It is illegal for them to transport gold with them? This is smuggling?

F'n crazy.

Probably not as crazy as them thinking that that wouldn't make a metal detector go off.

The nice thing about bitcoin is all you need is a piece of paper. Heck, if you use a deterministic wallet, you can just use a secret phrase that you memorize.

This would be good for small countries where faith is low in its ability to manage its mint.

I could see it done like this:

* Make it so that there is a fixed inflation rate of X% per year (so more coins are generated each year)
* Of the coins that are produced in mining, half go to the miner, half go to the government associated with the block chain
* Implement merged mining from the start and set it up so mining for bitcoin will also get you coins for said government blockchain.

The government would automatically collect the taxes off the inflation of the currency, which would eliminate the need to extract taxes off of the citizens. Also, the currency would appear around the world, so this would create immediate exports to other countries, which would increase economic activity. Exports also tend to be easily taxed (they all have to go through ports).

The government would have the immediate first flow of the currency, and it could use that to create whatever programs it wanted to pay for in the country.

Each government could implement its own local currency this way, and with merged mining, miners could and up with a bundle of coins for a variety of countries.

If the government wanted to restrict mining to internal to the country, that could be done as well, where a miner license key would need to be used as part of the basis of the hashing algorithm. Being a savy politico, this could also be something that needs to be paid for.

The benefits of a government bitcoin system is that it can create a sound currency that is free from manipulation, but can still be milked some for direct government spending (possibly eliminating a tax collection system), and some control could be placed on who can mine coins.

The exchanges are running an illegal operation according to the USA if you look at the verdict from the e-gold case:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold

This is why they are not operating in the USA. The long arm of the law could shut down their USA based accounts and prevent wires from going to them.

Um, why such a restrictive license. This is an image for a credit card and all derivatives of it are not allowed to be used on a commercial product... so it cannot be used then? Credit cards are commercial products. Why not just say, "I own the copyright"

Please, if you want people to use your stuff, just use the WTFPL license. It is certainly less confusing than all that creative commons nonsense.

http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/


If you don't want people to use your stuff, then just say so.

I was trying to search for results that matched a set of technical terms for a project I was working on recently. It opened my eyes to the new fuzzy search stuff that is going on in google.

That, along with the removal of the + operator has caused me to jump ship. I now just use http://duckduckgo.com

Apparently the US is hated. It is no longer available.

That would make it much easier. I think ATM seems like an odd name for it. It is more like a bitcoin exchange machine (BEM?). Put cash in, get bitcoins out. Put bitcoins in, get cash out. This could also just be two separate machines. 

Well, in that regard, if anyone at Starbucks (including customers) would swap currencies with you, it would be equivalent. This is different then the establishment actually taking bitcoins, which would mean no fiat involved. If before your transaction, mtgox funded your checking account, you could pay with your debt card.

Doing the two-step isn't paying for something with bitcoins. It is just two separate transactions.

But I do like the approach, I am just nit-picking semantics.

Ripper- may I have permission to use this content (possibly uncredited) on my sites (editthis.info and cueflash.com). I will most likely tweak it, but I need a good explanation as to why sopa is dangerous to the users of my sites.

Thanks,
Rob

I really don't think having a little character signify the decimal point moving is useful for new users (and people that don't want to remember what character means what)

Using the scientific notation makes it easy.

0.01 -> 1e-2

Look I just moved the decimal over 2 places.

Or
0.000001 -> 1e-6 ... which if you want to have a little decimal -> 0.1e-5

It is nice and clean, and once you learn it, you never need to guess what some strange character means.

The CIA infiltrates and destabilizes or manipulates any organizations or governments that poses a threat to the US government. I think bitcoin would be a threat to the dollar, and it is just a question of how much they measure that threat to determine if zero to N agents need to be assigned to it.

It also needs to manage black budget accounts (presumably to fund missions in the above paragraph) that need to be sent around the world and be hidden. If it looks like this is becoming a currency (especially in the underground) then they might also want to think about getting some. This will also require some agents to be assigned to the BIAMG (Bitcoin Infiltration and Management Group) - or just BAM as they refer to it in the office.

.01 BTC = 1 BTCe-2
OR 1e-2 BTC
OR 1 BTC:e-2
OR 1 BTC-2
(what looks best?... idonno)

There, now you guys are covered for the next million years. No need to learn a new symbol every few years, just change the exponent for the scientific notation.

More likely Satoshi will be assassinated and/or picked up by g-men. I suspect that is why he has not surfaced in so long.

It is a digital currency running on a peer-to-peer network similar to bittorrent. Only a limited quantity will ever be produced, and there is no central authority that will ever be able to undermine that. Bitcoins can be sent over the internet with virtually no transaction fees and with a fair degree of anonymity.

Some people use it just to speculate on its value (it has swung between 50 cents and $30 a bitcoin over the last year).

There are (hundreds, thousands...?) of merchants online that will sell virtual and real goods that will sell things such as coffee, apparel, and even illegal drugs (if you are into that sort of thing).
--
Many of these statements open up the other person to asking questions. I think this is better than just an elevator speech. You want to leave openings for them to ask questions.

If they are into the drugs thing, explain about the silk road. Some fence sitters will become instant converts once they see the actual site.

If not so much, show them a couple sites you have bought things on.

Set them up with an address on strongcoin, and send them a coin (or just keep a couple bitcoin cheques in your pocket (not necessarily from printcoin.com)).

Bitcoin represents an alternative asset that can act as money and is virtually untraceable. If a number of wealthy individuals used bitcoins for their own large transactions they could avoid taxes (not legally,  but still they could hide money) and that makes bitcoins very appealing as a financial instrument.

Keep in mind, most rich people don't have a lot of money. They have a lot of wealth, and wealth can be in many forms. Managing wealth and transferring it between instruments is critical. And sloppiness could result in taxes.

Perhaps appealing to accountants of the rich is even better than targeting the rich, but I think it is naive to think that the rich don't care about managing their own money. You don't get there without knowing how to manage your wealth, and just handing the reigns over to someone to do it all for you is not an option. You get an account to as an adviser and person who fills in your paper work for you, but you still have to know the gist of the game.

Obviously he is in the cold visiting his mining operations which consist of a warehouse of servers in Alaska cooled by a glacial run off.

It would be great to see a longer time line as well (past two years)

Hey rich dude who is doing all this work to hide money...

Buy this untraceable asset. You can even use it to buy and sell things among your friends to avoid tax events. Sell them that company at a loss for $1000 dollars, and have them give you 1M BTC on the side for it, then buy that yacht in btc, and pay the guy in BTC to avoid taxes. Have a congressmen to buy off? Don't bother with an envelope of cash, give him the slip from a fortune cookie, and let him know that the hash of it is a private key that will set him up for life. Then pay your corrupt tax attorney in BTC so he doesn't have to claim it either. Worried about storing all of your money in some off shore account. No worries, you can keep it in a thumb drive. Or better yet, a deterministic wallet seeded with the name of your favorite race horse. Watch the IRS try to seize that. Need to get some coke to keep the party going at your mansion... yeah that was the first thing we took care of (after the alpaca socks and the coffee)

Bitcoin, for people that know that fiat is for plebs.

Overqualified php programmer here.

Bidding is in USD (but paid in BTC)