There aren't many people using Bitcoins who aren't nerds, and we know there are many alternatives to Gox and Dwolla. I used Dwolla because it's cheap, but the Gox % fee actually makes it slower and more expensive than a wire to BFX in many cases. If they start going into exchanges' bank accounts, we go back to p2p trades, but until we know what DHS is charging, there's not reason to assume they'll go after other exchanges just because Bitcoin.

YEAH! Finally, we can move past Bitcoin as a fiat payment system and go back to our roots... Bitcoin as a drug payment system! No more online cash shit, just go to your local pusher and buy some online tokens to hit up SR for anything the dealer doesn't carry. Maybe the dealer can even get a referral bonus!

(I'm just mad that I've been increasing my long positions for the past couple weeks)

It'd be nice to see some competition with PayPal for international transfers. The current fees make it unappealing compared to an international wire (except I don't trust the reliability of wires) when buying/selling Bitcoin with friends. Otherwise, there's no significant fee with Bitcoin to transfer wealth, so...

Agreed...

Banks only lend out multiples of their reserve because they're only required to hold ~10% of their deposits on-hand as cash or something roughly as fungible as cash. They're still only lending out a fraction of their assets (including deposits), not multiples, so it's not magically multiplying money. They don't have $5m deposited, $500k free-and-clear as equity, then go around lending out $20m or something. Depositing into a bank is basically giving them a loan for them to take arb profit on. The goal of FRB law is to set a reasonable percentage of deposited funds which need to be able to be covered on any day, with the intent to prevent bank runs and keep everyone's deposit fungible, while also allowing banks to profit and give something back to customers (free checking, interest, subsidized transactions, etc.). Whether or not the majority of consumers know that or not doesn't really matter so long as the FDIC/NCUA has very low minimums in deposit insurance coverage (though that obviously introduces more moral hazard).

You can obviously do the same with Bitcoin, and I was concerned about MtGox's ability to do so ("issue debt notes") with "GoxBTC," but Gox recently pulled USD/BTC code functionality, so...

Silk Road

Talked about stuff like that in a Donator thread... Would appreciate if they moved it from Newbies to LTO, because it really doesn't discourage people given the naysaying isn't based on hard evidence - because it isn't really possible to solidify a claim that's it *is* a scam, just a 9.9/10 likely scam. That said - mods put a [Scam?] tag on the CedarTec thread... I think the MU thread is even more obvious, but also taking in BTC (which is kind of shocking -- but it's hard to know if people going in know it's a ponzi and are just gambling, or if they're unaware newbies).

Go for it. Only thing frowned upon I can think of would be listing every single item individually in their own thread or advertising SR wares.

Well... I'm looking for $135-140, so....

Erm - just for some insight from someone who semi-recently had to look for unskilled employment (even though the OP topic was apparently dropped 2-3 pages ago) -- if they can get a GED (maybe not even essential), there's a high level of demand for them pretty much everywhere in the country, because Americans aren't taking these jobs (in fact, the company I was at has frequently considered moving, possibly out-of-country, because they're paying $15/hr to a staffing agency and still have crazy-high turnover and have turned "over-time" into "expected time" because they simply don't have enough labor). It's not even the minimum wage law fucking them over. The jobs are very tedious and have long hours (night-shift is pretty much in-demand at every factory on Earth), but pay $8.50-$13.50 an hour, 65-80 hours/wk, anything over 48h = 1.5x pay, 2x on Sunday, so... yeah... tons of jobs for unskilled workers, but not tons of people willing to stand on their feet 11h/day willing to do an exceptionally unfulfilling and tedious job working every day of the week. Bring on the Mexicans!

ETA: Racial stereotype alert!

I agree. I think "mainstream" critiques like Jon Stewart's Daily Show, while always lacking in a call to action, will probably always be most widespread in getting a message out, even if ineffective. I disagree with most opinions (usually presented as smear pieces) in that show, and even find only 1/4 of it to be actually entertaining, but I watch it anyway. Jon will even poke fun at his paradoxical role, and insist he's a comedian, not someone who should be "setting the tone" for conversations in America as he's accused of. I've also watched LaRouche documentaries on recommendation from a friend, which I think could be considered "toothy." Neither has ever convinced me to do anything, so I'd think it's fair to assume both of them ineffective at changing anything. - And I know, it's unfair to say "I've never done it, so nobody does," but I've never really heard of anyone recently talking about Benghazi or the VA paperwork fiasco outside the Internet.

