensus.

I'm pretty sure LadyBytes would be open to that. Anyone going to CES should contact her.

Was it just a coincidence that the MasterCard booth was right next door?

I can imagine there are a lot of bankers thinking "how can I get out of this idiotic company?" Then they see Bitcoin and go "hmmm." I don't think any exec will convince a groupthink board to get with Bitcoin in it's present state, but you may get some rogue visionaries to jump ship. I would be looking for the ones that whisper their fandom and offer ideas they can run with.

Great work guys!

What if a service was set up in such a way that the users had control of their Bitcoin, and the entire service's operation was easily verified via blockchain? (All money coming in, going out, and fees charged) Would you trust it then, even if whoever ran it remained anonymous?

haha very nice. Good work on the placement guys. Spread the good word.

Well played boys!

One day PayPal might adopt BTC as one of its currency choices, and see an enormous opportunity in doing so.

PayPal doesn't HAVE to be the enemy.

Remember, once upon a time, PayPal was the "cool" competition to eBay's old cumbersome homegrown payment method they called "Billpoint".  Instead of fighting it, eBay put their money aboard and jumped upon the train with it.

PayPal is in a unique position where they could offer the world the opportunity to transact in bitcoin units while maintaining, for a fee, the consumer protections that go along with the ability to do chargebacks, which aren't inherently evil, just costly (and there are times, like buying things from strangers over the internet, when that cost is worth paying).

What we really should be asking ourselves is: what are all the reasons PayPal would NOT want to offer BTC as a currency option (whether it's legal, technical, lack of experts, fear of reprisal, etc.), and work on attacking those, rather than attacking PayPal as the enemy.  Their forbidding of using PayPal to buy bitcoins makes business sense from their current perspective - that doesn't make them an enemoy.  PayPal and Bitcoin can co-exist in a win-win relationship one day, and it will be an awesome day if and when PayPal ever decides to make that sort of move.

PayPal was "cool" when it was young, now it's a big corporation and it is extremely rare for a company of that size to support development of something that undermines their established business e.g. look at what happens in music industry. It is much more probable that PayPal would rather go bankrupt than try to adapt.

I just noticed the "Bitcoin" text on the booth...it looks like the same design as from the new logo contest thread...

bitcoin can be used as voting machine
I wrote something in development part of the forum, but it did not get any attention,
maybe i did not explain it well
or the problem was because i proposed it be implemented as separate cryptofork

the idea was that entrepreneur would deposit money in an address whose private key is partially distributed to all users of his service
if he runs, the money is voted into some arbitration fund and distributed to users
the amount deposited should be decided  by users

PayPal can in fact use Bitcoin to transfer value internationally at extremely low cost, assuming they offer exchange to and from local currencies. In that sense they would be a competitor of MtGox and other multi-currency exchanges, not the competitor of Bitcoin.

sneak up to that big paypal logo and place "complaint department" under neat it :D See how long it takes em to notice.

PayPal has couch. Do you have couch? I will only use your payment service if you offer couches.

Bitcoin no need couch. Bitcoin got coffee table. Coffee table NSFW, so no pic. PayPal envy coffee table. Show over. Coffee table going back home to Rassah. Mongo sad.

Seriously, great work guys. Hopefully there's a video or two coming soon to curb our enthusiasm.

~Bruno K~

Sweet..... Great job :)  Anyone attend this conference I don't see many people walking about....

bitcoin coffee table feature ASIC-warm coffee mug. coffee-mug pay for coffee. paypal envy no end.

it's easier for paypal to hit you in the head and steal your wallet if you're sitting down

It is only a matter of time before PayPal accepts Bitcoin as a funding source. If they do not do this themselves somebody else will make this happen. Wait a moment is there not a BitInstant Bitcoin funded debit card in the works?

Very good show by the way.

I can think of one serious technical inhibition: how could PayPal hope to enable Bitcoin chargebacks without a protocol change? To make that viable, Paypal would need the ability to prevent the amount that represents an individual transaction from being spent from the merchants wallet, for as long as the chargeback period lasts. I can't picture the dev team accepting that sort of change.

Easy the same as they do with CAD, USD etc.

1) Qualify the merchant's credit to cover the chargeback risk
2) Do not release the Bitcoins and hold the funds for up to 6 months if there is a problem.
3) Do not allow the use of the service as a currency exchange as is currently their policy.

