Bitcoin will have a hard time getting bigger if we're only going for smart people who understand technology...
I, for one, want to get these "20 year olds with an iphone paid for by their parents" to join the hike. Bitcoin users don't need to understand the technology, as long as it works. Who understands how iphones work? I sure don't. Still lots of people are using them (I'm not, but I don't understand how my ZTE smartphone works either, anyway). Same for computers and stuff. Hell most people don't even understand economy but that doesn't impede them from using local currencies to buy stuff, am I wrong? People use what they're told to use, may it be indirectly, through fashion and advertising, or directly, through laws and government policies.
We can get them to use bitcoin by making it trendy. Easiness of use and advertising are the major keys to it.

Bitcoin will only become big if it becomes accessible to everyone easily. Most people don't want the hassle. When bitcoin becomes as easy to use as it's safe, people will naturally start using it.
It already has a bunch of qualities, such as low fees and fast transactions.

The only few remaining flies on the ointment are mostly related to bitcoin being a nerdy, hard to use currency and its volatility, which is scaring people away.

Sorry for what I'm about to say but people mostly behave like sheep: the more people use bitcoin the more people start using bitcoin. All it takes is for it to be easy to use, some good advertising, and that's the trick. We all should take some advertising and designing lessons form Steve Jobs ;-)

A lot of people buy on https://localbitcoins.com/ , I think.
Or you can transfer money in dollars/euros/another currency to an exchange such as Kraken or Bitfinex and then convert it to bitcoins through the exchange.

It's all down to how much anonymity you need. Localbitcoins can provide full anonymity if you want but exchanges will always ask for a lot of information about you.

As for me I buy at Family Mart, which is probably the easiest, cheapest, as well as safest way available. But that's only for if you live in Taiwan (or are there just for travelling, for that matter). Only one thing: it's not anonymous at all since you need an available phone number (of course linked to your ID). Sometimes I also buy directly from a friend.

Based on that you should be able to find you own way.

China is about as communist as the Democratic Republic of Congo is a democracy.
And human rights are a western concept. We can't compel the whole world to think like us.

Now any country who wants to own a share of the great bitcoin scheme only has to do one thing: lower their electricity costs so that miners won't want to settle in China anymore but will have an incentive to come to them. In time either that will happen, either China will have to raise electricity costs. Every single person who's been to China will tell you that the internet is horribly slow there. Plus there's the great firewall, which brings uncertainty on top of it. Miners would like to leave China. They're only staying there because electricity costs are ridiculous. If bitcoin becomes bigger, governments will start to want a share. See what I mean?

There is no perfectly safe way. Usually people will sell you either paper wallets either hardware wallets (such as trezor) as the safest ones out there. Having bitcoins on an online wallet like is usually not a good idea but a desktop wallet (or if you absolutely want an online wallet, then blockchain.io) will offer satisfactory levels of safety, depending on what you do with your computer. If you have the habit of clicking wherever you mouse goes and downloading boatloads of stuff using torrent you're facing a greater risk than if you're using your computer solely for bitcoin.
That was for hackers.

Now usually governments don't confiscate bitcoins (apart if you're in Russia, maybe? I don't even know). Bitcoins are private property and usually will be legal (or at least tolerated) about wherever you go. The confiscations you've heard about might have been related to the silk road case, where governments confiscated fundings from an illegal drug selling company. Bitcoin only happened to be the currency used for these fundings. It would have been the same if they'd used dollars or euros.

Someone on 4chan apparently endorsed the role of karma : http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/02/15/pharma-bro-martin-shkreli-lied-about-bitcoin-so-someone-spent-his-real-money-on-lube/

Ok, $1,000+ is nothing for Shkreli but this whole humiliation is priceless

Considering that the transaction wasn't recorded on the blockchain (= it never happened) you can consider that he's completely clueless about bitcoin, to the point of thinking that it's possible to get in touch with Satoshi and that he can solve problems related to scammers.
That guy is not only an asshole, he's also ignorant and speaks without knowing. Maybe he's not that smart, in the end.

According to his own claims it's the latter: he said he had transferred the coins to a guy who pretended to be working for Kanye West and wanting to sell him a unique album. He fell for a scammer, so. Well at least that's what he's saying  . A self-made millionaire falling for a bitcoin scammer. If it's true this might be a historical moment . Sadly it looks like a shameless troll more than anything else.

