Coinpal / Coincard is my very favorite way to buy and sell bitcoins. Competitive rates and super easy to use.

Yeah, I was aware of the other options, but bitcoin market isn't open to everyone, otc trading via IRC seems a bit too complicated for most average people, and as far as I can tell, there is no option to sell bitcoins to morpheus, although I may have missed it on his site.

Having a super-convenient and competitive service like this is going to make a much bigger impact, IMHO.

You'll want to make sure any new charities are real, otherwise this could be used for fraud.

It is also possible, though unlikely, that someone associated with a real existing charity could use this for fraud.

I used the service a couple times while it was open on Friday. It worked great.

My suggestions for gift cards I buy regularly for my wife: Starbucks and Jamba Juice (incidentally, I get both of these at Costco for a significant discount off face value, so I might not buy them from CoinCard)

On the other hand, my wife might be less skeptical about bitcoins if they were bringing her a steady stream of frappuccinos and smoothies

One other thought: I do expect a drop in bitcoin prices as a result of this service being released into the wild. Bitcoin miners like myself who were saving up to meet the 800 dollar minimum required to get a wire transfer out of MtGox will now be able to sell their bitcoins much more cheaply and easily. If the service does not limit the volume in some way, this could have a major short-term impact on bitcoin prices as multiple people who were waiting to sell their bitcoins all use it at once.

How long until Coinpal/Coincard integrates with MtGox, or even replaces it?

I understand. I hope I didn't offend anybody. I am very open with my workers about what I will pay them and what they must do, and they seem very happy with the deal. I wish to point out that bitcoin rewards people who can find ways to mine more efficiently, and I'm responding to that incentive.

I'm paying some acquaintances to mine bitcoins for me on their video cards, but they don't know that's what they are doing. I'm paying them about double their electricity costs, and they think it's a great deal.

Being a greedy b*st*rd, I don't want them to discover bitcoins and start mining for themselves. I've managed to obfuscate the code well enough, but I am worried that someday one of them will look at the network traffic and see the connection to mining.bitcoin.cz and then abandon me to mine on their own. Then my greedy little scheme will be over!

I asked slush if I could pay him to give me an alternate access point on a server that didn't say "bitcoin" in the name, but he wasn't interested.

If anyone else can set some kind of relay between my workers and slush's server, I'd be interested in paying you to use it. I could use as many as three different servers doing this for me (for redundancy in case one goes down), and I'd pay $10/month apiece in bitcoins. PM me if you think you can help me out. I'll update this post once I have three servers and don't need further help.

Please don't mention your server name in this thread, as that would kind of defeat the purpose of keeping the server name unassociated with bitcoins.

I recommend against writing "bitcoin.org", as it is not as likely to arouse curiosity (people will figure someone is just trying to drive traffic to a website).

I recommend writing "What is bitcoin?" in red ink in the margins of the bill. That is what I may or may not have done to the bills in my wallet

Anybody willing to make a bounty for a "spray paint artist" to write "what is bitcoin?" in a public place?

What about someone who does some massive prank which advertises bitcoins and makes the news? For instance, if I had the resources to drop off a 5000-ton monolith in the middle of Times Square with "What is bitcoin?" engraved in it, that would probably make the news. Surely there are other outrageous pranks (which are actually possible) that someone could get paid for.

I'm (only half-jokingly) claiming that I caused the bitcoin rally:

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2555.80

After my post yesterday, the price jumped hard to 0.95, then dropped. Since then, it has been headed up rapidly.

It sucks though because I wasn't done buying my bitcoins!

If the rally made you happy (and you agree that I might have caused it), you can always thank me with a tip: 19hMEAaRMbEhfSkeU4GT8mgSuyR4t4M6TH

Bitcoin values have shot up since I posted these ideas. I wonder if speculators are betting that ease of buying bitcoins through coinpal is going to result in lots more people trying to buy them. What have I DONE??

I'm taking credit for the jump, whether or not I had anything to do with it

I love this service. So much easier than any other way to get BTC.

Suggestion: Have three-tiers of purchasing

Lowest level: Can only purchase a very small number of BTC, using your current structure.

Middle level: Can purchase more once you send them a letter containing a password to their confirmed paypal address. For the cost of a stamp, you can prove that a paypal account is not stolen. This could even be automated using a mailing service like l-mail.com

Highest level: Can purchase large quantities of bitcoins, which are "shipped" to the confirmed address using a password inside a USPS padded envelope (with additional padding to make it is just large enough to qualify for a tracking number). Shipping with a tracking number qualifies the shipper for seller protection in case of fraud. People sell gold all the time using Paypal, so I would imagine that selling BTC should be possible too. Note that you have to get signature verification on shipments worth more than $250.

The biggest risk is that fraud will occur on the highest-level tier, and PayPal will investigate and decide that you are breaking their user agreement somehow and shut you down.

You might be able to get additional protection by doing more of your communication through paypal (for instance, if the buyer gives you their bitcoin address through paypal, you could then prove that you transferred the bitcoins to the address they provided). However, that would rely on the support folks at PayPal not being lazy and incompetent, which may not be a good bet based on some things I have read.

Since you are building a reputation for honesty, you could probably also offer to buy bitcoins using paypal, making it easier for people to sell them as well.

I was saving this idea for possibly using it myself someday, but I decided to give it away to whoever wants it. Hopefully this information won't push up the value of bitcoins too quickly, since I haven't finished buying the ones I want yet. If anyone benefits from this idea, feel free (but not obligated) to tip me here: 19hMEAaRMbEhfSkeU4GT8mgSuyR4t4M6TH

Back to the topic at hand (custom mining rigs):

I spent some time trying to figure out how to build one for myself, and how much that would cost. I eventually gave up, because I don't have time for a project like that. However, it would be very tempting if someone were selling purpose-built mining rigs that I could just buy and plug in.

I think it very likely that there is a market (of unknown size) for selling boxes like that - built by someone with PC building skills but no access to cheap electricity and sold to someone like myself who does have access to cheap electricity but doesn't have much free time. Such a buyer would want a PC optimized for the highest MHash/$. All the seller would have to do is set up a simple web store and advertise it on this thread.

Please add coinpal.ndrix.com to the list of places to buy bitcoins. You can use paypal!!!

I just used it to buy 20BTC, and it was smooth and easy.

The author is very brave to risk all the fraud associated with selling Bitcoins. Best of luck.