That is a very simplistic statement. The real world doesn't always function like a capitalist cartoon.

I don't actually think that competition (from other cryptocurrencies) is healthy for bitcoin during the embryonic stage of the project. 

Here is why: There is a limited number of people in the world who are able to donate their time and energy to grow the bitcoin project, AND who are believers in cryptocurrencies.   If we have several competing cryptocurrencies, some of the talented people working on bitcoin right now will be diverted to alt-currencies.  This will increase the risk of ALL cryptocurrencies failing, for example through an attack by a bitcoin enemy.

We are more likely to succeed if we all pull in the same direction.

Once bitcoin becomes widely adopted, by all means, bring on the competition.

But right now, this community is still too small, bitcoin is still too vulnerable, to be able to afford divisiveness.

How exactly would you enforce this in a decentralized project?  Force every new user to send a copy of their passport to Gavin, before they can be assigned a bitcoin address?

Right now, bitcoin gives you the choice between making transactions (pseudo-)anonymously and publicly.  People have different uses for bitcoin. Some value anonymity, some value the benifits of green addresses. 

How you can think that talking away that choice would make bitcoin more useful, is beyond me.

There is no objective way to distinguish cybersquatting from the "legitimate" use of a domain name.  Any system that tries to prevent cybersquatting is going to need some human judge to decide whether cybersquatting is taking place or not.  Bringing back a human authority makes the system corruptible, and negates the reason that systems like bitcoin and namecoin were invented in the first place.  

In other words, there is no solution for the cybersqatting "problem". It's just something a system like namecoin has to learn to live with, just like bitcoin has to learn to live with thieves who exploit the carelessness of some users and the irreversible nature of transactions.

Mitigating measures have been suggested, such as introducing regular forced auctions of domain names into the protocol, but this would create other problems.  For example, the US government could simply snatch wikileaks.bit from wikileaks by bidding millions of dollars for the domain name, once it is force-auctioned.

Having said that, I think that if namecoin ever becomes popular, there will be fewer idle domain names than at present, because there will be systems for cybersquatters to rent out their domain names, in effect becoming their own registrars.   There is no ecomomic incentive to keep a sought-after domain name idle.
 

Ich rate dir ab, Paypal fuer Bitcoins zu akzeptieren. Ich habe vor einiger Zeit Bitcoins auf Ebay verkauft, und solange ich Paypal akzeptierte hatte ich eine Menge Ärger mit Dieben, die versucht haben, via gehackten Ebay-Konten meine Bitcoins zu klauen.

Am besten nur Banküberweisung akzeptieren, und verlangen, dass der Name des Bankkontos mit dem Name auf der Lieferadresse übereinstimmt.  Eine 48-Stündige Wartezeit vor Überweisung der Bitcoins ist auch eine gute Idee, weil sich die meisten Opfer von gehackten Konten in dieser Zeit melden.

Niemand kann den Kurs vorhersagen. Ob es sich lohnt jetzt zu investieren hängt von deiner Risikobereitschaft ab.  Bitcoin ist immer noch eine Experimetalwährung.

So ca. 500-1000 EUR "Spielgeld" würde ich persönlich als Newbie sofort investieren, aber nur wenn ich mir leisten könnte, dieses Geld zu verlieren.  Wie gesagt – nur meine persönliche Meinung. Jeder hat eine andere Risikobereitschaft.

Wenn du die Kursschwankungen ausgleichen willst, kannst du es mit Cost Averaging versuchen, also statt 500 EUR auf einmal, 1 Jahr lang jede Woche um 10 EUR Bitcoins kaufen.

Das ist auf jedem Fall eine bessere Investition als jede Woche einen Lotto–Schein um 10 EUR zu kaufen.  

Humans are really bad at remembering phrases and numbers. 

Even a seemingly easy to remember phrase like "category platypus ennui toast" will not last more than 3-6 months in most peoples' long term memory, unless they rehearse it regularly.  Most regular bitcoin users are too busy/lazy to keep rehearsing their passphrases.  Also, rehearsal can accumulate errors over the years and overwrite the original memory, so to be safe you would have to write down the passphrase to remind yourself once in a while, which defeats the whole point of a brain wallet.

Humans are good at remembering images, however.

Instead of memorizing phrases, I would recommend employing your visual memory, for example like this: Go for a jog/walk/bike ride along a particular route once a week, for a period of 6 months. Then use the GPS coordinates of certain key points along the route as your passphrase. Even if you forget the coordinates, you are unlikely to forget the locations, and you can always look them up on a map.

Implicit memory is even more reliable than visual memory.

Though time consuming, this is probably the most secure way to set up a brain wallet:

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/133067-unbreakable-crypto-store-a-30-character-password-in-your-brains-subconscious-memory

Exports aren't needed if you're big.

The smaller the country, the less stuff it can make on its own, the more it needs to import.

In the long term, imports must balance exports.  A country that imports more than it exports is not sustainable.

Thus, even small rich countries such as Norway are heavily reliant on exports.

I would also recommend the Electrum client for a newbie.