Bitcoin has one huge advantage for PayPal as a funding method namely that PayPal itself is not subject to chargebacks as is currently the case with credit cards as a funding method. The latter is a huge risk for PayPal hence a lot of their polices that many find so objectionable. What PayPal should never allow is the deposit of funds via a credit or debit card and the subsequnt withdrawal of the same funds as Bitcoin since that would leave PayPal with a huge chargeback risk. This is precisely what PayPal's introduction to BItcoin has been so it is hardly surprising that PayPal would ban Bitcoin on their system.  The other way around as BitInstant is proposing with their Bitcoin funded debit card works just fine.

no need to change the protocol to allow refunds/chargebacks. the term chargebacks comes from the banking structure with its card theft/fraud insurance policies.

but bitcoin doesnt have such insurance policies so all that is needed is positive feedback to make the transaction complete. so just like ebay, paypal holds the funds until positive feedback is given. end of story.

the only issue i can see is if paypal became their own fiat to bitcoin exchanger. but if they just kept it simple by allowing payment in GOODS/products for paypal fiat or bitcoin. there would be no protocol changes required.

-sidethought-
if any protocol changes are needed to make crypto currency more regulated maybe use litecoin for the regulated stuff and bitcoin for the anonymous stuff.. thus keeping everyone happy, while also getting a crypto currency to mass market

If that is going to happen at all, I'd expect it to be the other way around.

read the other threads, as there are too many drug dealers loving the anonymity of bitcoin to ever let bitcoin become regulated.. EG the 50+ pages of trolls objecting to the BTC foundation, the pages on the economy subsection hating the identification AML/KYC regulations that MTGOX and bitinstant NEED to follow. its soo much easier to start with a clean slate such as litecoin. instead of unsuccessfully pushing drug dealers away from bitcoin.

let druggies continue to use bitcoin after all its their money, no one should tell them what to do with it. let them live in their blissful existence. and allow the rest of us more reputable people concentrate on getting A cryptocurrency to mass market to counteract the FIAT ties that bind our hands.

by overcoming merchants main objections to handling propoganda'd media press of bitcoins (ponzi, silkroad reputation). It would get a lot more merchants accepting crypto sooner. which would then ripple onto merchants taking the risk and adopting bitcoin too.

Heh, your obvious bias towards litecoin is spilling out of your nose  ;D

Let's analyze:


Do you have stats for that claim?


It's 50 pages of people discussing the foundation, only a dozen of the same people are against it. They are not trolls, they are real people who have real issues with the foundation. Some of those issues have already been addressed in foundation meetings.


Dude, for any Litecoin business or Litecoin itself to survive it needs legal businesses to exist within its economy.

You are pushing for a double standard. If Bitcoin becomes more friendly to the legal world the druggies will stop using it. If what you want to do to Litecoin happens, the druggies WILL use it. The only reason Bitcoin is attractive to the underground markets is because its unregulated.


That makes absolutely no sense. Litecoin will never reach mass market or adoption without either the druggies using it or it becoming better regulated and consumer protection.

You are advocating both sides in your post, it makes no sense.

-Charlie

Thanks for your guys' work and for making bitcoin more widely known about. 

Very exciting stuff.

+1 Charlie lays the smack down.

lol. I don't see how franky1s idea would work at all: why would anyone want to regulate litecoin (whatever that my look like) and then expect everyone to jump on it because of that? Bitcoin survived for as long as it has precisely because it slips through the fingers of people attempting to control it and - like it or not - a lot of people use it precisely because of that (illegal trade, capital flight, tax evasion,...)

due to my reply being off topic to the good work bitinstant done at las vegas ill just link in my reply. to avoid sidelining the main topic.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=121480.msg1309971#msg1309971 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=121480.msg1309971#msg1309971)

i advocate ANY crypto for many different reasons, and i salute bitinstant because of the ideologies as an alternative to FIAT payment systems.

Wow, you've just earned so much respect in my book.

You are a gentleman and a scholar, sir.

I honestly would have kept the convo going, my forum etiquette is not as good as yours.

Thanks

A pretty large Bitcoin contingent will be at Money2020 in 2013.
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=289370.0

What a difference a year makes.

What a difference TWO years makes...

hope bitcoin can be accepted by more people, paypal is just so so.

I was ALMOST able to attend this show, would be a flight but too bad I missed it.  I followed a bunch of the news on twitter as best I could, looks like there was TONS of info there.  Great to see!