Also, they claim that the reason they are delaying opening the site back up is that they need to process more claims.  While this is a valid reason for delaying opening trading, there is no good reason for not allowing approved users to log-in to their accounts, confirm their balance, and add or withdraw money.

Really, I want to believe them but I can't help but think that it's very possible that Mt. Gox is scrambling behind the scenes to borrow money to make up for some deficit of which we are not aware.

My question is: if they were pulling in so much money, why haven't they hired competent technical expertise and more customer support?  All he does is hire a part-time ESL teacher (no offense to ESL teachers, I did it once myself)?  I totally agree that each day is costing them massive money, so why not hire more, and higher quality, help.  It's the Intertubes -- they don't have to hire people physically in Japan.

I guess we shouldn't attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence, but still, I don't get it.

As a relative newcomer to Bitcoin, I can tell you my impressions of the board.  They seem like, well, any other forums on almost any other subject, except for those where the participants know each other personally (i.e., not anonymous forums).  And to offer counter-evidence to the poster who thought it was ridiculous to believe that a major entity, such as a financial or government entity, would bother posting against Bitcoin on an Internet forum, I'll just point out at the prevalence of Twitter messages critical of Bitcoin over the past few days.  If you follow many of them to their source, you'll see that many of them are the same Twitter users who are twittering about Gucci handbags, or S.T.U.P.I.D Technical University for Adults -- they're paid shills.  So someone cares enough that Bitcoin should fail that they're paying money to see it come true.

That said, one thing the original poster said shook me a little.  It's seems obvious now that it would be possible to steganographically encode anything into the blockchain, but the thought that malicious users could plant CP or other malicious content into the block chain is nonetheless a major concern for me.  The day that the average Bitcoin user finds out he or she has been accidentally downloading illegal porn is the day Bitcoin will cease to be a viable currency.  The press will have a field day.  Is there no way to avoid this vulnerability?  Mike Hearn mentioned that users who didn't want to store such content could simply delete non-financial data, but how easy would that be to do?  Manually delete the blockchain after each financial transaction, and then re-download the entire chain before the next transaction?

I completely concur with the earlier poster.  I mean, what the hell?  They are sitting on a gold mine and yet he's trying to run it off a shoestring budget by hiring English teachers part-time?  He had an opportunity to be a multimillionaire but now he's blown it.

I claimed my account with a strong password, Dwolla number, and pre-existing e-mail and yet it has still not been resolved.  When I wrote to them earlier today to point this out, I receive a message saying "Don't worry, everything is on track".  What does that even mean?  Is my account cleared or not?

The thing is, it's not even my hundred or so bucks that I'm so concerned about.  Rather, he's holding up the entire Bitcoin economy, since folks are holding off on buying new coin until they can be sure that they price will not take a huge dive once Mt. Gox re-opens.  I'm starting to think he's just written this whole thing off anyway -- he's basically given up on Mt. Gox.  And so now he's just trying to resolve it as cheaply as he can.

Jessy, I actually read your entire post carefully, and although I have no interest in the adult entertainment industry (don't condemn it, just not my thing), I got a lot out of your (and Warren's) ideas.  "Moat" is an important concept; it's essentially why my wife and I had to abandon an educational app that we had put 2 months of part-time work into -- a big player stepped in easily before I got it off the ground since the barriers to entry were low.  As I'm thinking about future opportunities, this concept of moat needs to be burned into my mind lest I waste another 2 months of work.  Thanks for the reminder.

That said, with new technologies, there's always a chance an upstart will end up winning big, since being first in counts for a lot.  The barriers to becoming an online BTC exchange were relatively low (some would say too low, but not me).  But look at how successful MtGox was prior to the hack, just because they were one of the first ones in.  A savvy businessman could have taken all the cash flowing in and created a rock solid site and then been THE online exchange to beat in the coming years.  I suspect it will be the same for Bitcoins and porn.

Good to hear from some more folks.  Sent .5 to Sakkaku and Adiamante -- thanks for introducing yourself.  Would like to do the same for pharno and seeARMS but I see no BTC address. 

So that's the end of my BTC offer but I would still love to hear from some more people interested in connecting with others for Bitcoin projects.  Give us your background and what area of Bitcoin are you interested in? Anyone else interested in see the use of Bitcoin expand into Africa and South Asia (particularly India).  I think BTC could satisfy a huge unmet need in those regions.

