0.0005 sounds about right to me. At any rate 0.01 is now too high and it should be at most 0.001. (Of course in the long run fees should be a matter of individual policy, but there's nothing wrong with defaults.)

I like this idea.

Ah, you beat me to it!    I was going to do something like this, but I was waiting for my semester to end before I threw any real resources at it.

Do you maintain any record of the private keys on the cards you issue? I really hope the answer is no---I'm not worried about you stealing, but I am worried about you being stolen from. (EDIT: I see you answered this, sorry!) If the card has the only copy of the key, bitbills ought to be as secure as Bitcoin itself.

Another question: are you interested in enlisting local distributors? If I can't be the Bank of Bitcoin, being its first employee might be nice.

Folks saying the Forbes article had no major effect: Don't forget that the issue went to subscribers quite some time before it hit the newsstand. I read the print article several weeks ago in my department office at school. You know, just before we spiked up to 4.15 from 2.6 or so.

Crossfire actually degrades mining performance.

Three 5870s will be exactly three times as profitable as one 5870.

I have some old Xbox and PS2 games taking up space in my cabinet. I've been holding onto them on the chance I'll want to play them again, but it's been long enough now that I don't think that's worth worrying about. If I really want to play them again, I'll buy them again.

I checked out the games' going prices on eBay and they vary pretty dramatically. To make my life easier, I'm offering them all at the same price.

All the games are used (by me) but play perfectly. Other than that, their conditions are listed below.

Xbox games

• Def Jam: Fight for NY (GameStop case, no manual)
• Enter the Matrix (original case & manual)
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (original case, no manual)
• Halo 2 (original case & manual, bought new)
• Legacy of Kain: Defiance (original case & manual, bought new)
• Ninja Gaiden Black (original case & manual, bought new)
• Sonic Mega Collection (original case & manual, bought new)
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Tetris Worlds ("promotional offer, not for resale")

Playstation 2 games

• Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies (original case & manual)
• Final Fantasy X (original case & manual, bought new)
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (original case & manual, bought new)
• Shadow of the Colossus (Greatest Hits, original case & manual, bought new, case is damaged)

Note: the 1 BTC price doesn't include shipping. I ship from the US, I'll only charge actual shipping costs at the market exchange rate, and I'll go as cheap as I can manage. Once you send me your address, I'll give you a quote.

justcause told me I had won an auction for an Amazon gift card. I had let him know in advance that I would escrow the funds via ClearCoin if I won, so I did so with a charity escrow. He wrote back asking "how do i know when i send  you the gift card you wont just run away with it" implying he wanted me to send him the bitcoins first. I made it clear there was already no way I was getting the money back, so I couldn't have any motivation to scam him. He then wrote back saying he had lost everything on his hard drive, including his bitcoin wallet and amazon gift card codes, so he couldn't complete the deal. I asked how long it would take him to get a new gift card and he said 1-2 months. When I told him we could still complete the deal and it would save him from negative feedback, he became quite belligerent.

I can't say for sure that justcause intended to scam me, because if he lost his wallet he really can't receive the BTC I've escrowed. But at any rate I won't do business with him again. Even if he is telling the truth, he should have eaten the cost of his error.

Scroll up, actually read my post, and try again.

"How can I / the average person ever get any bitcoins when mining takes so long?"

The idea that mining is the normal way to get bitcoins is pretty pervasive, probably because of how it's introduced, and this question keeps getting asked.

Hey, I asked for the same thing and got one response saying it was unnecessary because there was no real meta-discussion happening.

Now that the forum is here, of course, meta-discussion is happening!

What response have others gotten from justcause? I was told I was the winner because Vasiliev hadn't responded, but he seems to have posted since then. Were others told something similar?

People who use GPG: How do you back up your private key?

