The Japanese ¥en currently trades at $0.012190 to the dollar and people still use ¥ quite a bit.

In fact, when the ¥en was trading at 130 to the dollar in the good ol' days, it was 1¥ = $0.007692  (traders would just drop the first two zeros and trade it as 7692/7694).

I need to vent and this forum seems like the best place! For the last two days I have been attending/following via Twitter the 14th annual Digital Money Forum in London hosted by my friend, Dave Birch.  Here is the agenda link: http://www.chyp.com/  (click thru to get to agenda) ...or...  http://www.chyp.com/digitalmoney/agenda-2011/

Keep in mind that the speakers and attendees are paid many thousands of dollars/pounds/euros per month to study and implement electronic money concepts for multinational banks, payment associations, and payment companies. For Hushmail, I even presented at the Forum in 2001 regarding web-based digital signature technology but i think it was Digital Identity Forum at the time. And, this is why bitcoin is going to blindside everyone:

1) there is not an awareness of market demand for decentralized p2p digital currency;
2) many 'experts' do not understand the difference between centralized vs. decentralized as it relates to digital cash;
3) many 'experts' do not recognize that bitcoin requires the chain to prevent double-spending;
4) people react with the same antipathy that they have towards gold standard or else, conversely, they fail to understand that bitcoin value doesn't rest upon the intrinsic value economic argument;
5) quasi-competitors, Facebook credits and Linden dollars, etc. as virtual currency, restrict two-way convertibility;
6) generally people dismiss it as a fad and they are not aware of the floating exchange rate;
7) lastly, it was mentioned that they could invite someone from bitcoin to attend the forum next year (I guess that would mean Satoshi if anyone can find him or if he wants to be found, but if I were him, I wouldn't attend -- that's the whole point of distributed p2p value).

You can follow the hashtag #dmf14 on www.twitter.com if you want to view the conference comments. Godspeed.

The EFF is probably dumping their bitcoin on the market and that's what is keeping the price under $1.00 now.

Posted by Sebastiano Scròfina, a decentral banker at kakigarden.com

Is Bitcoin doomed to fail ?
http://www.quora.com/Is-Bitcoin-doomed-to-fail?srid=uLs

He states:
"I love the concept of Bitcoin. I believe the Internet will redefine currency in the following years. But I've got 5 major concerns about Bitcoin's scalability (other than the block chain size)"..........

v-tim,

Are you a venture capitalist or angel investor?

Thanks to kiba for launching this.  I am just now seeing this post so apologies for being a few days behind.  IMO, the reading material needs to be at a more 'granular and focused level' for direct relevance to bitcoin.  Human Action is indeed a powerhouse, but that can be read on one's free time/beach time.

The Austrians have been very specific in monetary theory, for instance:

1. Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit
2. Rothbard, What Has Government Done to Our Money?
3. Hayek, The Denationalization of Money and Competition in Currency

Additionally, I have painstakingly gone through all of the academic journals (1990-2010) for articles related to digital currency/digital cash/precursors to bitcoin/etc and the links are hosted at the right-hand side of the blog page for http://themonetaryfuture.blogspot.com

You can find it by scrolling down to the middle under the heading:
Selected Digital Currency Articles and Academic Papers (2000-current); and
Selected Digital Currency Articles and Academic Papers (1990-1999)

IP addresses are not a 100% replacement for domain names; try it with some of the seized domains and see what happens.

U.S. Government Seizes BitTorrent Search Engine Domain and More http://bit.ly/hsNGvD or, this address below...

http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-government-seizes-bittorrent-search-engine-domain-and-more-101126/

Bitcoin itself as a P2P client is safe from DHS and ICANN closures but what about the applications and various exchanges in the bitcoin universe like MtGox?

Good post TTBit, especially the part about MtGox functioning as an online financial institution. Other MtGox implications, besides the PayPal debacle, are jurisdictional.  The bottom of the web page lists an entity that looks like it's registered in Panama, but I believe that large balances retained at MtGox would be subject to shut-down by the local jurisdiction, if they ever received enough pressure to do this.  The issues would be:

1. does LibertyReserve support secondary account redemptions if the primary MtGox account became compromised/confiscated?
2. What happens to MtGox bitcoin balances if servers are confiscated?
3. does MtGox maintain backup servers or servers located in a different jurisdiction than the primary mgmt entity?

You got that right, caveden.  It took me about three weeks to get over the "concern" with currency backing and the whole intrinsic vs. extrinsic debate, but I finally GOT IT and now i almost lose my temper every time i have to go over the concept with other economists, traders, and even developers.  Paper currency notes have no intrinsic value (without considering the law and gov't payment preference).

Until we can use molecular transport pods to send a gold coin across the internet, decentralized P2P money will gyrate towards reusable proof-of-work methodologies.

Not the best wording but the article has received a lot of attention. I don't think that the EFF is in a position to grant legal protection...maybe "legal assistance".

However, bitcoin does not really need any legal protection -- it is not legal tender, it has no "intrinsic" value, it is not pretending to be a political monetary unit, and it doesn't break any laws -- it is simply a reusable cryptographic proof-of-work. It doesn't even violate copyright laws. So, for governments to legislate against it or to attack it with existing laws, they would first have to recognize bitcoin as having value. If they did that, then other cryptographic POW systems would gain instant credibility and the anonymous e-currency business would be off to the races!

