personal use:
1 ) compared to buying stocks and shares, less fee's per trade
2 ) compared to wire transfer to foreign country, its faster
3 ) compared to wire transfer to foreign country, cheaper then banking currency transfer fee's
4 ) its like having an extra bank account without having to go through the bank paperwork

business use:
5 ) setting up a payment gateway for customer without having to signup and pay for a card processing merchant account
6 ) no monthly maintenance fee's to worry about
7 ) no chargebacks
8 ) no fee's related to chargebacks, refunds or payments (except the 0.0001 bitcoin client fee)
9 ) holding the coins short term can increase profit if timed right. but more profitable/less riskier the longer you hold them.
10 ) silk road is now dead, so businesses and customers wont see as much drug taint/propoganda in the future

the OP's original thread was not about sydney it was about another county a couple hundred miles away, that had no disaster.. but as soon as we highlighted the flaw to his story, he re googled some info and edited it all to now say blue mountain council. as admitted here:

with past history of fraud and scams. and especially with bitcoins being irriversable, doing some due diligence and learning about the people we hand money to should be something everyone does.

bitcoin is not like a credit card, where you can easily just hand out money and then if something went wrong, simply asking for a refund or a chargeback.

bitcoin is new and should be treated as such, with people realising its fully in their control and fully owned and backed by them. so it is not scammer until proven innocent, but investigated until trusted.

i have an open mind and things like seans outpost and many other things that i have invested in or donated to based purely on the merits of what was posted. i do not have a scammer first, investigate to remove scammer tag second mindset.

all i know is that i seen a story, that had an article that was 10 months out of date linked, referencing a county that had no current disaster news, and then on reproach the OP suggested another county to which he personally was not accustomed to or knew very much info. this raised flags for me, as it did others.

please remember that bitcoin is not like FIAT which gets printed aimlessly, there is a finite amount and the costs both equipment and electrically, make bitcoin a sacred and scarse asset, which should not just be handed over simply by a cry for help on a forum.

the story needs to hold weight, be provocative and thought out. show detail to how the funds will be spent and the actual people it will support. seans outpost is an excellent example of this, which is why its had so much success.

also to add, i personally do not like donating to mainstream international charities because through my own volunteer work i have done and charities i have spoken to, i have came to see how sometimes these funds never reach the intended 'victims' i prefer seeing direct donations to the frontline of disaster area's/those in need. and as an example anyone from the UK who is reading this and thinking about UK foodbank donations. don't donate to the HQ website of Trussel Trust they are a franchise organiser for the local town charities. thus penny pinching weasels. instead donate directly to the foodbank in the actual town you live in.

giving out a donation adress before even researching the charity or cause or what actual benefit it will give is worse then burning bank notes on a BBQ

we all know bitcoin is more precious then a bank note so if your the kind of person that would never burn $200 of FIAT, dont donate until your sure of the facts..

i did start suggesting before that there were flaws in the OP's scheme. and even now he does not even know what county actually needs help, he is simply google searching a disaster, mentioning it and then hoping we pay into the address.

he doesnt seem to have passion for donating, else he would know enough details up front about the topic to not have made so many flaws.

and if you do provifde proof of donating. lets not see a glamorised screen shot which basically shows this

---

+
Red cross

please fill in the form below
amount : [$200]
bank details : [xx-xx-xx xxxxxxxx]

thank you for your kind donation

---

what would be better is photo's of you carrying blankets or food or water or anything the people need to the evacuation centres with a name or bitcoin logo in view to prove it aint a google image or photoshopped screenshot..

bitcoins are worth more then FIAT so dont assume donations are given out easier then FIAT simply because the payments are faster. we do scrutinise these schemes..

but the whole idea of bitcoin is to be different.

merchants dont want to fill in paperwork to get merchant accounts with card providors. if the FIAT side of converting bitcoin to fiat requires AMLKYC then thats still paperwork

merchants dont want fee's that eat into profits, so i do see fee's as a problem, but as long as they continue to represent pennies, it wont be a massive problem, just an irritating one

agreed it was meant as an example.. basically.. the advertising on the box doesnt correspond to actual use..

but anyway, i love that yohan and his company are pretty much the first 'industry' into bitcoin that from wages (yohan himself taking bitcoin), the factory, the shipping, are all able to be done within bitcoins.(because its all done at enterpoint). i do find enterpoint/yohan a great addition to the community. just knit picking the chip supplier (bitfury) for not making new batches of chips with a more accurate speed etched into the chip.

that being said.. going back to the pricepoint...
i can get a avalon 60Ghash for 6btc so thats 0.25btc per 2.5Ghash, so these new bitfury usb sticks better be competitve

i take it you don't live in the area.

i take it the red cross / "Warrumbungle Shire Mayor's Bushfire Appeal" don't officially know they are receiving funds as this would be better to have them showing the BTC address

i take it you have no control that the funds once entering red cross / WSMBA (if they even get to them) do or dont help fire victims and not used to supply red cross HQ with more pens and executive leather chairs.

that being said, im all for helping those in need.. but the FIAT system has for decades been feeding charities where the funds never reach the front line. we need to go one step further and ensure our hard earned bitcoins get to the actual desired end users in need.

