50 BTC sent.

I previously posted an idea to use this as a way of promoting Bitcoin. On reflection, that seems like a poor idea. If you can find someone able to help in Japan and readily willing to take BTC, great. If not, then perhaps the best thing to do is simply to sell off the collected coins and transfer fiat to the chosen charity. It would be unfortunate to come across as trying to wrangle publicity from a tragedy and to do so by dangling donation money in front of a charity only to try to make them jump through hoops to understand Bitcoin and learn how to sell the coins for fiat.

Does anyone here know a grassroots organisation in Japan that they could personally approach? I don't think we'll be collecting a lot of money here, so a small organisation would probably appreciate our donation more than a large one. Also a more personal approach would, to my mind, seem to fit the general distributed nature of the whole Bitcoin system. Perhaps a shelter in the disaster area could use financial help?

Do you know yet who and how the funds collected will ultimately go to?

Almost all absolute statements, especially when it comes to human action, are likely to be false. Government can do good. It does good. The question is whether the overall balance is more "good" or "bad" according to whatever criteria you choose to use.

As I'm sure pretty much everyone knows, shit has really hit the fan with the earthquake and Tsunamis in Japan. Is there a charity organisation that might be persuaded to accept donations in Bitcoin? Japan currently seems to have been the hardest hit by the disaster, but it's of course possible some other areas in the Pacific will need aid more.

I hope it's not too cynical to think this, but perhaps there's an opportunity to both help some people out and to gain some positive publicity for Bitcoin here. Everything is still very much up in the air, but I'll try to look into this as soon as things clear up a bit.

Scenario:
Bitcoin goes big-time. Governments realize they're missing out on a lot of tax income due to people not reporting their BTC trades, or at least suspect they are. Also they know it enables people to transfer large amounts of funds across national borders without detection. What does a government do? I wouldn't be surprised if they just banned using Bitcoin altogether, either directly or indirectly.

Now, this is going to be hard to enforce, assuming a similar level of Internet freedom we enjoy today. However, if Bitcoin is still small enough, I believe it is entirely possible for governments to contain it through propaganda ops, much like they do with drug prohibition. They can't eradicate it, but they can make the population at large hostile to it.

There's an interesting dynamic here: The odds of government intervention rise as Bitcoin gains in popularity. At the same time, the difficulty in disturbing the Bitcoin economy rises as well. The big unknown is how far Bitcoin can develop before governments start trying to shut it down, probably by going after exchanges.

That's not what I asked. My point is, it's perfectly possible for Bitcoin never to gain sufficient critical mass to remain viable and for the economy to slowly grind to a halt, without any technical flaws at all.

Do you seriously think the only way Bitcoin  usage can decrease is if there's a technical weakness found?

Rationality only applies when you already have a goal in mind. One's deepest goals are not usually (I'm tempted to say ever) formed by a rational process. I wouldn't worry about it too much, although it's good to look at why you're doing things from time to time.

Without digging for quotes from this thread, I seem to detect a theme of "we don't matter in the big scheme". My way of dealing with that is a question: If I don't matter in the big scheme of things, why should the big scheme matter to me?

Are you kidding? There is no long term data to speak of. It's perfectly possible for the price to stay at the current level well past a couple of months, or to drop below your artificial rally trendline.

Keep in mind it's our "primal form" as you call it that led to all the technology we have today. Also I get the feeling you're thinking of some kind of lone hero, surviving on their own. Maybe that's not what you meant, but if it was, consider how social Homo has always been. Our brains have evolved to effectively read minds, that should tell you something about our "natural" state.

Sorry, I don't care for it. Too convoluted. Dobry Den's version draws the eye to the relevant information and (if the download links are moved to top) has them grouped naturally. With this design, if I'm trying to read the info for consumers, my eye is being constantly drawn over to the merchant column. At a glance this tells me nothing, that's not a good thing.

The color version looks good. I'd prefer to have the download links at the top, though, now they just break the flow of the page.

Did they actually say they're going to cover it? Sounds to me like just a polite way of saying "I got your message".

This sounds good to me. Free EUR transfers are a big perk since that's the fiat I mostly use anyway, and clear TOS is a big step forward. I've been worried about how things have been going lately to the point of withdrawing my funds from Mt Gox, but if this turns out the way it looks, I think I'll feel comfortable doing business on the exchange again.

I don't see the relevance of  your arguments, unless you're arguing we should only accept as reality things we like.  There is little evidence people choose to be homosexual. It seems to me sexuality is a spectrum, perhaps even a multidimensional grid, between the extremes of which we all fall somewhere, depending on the complex interactions of nature and nurture. Anyway, I digress.

If I understand your argument correctly, you are saying that if nature seems to be saying homosexuality is a disadvantage, the logical thing to do would be to be against homosexuality. There are two problems with this: Nature says no such thing - that is a human interpretation of it. Also, I do not believe it is very easy to change one's sexual orientation, especially at the extremes. Being against homosexuality is like being against rainy weather. One may not like it, but it exists and will continue to exist, whatever one thinks of it.

Because you're completely out of line. Arbitrarily denouncing people like you and some others have done is, in my view, extremely poor behaviour. I for one will not soon forget that. In fact, once all this dies down, I think a summary of what has passed should be attempted, and I think too that the more egregious, baseless accusations should be listed and the authors called out on them.

As for the subject of this thread, I have a fair amount of trust in Mt Gox as far as him acting in good faith goes. He's had the opportunity to scam me out of some cash and has not done so, and overall seems to conduct his trade with integrity.

This does not mean I trust his abilities in dispute resolution, though. I simply do not have enough history to make any judgement on whether or not he is capable and fair in such matters. The outcome of the current dispute will be important in determining my opinion on that. 

Witch! Witch! Burn the witch!

These are serious accusations in a community built on trust. I hope you have more to back that up than a half-assed hunch.

This just sounds contrived to me. Not everything needs to involve financial transactions.

Also nothing to protect against scams. One of the better things about using Mt Gox is that as long as you can trust the service itself, the trades are safe. Either you engage in direct trade with others, who may or may not hold up their end of the bargain, or you use some third party to mediate, reducing or even completely removing the need to trust the trade partner, but introducing the need to trust the third party. If I understand your idea correctly, it would be some kind of decentralized system that performs the function of a trusted third party without anyone actually having to trust a third party. I don't see how that can be done.

Opinion on homosexuality is quite unrelated to one's opinion on evolution. Did you know the odds of a mother's male offspring being gay appear to increase as the number of previous male offspring born to that mother increases? This may be a simple accident due to the mother's body learning to "defend" against a foetus, or it might be a phenomenon driven by selective pressure. Maybe, in a tribal society, it is useful to have uncles who do not go off to have offspring of their own.

Few Atheists who believe in science and actually understand the scientific process to any degree have any firm belief on first causes. There are theories which may or may not be proven false in the future. Understanding  how things began isn't necessarily relevant to understanding how things work, anyway, depending on the level of granularity  you want in your explanations of the universe.


These seem to be strawmen. I see nothing worth commenting on.