Thanks ribuck, but a fully-encrypted hard drive, like http://www.truecrypt.org/ will solve this issue.

Now, I also know that a person in the UK went to jail for "not" revealing his PGP private key password, but i suppose you can always say that you have so many passwords that you forgot.  Also, see similar case "UK teenager jailed for not disclosing password":

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/uk-teenager-jailed-for-not-disclosing-password/6372

You guys are great, but you sure do get off topic pretty quickly. 
;-)
Cheers,

What are the best ways today to have "safe bitcoin" like "safe sex" ?  Is the future of untraceable bitcoin going in the direction of anonymous re-mixers where you have to trust a third party bitcoin bank or are there other ways that i am missing?

I realize that bitcoin is pseudonymous vs. anonymous and that precautions must be taken, but I came across two easy-to-find web pages that should serve as a harbinger of how law enforcement will utilize bitcoin data should it attain critical mass:

1. http://buybitcoins.com/   Look at the Google maps from the crooks real (or proxy) servers. Now, this company lost over $2,000 in fraudulent cc transactions which is wrong, but the larger point is that a shocking amount of information is available from sloppy users.  Consider if this were political prisoners from Tibet, Wikileaks benefactors, or simply international business people wishing to keep an income stream private from confiscatory taxation authorities;

2. http://theymos.ath.cx:64150/bbe/   This is the Block Explorer brilliantly assembled by 'theymos'.  I almost fell out of my chair when I imagined law enforcement each having Block Explorer running as their home page. Theymos should receive many donations (from governments, I suspect).

The implications are obvious.  In the trade-off to cryptographically address the double-spend issue, Bitcoin has left a transactional trail of valuable data which can be beneficial to anyone attempting to piece together a profile.  As Bitcoin matures, more services such as mybitcoin.com, bitcoin banks, and bitcoin mixers will be routine practice because otherwise the casual (or novice) user will be unaware of the trail that could easily lead to physical and geographical identity. The privacy features of a $100 bill or a 500-euro note should be the minimum standard of financial and transactional privacy.

Aside from Satoshi sinisterly building in a back door for his future King Croesus-like wealth, the primary existing design flaw is what to do after 21 million is reached.  Even at a generous 1:1 BTC:USD exchange rate, a small-time chump-change millionaire could buy up the world's supply of bitcoin and dictate prices/transactions.

Now, the only thing that would make this scenario unrealistic is for bitcoin value to go to 1000:1 thereby reflecting a $210 billion supply.  If bitcoin is on that track then maybe the speculators have the right idea. You don't get there right away, but the current design flaw is that successful growth of the bitcoin economy has unavoidable built-in deflation. A solution to the post-21 million bitcoin world would address those concerns now.  Weeee...........this speculating stuff is easy.

Grondilu, we are in agreement, especially regarding your comment on token representation.  My point is that a pegged rate to gold will provide bitcoin with stable value representation (and put an end to the crying deflationistas and inflationistas). A floating rate to gold is what exists now but you still have to go through someone like Mt. Gox where the quoted exchange rate is dollar-based to get the expression in USD. I understand the irony here because a gold peg seemingly would overlay a centralized structure from those providing the gold-backing, but it doesn't have to be centralized if the bitcoin forks grow with the injected amount of gold.  The gold peg can be software-established in the same way that the 21 million threshold is established. This would therefore be distributed because it is a distributed system of bitcoin exchangers worldwide providing the backing at generation.

I will remain open about the forked block in bitcoin being unnecessary, but I don't see how a stable bitcoin is feasible without parallel bitcoin economies having the option to provide the convertibility function.

The reason that I think a fork may be required is that there are already so many bitcoin issued without a value injection (other than gen time and power). We wouldn't value paper dollars based on the amount of paper and ink utilized. Bitcoin is not "legal tender" fiat by decree.

I am referring to a stable rate of x bitcoin to x grams (just like the Chinese Yuan to the USD or other dollar pegs). This would allow bitcoin valuation to take place in an expression other than USD and one would not need to go through the USD for valuation and/or two-way convertibility. A pegged link would then allow bitcoin to also take on the "unit of account" function of money in addition to the "medium of exchange" function.

Agreed, the article is bollocks. The greatest threat to the current bitcoin economy is probably a parallel (or forked) bitcoin economy where large block issuers align themselves somehow to issue bitcoin which is convertible to a predetermined amount of gold from the outset. This will bridge the link to the physical world via 24/7 convertibility (using exchangers and even gold ATMs now in some places).  Additionally, it would benefit from the relative stability of gold that everyone understands.

By delinking the medium of exchange function from the store of value function,this strategy would also exploit the "scarcity" token feature of bitcoin in a positive way (because, yes scarcity is different on the Internet). Prepare for parallel bitcoin economies.

These guys let you get into the system with VISA and MC: http://centregold.ca/
....also, their fees are even lower if you fund with Amex.....you just have to look around at the various 800+ exchangers out there.....a good starting point is the approved exchanger list at Liberty Reserve.