Word.

SeeARMS:  Very cool.  I'm very interested in seeing what you come up with for your secure online wallet.  Bitcoin needs a truly secure online wallet service for the same reason Dropbox is so popular.  People have multiple computers and move from place to place.  Granted, you don't want to keep your savings in such a wallet, but if it's secure enough it will be perfect for keeping enough for daily transactions.  I'm hoping you'll have some type of dual factor authentication.  Yubikey is a great option if you're willing to implement a hardware solution.   Do you have a public BTC address in which I could put 0.5 BTC?  PS - my wife is half-Canadian so I hear your pain.

Austin: Nice mix of technologies.  What kinds of NoSQL systems have you used? Couch, Mongo?  I've been using RDBMS for so long I can't even imagine how NoSQL would work. So I'm thinking about starting to play around with Amazon's NoSQL implementation -- I'm forgetting what they call it.  I've been playing around with the free tier of AWS and am impressed by EC2, and it's so cheap to use their native NoSQL database in comparison to the cost of running a dedicated relational DB on AWS, and evidently faster, too.  By the way, how familiar are you with Javacard, or JavaME?  (and check your wallet, am about to send 0.5)

Thanks to both of you for helping to get the thread started.

Vegetta, I wish you well with this.  I've got my plate full so I'm afraid I can't contribute (plus I have no idea what an adult site should look like these days).  But you just may be one of the torch bearers for bringing bitcoin to the masses.  Good luck!

Wow, no one is introducing themselves?  How about 0.5 BTC each for the first five bona fide introductions (as determined by me)?  Just a few sentences about your skills and background and an aspect of bitcoin you're interested in. Limited time offer.

For a better functioning economy, the early adopters need to start really spending and cashing out their bitcoins.  It's never going to be a currency if it doesn't circulate.  If Bitcoin doesn't take off, it will be because of its deflationary properties, not (in the end) because of any security flaws and/or user interface issues.  Those issues can be solved relatively easily. 

If I had a stash of Bitcoins, I'd be spending them like crazy.  There's a huge labor arbitrage opportunity for people with large stashes.  There are skilled developers who are accepting them and pricing their services low in bitcoins.  So if you have a stash, start cashing it out and spending it instead of leaving it sitting around unwatched in an easily-breached account.  Don't led greed make you wait until it's at $100 a bitcoin -- you're already a millionaire.  And the chances of it reaching $100 a coin are small if more people don't start buying and spending it.

That said, I'm still optimistic.

I suspect there are a lot of talented folks out there monitoring these threads who would like to get involved in a bitcoin project but lack the contacts to do so.  So I would suggest that anyone with an interest in becoming part of a start-up team, introduce yourself in this thread.  You don't have to give your name, but a brief description of your background and interests could help to pair you with others interested in the same area.  I'll start.

My background is in public health and international affairs.  I also did web development out of undergrad back in the 90s (left right before the boom).  I'm very interested in seeing bitcoin expand into Africa and South Asia, particularly given the prevalence of mobile phones in those regions.  If a basic java client for use in non-smartphones could be developed for bitcoin, it could lead to the currency being adopted in the developing world.  Remittances are another interest of mine.  So I'm interested in both supporting an open source client for phones running java (maybe using SIM toolkit and javacard?) and starting up some type of for-profit project in anticipation of Bitcoin's adoption in Africa and Asia.  I can do basic-to-intermediate coding in a number of scripting languages (PHP, Python, Javascript), am comfortable with HTML and CSS (and several web frameworks), and used to maintain multiple databases (using MySQL) when I worked as a biostatistician.  I am also fluent in multiple human languages. So I think I'm in a good position to help Bitcoin expand into the developing world, but would love to find some reliable collaborators to help.

I've got another interesting project that I'm hoping to get off the ground, but which I'm not quite ready to share at the present time.  But it also would help foster the bitcoin's adoption around the globe.

Anyone else?  Please feel free to introduce yourself and describe your background and Bitcoin ideas.  Thank you in advance.