but thanks for the link showing Warrumbungle county website dated january and the website showing current incidents, very informative of the actual area's hundreds of miles from Warrumbungle that have current actual fires, that need support

that is the mindset of the longterm investor. the OP is thinking interms of instant payment merchants that were initially promised "virtually fee free"

i personally i find the fee system a bit of an unrequired feature for atleast a decade or two. the block 'reward' is more then enough... for now

but as long as GavinA keeps decreasing the amount of satoshi's the fee is, when releasing updates for the bitcoin-QT dependant on price, like he has done over the last couple years. and every other third party program follows,  so that fee's remain pennies. i see no massive problem just little irritations at a nearly flawless system

as long as bitcoin remains useful, someone will use it. it only takes 2 people to trade, it doesnt require the whole worlds acceptance of it.
and if they both value bitcoin as being worth $160 of mining power and time consumption to make a single BTC, then they will trade at that value.

"Prohibition is extremely effective"

Edit: "What did you think would happen?"

tell that to the guys making moonshine during the alcohol prohibition.
tell that to the blackmarket butchers selling meat during the Blitz rationing
tell that to the..... endless list of examples

edit: i can be sarcastic too

two points to make.

banks love their FIAT, they dont care about prisoners trading cigarettes or kids trading pokemen cards in exchange for extra food. they only care about their beloved FIAT. instead of a foreign employee putting the FIAT into an envelope and sending it out the country back to their homeland, thus taking it out of local economy. with bitcoin people in france will do bank transfers with other people in france when purchasing bitcoin through localbitcoins.com or meetups etc, thus keeping the FIAT circulating within france, which is what the banks love. they dont care that bitcoin may then be sent to UK, US or singapore. as its not their problem.


secondly, using a few hops,skips and a jump ill just leave a few words listed for you to research into their connections and why the french economy wont make bitcoin illegal

France
EURO
Eurozone
Frankfurt Germany
Fidor Bank Germany
Bitcoin

such a noob response.. if only you knew lol,

ill be getting more then that, but goodluck with your calculations

did thy sell tickets for 'the social network' for facebook credits?? nope.....

that was such a missed opportunity for zuckerburg

cheers for the more detailed white paper. atleast that gives more details as oppose to how the video explained it.

avalon 60Ghash for 6BTC = $900 = £570

i ordered it wednesday night and got my tracking number today (friday night/saturday morning) so i expect it to arrive on wednesday. from estimates

hardware breakeven = 36 days cha ching

i dont see it working out.. its a good theory, but in practice it wont work.

i understand it would do-away with binary based database balances that represent someones fiat balance on an exchange and instead be a blockchain ledger, allowing more security.

i understand that if all the exchanges moved over to blockchain based swapping instead of database based it would decentralise things because the funds are not locked into one exchange, making arbitrage easier.

but there are issues:
initially bitUSD has to come from somewhere to cope with demand of the first lot of customers that want bitUSD. this involves a pre-mine.. so i take it Charles Hoskinson will mine and manage this and be the supplier... making him the 'mint' creating bitUSD

whats stopping him or anyone who has access to his secret mining pool from just mining excessive amounts and then raiding fiat withdrawal gateways dry while those that have bought in now hold a bitUSD and no gateway to withdraw to, because there are no fiat reserves left.

this is why okpay, mtgox, bitstamp need regulations already, because although they trade a digital database representing a bank account dollar. bitUSD is the same, a blockchain representing a US Dollar.. meaning a regulated blockchain would occur... to monitor everyone and prevent 'printing more money' (mining excessive amounts). so whoever mines BITUSD initially would be regulated.

speed of transactions would be slower. people have done this before on the OTC channels using their 'coin-QT wallets, swapping litecoin for bitcoin. confirm times can be a problem.

i can think of many more issues..

blockchain.info have alot more API's and features and full control of private keys and funds. if i was to use online wallets blockchain.info has my vote, but with anything online be secure.

1. lengthy random passwords
2. use for small-short term amounts
3. change passwords regularly
4. change private keys/sweep keys regularly
5. (should be rule one) remember its your funds, your responsibility, don't cry to anyone else if it disapears

the theatrical 'pause' before revealing results if getting a bit long

yohan logged on an hour ago from the timestamp of this message, but did not post anything. his last post being 10 days ago.... this is turning into a cliffhanger....

the suspense is building...

another dark service that causes media to produce negative info about bitcoin disapears

this makes bitcoin more legit which is great for legit merchants and investors. now theres even less excuses to not invest in bitcoin...

in short im happy

a movie about a guy that goes to a cybercafe, logs in checks his private messages and bug reports for a website... well thats 40 minutes of a movie wasted.

the movie then shows him in a chatroom typing away having an arguement and he flips open his tor browser to hire a hitman. thats the 10 minute build up to the action part of the movie.

and the last 40 minutes of a 90 minute movie is him sitting at home and the cops knocking at his door, getting arrested,,,

... definetly not a die hard action movie.. and less of a storyline then that facebook movie...

id think they may make a documentary channel  episode about it one day, but not worthy of going to the cinema for