just read the last message about subsidizing and hiding tax..

retailers know people like round numbers and they find it easy to add up in their head how much to pay before getting to the cashiers desk its why u dont see weird price tags with 23c or 71c at the end.. its mostly 0c or 99c(read on for this explanation too)

because of that, if true product value was $19.71 the retailer would still charge you $20 even if there was no tax/ card surcharge. simply to do with nice round numbers.

the cunning retailer may ofcourse bring it down to $19.99 as their belief(due to consumer behavior studies) is that customers don't see it as $20 minus a penny(expensive) but as $19 "something". making customers subconsciously think is way more cheaper then $20 then it actually is. purely because they see the big $19 followed by the smaller print 99, which they think is ignorable. that is why you always see price tags wrote like below to make an extra near on dollar not even noticable.
$1999

the point being whether tax/surcharges are hidden or not you are still going be paying the retailer the same.

imagine a world where no surcharges are charged at the shop but instead at the end of the month the banks debited out 1.5% of your total spend from your account, thus solving your ... i don't want to pay hidden charges.... would you still be happy spending $20 in the shop then 30c at the end of the month..

what this new rule does do is highlight to customers how much the retailer pays credit card companies so that customers can see that credit card companies are hurting retail profits, and those with compassion would start using debit cards or cash. (that's their hope anyways)

the point again, you will still end up paying the same price.. just a different person would get to keep the 30c

this wont affect things much. retailers know if someone sees a product price tag for $20 and goes up to the counter to pay, passes them their credit card and the cashier says "that'll be £20.30" the customer will first take another look at the price tag to make sure they didn't misread it, before starting an argument with the cashier.

all you will see change, is what the sales receipts will say
product cost      $19.71
____________________
card fee             $0.29
____________________
total                 $20.00

that way the retailer would only pay sales tax on $19.71 as oppose to the full $20. (thats how some retailers work in the UK)

bitsyncom. i fully understand there are parts parts sourcing issues with avalon. and those genuine people that want ASICS (either from yourselves or BFL) to succeed. one thing that has been BFL's biggest failure is the way it communicates with customers.

i know both BFL and yourself have passion about your products. but the professional silence followed by insults has been BFL's failings and from what i am reading today, will become avalons too.

the way i read it is that so far you have not been getting parts from a factory, which would easily have millions of stock,  due to a big shipping/ordering time delay. so instead you found a local source, probably something like radioshack or a small wholesaler. which this week you have managed to empty them of stock. so now you have to either wait for the local wholesaler to restock. or order from their a foreign supplier, causing a bit of a delay.

which is fully understandable.

one thing i would say is be passionate about your product but don't take public criticism personally and attack people individually. allow the product to uphold your companies reputation. don't ruin it with insults, especially directed at individuals.

samsung CEO would never respond to each and every customer with use of insults due to their comments. i have however seen some CEO's make generalised statements that poke at critics in a elegant and subtle way.
its time bitcoin companies step up their game. PR can be the biggest advert a company has, try not to get personal with individuals.

i know its hard sometimes to bite your lip and thinking that replying to comments about the place you work, on personal time wont affect you or your business. but in the end it does. INABA is the proof of that.

at least pre-draft replies and read them twice asking yourself:
is this business or personal
is it factual
does it clear any concerns the recipient may have
will this statement hurt the companies reputation
you should call it the "am i doing a BFL_josh dumb reply" checklist

then redraft another copy that at least gives a positive answer to each of those questions. try not to make it sound like your bringing a gun to a knife fight. but more like bringing a beef steak for others to use the knives on. (do something they wont expect).

lastly. slander is vocal libel is written

please add 99.99% human (0.01% to account for any chatbots someone may write just to disprove the theory)

technically in 2012 litecoin was below 0.003 is there a stipulation that it has to be that under 0.003 at any point in history "before January 27th" or just in a 24hour - one month timegap it hits under 0.003.

i hate all these gambling things that leave soo many grey area's for people to abuse.

It is also worth noting that other projects are in development, but instead of "doing a BFL" by creating hype way before anything is even ready to be beta tested. It is best to ensure the projects are in a good enough working order before creating hype.

That way when they do get released, its ready to use. Which is best for the long term, instead of spoon feeding info now and again to cause pumps and dumps before anything is finalised.

The litecoin community learns all the great things bitcoin has brought to crypto community, and also litecoin will learn from bitcoins mistakes to make sure litecoin does not follow it like a deaf sheep.

As for bitcoins gold standard people keep giving it. Crypto-currencies are not a commodity, you cant make anything out of it, you cant eat it or drink it.

Crypto currencies are technically an Asset, much like a piece of art.