EDITED: To remove the phrase "anyone with an interest in...investing in a promising bitcoin project" in case that's what is preventing people from contributing to this thread.  I'm not personally interested in investors, I only mentioned that in case there were investors our there looking to make contacts.  However, I am very interested in finding collaborators, so please introduce yourself or at least tell me why you choose not to.  Yes, I'm newly registered to the forum but I've been following Bitcoin closely for over a month.  I know that's not long compared to some of you, but relative to Bitcoin's current lifespan, it's not too bad.

EDITED: Removed "Catalyst" from subject since it occurred to me some people may be thinking of the ATI driver and not the type of catalyst I have in mind.

Just think of the addresses as invoice numbers.

For all you lurkers out there, and for all those who've been thinking about bitcoins without actually trading them and using them to buy/sell things, I'd highly recommend you actually try the client to buy things using bitcoins and discover its genius on more than just a theoretical basis.  I've been lurking on these forums for the past 3-4 weeks, reading about bitcoins, and was very intrigued -- enough to buy a hundred bucks worth (now tied up on Mt Gox).  But I only started spending them today, and I'm just amazed at the little geniuses and choices built into the system.  To name one example, I love how you can choose how fast your transaction is processed, depending on how much you want to pay.  So if you're making a 1000 BTC purchase and need it to clear quick, you just offer 5 BTC transaction fee and watch yours go to the first of the line.  And now reading about all the amazing bitcoin technologies being developed and coming on board on the project development section of the forum.  Clearly, unless some major flaw is inherent in the design, Bitcoin is here to stay.  All this security stuff is just growing pains.  I'm sure of it.

TL;DR :  Lurkers and Bitcoin "theoreticians", jump in and start using this thing to buy and sell.  It's an amazing system!

Dear Mods,

I've been lurking for several weeks and have an interest in posting in the projects section to see if anyone else is interested in trying to support expansion of bitcoin into the developing world.  I'm interested in getting some kind of java client for non-smart phones off the ground to help stimulate interest in Africa and South Asia, where basic cell phones running java are the local version of the PC.  I've got experienced in the third world, speak several relevant languages and (first post notwithstanding!) am reasonably knowledgeable about technology.

Thanks in advance for your consideration.

Fern, you might want to look at http://www.xe.com/fx/ if you've not checked out xe already.  They do currency trades but also can facilitate setting up local currency accounts.  I'm in the process of applying for an account with them.

I'm actually looking at the same thing as you, but from the US.  I'm in the middle of a big project (and am procrastinating as I write this), but I'll try to PM you once I'm through, if you're interested.  Perhaps we can help each other.

The one thing that sucks about currency arbitrage is that to make significant money, you usually have to start with a lot of money.  But the good thing is that it's relatively risk free if it's done correctly.  I think Bitcoin is ripe to be used as one leg of a currency hedge.

I had not seen those links, but that would be a relief if it's that simple (and I'd look like an idiot).  But why would they continue to ping the deepnet IP even after the page is loaded?

Anyway, I hope you're right, and if so I certainly deserve to stay here in the newbie section

I'm a long-time lurker who has only bothered registering to pass on a piece of information that might interest forum users and moderators.  Someone on the forum is causing other users'machines to send packets to deepbit.net.  I noticed that whenever I was on the forum, my machine was connecting to 91.213.175.240.  Turns out this is a deepbit.net IP.    For those that don't know, deepbit.net is a bitcoin mining pool.  I've 100% isolated this behavior to the Bitcoin forum. It would appear that someone on the forum has is using some variation of CSRF, probably via a link or image tag in their signature, to cause other users' computers to call 91.213.175.240; I would assume to use their CPUs/GPUs to mine on their behalf.  I'm not knowledgeable enough about security issues to guess how exactly they are doing it, and I'm in the middle of a big work project and so don't time to track it down.  I would assume the script is only using our computers to mine on their behalf, but who knows?  I'm kind of surprised that no one else has posted about it.

I'm running windows and I've not yet tried to isolate this behavior on a linux machine, but I'd assume it would work there, too.  It's really amazing the level of sophistication that attackers use now against users.  Everyone be on guard.

Just to be clear, I don't think this is related to the forum owners, but rather to a member of the forum.


PS -- I don't mine and have no mining clients installed.
PPS -- This hasn't happened on the newbie section, but in the general section.