it requires motivation, energy and most definetly a passion for the idea that has come to your mind to become a reality

I still prefer the web of trust

You shouldn't. The PKI is the result of evolving a web of trust style system over many years, as it got real usage. It looks the way it does because of its solutions to the problems the raw web of trust model has.

For instance, let's say Bob starts signing keys using GPG. His signature is worth very little unless I happen to know and trust him. In practice as a new Bitcoin user who just saw it on CNN, I don't know Bob. However, maybe I do trust the guys making the Trezor because they are a real company and they live in a country with sane laws, etc, they have lots of happy customers, so that gives me a starting point. Then if stick and slush trust Bob, and Bob has signed the key of bitcoinstore.com then I have a chain of trust to the store.

Bob has become a certificate authority!

How trustworthy is Bob, really? Does he keep his private key on a computer running a warez copy of Windows XP that is full of malware? It would be nice if we could formalise the "stick and slush trust Bob" part of the above description. Otherwise what stops Mallory turning up and demanding that Trezor trusts him too?

A good way to resolve this conundrum is to come up with a set of best practices, like keeping your private key inside a hardware security module, and setting some rules around when Bob/Mallory should sign a public key. To increase trust in the system and stop Mallory just claiming he follows the rules when really he doesn't, we might want to create a formal audit system and an auditor organisation that verifies these guys are following the rules.

We just re-invented the WebTrust Audit:

   http://www.sslshopper.com/article-what-is-webtrust-for-cas-certification-authorities.html

Eventually as Bob and Mallory get more professional and trusted, they'll discover it's sort of hard to do it in their spare time so they'll create companies and start charging fees. They'll compete in the open market. After a long time, some of them will discover that for the most basic kind of key signing (emails and domain names) it can be entirely automated and done for free.

That's StartSSL.

As the number of trusted parties goes up and they handle more and more key signings, eventually Bob or Mallory might get hacked or pressured by the government. It'd be nice if everyone knew what keys Bob and Mallory had signed, in a more scalable way than just relying on everyone to upload all their keys to the MIT key server.

That's certificate transparency.

I hope you can see now why the PGP web of trust would eventually end up being pretty similar to the regular PKI, if it got big enough.

I can never keep track of how to follow this.  When can we expect the next dividend?

*I've not paid attention to Pyramining in months.

Do you really think this will work again after Labcoin (without super solid evidence)? I doubt it and I really hope I'm right..

To be honest even in real life situations it's not regulated.

Say person A meets person B at a casino. Person A transfers 1BTC to person B and person B gets up and walks out the door, what does person A do?

This is obviously an extreme case but not at all impossible.

On the other hand and not unrelatedly, the passphrase has to be strong. A brain wallet based on remembering the secret code “strawberries” isn’t a very good brain wallet, even if you don’t forget it. The reason is that a number of people also won’t be forgetting strawberries, and it’s certainly possible that some other guy one day just decides to use that passphrase for his brain wallet, triggering de facto marriage and pooling of assets between you two. And you don’t even know the guy!

Tinkering with these problems a novel idea suddenly occurred to me. You could write a bit of software that takes a picture, picks four random numbers and spits out a key. That’s your key.

MPOE-PR, I always enjoyed reading your posts even when I was just a lurker. But this one really left a bad taste in my mouth.

But why did you feel that the skin color of the characters was relevant to the story?

Imagine I catch my son stealing cookies from his sister. So to teach him about stealing and honesty I tell him a story about the Gentile boy who plays fair and never lies and the Jewish boy who is always trying to trick and steal from his friends and he winds up with everyone hating him. Why not just tell my son about a bad boy and a good boy?

What does their ethnicities/religion have to do with the story? What does that say about me? And what does it do to the minds of impressionable people that hear that story from me?

In the spirit of Bitcoins we try to remain as anonymous to the process as possible as we will be taking on some controversial projects as you might imagine.

Sorry, I thought that saying, "I have been managing a small group with my friends...", made it clear that the group I have been managing has been a small one and that it was a group of friends...
We have some paperwork but none that I have any right to show. Due to our limited funds we have had limited room for growth, I mainly have been handling the hardware in making sure that it continues hashing and have been maintaining open communication channels within our group.

Any update?

Plans to reinstate BTC-TC: Don't panic!

Considering changing to Inputs.io from Bitcoin QT client as I have had computer issues which make me a little nervous on the safety issue, ie. losing access to my BTC QT.

I have had a look at the Inputs.io and it appears to be quite good.

Any comments are appreciated.

Oh all i need to do is go get a second computer? Is that all? Get real.

I know i am being a bit of a dick here, but every time I see someone getting robbed it is their fault. There is nothing wrong with the system no changes need to be implemented there is nothing to fix because the problem isnt the way that it works but my ignorance or my behavior.

I will not be disclosing why. That is like giving away all the questions for a test. Just know that we are working very hard to collect sufficient data to prevent fraud. There is no guide on how to prevent fraud related to bitcoin and we are learning as we go.

So, pro tip #1: there's so much to do and so few people capable of doing it in Bitcoin that if your plan makes sense and you seem even remotely competent everyone else who is competent will breathe a sigh of relief. They aren't going to "steal" your idea of doing the absolutely fucking obviously banal, cause so much is needed I couldn't begin to tell you.

Pro tip #2: if you are incompetent, the people who are competent aren't going to steal your business early. They are going to steal it late, just like MPEx demolished GLBSE. They don't need early mover advantage, they will come to your market six months or a year late, break off your arms and beat you over the head with them until you are reduced to a bloody mess.

So, forget about anyone "Stealing" your business. When S.DICE was announced, a bunch of forum muppets rambled on about how it's not worth its valuation because "everyone could do it". And I laughed at them then and so to prove my point that they're laughable idiots they declared that they shall do it! It's been months, who has managed to steal the business? You can't steal any business from the competent, and if you're competent yourself you don't even try to, cause it makes no business sense.

Most bitcoin-exchange listings are backed by real corporations.

Why hasn't anyone gone for a listing on a traditional exchange (not necessarily in the US - but even OTC/Pink Sheets?)

MPOE-PR: I know this is off topic for this thread, but how does MPOE deal with securities compliance
and the possibility of shutdown by the SEC?