In theory, Electrum is not as secure as the original client, but unless you are dealing with volumes in the thousands of bitcoins, Electrum is absolutely good enough.

However, I would avoid web wallets for anything more than 10 bitcoins.

The business has changed owner twice since the days of selling cards. The software has been rewritten from scratch. The brand name, and a handful of original customers from back in 2010, is all that remains.

Yes, I have.  My last SEPA withdrawal took 3 days.

I doubt mtgox is out of money.   I have often had problems with delays with them, but I always received my money eventually. My guess is that they are overwhelmed by the bureaucratic burden of running a large bitcoin exchange.

My problem:

I accidentally deleted a number of files using the rm command on an eCryptfs-encrypted Ubuntu laptop.

After cloning the laptop HD using Clonezilla, I mounted it on a virtual machine and scanned it using extundelete.

Extundete WAS able to recover some files and directories in my home directory (where I deleted the original files). However, I don't know how to decrypt them.

The files and directories are located in  /home/.ecryptfs/myusername/.Private and have names like:
ECRYPTFS_FNEK_ENCRYPTED.FWY..eji-ZXkFURR9uWEBwMcCU.iQiwLKedbxBNrycVOxcA.uMuYBD-bB---


The aim is to recover as much as possible, but the criterion for awarding the 10 BTC will be the recovery of at least one unencrypted version of a file contained in the data above.  I can provide my ecrypfs password, and the original cloned HD if required.    

Because this is sensitive data, the offer is for trusted forum members only.

Great speech, Amir!

TC doesn't require physical access to the server. Your RS232 solution does. 

Apart from being more costly than using a dedicated hosting service, this simply isn't practicable for a lot of bitcoin entrepreneurs, eg. those with a nomadic lifestyle.  Where is Zhou Tong going set up this machine? In his student dorm?

Beim Original-Client ist der Private Key Import in der GUI noch nicht implementiert.

Private Keys koennen aber ueber die Kommandozeile importiert werden:


bitcoind ruft die Kommandozeilenversion vom Client auf:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoind

Hier die Liste aller Befehle:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Original_Bitcoin_client/API_Calls_list

Den Bedarf, grosse Datenmengen zu speichern, wird es glaube ich schon geben.  Wie die Massenanwendungen in 10 Jahren aussehen werden, ist schwer vorherzusagen.

Allein im Videobereich wird es zB. einige Neurungen geben.  Ein 2-Stündiger 4K HDR  Film kommt da schon locker auf 200 Gigabyte.
 
Da gibt es zB. heute schon Leute, die ihr gesamtes Leben mit Videobrillen filmen, 20 Stunden am Tag, 7 Tage die Woche.  Nicht, weil sie sich das ganze irgendwann ansehen werden, sondern weil das resultierende Videoarchiv mittels Bilderkennung durchsucht werden kann („Wie heisst das Restaurant in Paris wo ich vor 10 Jahren mit meinem Onkel gegessen habe?“).
 
Ob die Datenflut in 10 Jahren hauptsächlich lokal oder in der Cloud gespeichert wird, ist eine andere Frage.

How can you be sure this is not a red herring?

I don't see how 1PFgAJWLJZGSaVDg2rX3XDfTcyd6CpLdS6 more difficult to copy and paste than IBAN: DE46520400210277281204; BIC: COBADEFF520.

It's not an either-or.  100% of all Bitcoins in existence are saved all the time.   100% of all USD in existence are saved all the time.  The only difference is how fast they change the hands of savers.

There is no such thing as an arbitrary t="amount of time bitcoins stay in your wallet", below which it's magically not saving anymore.

A currency that isn't saved is a currency where t=0 which is clearly impossible.

You could argue that the rate at which money changes hands is lower for BTC, but I don't see why that is a bad thing.

Bitcoin doesn't subsidize (long term) saving, all it does is not penalize it.

Everyone has their own utility for deferred consumption. Inflation distorts this and takes away people's choice to defer consumption.  Less choice = everyone is worse off.

Bei 2000 Transaktionen pro Sekunde (VISA-Niveau) würde die Blockchain ca. 50 Terabyte pro Jahr wachsen:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability

Wenn Bitcoin wirklich VISA-Ausmaße erreicht, dann können bald nur Datenzentren und Supernodes die gesamte, nicht gestutzte Blockchain speichern. 

Allerdings: Ausgehend vom Moorschen Gesetz für Festplatten, würde eine Verbraucher-Festplatte irgendwann zwischen 2025 und 2030 wieder mit der Blockchain aufholen (500-1000 Terabyte).

That is not only a good strategy for speculators, but also for savers, esp. early adopters, who want to realize a fraction of their bitcoin investment but are not in a particular hurry.

Instead of selling off an entire tranche of BTC at once, you do the thing described by the OP.

Assuming that sooner or later you will make an incorrect range forecast, only two things can happen:

a) Eventually you run out of BTC. Great, tranche has been successfuly converted to USD, plus you made a profit above average exchange rate.

b) Eventually you run out of USD. No problem. Just return the BTC (+profit) into your long term savings wallet and wait for future selling opportunity.