So its better to think of bitcoin as a Van Gogh and litecoin as a Picasso. Van Gogh will paint 21 million paintings and Picasso will paint over 80 million.
Just remember Van Gogh can be a little selfish and deaf when it comes to listening to his patrons requests, just like the bitcoin foundation. But Picasso is a totally different attitude, although some patrons will at first say it does not look like fine art at first glance with its crazy implementation, it does have an elegant beauty that will stand the test of time, and like the developers. Not afraid to learn new ways of doing things for the benefit of the patrons.

edit. i used too much waffle in my reply

the best payment processing with fraud REASSURANCE is the mtgox "pay with mtgox account" button

no need to worry about 0 confirm transactions. as the funds have to be pre-confirmed by MTGox to even send to merchants.
it requires customers to log in, which reduces the chances of them crying about leaving their open qt client on the phone/laptop whilst they walked away and a stranger moved funds.

i think the point trying to be made in the last post was that bitcoin conferences are usually just "get together's" of people already in the community.

take the euro conference of 2011 and the london conference of 2012. there was not much outsider involvement, nor much media coverage.

yet. if bitcoiners went to outsider conferences. EG going to technology conventions like CES, or the money2020 it will get more outsiders involved with bitcoin and help grow bitcoin more.

bitcoin conferences are more like tea parties for the community. so they can meet up face to face with people they have only seen before as a forum avatar and username. great for networking with people and so i do hope the main emphasis is on making everyone's business known so that new collaborations / projects are made. and not just for the social tea party scene.

very much off topic. not sure why its on this forum.

unless due to privacy reasons the names and businesses had been changed to protect the identity of the accused. and in actual fact the accused is sonny V and the victim is inaba lol

gold is wonderful because it can be used for jewelry, decoration, in electronic devices and many other things. it also has a limited supply. hence why its the 'big thing' in investments
you cant do as much with rubys and sapphires as you can do with gold. so yes in ancient times pretty things meant alot more to the rich then today, multifunction of limited resource matters more these days, take gold and platinum for instance.
diamonds can be man made... need i say more
i agree home made is a nightmare. but going back to the gold analogy once gold miners dropped their pickaxes and wash bowls and started to convert cheap second hand farm machinery into makeshift mining machinery the 'game' increased. yes it was a nightmare but it kickstarted a new industry and then came the professional machines. gold miners use to buy a pickaxe for under £50 now they spend a few hundred thousand on professional machinery.
with bitcoin what you will find is that those that do not have ASICS will start diversifying their business plans. to either not mine at all and start producing products to aid others mining, and profit from product sales. offer services to change the mined coins into native currencies for the miners, or create other wonderful businesses/services. creating new industries revolving around bitcoin.

back hundreds of years ago only the kings metalsmiths were the only ones able and skilled to do anything with the gold once it was mined. now anyone can do anything with it. take samsung for instance. they invest alot of time and money into getting gold for their components. and solar panel company's are currently right now seeking out alot of silver to ensure adequate supply to make solar panels. but you would never imagine them to be gold miners or investors as that is not their niche. but they are part of the gold//silver industry.

i will say bitcoin is not a commodity. it is a asset. so using a gold analogy has its limits. as bitcoin only has one purpose a store of value. (you cannot make jewellery out of a bitcoin).

although the program to generate coins is called a miner, i have always felt that satoshi's paper was a work of art and that using gold mining analogies was a failed comparison due to its limits in comparisons. if only miners were called vectors or designers or something more related to the art, people would not be seeing bitcoin as a commodity purely on its gold references everyone uses, but as its true representation, an asset.

so lets take an asset that cannot be used for any other purpose but to view, admire and store value... ART:
paint brush companies, canvas companies, art galleries, auction houses, art schools, and many other 'rich' businesses have succeeded in increasing wealth without themselves putting paint to paper to create the asset themselves. bitcoin will be the same. it will change the game.. not kill it.

if your looking for some charts.. its limited because of anonymity, its hard to tell where people that use bitcoin actually live.. but here is probably as close as you can get to a chart showing numbers and locations. (warning: outdated, but useful as a guide to location ratio of the community)



it came from here http://bitcoinstatus.rowit.co.uk/

if you want to see it in a nice and impressive view here:
http://blockchain.info/nodes-globe

location based info should always be taken with a pinch of salt. but from reading forums the leader is USA followed by europe, which does have a big market for bitcoin businesses. unlike australia or asia south america or the UK which is small in comparison to the two top 'players',.

my solution to 20 different random passwords is easy

have a random character word u can remember and the somewhere in the word you also put in something else. EG the websites address

eg:
1h9f6e0 49d8ve7 becomes 1h9f6e0bitcointalk49d8ve7
or
193yzso37dsw becomes 1B9I3TyCzOdIoN3T7AdLsKw

by the way my password looks nothing like this, its just an idea to have something that is not in the dictionary.

you can even make a VB.net webbrowser that reads the web address and auto spells your password for you to just copy and paste into it, thus avoiding google chrome addons and internet explorer extensions from listening into the webpage data transmissions. and bypassing keyloggers if u simply copy and paste.
if your smart enough you can even use the document.element code to directly put the passphrase into the webpage login box without the need of your passphrase going into the 'clipboard' which avoids any smart keyloggers which might also copy every text you copy and paste.

there are many ways to secure yourself and the best security is personal security. not relying on third party design or service to secure your system for you.

because if everyone started using the same security service hackers would direct their interest at that single service. but an individual style of security where no two people use the same method, will make hackers lives even harder.

