I will tell them what my password is. And they'll even get my bitcoins. They'll just have no idea if they took all of my bitcoins, or just a small fraction of them.

P.S. I have very few bitcoins, and am almost out of them.   ...   

On yeah, that's right, just use lasers for long distance. No radio interference and no jamming.

My point is from the other direction. Wouldn't they have to show some proof or evidence that you have anything to begin with? Otherwise they'd have to go start arresting anyone and everyone on suspicion that they might have something in their head.

Wouldn't they have to prove that you still have access to the keys? And wouldn't it be fairly easy to devise new techniques to keep anyone from finding out exactly how many coins you have? Plus you could do some really crazy things with multi-sig. Like lock your coins from being spent for a time, or even set it up so that even if they get your password, they can't do anything with your coins without catching or finding someone else.

Speaking as someone who has/had soldiers in my family, WTF are you talking about?

^^^ And this is why we need built-in mixing, anonymizing, or Zerocoin.

Yes, you're right, it would not be a good idea. I hope that by the time something like this happens, Bitcoin would be at, or close to, a point that any country doing something like this would essentially result in that country putting sanctions on itself, and blocking other countries from doing business with it.

Sure. And that someone could be China, Iran, North Korea, Iraq, Equador, Chile, Russia, India, Seycheles, or if none of those are willing to, pretty much anyone, anywhere, on a Tor node. Or an I2P node. Or any other anonymizing node.


And that's why drugs are not available anywhere, and CP is no longer on the internet. Sure, it would be a problem for the business that's in a country that bans bitcoin, but it won't be a problem for any businesses outside of that. USA banned online gambling. Doesn't mean that business is dead.


Well, they can take away my pieces of paper and my computers, but I have a bunch of other copies of those papers stashed around, and they're all pretty much useless without whatever keycodes I have in my head. Hell, even if it gets to the point where they can read my brain for passwords, my password could simply be "The 5th item from the bottom at such and such location, plus the number on this page on that book at that library, + large string of characters hidden there, which I can never remember because it's too big." I could even memorize a ton of such places, and know that only a few of them are legit, or which order they must be put together in to make a password.

With Bitcoin, it will be, "I will gladly pay you Tuesday for 500 hamburgers today"

I kinda disagree. Mesh networks have massive benefits, the biggest of which is not having to pay $50+ a month for internet at home, and another $30+ a month for a data plan on your mobile. They also should have less downtime, due to redundancy, and may be faster, since packets can be routed over more channels. The problem, or conundrum, with mesh is that they have a chicken-egg problem of what should come first. I would love to run a mesh, but my neighbors don't have it, so I would just be by myself. My neighbors would love to run a mesh, but I don't have it, so they would basically be running it by themselves. Thus, there is plenty of incentives to get a mesh set up, but no one wants to go first. There is also a possibly bigger issue of "I'm paying for my internet, why should I give it away for free?" which may be more difficult to overcome, though possible, if you agree to share resources among paying customers (My husband and I use different cell providers - t-mobile and at&t - which we individually pay for, but we mesh our phones together so that both of us always have a good signal, even when one provider has a crappy one).

The only solution to this conundrum I've found is to piggy-back mesh on top of something else useful, like the bitcoincard. It's primarily a means of storing bitcoins and making payments where web may not be available, and mesh comes second, but thanks to that type of device, mesh may become prevalent without anyone even noticing or planning for it. Hopefully there may be other such devices, where mesh capability is secondary, and the primary use is more of a necessity. I guess lack of cheap, easy to deploy mesh devices may be another issue. I'd love to see something small and solar powered/charged (or induction charged that you can attach to a powerline carrying pole) that you could buy for $25. I'd fill my neighborhood with those first chance I get.

Ooh, and another one!


I'll have to wait till I get home to review all of these. Bruno, since I know you're never busy with anything  feel free to check these out and let me know what you think, too.

Frankie, my MBA classmate who also somewhat got into Bitcoin, is the one who has been making contacts with charities recently, after we met at the Alumni gala this past Friday, and I told him about Bitcoin100. So far, these are the charities he has e-mailed. We need to figure out if we should pursue these to get them to accept bitcoin or not:





Note, I did not expect this, though it's welcome. We'll have to decide on whether these qualify, and get some feedback from our donors to see if they have any objections (I suspect some might). Also, I corrected him in that Bruno is the founder, and I just sort of took over.

Blockchain stored in nations where it's not illegal, everyone else uses it the same way Bitcoin Wallet for Android does it, where it only requests balances and relevant info for the addresses it's keeping track of. No need to keep copies of the illegal information. Done.


Besides, it would be pretty baseless to make something like an accounting ledger illegal.

100 is binary for 4. So, maybe Bitcoin100 could be the Bitcoin 4: myself, Bruno, Edd, and Jason? Though we would have to not let anyone else join  
Just kidding..

Bitcoin100 didn't raise more than $10k. I think we raised something like $5k in donations. Maybe more, but not $10k. Bitcoin rise in value has just been very good to us.

Personally, I wouldn't want to bother with the 501c status. On the one hand it *might* get us more donations from people wanting to donate for tax deduction purposes. On the other hand, that would mean more costs, more fees, more paperwork for donations and IRS filings, and I think generally goes against what I think is the spirit of Bitcoin and this group, which is that it transcends governments. People from all over the world are donating bitcoins. And we do our job without relying on any bank or official organization "allowing" us to send money to charities. Why should we limit ourselves to a specific country, and force all our records and filings into a specific currency? Plus, I would have to keep record of every Bitcoin we receive in it's USD price at the time we got it, in order to file proper tax revenue filings. Sure, it's also extra work I'd really rather not bog myself down with, especially since I don't think it's needed, but really, my main objection is the one above.

It's actually not new age at all. Think psychology and psychiatry, mixed with Spock from Star Trek. Not so much "Everybody feel good!" as "I understand myself, and i am in complete control." There's a new movement to apply things we have learned in psychology as a curriculum to teach kids things we pretty much always improvised through before. Such as to make sound decisions and control their emotions under stress, read and understand other's emotions and expressions to better communicate (or manipulate), manage your emotions or feelings so as not to feel depressed when you are fighting through difficulty, etc. I'm not entirely sure if that's what this charity promotes, but I think it's a very useful skill that will make kids who have gone through the program rather considerable opponents in business compared to those who go on their gut, and freak out in hysterics when things don't go right. Honestly, based on what they covered and taught in a part of that MBA class I took, that possible future generation somewhat scares and intimidates me 

I was contacted by a friend regarding this charity http://ibme.info/

Here was the short pitch:


It basically sounds like the new field of "mindfullness" education that is being discussed for use in schools, that teaches kids how to think, focus/concentrate, manage emotions, and understand others (this was briefly covered in my MBA curriculum, too btw). I would support it, since "learning how to manage your own thoughts and emotions" is a valued skill, but I'm concerned some here may associate this with "hippy stuff." Anyway, let me know what you guys thing, and whether we should pursue them to add Bitcoin as a donation option.

Are you going to force me to send to that address? What if I what to send my donation to some other address?

Government = RIAA
Bitcoin = Thepiratebay/BitTorrent


That's pretty much how it'll play out.

I thought it was "100 people donating 1 bitcoin each / 100 people donating 100 bitcoins total?"

I've just been telling people that it's 100 people/members pledging to donate a combines $1,000. It's not 100 people any more, though...