I use Instawallet. Jav hasn't run off with my money, and I haven't been hacked. I trust it with A FEW bitcoins.

(I also like the way the site operates, including the fact that there's no password to slow you down. Yeah, it may be less safe, but since you shouldn't be trusting an online site with the bulk of your bitcoins anyway, it doesn't impact my risk assessment much.)

I'm fairly certain they do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_(signals_intelligence)

I strongly disagree.

Setting aside for a moment the actual "wrongness" of obscuring one's finances in the first place....

If the little old lady selling some silver coins and a couple of 1/10 ounce gold eagles at the flea market asks for ID before selling to anyone, she's going to go home without having made a sale. She doesn't need anyone else's ID, and frankly, the harm she could do with it is far greater than the harm I'm going to do buying a few hundred dollars worth of metal.

Ditto to the traditional, reputable coin shop. It's not uncommon to show ID when selling a lot of metal, or jewelry or the like, on the off chance you're fencing stolen goods. But buying? What would be the point of looking at the name of someone who buys a gold coin? It's not like the mafia or drug cartels (or your neighborhood drug dealer, I would imagine) do business in gold. Last I heard they had a preference for euros....



I agree, using a physical money requires some sort of physical presence and interaction at some point. I was just pointing out that, at least here in the U.S. (for now, anyway), using gold can be fairly anonymous.

Now I'm wondering if MyBitcoin was the one that hacked Mt. Gox.

No, thanks. Especially now that laptops and even smartphones can do most of what I'd imagine most would want, I just don't see the need for that sort of technology to be commonplace. Really, besides bitcoins, what could you have on your home computer that would be THAT important to access from anywhere, that you can't/won't carry with you, or just store in the cloud?

I've never had to provide ID, background info, or even my name when buying gold, although I chose to once or twice by buying via debit card. Just find a brick-and-mortar shop that sells gold. Take cash. Buy smallish amounts. Nothing to it.

If you want to spend a lot, either first build up a rapport with the shop owner over time, or look for several more out-of-the-way places to buy from. (Look hard. Odd downtown shops and flea markets can surprise you.)

Neither for me.

So far I've only bought from bitcoinexchange.cc and the designated trader for Mt. Gox (sent a money order, got BTC after almost 2 weeks...)

I currently keep a few BTC with Instawallet, for quick smartphone spending. I expect to eventually lose those, so I won't be keeping a significant amount with them, or any online service.

I've been looking at the smartphone apps that handle bitcoins. Haven't actually tried any yet (would greatly appreciate updates on how well those are working at this point.)

I keep a good chunk encrypted but readily accessible, offline. But the bulk are kept in "cold storage."

My only regret so far is the bitcoin donation I made to a radio show that shall remain unnamed, after hearing one of the hosts admit he got burned in this mybitcoin thing and lost their donations. You'd think he would have learned after getting burned with Mt. Gox (after which a co-worker, on air, chided him for taking a decentralized currency and basically centralizing it.) I wanted to slap the guy. That's just ridiculously lax.

Most services can be trusted somewhat. It's just that on the 0%-100% scale of trust, most currently are on the low end of the scale. But apparently, too many people will ignore that (or wrongly calculate the trust level) and store an absurd number of bitcoins with them.

ALL bitcoin users should keep the bulk of their bitcoins in an offline, backed-up wallet. Duh.

Exactly.

Side note: I can't help but wonder why so many people seemed to prefer mybitcoin over instawallet. Because it had a password? Both were e-wallets, and not worth keeping a lot of bitcoins in.

Some on this thread seem to be unaware that the rate of bitcoin "printing" can't change.

If interest drops, and only a dozen miners are left, then once the difficulty adjusts, there will be 50 new bitcoins every 10 minutes (on average.)

If China sets up a million new miners, then once difficulty adjusts, there will be 50 new bitcoins produced every 10 minutes.

That's the point of the difficulty adjustments: to ensure that the rate of new bitcoin production remains constant. The only way to change that is to alter the bitcoin protocol itself. Good luck getting a majority of the bitcoin community on board with that. 

Only because the debt would have, legally, been paid.

Of course, those receiving the trillion-dollar platinum coins would probably be a little upset.

Or they might just deposit them, flooding the USD market, and life would go on, albeit with a new surge of inflation.

1) Staying out of paper markets/investments. No 401k, mutual funds, etc.

2) Acquiring commodities, capital tools, and commodity-producing assets

 a) Ideal commodities at this point: silver, gold, bitcoins.

 b) Capital tools (probably not the right term) include things like, at the low end, a quality tool set that will last a lifetime. Also includes readily-usable skills.

 c) I would have just said income-producing assets, but just being able to generate cash probably won't cut it. Rental properties will continue to be worse and worse in this regard as inflation surges, especially considering the market crash isn't over yet.

While this is technically true, you seem to be drastically underrating its utility as a digital means of exchange. Let's just say that at this point, until something superior comes along, bitcoins will continue to have significant value.

The Hunt brothers attempted to use margin. This was their weak point.

Nowadays, the world's silver inventories are being depleted by people actually buying real, tangible silver, paying in full, and physically removing it from the market. There's no singular target to go after anymore. A sudden change in COMEX rules won't stop folks from continuing to buy from their coin shops. And the internet is informing everyone of the true fundamentals. Even the Chinese are becoming eager buyers of silver.

The suppression of the price of silver will be the end of the global bankers.

It's wrong that they've been able to keep their ponzi scheme afloat for so long. But it seems clear to me that a change is imminent.

Multiple times, no less.

Great idea. Instawallet continues to impress.

Without them there would be no Bitcoin in the first place.

"Normal" folks don't think outside the box like this, and certainly don't buck the system and create something that so many others find threatening.

Can't have one without the other. Choose.

You might want to consider New Hampshire. The influence of the Free State Project has led a lot of liberty-lovers there, and they generally embrace any and all non-governmental monies.

Wow.

And people wonder why Wall Street, and in large part due to them, the global economy,  is in the shape that it's in.

This is why the world needs bitcoin in the first place.

Maybe MtGox and CampBX are just "experienced businessmen" and just know when to be discrete (as in just keeping their mouth shut, accepting a little fraud as part of the way business is done, and keeping everyone else—including customers—in the dark about it.) 

Why am I not terribly surprised?