A correction might happen. Though it feels early. I'd say a correction will definitely happen but maybe only at around $450. For now we're going up. Segwit is coming, the Chinese new year ended yesterday. What other fly remains in the ointment, seriously? Right now I can't see any. But yeah, speak, if you think otherwise. I'm all ears. Oh yeah there's Martin Shkreli claiming to have been scammed. That's nothing. It will be forgotten in two weeks.

Oui, surtout, fais gaffe à pas tomber sur un escroc.

...
... Désolé j'ai pas pu m'empêcher, ça faisait un moment que ça me démangeait  

Yeah right he's a troll but I can't quite draw the line between his troll and the truth. Does he really think that Satoshi can be contacted that easily (and that he has any power to help whatsoever) or is it part of the troll? Maybe the misspelling of the name Satoshi itself is a troll. This is bugging me.
This guy is smart anyway. Granted he's a psychopath, but a smart one. He would never fall for such a simple trick. So yeah the whole thing is a troll, but how far does his knowledge of bitcoin go?

Surtout que bon, il vient juste de commencer à faire des va-et-viens dans cette fourchette (d'ailleurs moi je vois même pas de va-et-viens, tout ce que je vois c'est une correction dans un marché très bullish, potentiellement pumpé mais peut-être légitime). Il y a pas une semaine il était à 0,005 et qui sait où il sera dans une semaine ? Dump magistral ? Lune ? Le même endroit ?

Par contre pour un Vénézuelien ou un Kazakh, y a moyen de mieux gagner sa vie comme ça qu'en étant ingénieur.
Peut-être que Yobit ne vérifie pas, mais utiliser un bot ça va pas échapper aux modos par contre...

J'ai toute une liste de posteurs ignorés parce qu'il disent de la merde/ne savent pas parler anglais (désolé mais c'est relou à lire, des trucs dans le style de "in that time bitcoin price is just like that", surtout quand ça commence à s'enchainer) et je suis sûr que les 9/10 doivent être Pakistanais, Kazakhs ou en tout cas de ce coin. J'ai rien contre ces pays mais par contre j'ai quelque chose contre les types qui enchainent les posts de merde pour gonfler leur chèque de fin de mois. Or je ne pense pas me tromper en disant qu'ils doivent certainement venir, dans la majorité, d'Asie centrale.

The more I think about it the more I'd like to see Bernie Sanders elected. His opinion regarding bitcoin is unclear but it can't be worse than the other asshole on the other side, who is probably backed by JP Morgan and other big banks, right? If Trump is elected it's gonna be bad for bitcoin, whatever. So yeah, go Bernie.

Bitcoin is an american movie. Now based on my own data about 100% of the Americans around me have heard about bitcoin. Thus I'd say that yes, chances are that they knew what it meant and that it might even have been made on purpose. Now I'm planning to see this movie but I haven't yet, so I can't really say anything for sure.

Well you're the devil so I thought you'd know of him, at least as of an associate or something. That's surprising now. I guess Shkreli still has more villain work to do in order to be put in the devil's eyes. Never enough, hey. You can always improve.
Having said that, trust me about two things: 1) he didn't lose these coins, this is just him trolling there, and 2) it would be great if someone could fuck him for once.

Yeah I have the same problem here. Though it's been more then a week, for me. Last time I successfully claimed was on February 7. I also stopped recommending it. I guess if it doesn't come back I can definitely leave the world of faucets  . Farmsatoshi was the only one that I hadn't already given up on until now. It was slightly more entertaining then a regular faucet.

Yeah he said he got in touch with Sitoshi himself to recover his bitcoins, guys. That's how you do it! This guy would do the impossible to achieve what he wants to!

Ça fait plus de 6 ans qu'on évoque sérieusement la mort du bitcoin 


Tu peux expliquer en quoi il se fait dépasser de jour en jour d'un point de vue technique. Moi je vois un tas de cerveaux bouillonants perpétuellement en train de trouver des solutions aux problèmes que bitcoin rencontre. Bitcoin tel qu'on le connait aujourd'hui va être dépassé, mais il est en métamorphose constante, et il évolue à une vitesse impressionante. Il me semble justement très vivant, à moi.

Yeah I'd like to know how they handle confirmation times too. Do customers need to leave some ID or something in case the transaction gets cancelled?