Maria - you are uniquely positioned to start one hell of a business. My advice? Start a local exchange.

It seems to me that we're putting Rothbard's ideas to the test, then! The internet is a game changer. Everyone knows what money is, and everyone knows that spending money over the internet is expensive and dangerous. Bitcoin's "commodity" value lies in that it is inexpensive to transfer over the internet and, if you're reasonably safe about it, safe to transfer without worrying about someone robbing you blind.

Nice! With the right information, arbitrage eliminates itself!

I'd like to see a prepaid, reloadable debit card offered by a business that provides the following service:

1. Step by step, out of the box instructions for manufacturing your own debit card with a magnetic encoder bought with cash
2. The company sends you the file you need to program your plastic over email
3. You make your own debit card, without having to provide a mailing address.

Yes! And how many will convert to BTC to withdraw their funds? With a net outflow of BTC you could see a high BTC price followed by a large amount of people holding USD, jammed up in line to withdraw their money.

Because Bitcoins usefulness outweighs the shortcomings of its major exchangers. It's features as a medium of exchange are its fundamentals: reasonable anonymity, ease of transfer, deflationary nature, decentralized, etc. etc.

Mine was accepted this morning.

My pass: 10+ random string of letters, numbers and symbols
Balance: less than 10 BTC (I gave them the approximate amount of my last balance as evidence)
Other evidence I submitted: Cities I had logged in from over the past 3 months

Good thread, thanks for the bump!

Thank you, Stupidpal! Smooth transaction.

All sold out at the moment. I may have more invites later.

Go buy 3 ounces of silver bullion. Then, sell them to a reputable bitcoin user. You'd want to only sell to a reputable bitcoin user because you don't have an established reputation yet. So you have to ship the goods first, most likely. With a reputable user, you'll be more assured that he'll pay you upon receipt and that he can then vouch for your trustworthiness. I recommend going through #bitcoin-otc.

Or use bitcoin4cash or bitcoin2cash?

It had turned into a conversation about startups vs. established businesses, anyway.

Also, I spent 5 minutes reading The Venus' projects about section and couldn't figure out what the fuck you guys are talking about. I mostly read sentence after sentence that basically said this over and over again:

"The Venus Project is a leap forward in technological thinking. Old ways of thinking clearly are not serving humankind. Read on to find out about our innovative solutions to the challenges the world faces today. For too long we've been living in a world that.... blah blah blah."

It led me to believe that your project doesn't actually have anything to say.

The futuristic, hypotrophic cities (hitech strip malls) on your home page make me want to puke. Give me a narrow alley and a 450 squarefoot apartment crammed in between hundreds of other apartments, please.

Awesome thread! Of course, if all entrepreneurs were easily scared off, we'd still be living in the dark ages.

This makes me think of a book I'm reading at the moment, The Economy of Cities. The author argues that established, highly efficient, large businesses have their place in the economy, but it is small start up firms that are the driving force behind true economic growth. It takes a hotbed of networked small firms coming up with new work, building on old ideas and cannibalizing technology to move an economy forward. This, for instance, is why Detroit was such a marvelous city up until it turned into a few large auto makers dominating the auto industry. Up until that point the Detroit auto industry was a network of small firms and amateurs working out of their home garages, and they invented the modern automobile. As soon as the economy shifted toward mass production they made themselves redundant, because any city in the world with high industrial capacity can engage in high volume manufacturing. They can't, however, imitate imagination and innovation. Of course, this comes at a price: a high rate of failure and low efficiency. But, the author of The Economy of City argues that these are actually the signs of a strong city economy.

More here: http://attackthesystem.com/2011/06/21/more-on-the-economy-of-cities/

Shouldn't that keep you from buying anything?

I thought the femmed seed things was a marketing ploy. And 1BTC is such a low price that it makes me wonder....

Is getting scoped at a hydro shop a problem in Denver?

One really awesome thing about this business idea is that it is an "import replacer." Meaning that some vendors at certain websites can cut out the step of converting bitcoins into cash and then into gardening equipment. Instead it's bitcoins straight into inputs of production!

Can't wait!

Black Markets

Silkroad is a good start, in my opinion. As fellowtraveller mentioned, anonymity (or as much as anonymity as bitcoin provides, with a little bit of effort) is one of bitcoins edges in the market. It's a reason people will go through the trouble of transferring their government issued cash through the pain in the ass process of converting it to bitcoins. As long as this process, along with the purchase of drugs, is reasonably or comparably easier than going through traditional black markets, then people will continue to use Silkroad. Providing better tools to help maintain anonymity and spreading good, solid information on how to utilize them will help.


Goods and Services to Miners

Miners are the ones who have bitcoins, right? If you're starting a brand new business in the bitcoin economy (rather than adding bitcoins to the forms of payment you accept at an existing business) then miners should probably be your target market. I've heard a lot of people call them hoarders, but that might just because they have very few things that they can buy with their bitcoins. They expect to have better and/or more options in the future to spend their bitcoins on than exist today, so they're not spending. One major service that miners utilize on a consistent basis is exchange services. Also think about their input costs and equipment requirements. I know there are folks who are already starting businesses in this area. Another category would be consumer goods for miners. Bitmunchies is a great example.


Local Meetups

A lot of people believe in Bitcoin and would gladly trade locally. I'm looking for a second hand weight set, used work boots, and a deer rifle, for instance. If there were an active meetup community then there's a good chance I'd be able to find one of the aforementioned items. Plus, there's plenty of stuff in my garage that I'm no longer using that I'd like to offload. Classifieds probably aren't the best venue for this, because there simply isn't a large enough market for people to bother checking bitcoin classifieds sites. A meetup, on the other hand, would be a great, locally oriented venue for sales of used and second hand items.


This is just off the top of my head. Personally, I think it is too early to expect brick and mortar businesses and established websites to adopt bitcoin.

Just started a Portland, OR meetup community. I have a friend who is a miner (neither of us knew the other was into bitcoin.) Will try to get something started!