Yeah I too have seen the video and the systems the Bitpay guys are building. It is really top-notch stuff. If I were a wealthy VC angel I'd be making some phone calls right now.

Hello all,

I need a programmer to help finish up a project (it's dope, I assure you). You must be fluent in asterisk and voip systems, PHP, and the bitcoin system. Knowledge of flash/flex is greatly preferred.

Please PM me.

Here's a rough draft. I chose not to put more than one "call to action" on here... only one QR code, to focus attention. No reason to suggest vendors to people who haven't yet heard of the currency. That's step 2 =)  The messaging is targeted to university libertarian/rebel types.

Thoughts?

I'll take this on.

Stay tuned for rough draft.

BTCinch.com offers this service and it works REALLY well.  OP - PM me and I'll send you .1 bitcoins to show you.

Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest has some pretty stupid ideas in it also, but it's still fun to watch

And indeed, the Monopoly franchise has made Hasbro hundreds of millions of dollars (billions?) so if the game was intended as a capitalist critique then the joke is on the creator.

I see no reason to encourage a bunch of unemployed, overweight seniors and welfare recipients to learn about monetary policy, cryptography, and global financial markets =)  

The demographics of those who watch and are susceptible to infomercials are on the opposite side of the adoption curve from where Bitcoin currently is. The "average dull American consumer" will be the last to adopt Bitcoin, and that's fine. There is no reason to expend resources trying to entice such people anytime in the foreseeable future. By the time the Bitcoin ecosystem is ready for them, no promotion will be needed.

If you want to spend money on effective Bitcoin marketing, do the following:

- Prepare professional white papers on security, investment, growth drivers, and merchant implementations for Bitcoin
- Create new, professional educational videos a la WeUseCoins.com (but make them more in depth on various aspects of Bitcoin)
- Create a fund to donate to any legal team that is hired on behalf of Bitcoin in upcoming legal cases. Such precedents will be very important.
- Donate to some of the current projects like SafeBit which are making beautiful software
- Create a professional PR team. If they are professional and wise enough, they would become the de facto official PR outlet for Bitcoin.
- Buy ads among the demographics who are likely to adopt bitcoins even though they're currently inconvenient (Ron Paul forums, agorist conventions, tech groups, etc.). These should be professional and polished. Not salesy.
- Put together a local team in large Indian and Chinese cities to act as guerilla advocates of Bitcoin, start up seed and cottage industries on key cities like Mumbai and Shanghai. Make sure all relevant info is translated into local languages.

And so on.  Lots to spend money and time on before "infomercials."  =)

The Bit-pay.com guys are working on one. Send them a message.

More amazingness from the Bitpay guys. Getting tired of all the amazingness.

Very well said.

Irony: loving a country that was founded by extremists and then denouncing extremism in any shape or form.

Tell me cablepair, what is it you love about America? Do you love the government? Or the people? Or the land? Or the freedom? Or do you just enjoy saluting the flag because it happens to be the one you were born under?

I love the principles upon which America was founded, but I hate the government. Am I a patriot, or an extremist?

The ability to short-sell and buy on margin is not a short-term phenomena. Any person who desires leverage will find this service useful. If you KNOW bitcoin will rise or fall, then this offers you a chance to make much more money. Bitcoinica's effect is good both for traders/speculators/investors and also for Bitcoin as it permits a greater variety of pricing means.

You're joking, right?

1) Gov keeps interest rates far below what the market would set, encouraging millions of mortgage loans which otherwise would not have been taken
2) Fannie and Freddie guarantee/backstop many of the mortgage loans, removing the risk from the banks, thereby encouraging them to set standards extremely low because the risk is borne by the government enterprises.

These two factors were the majority cause of the housing calamity, and they are purely the result of government intervention in what is supposed to be a free marketplace. The housing calamity is perhaps one of the best examples of well-intentioned government programs causing terrible effects. How ironic and unfortunate that people have managed to blame the "free market" for the problem.

You've been misinformed. To the extent that the gold standard "caused" the depression, it was because the government had printed and spent more money than the corresponding gold reserves, and thus creditors opted to take possession of the gold instead of dollars, causing a run on the bank type of situation. This is what happened to Britain as it entered its great depression. In other words, gold forces fiscal discipline, and when politicians don't behave, the economic consequences are made clear early on.

Compare this with today, where politicians can print and print and print, artificially keeping prices from correcting and risking hyper-inflation by so doing. The consequences of their actions in these past several years have not yet been felt, fyi.

The gold standard doesn't hurt economies. It protects savings, property, and value. If you prefer a world in which politicians perpetually steal your money by simply printing more of it (thus driving prices up which you pay), then you'll be antagonistic to a gold standard.

And your claim that "any economist will tell you that the gold standard hurts economies" is very wrong. Mainstream media and government economists will tell you that, but economists who aren't fools will not. If you'd like an excellent article on this topic, written by Alan Greenspan himself (back when he wasn't a fool in the 60s), check this out... it might just blow your mind:  http://www.constitution.org/mon/greenspan_gold.htm

Holy crap. THIS is why Bitcoin will take over the world.

Yeah I get the "web socket closed" error also in Chrome.

When I use IE or Firefox (latest versions) I get error saying I need to upgrade to a browser that supports web sockets.

What do I do?

Well done Roger, you are truly an asset to the community. I'm a long time listener on Free Talk Live (knowing the hosts here in New Hampshire) and it always thrills me to hear Bitcoin ads =)

Site is down??

Thanks for your post, OP. Some good sentiment there and I fully encourage the optimistic tone.

My thoughts on this are as follows: Bitcoin is not just a new weird geeky technology. Bitcoin is not the new tablet, or 3D tv, or server protocol. Bitcoin is in fact a philosophic and economic phenomenon which drastically challenges existing systems of thought and social behavior, internationally. It cuts to the core of how humans operate in the world, and the ramifications of Bitcoin--if it succeeds--will be truly profound. It is a system of highly leveraged effect. New people will get rich, new people will get poor, structures will shift, and various opportunities will rise and fall for various people. It sounds cliche, but Bitcoin has the potential to fundamentally change the course of history and this is awe-inspiring to some, threatening to others, and unbelievable to most.

Because of this leveraged effect, Bitcoin will long be highly contentious. And while we should encourage optimism and community spirit, we should at the same time realize that the external pressure bearing down upon Bitcoin will be immense. We should expect the conflict and tumult.

Stay civil, stay mature, stay humble, and stay rational. Bitcoin kicks serious ass, and I think most of us know this.

That's a really silly statement. If Bitcoin remained "forever volatile" you would see hedging mechanisms and insurance which tempered the peaks and troughs. Basically, if you can predict a pattern of movement, you can profit from it, and thus reduce the movement. You can see this with the "btc always falls in price over the weekend" that was occurring in regular intervals earlier this summer. If it can be predicted, people buy and sell in anticipation of profiting from such foresight and ultimately diminish the move they were predicting.

Bitcoin will be volatile for a very long time, but ultimately it will (like all goods and services) tend toward efficiency and stability.