It looks like Netagio is a European corporation. According to their website, anyone outside of Europe cannot open an account. So there could still be an opening for Counterparty.

Edit: What does a distributed protocol offer that a private company does not? This is a question that all cryptocurrencies will have to answer.

You might put James Turk, founder of GoldMoney.com, into the mix. He had been quite skeptical of Bitcoin, but more than a year ago, after doing a lot of his own research, he embraced cryptocurrencies and had been trying to use them at GoldMoney.com. I don't know exactly how, though. He's very critical of the entrenched powers and their abuse of the gold market in order to support fiat currencies. So he not only has a great deal of knowledge and experience about the gold and other precious metals markets, he is very interested in how cryptocurrencies can disrupt the destructive and corrupt politico-economic systems in place now.

I have no idea how to get his attention. I am sure that wealthy, influential people like him are bombarded with "great ideas" all the time by naive entrepreneurs. But if you make a solid business proposal (and it sounds like you have a very solid beginning), he might listen.

Google "James Turk Bitcoin" and you'll find a few links, including this interview (http://bitcoinmoney.com/post/31942156510/james-turk-felix-moreno). He's been trying to integrate Bitcoin into his business, but I'm not sure how successful he's been. (And I haven't done all that much research.) It would be easy-ish to take payments in bitcoin (several companies are already doing it), but what you're proposing is far more advanced and interesting.

+1
Speaking as someone who had ~$7000 worth of NXT stolen via NRS malware, I agree. Cryptocurrencies are the Wild West right now, and if we spend our time saving or compensating everyone who has been defrauded, there will be little left for the original investors and developers. 

Done and done.

Huntercoin (HUC). Very innovative. Even if it doesn't acquire a large market share, people will be watching it.

Hahahahaha! I love this. (Can I use it?) You're the bitcointalk winner today!

That helps. Right now I'm a passive forger, mainly because I am not technical enough to contribute by creating some new product or service. As NXT matures and metalayrers are enhanced and simplified, that will change, I think.

It helps me to think in terms of analogies. So I think of NXT as the transportation infrastructure: roads, signs, lights, etc. that support the more interesting things - movement of commodities, communication, currencies, etc. As a forger, I operate a toll booth on one of those roads. According to my NXT "contract" (forging), I maintain my little part of the highway in return for getting a little bit of the tolls. Right now, the tolls are extremely low. Like you, I don't earn enough to keep the lights on on my part of the highway. But increasing the tolls may not be the answer. My "philosophical" question goes back to BCNext's quote. We can think of the toll booth operator as a parasite who is only benefiting the infrastructure because doing so serves his selfish interests. Or we can think of the tooth booth operator as someone who deserves a bit of a payout for providing a valuable service to the infrastructure. I think BCNext was concerned about the parasites, and rightly so. But what makes a parasite?

I was reviewing BCNext's plan as told by CfB here (http://wiki.nxtcrypto.org/wiki/BCNext%27s_Plan), and again was pulled up short by this line.

"Selfish miners (those who only mine to earn fees) should be "removed" from the system. They are not interested in the success of Nxt and only want to cash out."

Have others already talked about what this might mean? How could/should such removal occur? There is a technical question about how to determine if an account is linked to productive, supportive assets, services, etc. And there is a followup question about how such removal occurs.

This is relevant to the fee discussion that has generated some heat here. But I am more interested in the philosophical question: what does it mean to support NXT? Does it only mean to create/buy/sell assets, second-order currencies, etc.?

(If I've missed the discussion, just point me to a post or thread, please. I didn't see this particular "removal" line addressed in the other forums.)

morphers, are you thinking of storing the images themselves on the blockchain?

Excellent interview. I'm not technical, and this is exactly the kind of explanation that makes sense to me.

http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/2014/02/24/interview-anoncoin-developer-speaks-zerocoin-implementation/
 

There are at least two ways to look at this.

A. Counterparty is not ready for prime time. Everything is too complicated and there are too many technical hurdles for average users to overcome. No GUI, no one-click install, no decent wiki to explain everything for new users, there are still bugs in the code. This is a disaster, and it will never catch on. You guys should have never tried to release this.

B. This is a great idea, and we get to buy in to the business when the construction on the building isn't even finished yet. That means it's quite undervalued, since most people buy what they can see, and not what they can imagine. I have to endure some technical issues, and there is a genuine risk that things may all fall apart before this is ready for prime time, but I am willing to take that chance and deal with the inconveniences because I'm getting in for cheap at the start of something that could be quite revolutionary and lucrative. Not only do I stand to gain significantly as an early adopter, but I am also able to influence the design and trajectory of this project through thoughtful input.
EDIT: And this thread is full of responsive, intelligent people, including the devs, who are willing to help solve whatever problems I encounter.

I choose B. I hope you do, too.

Bitte, Peter. Mein Deutsche ist nicht gut genug. Ich studiere.

This idea looks like a perfect test case. You work with a limited number of vendors (those selling particular items in the stadium) with a limited number of people in a single place for a specific duration of time - the football match. Even better if NEM can be used to order and pay for your food/drink from your seat, and have it delivered to you by runners. (This is possible because of the short block time in NEM; not possible with BTC.)

Test cases allow for a concentration and coordination of effort, and a very deliberate debriefing/evaluation time afterward to see what worked and what didn't, and how to make changes for the next time. Test cases like this also limit the damage in case things don't go as planned.

This is from the NXT thread. NXT is a very interesting second-generation coin (a crypto-ecosystem, really), and I think they could bring a lot of the right kind of attention to CryptoAve.
I hope you all think this is worth a follow-up.

As of midnight, Feb 22, this user's account is not even one day old.

I didn't mean that we all had BTC in MtGox. Personally, I don't. But you don't have to have funds there to be enduring the effects of their screw-up, since it's casting a pall over all cryptocurrencies. I thought this was clear from my initial post.

With all due respect to the CryptoAve developers and website designers, there is nothing compelling or interesting about their service as far as I can see from the site. If this is a place to exchange selected cryptos for BTC and US dollars, and it looks like it is, then this is a big deal. But it's not obvious from their home page that this is what is available. I dug a bit deeper, but still have questions: Does CryptoAve satisfy all tax and reporting reporting requirements for operating in all relevant jurisdictions? Are they FINCEN compliant, for example? If so, then this is an outstanding and necessary service. But it looks like I have to create an account in order to find out exactly what this site is so good for.

Any press release should probably talk about what CryptoAve is, why it's so significant, and how it enhances the value of DigitalCoin, because the CryptoAve site is not doing a good job of explaining its own value.

(Apologies if this has already been addressed.)

Is there a press release for the opening of CryptoAve? When stories appear on Coindesk.com, Cryptocoinsnews.com, and other outlets, people who have never heard of a coin do tend to pay attention.

Yep. We've all been Goxed. Their bad implementation of BTC has brought everything else down for now. It's temporary, I'm sure, but no fun to have to sit through.

Can someone explain for the non-programmers/non-cryptographers what is the difference between Anoncoin and Darkcoin, please?