I'm using a passphrase-protected private key with what I consider to be a strong passphrase (quite long, no English words, no personal relevance, etc). Do I need to be protective of this key? My guess is that it's symmetrically encrypted using some derivative of my passphrase, so it should be unusable by anyone without my passphrase. If that's the case, I could post it on a billboard in Times Square and no one could do anything with it. But I keep hearing that I need to keep my secret key secret, so it's possible I'm missing something here. What is it?

Speaking for myself, I've been saying "point zero five bitcoins" for 0.05 btc. It's the only thing everyone understands, and it will make the transition to saying "point zero zero five" require less explanation. Most people in the West are terribly confused by sub-cent amounts of money and will screw up the terminology (see the Verizon incident if you don't believe me), so avoiding it altogether is probably safest.

It would be nice if the decimal place were a few more units to the right so that we don't have to eventually be saying "point zero zero zero one nine" all the time, but honestly no one knows how much a bitcoin will eventually be worth, so it's hard to say exactly where it should have been. (My preference is that there should have been no decimal point at all so that I could be a billionaire the first time I generate a block, but I'm kind of a geek and my preference shouldn't be taken as an actual good idea.)

I have Comcast cable internet. For nearly a week now I've been unable to access any part of bitcoin.org unless I use a proxy like Tor. I can access it just fine from my mobile phone and from work. Does anyone know if Comcast is blocking the site or something?

One thing has to change in the ad right now:

It's weusecoins.com, not .org

My mistake, sorry!

Well if it's going to push weusecoins, we could use the same guy who narrated that.

Another idea, more conversational:

Cash register sounds and commotion
CLERK: That's $428.57, please.
CUSTOMER: Can you believe what groceries cost these days?
FRIEND: Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? And it's only getting worse!
CUSTOMER: Inflation. What can you do?
FRIEND: Well, you could use Bitcoin instead.
CUSTOMER: Bitcoin? What's that?
FRIEND: Bitcoin is a new worldwide digital currency. It's free to use and accept.
CUSTOMER: Free!?
FRIEND: Yes, free! No one owns Bitcoin, so there's no one to charge you for it. And best of all, bitcoins actually gain value over time!
CUSTOMER: So prices in Bitcoin will go down over time instead of up?
FRIEND: I started using bitcoins when they were worth only fifty cents each---now they're worth over three dollars!
CUSTOMER: Wow, maybe I will start using them! Thanks!
FRIEND: No problem! To learn more, visit weusecoins.com.

Well, there's possibly room for both: "Are you sick of the government using your money to bail out Wall Street? Then take back control with Bitcoin!" etc.

I can now only access this site through Tor. Does anyone know if Comcast is blocking it or something?

The economy here is still pretty small---you could get a lot of bitcoins by providing some small but useful service or reselling goods, and probably make a profit at that. If there's anything you can get on the cheap, try reselling it.

A(nother) modified form of the above:

Are you tired of watching the value of the dollar plummet?
Are you tired of banks charging you fees?
Do you want to take back control of your own money?
Then take a look at Bitcoin!
Bitcoin is the world's first decentralized, anonymous internet currency, and is gaining popularity every day.
It's free to use, free to accept, and free from inflation---forever!
You can use bitcoins anywhere in the world, and their value will only grow with time.
To learn more, visit weusecoins.org.

Here are some of the most important changes I made:

• Removed the "investor" angle. Most people don't have any investments at all, and they aren't really looking for one---but "dollars losing value" and "banks charging fees" are gripes they're familiar with.
• Mentioned anonymity once but didn't make it a major selling point. A person who has no problem giving their Gmail password to Facebook will not understand why anonymity matters, and may think this is some shady money laundering thing. (And they're not supposed to find that out until they're initiated!)
• Focused on the "free as in beer" aspect. The fact that no one controls Bitcoin is important, but hard to get across in 30 seconds. Best to leave it out if we can't make it clear.
• Replaced bitcoin.org with weusecoins.org---bitcoin.org is a better project site, but weusecoins.org is a better promotional site.

My only concern is that my version sounds a bit hokey to my ears. But maybe others will think it sounds okay. Anyway, that's just a suggestion---feel free to use any, all, or none of it.