On another topic, if you want to standarize this “national bill to bitcoin address” process, you should use currency codes (e.g. USD and MXN instead of US and MEX).

I like this idea. However, there's something that bugs me...

When you add the bitcoins to the bill address, they are unspendable online (unless you happen to agree with all the parties required for the multisig). That means that if I receive a physical 0.5 BTC payment, there's no way I can add them to my phone wallet so I can buy this nice thing I just saw on the Internet.

Doing this would “fork” the bitcoins, in the sense that physical bitcoins would be separate from the online ones, which would lead to having two currencies.

I know all this is a very tough problem, but maybe the solution doesn't need to be literally having bitcoins in your hand.

Well, my original post is more about the technical issues of playing online multiplayer games without a central server. Poker is the example given in the book, but I think any kind of game would be equally hard to implement in this way, wouldn't it?

I'm currently not interested in the legal implications of this (whether gambling is legal, minors are involved, etc.). That would be discussion for another post.

I was checking my old books, and found one called Game, Set and Math by Ian Stewart. I liked this as a kid because it had interesting math problems (although at the time I couldn't fully understand them).

I decided to check it, and found something interesting. In one chapter, two characters called Tweedledim and Tweedledumb discuss about playing poker by phone. They are worried that the other one can cheat, so they develop a trustless system with an asymmetric encryption, in such a way that one of them can shuffle and deal the cards without knowing which are which.

Obviously I didn't know Bitcoin when I was a kid (simply because it didn't exist), but now I do, and I find some similarities in the concepts. And seeing that Bitcoin is real and has worked for years (even if it's still economically unstable) I'm curious about this “poker by phone” idea.

Has anybody developed an actual implementation of a decentralized poker game (or any other kind of game, for that matter)? Or is there something wrong with the theory that would make this impossible?

In theory, downloading the blockchain helps strengthen the network because it becomes harder to falsify it. But in my opinion, there are already many nodes around the world which would take a long time to beat, so there should be no problem with not downloading it. On the other hand, if you do have the opportunity to download it, then do it.

I decided to enter and use it, just for the lulz, but I can't even find an address to send money to or any login button or anything. If you're going to scam me, do it right.

I'm sorry, but I would find it very hard to remember it using this method. (which is the letter that will be a number now?)

Microsoft has 16, and it has been like that for years

I use KeePass with the default (20 characters). Should I increase it?

I've never seen such a thing. Do you have examples of this?

If I had to pay, I wouldn't have joined this forum (mainly because at the time I didn't know how Bitcoin worked).

The problem with bitcoin-qt is that it downloads the blockchain, which can take days if starting fresh. For casual users, a thin wallet like Multibit or Electrum is the best option.

I agree. (?)

Are you saying you don't have a physical location for your service? If so then there's no way it could appear in CoinMap.

Nice! I hope you invite us some day.

How come the island is cheaper than the villa?

Maybe it's a little late for this response, but here it goes.
When you have a wallet on Multibit, the file path is shown in the title bar. So, when you made the transaction, you could have looked at it to see where the wallet was coming from (I don't think you can do this now with a nonexistent wallet, though).

If you deleted your wallet while Multibit was open, I don't know what could have happened. Maybe it was stored in RAM or something... I honestly am not willing to test this scenario.

Can I use external images as smileys on my posts here? (example: )

Or should I always use the ones from the forum? (example: )

Is there any kind of restriction about this?

You should never delete the wallet files unless you already have backups. That's why the uninstaller doesn't remove them.