I hope to go somewhere on vacation this summer and would like to be able to pay using BTC.

Either a cruise or some sort of foreign travel.

This is a good point. I like BitPay and it is great for a business but you have a great service that could be very useful for individuals.

There are plenty of people that send and receive money on PayPal that are not businesses.

Then again, I can see some legal gray area if you just start exchanging people's Bitcoins for local currencies. Because then you become an exchange and all the legal BS that goes along with it.

As a payment service, it works well.

I know I would transfer my BTC from MtGox to BitPay for the quick BTC to dollar turn around.

Sweet, I ran across some of your videos while studying for a few of my certs.

Consider how a 100 million dollar sale would affect Bitcoin vs Microsoft.

Microsoft currently has about 8 Billion shares at about $28/share.

Bitcoin has about 11 million bitcoins at about $45/bitcoin.


A 100 million dollar buy/sell for Microsoft would create a fluctuation in price of 10 cents.

A 100 million dollar buy/sell for Bitcoin would create a fluctuation in price of $22.


Now consider that only around 2% of the total amount of Bitcoins is traded daily (could be similar for Microsoft). The amount needed to fluctuate that much is closer to $2 million.

(A quick check shows Microsoft up 16 cents for the day)

MtGox is giving a good example of why patents and copyrights are not as necessary as one would think.

Come out of the gate early, with a new idea that is useful and in demand and you will build a level of trust and a user base where you can dominate for a while.

Is MtGox the best exchange out there? That is debateable. It is up to the other exchanges to provide something better and more useful to attract those customers who flock to MtGox. And it is up to MtGox to stay ahead of the curve.

No monopoly can live without government interference. Other exchanges will start to grab more market share.

Look at Internet Explorer. When I first started doing any web development, I had to conform to Internet Explorer's standards because 95% of web browser use was in IE. Now they are at less than 40%.

With new technology there tend to be a limited amount of companies providing services. The same thing happened with the Internet and web pages. Pets.com jumped out of the gate as the place to go on the Internet for your pet needs. Now it is not so centralized.

Nice...and your hosting services appear to be cheaper than namecheap.

I am not in the service. They did give me dog tags the last time I came out here but not this time.

Perhaps engraving the cross around my neck could work. And if someone stole it from me I could immediately rush to a computer and move my BTC.

Though out here I would probably die from a missile or mortar round...

You are welcome.

Pay it forward.

I sold about 500,000 BTC, it has not gone through yet.

I just burned my house down in hopes that I can get money from the insurance company to pay the loan sharks that are going to take a leg for each week that I do not pay.

PANIC PANIC PANIC!!!

I was wondering about this myself. I am in Afghanistan and have to consider these things.

pawned them for $3 to buy some bitcents

Again, that is why I say that the risk is BitFinex itself. From what I understand it is run by a guy in France as a side job. While I have every bit of faith in his intentions and applaud his initiative, if everything tanks, he will likely not be able to cover anything overly huge.

But yes, if I was someone who were holding on to dollars, a chunk of it would be in BitFinex getting a 100%+ return.

This looks quite cool. It sounds like an innovative approach.

Well, the Fed prints out billions of dollars and gives it to their banker buddies before inflation hits. Then those buddies use that money for investments before inflation hits. Then as it trickles down to you and me the money is inflated.

As for the way Bitcoin was created in order to award early adopters, it allowed people who may have otherwise just tried it out to have a large stake and incentive to make Bitcoin succeed. The risk was also higher early on to put in any time or money because it was an unproven technology.

To go the opposite way of awarding latecomers and not awarding early adopters would have had people waiting to adopt Bitcoin until the incentive was there, which would have led to Bitcoins early demise.

Methinks it was an article on Reason.

Like the dollar?

Google had the same problem early on. Its early adopters could have sold all of their shares at any point and dropped the price drastically.

Very cool. Two of the main things I spend money on in the same week moving to Bitcoin.

I e-mailed my mortgage broker to ask if they will take payments in bitcoin just for the trifecta.


Edit: Response from my mortgage company. No Bitcoin support...darn.

I was able to get on the site last night at home and saw that lending of dollars has over 100% annual return while Bitcoin lending yields 4%.

Even if you do not like Bitcoin or want to play the market, getting a 100% return is a pretty decent place to keep your money.

Though the risk factor is BitFinex itself at that point. Surely, if it were a bank with a track record, 100% returns on loans would be filled quickly.