The OP is saying the total value of bitcoins minus Seigniorage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seigniorage) is too high.  That's a valid point.  It takes money to mint BTC, and that money is paid by the users of BTC.

TonyT

Not really true.  The same thing is said of gold miners, in that they "set the price of gold" and that "gold can never fall below the costs of mining it", but time and again this 'rule' is violated.  The OP has it right.

Excellent post and I think you know the answer.  Bitcoin is not "free".  Seigniorage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seigniorage) is, as you say, 10% a year.  So do the math:  in 7 years the stock of money in Bitcoin will be halved, unless, as you say, new money comes in.  But new money is getting harder to find.  I myself--a Bitcoin long who has two Bitcoin exchange accounts, one in the USA, one in the UK--have yet to buy any Bitcoin because the transactions have been canceled (coinbase.com) or slow in arriving.  I may drop out of Bitcoin if I don't get bitcoin soon. And it took me 44 hours to install Armory, my PC wallet, and I am told that is not unusual.  Only 7000 full Bitcoin nodes exist--a tiny number that makes the Bitcoin P2P network very fragile. Further, the chief scientist Gavin A. has stated himself he sees a day when users get charged for using the P2P network, and already as you know there is a minimum recommended transaction fee for every bitcoin send.  Further G.A. has said anonymity may not always be the same as today in future versions of the Bitcoin P2P network, which will make this network less attractive to the principle people who use bitcoin and don't just horde it for speculation, and that would be black marketeers.

In short, Bitcoin is a bit of a Ponzi scheme for black marketeers working in the dark market.  And, as others have pointed out, the transaction fees in established payment schemes that use fiat currencies, like PayPal, like Western Union, and the like, while high, at least have the advantage of being transparent.  In Bitcoin, these fees are hidden.  Bitcoin is not free of transaction costs, is not anonymous, depends on a fragile P2P network, and is hard to convert to and from fiat currencies.

I see.  When you solve the Capchcha's what is the purpose, I guess defeating the anti-bot provision?  And viewing the ads on the page is what they want you to see?

Edit-- too slow, it will take too long to get to their minimum limit to withdraw.

How often do you change your server seed?

Who is the escrow?  The forum has a moderator who acts as escrow agent?  You are selling for 135 $?  Not 135 bitcoin.  I see.

Sounds like a good deal, but sorry I still don't have any bitcoin yet, though I've ordered it a while ago. 

Ah, it's morning where you are?  So you gave me a clue.  Maybe you are in Latin or South America after all, or even in the USA, as an immigrant from Russia.  Keep talking, I want to know more about you my friend.

Nice spot of a programming error.  Indeed you could have stayed silent and profited.  But I doubt this character gives you any reward.  He's a slippery character out to make a quick buck seems to me.  Whether or not he is corrupt remains to be seen.  He may even be honest, albeit slippery and without any morals whatsoever.

It's also an example of why you should never do your own "home grown" randomizer.  (A programmer's rule of thumb that I have broken myself, I code in C#).  In fact, had he used rand(), as you say, perhaps rand() can be broken, but it would not have been as easy to break as the error he made that you saw.

Also it's interesting that the loss of a mere 5 BTC --about USD $3000--will shut down a site.  Thinly financed, fly by night.

Not really. I couldn't get satoshi sent to me.  I went to the site you suggested, and to the site upstream of this thread, and filled out the Capchcha, and saw the ads, and then got this: "150 satoshi was sent to your Microwallet.org account."

Not to the Bitcoin address I told them.  I don't want to open an account with Microwallet.org... what to do?  I have no BTC and the BTC I ordered is a week away...but beggars can't be choosers!

TonyT

Very interesting Mobius7.  I assumed that when I ran Armory, I was a full node.  But you are saying I have to fiddle with my router/firewall as well?  Interesting.  You are right, 7k full nodes is nothing.  I am in a developing country and maybe that's why I always have a hard time loading Armory (takes forever):  not that many nearby nodes.

TonyT

KingOfSports, you seem like an OK guy, so how did you get the below red flag next to your name?  I'm curious how this would happen, is it a troll who decides to smear you? Or maybe, like in business, if you do enough business eventually some a hole will be displeased for some reason?

