bitcoin.de now is fully integrated with fidor bank so it's near instant. Kraken.com works well and has some cool stuff in the pipeline. You can SEPA to Bitstamp as well but they only deal in USD so your money will be converted, it's normally a good rate though.

Is there anywhere with such a disconnect between what elements of government are saying and the banks?

The UK BTC economy is pitiful compared to most first world countries. If the government was keen on moving things along they'd put together some guidelines so banks can't hide behind the lack of regulation excuse.

A layer on top might address something. The core development looks to be extremely steady from the outside. I guess it becomes more than an intriguing challenge if you know thousands are watching your every move.

Dick swinging maybe? Perhaps it sends a thrill through a miner to process such a huge transaction. Or perhaps it's to prove an obscure point.

Spending several hours on this forum will turn up pretty much every question ever asked. I still learn something new every time I peruse it and it's by far the greatest repository of information and experience.

Obviously there's a huge amount of noise but you'll bat from subject to subject in no time.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/ check the side bar here for some links.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoinbeginners is devoted solely to newcomers but it doesn't look all that useful to me.

If you want to know about the mechanics of buying and using then start off by letting everyone know what country you're in. It's a whole lot more straightforward in certain places.

Hmm. Not my area of expertise I'm afraid. There are plenty of coin mixers and tumblers out there which'll make inputs very hard to trace and the blockchain.info wallet has the shared send feature but I'm not sure how reliable it is. No doubt someone'll be along with a proper answer soon.

They're a lot more worried about perception rather than the letter of the law. Ultimately they're a private entity so they can choose who they do and don't deal with and verifiable gambling = potential trouble from The Man.

If you've got that many coins then you probably have an army of robot-brained nubiles to handle the boring little details. I agree with you though. I'd probably need a few weeks of training to work up to it. 

They're desperate to appear whiter than white. There's a lot of people who are claiming problems so look into covering your tracks.

https://www.reddit.com/r/poker/comments/2dxuqw/be_careful_seals_users_coinbase_has_blocked_me/

Have you looked into circle.com? That'll be cheaper and a whole load less sketchier than handing over money on here.

It's been said that Coinbase is tracking transactions a couple of transfers down the line. I've no idea where they find the time for that but it might be true.

Instead of mixing you could also send your coins from coinbase to another exchange and then withdraw.

The market's too thin and piddly to allow for steady growth at the moment. It'll continue in waves of despair and elation until it becomes considerably larger and then it's that much harder to bat around.

Better distribution ultimately. They could've dumped all along on the AE as well.

They're about as anal as can be. Considering they're trying to be legit in a very sketchy area, I'm surprised they don't ravage more people. Similar to Bitstamp, they're trying to please the people watching them by getting on their customers' tits with ludicrous paranoia.

There are a few bigger ones out there. I think there's one which is over 100,000 pages. I'll save reading that for when I'm in hell. I wonder how many people on here have perused every page of this thread? A fair few I'll bet.

Surely Skynet sent it from the future via aliens and Zeus?

I'm not so sold on that.

It's great that someone enjoys a download. The mugs who poured a ton of time, money and talent into making it available deserve compensating.

Crowd funding and micro payment may well be the way forward, but there's a pretty mucky middle ground to be crossed yet.

Anyone under 35 or so effectively assumes that all media can be free. We may end up up to our noses in self indulgent shite that's given away.  I'd rather pay for some professional standards and filtration.

And people just don't understand regular money either. Shockingly few have ever actually bothered to spend a few minutes reading about the nature of the whole thing.

I wonder whether BTC will reach a stage where knowing anything about it is as unnecessary as fiat, or whether it'll inspire people to look deeper.

I guess anyone going in for the auction is pretty exchange averse to start with. It would be a monumental grind to spread across several exchanges for days on end. I'd do it myself, but there are some strange/ more sensible folks out there.

There's not much they can do with it other than sell it. There's nothing approaching actual merchant use there. That was squished pretty rapidly when it looked like it might be brewing.

Perception, lack of understanding, no incentive to use it.

The services we have now are light years ahead of a couple of years ago, but to buy something with it still involves jumping through hoops to obtain it, learning how to guard it and it would probably cost more unless there were serious discounts.

If and when the whole process is made mindless, that's when it might start going places. Look at Abra. That's a new remittance service with no mention of bitcoin on its site. All people using it will know is that it's quick, cheap and works.