All that said, I think 20/20, 60 Minutes, and similar shows are and will always be the most effective -- we've seen them make major changes in US politics, with new SEC regulations on insider trading definitely being the big outcome (though... IIRC, they were already on the books, so....). I can't think of any examples of "movie"-type documentaries ever having that kind of societal impact, because they really aren't watched by many people - and when they do, it's generally because they're funny.

- But then, what about Super Size Me? I can no longer get super-sized food, and we all know what happened in NYC. I watched it and was amused, but I think Fat Head was also amusing and presented a more compelling case than Spurlock's film. Neither really made me want to change anything... so maybe a debate over the effect of Super Size Me and the changes the US consumer saw after are warranted - but I think we can reasonably attribute at least a significant amount of weight toward societal change to the release of Super Size Me.

I'm going way off on a tangent... I think media which targets people early (most religions are excellent at this!) will always be the most persuasive. I really like John Stossel's "In the Classroom" series, because even though they have a significant bias (especially in more recent Fox-released DVDs), they're ultimately about encouraging independent and critical thought. In the DVDs, they include teacher resources, so it can become an actual lesson, with a very significant outreach while being very cost-effective (in fact, I was shown one of the first Stossel in the Classrooms DVDs by a teacher who was simply excited to have something new and free available in his toolkit). If we believe a revolution is warranted in some area, there is surely no greater means of producing it than by promoting sentience among humans, and I think that's ultimately much more important than promoting any single issue. We all know that in the typical "American" conversation, it's like talking with a completely thoughtless version of Chuck Hagee or James Fallows - or just asking "The Bible" its opinion on whether or not God could create the Immovable Boulder. We know sending these non-sentient beings to college doesn't work, and I think it's the same with documentaries in most cases - so how do we effectively get to "The Influencers" in our society? Maybe more importantly, who are "The Influencers?" Frankly, I think it's just the current generation of "old people." I don't think we can fundamentally change their way of thinking, only offer them facts to show them something the majority of "old people" believe wrong. With young people, though (and I'm talking 8-18, not 28-38), I think a much stronger case could be made that we CAN fundamentally change how they think, and maybe more importantly - WHY they think. I think a lot of documentaries ultimately fail (not in terms of revenue, but in societal change) because they target people who are set in their ways, but not very influential -- the majority.

ETA: To be fair.... I heard a lot from my friend on LaRouche. At first, I thought it was hilarious some old guy was blaming climate change on some far-off "Crab Nebula" I never heard of in school. After actually researching it - a result, partially, of tangential learning from LaRouche videos - I find myself believing many of his general theories plausible -- not necessarily that the Crab Nebula is responsible for climate change... and I still think it's funny anyone could believe "The Queen" is involved in hard drug trade.... but still... documentaries by him and his "associates" ultimately have affected what I believe and how I think, so maybe they could be considered effective - at least in doing something.

A lot of early folks have already sold. There are a lot held, and a lot of those are probably lost forever, because BTC was near-worthless for a good stretch of time. When Laszlo bought a pizza with BTC, it was a big deal -- not because he bought them for 10kBTC or whatever - but because someone actually accepted it for payment.

Very early adopters got lucky. A lot of people aren't finding the same luck with altcoins, but some are. Satoshi can't predict the future, and IIRC, he was envisioning a much more decentralized mining network, not a couple hundred big players once the GPU miners are pushed out. I think having a relatively high mining reward early was a necessary evil to encourage selfish individuals to hop on board, because they might think Bitcoin's a "good idea," but want some "exclusive deal" to get them on-board -- all the time, start-ups offer VCs too much equity for something like $50k. The company goes on to grab $500k net the next year and the VC makes his money back just in dividends, along with 49% of the company or whatever. And, a lot of the time, the VCs lose. I think early adopters could reasonably be compared to VCs. - Or just weirdo nerds, and giving a bunch of weirdo nerds a ton of cash is probably good long-term. Just look what Mark Cuban's become. 

