In my mind, BitPay has always been a transitional entity. It's core purpose, as far as Bitcoin is concerned, is to introduce merchants to the benefits of this new paradigm while allowing them to remain in their comfort zone. Eventually, once the volatility of the market subsides, merchants will realize that they can save even more money by accepting bitcoins directly instead of paying someone else to process them. By this time, there will hopefully be more opportunities to pay some of their overhead (rent, utilities, employees, etc) with BTC, as well.

At the Texas Bitcoin Conference, Tony Gallippi even confirmed that some of their customers start off immediately converting 100% of their BTC income to fiat but then gradually begin keeping a growing percentage as bitcoins.

I live in San Antonio and sometimes try to be funny. I'd love to help. I can be reached via PM here, the contact page at BitBrew and I occasionally attend the Austin Bitcoin meetup.

Bitcoin2014
Building the Digital Economy

15 - 17 May, Amsterdam

http://bitcoin2014.com/

I just got an email from a friend across the pond who asked me the same question about the conference, almost word for word. Have we met outside this forum, Bit_Happy?

Let's see, one project I'll be announcing in a couple of days - nothing innovative or groundbreaking, just filling a niche in bitcoin space that anyone could have. Honestly, I'm surprised no one has yet.

There's another that I very much want to be a part of but I don't know how much I can bring to the table. The focus will be moving bitcoins into the hands of Latin Americans but, even though my mother is originally from Mexico, I have very few contacts there and even those are distant cousins that I only run into at family reunions. Also, my Spanish is atrocious.

Then there's the idea for a real world service that runs almost autonomously on a decentralized network using Bitcoin or an alt-coin. This was originally proposed by someone else and I just fleshed out the framework a bit so I don't want to discuss it without his knowledge. I feel it might be revolutionary but it's also very disruptive and, since it will take place in meatspace, the threat of being targeted by authorities may prevent enough individuals from supporting the network so that it isn't sustainable although it's entirely legal.

In addition, my partners and I at Operation Fabulous are reinvigorated and newly committed to introducing new users to our Bitcoin based advertising platform. While this may not be a new project, per se, it'll be new to some.

The remaining projects are still in that nebulous "planning" phase that exists solely within my mind.

The question was about Bitcoin's next step, not the stuff that's so easy you can even do it with cash. 

You don't even have to google if you just hang out here long enough. I saw Goat and his Lamborghini in person last week.

When people say this, they are usually referring to the Bitcoin protocol, not the currency (bitcoins with a small b) managed by the network.

Check out Namecoin, FreeSpeechMe, Ethereum, Mastercoin, Open Transactions, and others for how it will be used in the very near future.

I still didn't see that link anywhere on their chapter's website. There is no "Donate" page or link and their "Get Involved" page only shows some contact info and a link to their FB page.

I was at the conference and I thought it was great.

Personally, I was experiencing a bit of physical discomfort - it was colder than I was expecting (March in Austin should be WARM!) and my allergies were knocking me on my ass (this I should have anticipated and prepared for).

Despite my sub-optimal state, I made some interesting contacts, caught up with some friendly and familiar faces, and left ready to throw myself into a dozen more new and exciting projects.

I was about to volunteer but then remembered I'll be attending the conference in New York on the 7th and 8th and won't have the time.

Any other future dates likely?

What, you haven't heard of Operation Fabulous?

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. For an advertising platform, we've done a lackluster job of promoting our own product. We've also been rather neglectful of incorporating features and improvements that many of our customers would like to see. Well, that's all about to change.

We built a new stats system in the backend and a new views and clicks graph on the ad space page. Within a few days we will also add a "top referrers" table to the ad space page that will be useful for advertisers to see if an ad space is placed on more that one site. We also plan to overhaul the publisher site listing in the coming month to allow searching and filtering instead of a long list which might not be sorted in an ideal way for advertisers. This will also give publishers a better visibility of their ad spaces.

Additional improvements are planned, but we’ll provide updates on the official Operation Fabulous blog as we address them.

Operation Fabulous, serving the Bitcoin community since 2011.

I don't see the Bitcoin option on the website.

I'm still a day behind you but I got you beat in "activity".

Total time logged in: 70 days, 10 hours and 32 minutes.

Offer them at a more competitive price without conditions.

Add a Bitcoin logo to the handkerchief.

Accept escrow.

0.2 BTC

I haven't heard of anything but I never get invited to the cool kids' parties so I wouldn't know.

Too bad we can't tell who's who in person. Look for me tomorrow DM, I'll be sitting on the merchant's panel and I've been hanging out with one of the Bees Brothers and their dad.

Got mine today, too!

Just the other day when I suggested to someone who has displayed some interest before that now might be the best time to acquire some BTC: "This is obviously a bubble. I'll buy some bitcoins when they come back down to a dollar each."