TonyT

Trust: -1: -2 / +2(2)
Warning: Trade with extreme caution!

I am watching this thread, and if possible, please feel free to tell how long it took to download the databases and resynch Armory.  It took me 44 hours and I want to see if I'm an outlier or not.

But the price of BTC has been very STEADY lately, and even FALLING, so why doesn't Coinbase.com trade?  I think they have internal issues caused by compliance with FinCen.  They are afraid to deal with anybody except regular repeat business.  Any new customer or any large transaction is treated with suspicion.  Either that, or they have other problems we are not yet aware of. 

Coinbase is big, but the bigger they are, the harder they fall.  I will now use bitstamp, where I also have an account.

I feel your pain.  As I wrote in another thread, the other day they cancelled my small order to buy (1 BTC) after initially withdrawing money from my US bank, as "too risky", even though I complied with all their terms, it was a US bank they withdrew from, I had two-factor authentication and the price of BTC actually fell, so the trade was even more profitable for Coinbase.  No excuse for this behavior.  

Avoid Coinbase.com, they are very erratic.  I am based outside the USA but I used a US proxy server so they did not know that.

Where is a faucet?  Can you send me some bitcoin please?  A small amount?  I need it to experiment with.  The bitcoin I ordered is not yet here.  I will send it back to you.  Just send me enough to have a "round trip" from you to me and back to you.  My Bitcoin address is 135D1oL8Ud6cCJZaSZ34pU2qrpC81xPQTi 

Thanks!

Good one.  I wish I had his IP address...which bitcointalk.org probably tracks, though if he's smart he is using a VPN to cover his tracks.  My guess, with wide variance allowed, is that he's Slavic since to do a dice site properly you need some programming skills, which those countries have more than the Latin countries.  And if he was Asian he would not write the way he does... In any event, I'm sure he will try to make money fast then disappear if there's any heat from authorities.  In Russia you can bribe the authorities to look the other way anyway, if you have connections.

From what I've learned in the last few weeks, a lot of Bitcoin founders and whales agree with you.  They will IMO try and change Bitcoin to be less anonymous and more like a very cheap and powerful Western Union or PayPal.  If not, I'm afraid Bitcoin will go the way of "Linux" in the OS desktop market:  a mere niche product with not much following except from diehards like drug dealers (for BTC not Linux users).

Thanks for the reply.  As you can probably tell, my tone towards Bikini has shifted in the last few posts from inquisition to a polemic, which he realizes and I suspect is glad for the change of pace.  After all, BikiniDice IMO just wants this thread to die and go back to business as usual for these official business threads, along the lines of:

AwEsoMe SiTE BRo!  When u gonna GET LIVE NudE GIrlz??   

It's interesting that you tried to and offered to ban a user.  Thinking one step ahead, as usual. ;-0

Are you really going to study it, BikiniDice?  I must say this about you:  most dice owners would have not replied in your manner, but tried to play it cool, which I think is admirable on your part.  That is, a lot of these dice owners are just smooth talkers, and do nothing.  They simply want to sweep any fraud under the carpet.  I was reading a thread (where dooglus was involved) with another dice site, and that operator kept denying everything until the evidence was too much, and he had to give in (the issue was provably fair).  At least you show an ability to learn, but, I am afraid that it's just an act.  

It's too bad dooglus got out of the dice business.  You can see the man has character and was not trying to cheat anybody, just provide entertainment.  He actually respects the law (unlike most of these dice operators, I bet some of them are downright criminals who have spent time in jail so it's not a big deal to them to go to jail), tried to be fair and was fair, and, impressively, actually knows programming.  More of a scientist than a businessman, to his credit.

Here is a question for you BikiniDice:  do you track your customers IP address?  If not, why not?  It's useful marketing information to know where your steady customers come from.  Further, what if one of your steady customers is a gambling addict?  Do you cut him off from gambling, like a bartender cutting off an alcoholic from another drink?  I bet not.  You don't care if one of your customers gambles away their life savings--their money is simply your profit.  You have no heart, are an exploiter, not a creator.  A parasite.  Have a good day and good luck my Slavic 'friend'.