ETA: Guess I just gave a wordier response to what Birdy wrote while I was writing, heh.

Who the Hell submits to being pictured and giving away a photo of their ID for a freakin' candy bar? I don't like people looking at my ID, much less getting a scanned copy. I'm still uneasy about having submitted ID to sites like Gox. Anyway - the cost of adding all that would be pretty ridiculous for a candy vending machine.

Anyway, I compared this to personal checks in a (newer, actually) thread. Many stores accept personal checks (usually up to $xxx), and many also do their own version of KYC (see MoonShadow above). If a customer turns out to be a frequently-thieving assbag, you ban them from your store. In the case of vending machines, I'd guess they'll just have to accept the risk or use ZipConf-like insurance. For workplace vending machines, you can do something like lock out the machine until a tech visits it when a double-spend is detected, so the thief will gain the ire of their coworkers, and pressure to stop doing it. If it continues and company management does nothing, the vendors can simply remove the machines and put them to work somewhere else. I think most physical and low-cost/high-volume companies will find the risk exceptionally low.

Companies don't need to, and frequently do not, operate on the premise that their customers are thieving assholes, with the exception of many IP distributors, and if a company thinks Sony BMG is a good model to emulate, keeping them out with uneasiness over risk of double spends is fine by me. 

I agree with others saying it's normal. I've frequently had that problem with new PSUs and GPUs. It goes away. So far, I've never had anything burst in flames, burn up, or go bad (as far as PSUs and GPUs emitting a "plastic-y" smell). If you can identify the smell as coming most strongly from a connection point, then you probably have a problem. If worried, I'd check the connectors every few days -- just pull them all up, examine for any warping/melting, and plug them back in until the smell goes away.

I'm fairly sure they multiply because BTC's open-source and historically, you can make a lot of BTC/USD/etc doing altcoin pump&dumps, especially if you're the first. You mine for a few weeks, create a bunch of sockpuppets to pretend people are interested, then sell at its peak, rinse & repeat. You can't really pump&dump BTC the same way, because that extreme early mining advantage has "unfairly" already been distributed. Now, many are still able to mine profitably with GPUs, but I don't think anyone's willing to spend 10x on electricity than they make at current rates -- I think that ultra-extreme volatility's done for - it's unreasonable to expect BTC to hit $2k or $2 in the next six months, and those are the kinds of price swings we saw "back in the day" and the kinds of swings altcoins see today, which is why there are a lot of speculators (the HYIP kind of speculators, I'll add) buying and selling massive numbers of these coins where able. Ultimately, I think the Bitcoin transaction "minimum" fee/bid and the new minimums being put in place will decide the price ceiling in a few years' time, and we'll probably hang around there with altcoins (especially established altcoins like Litecoin) really stepping into their role as the "silver" of Bitcoin.

That hilarious video of Chuck Schumer looking at the Silk Road site on a laptop and appearing outraged is what initially brought me back to look at Bitcoin seriously, so.... I'd rather have a US Senator talking about it being impossible to trace than in an article about a drug raid. Drug rave, maybe - but not a drug raid.

Bitcoin being a tool for monetary privacy is great, but I doubt we'll see many articles where journalists buy drugs and report the police haven't been in contact with them, yet. 

Tangent:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VEueDUUe6Q
(I can't find the original nor load that one to tell if it's even the right video -- sorry if I picked the wrong one.)

Could've been referring to a sticky bomb. 

- and here I was just thinking it was a racial slur. "Legend has it, their country was so poor, the famine ended once the EU sent them one Mickey, quintupling their GDP." ... I'm not very good with jokes, sometimes.

Different BTC exchanges have been engaged in lawsuits for at least a year, now. TradeHill sued Dwolla over a year ago, still hasn't gone anywhere afaik.

Pretty sure he lost fiat, not BTC. If someone steals your cash and buys goats with them, we wouldn't say you lost your goats.