I didn't bother reading through the responses, just answering to the OP directly. I'll put my communist hat for a moment. Seriously. Distribution of bitcoins is as democratic and as communist and as fair as it gets. Everyone was free to join in, except those choosing to live under the few extremely oppresive regimes, like North Korea, or those living in the countries that have recently been raped by the imperialists, and were thus too busy or too distracted to think about mining. Sorry for them. We'll try to help out.
Back to the lucky majority of us here, we shouldn't be comparing the scam called fiat money, created as debt by the privileged class out of nothing, with the hard, democratic currency like bitcoins. It's apples and oranges, as one has infinite, monopolized supply, the other has fixed, democratic supply.
As for those who got in early and mined or bought significant chunks - these coins are meaningless until they are exchanged for goods and services. I see no problem there. It doesn't affect my quality of life in any way, or least not in any new way. What if Satoshi wakes up multi-dollar-billionaire, and decides to spend his coins to hire mercenaries to invade my country and turn it into a parking lot he then owns and operates? Nothing new. Nothing exclusive to Bitcoin. Happens all the time.

It also worth adding that lenders in this case bear no risk whatsoever. Most of slaves will take the game seriously and work hard to create wealth and give it to the lender, interest included. And if they don't - no problem. Just take whatever they bought using your funny money, and don't deal with them further.  And keep telling people how you don't get something for nothing in life 

Wow, did we go off-topic here...!

Basically, you are suggesting we use laundering services to avoid getting in trouble with the AML authority.

The only way forward is to work with the government by educating them, turning influential individuals into Bitcoin stakeholders, and avoiding suggestions like the one above. It is perfectly clear that current FinCEN interpretations are anywhere from misguided to idiotic, but it is also perfectly clear that the bigger Bitoin grows, the less under the radar it remains. Regulation is here to stay, and we as stakeholders need to do all we can to ensure the rules are acceptable for those who generally follow rules. Even if you don't follow rules, this is still in your best interest.

I may have missed this: are you preparing a PoS version for merchants? Even now Mycelium might be a good option, with some specific tweaks it would become a powerful, secure PoS terminal.

Professors of economics, economic experts, pundits, and such have had their chance, multiple times, and have repeatedly proven themselves idiots and their theories idiotic. Only an idiot would take them seriously after everything we've seen in the past 50 years. Even those who profited - especially them - don't take the mainstream econimic theories seriously.

Wait, what?! You guys use Tor to watch video streams?  What bitrate is that?

The pool will likely have a lot to say about you. VPNs might help, but then you need to trust them. How do you pay? Is it a honeypot? Tor might be an option, but latency comes into play. If going solo, variance is a bitch, plus you need to worry about your ip address exposed again.
...and government and other agents, too.
Yes. This is an important and often ignored detail.

Overall, it takes careful planning and hard work in proportion to the value of your privacy as  a target. My effort would be much smaller than that of a politically exposed person or a big-time drug dealer or a terrorist.

Oh, crap. I was focused on the title of the thread, which said that network traffic was exploding, and was amazed to see the number of users exploding, too... That, and maybe the amyloid deposits in my brain...

Bitstamp is not based in the US, and cannot be "taken down" by the "fed."  What can become a problem are USD wire transfers and USD bank accounts, as these are both, universally, in the hands of the US banks, which are of course regulated by the government of the United States.

Again, the question here is - how come Gox is supposedly having problems that Bitstamp is not having?
 

Presumably Gox is having serious problems with the US regulators and banks, leading to thus far $5M seized. As a consequence, there are no USD wire transfers coming out of Gox.

Why is it, then, that Bitstamp is at the same time running smoothly its USD-denominated bitcoin exchange, and is able to wire me USD, working with those same US banks?

Either Bitstamp is on thin ice, but has not fallen through yet, or the official Gox story is not true.

I get 2btc + the value of cards from you. I order and pay for prepaid debit cards, providing my personal information. You use them for your purposes. I see a potentially painful problem here.

...and that is all that really matters
BTC is here to stay.

About cleaning the mess: the liquid from OP is chosen as it boils at ~34C. You just need to warm up the gear above this temperature, and it all evaporates.

Interesting concept, however we should always remember that we are going to die. Even Ray Kurzweil.
How about replacing "saving a life" with "extending a life for at least one day"? A good start is the list of countries where people live on less than "dollar per day" - they got it backwards, but it's a start. They define poverty based on an arbitrary sum of dollars, we want to define a unit of account based on poverty.

Illuminati planted the "ignore" button in this forum software... who knew?

There is no profit, instant or delayed, unless they can move fiat out of gox, and into their own hands. Gox deposits are not insured. There is no arbitrage, there is only gambling on the fate of gox.

It's no different than having savings in different fiat currencies. You choose which to spend, where, and if you are going to exchange first or spend directly - depending on convenience, fees, exchange rates, and maybe even tax implications. Say you are moving from the U.S. to Canada, or from Switzerland to France... You have savings in two currencies, and an option to buy before move, then import, or buy after the move, exchange or not, etc.

In other words, even with infinite precision, you might be adding fractions of a coin, and halving that fraction periodically, but you will never have a total more than some certain maximum, which is easy to calculate.

Do you only emulate data corruption by digital means, or you use physical methods (faulty cables, EMI, gamma radiation, heat...)?

This is what I thought, too. Nagle, can you clarify your claim? It's important.