i know of millions of people that buy gold and trade gold. but they dont mine it because its expensive to buy the machinery and too time consuming. they would rather continue with their regular day job and buy gold for other reasons, whether its for investing or for making things from.

bitcoin will be the same. hobbyists that gpu mine btc will start to either up their game and make it into a proper profession by buying / making their own bigger rigs or change their method of accumulating wealth.

much like gold miners had to upgrade from pan washing gold to using excavators and wash machines.. or they became gold merchants, trading mined gold which other people mined, for fiat currency and pocketing the profit margin in the middle.

bitcoin will be the same. you will notice more fiat exchanges pop up and other bitcoin related ventures. use this time to think up new avenues of income. EG google "drop shipping" and see if you can find legit products that you can sell for bitcoin without the hassle of packaging up the goods, as the supplier handles all that.

and if you truly want to help the economy and help increase future strengths of bitcoin. aim your plans at the outsiders.

try not to be a sheep making yet another gambling site that only those within the community will use, or another coin lending site only the community will use.all that will achieve is stirring the pot of cash within the same group of people. no wealth creation, just diluting wealth within the community.

and as for the identity of these secretive ASIC creators i think its now widely known that Sonny Vleisides and josh zerlan are behind BFL.. and their address.. you could probably find it..

but with that in mind about trust. do you know steve jobs or bill gates home address off the top of your head? yet people dealt with their companies without issue a few year back before they stepped off their CEO thrones for differing reasons.

i do agree that bitcoin businesses need to be transparent and honest as it creates alot of scepticism when they hide certain facts about themselves. and even now people are not 100% sure about BFL due to the vagueness of facts BFL decide to release. Which is totally understandable.

their PR does suck and i think aswell as miners having to up their game when asics come out, i think bitcoin businesses need to up their game too.

there are only a handfull of bitcoin businesses which i find great, and they are bitinstant, moneydealers, bitcoinstore bitpay. and strangely enough they are all linked together by certain people.

i think other businesses, oops i should say other hobby stores should learn from the legit businesses and up their game.

bitcoin is still growing, not dying. so look forward to change and roll with it.

wait for it.............
we have had the sales pitch, wait for it....

pre-orders/ investment, donations will come up next..

maybe worth reading through this thread
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52543.0

about the BTC100 they already started talking to charities from what i read. might save you some time with your own endevers if u collaborate or steal idea's off each other

let me think. credit mtgox.. hang on.. thats my idea

if you have a bricks and mortar shop and want to accept crypto but without the hassle of confirm times.. there is and has been a solution.

MTGOX codes

this means the amount has been pre confirmed in mtgox and will instantly appear when you redeem it.

need i say more?

yep.
just need to create an app that says send your mtgox code to this page. (which is linked to the shop owners mtgox account or bitinstant)

my sentiments exactly to both of you. this is why i and a few other people with the same mind set have moved over to litecoin and are in progress of doing a few things with that.

a few of us have already been in contact with merchants/ e-commerce and brick and martar stores and for all the propaganda about silk road and limited userbase of 200k regular users world wide = 1 people per town. its not really in it for them. plus asking the merchant to fit the bill of the discount does not look good either.

although the counter argument is: free advertising on many websites, maybe some media coverage and the only cost is x% loss on the potential 1 customer per town, which on the scheme of things is just a drop in the pond. the whole propaganda of SR keeps rearing its little head up again.

the whole anonymous SR niche market VS mainstreaming legit businesses. is still like knocking ur head on a brick wall.

i do though think that people making insureances and gambling are just stirring the pot of cash amungst themselves and not really creating actual value or expanding the community. a much better idea is to create a website selling goods and using a drop shipper to do the hard work. it costs you nothing upfront, no need to store unwanted goods if they never sale , no need to package them up or take them to delivery points. you just get an order and pass it onto the drop shipper adhok.

wrong. in 2009 bitcoin had 0 value..  and you cant use bitcoin to do anything else. you cant bend it or melt it to make jewellery out of it, you cant eat it or drink it so it has no commodity value. it wasnt till months later that people started putting a monetary value to it making it become an ASSET.

bitcoin is not like gold (commodity) at all. it is more like van Gough art (asset) but instead of a dozen paintings theres a few quadrilian satoshis.
it wasn't till months later that people started putting a monetary value to it making it become an asset.

in 2009 it had no value, but because some people started selling alpaca socks and pizza for it, it created a demand. and the production costs set the price accordingly increasing due to difficulty changes(supply) which then increased the costs of electricity and hardware to continue mining. move on 4 years and the price is now linked to production costs + miners profits.

500 years ago water was free, anyone can have it. no one seen monetary value in it. but then water companies created value. how you may ask.
by making it easier to get hold of instead of the people gathering it themselves (supply) and by setting a cost based on water pipes and treatment facilities (production costs) and now they are making huge profit due to the demand for it increasing.

short answer: its backed by production costs
EG gold miners sell gold to cover their costs of production and a profit to cover their livelihood. gold is getting more expensive to produce a gold bar, hence the high prices.

long answer: its backed by productions costs and profit dependant on demand
EG if an individual gold miners costs were $1500 to make a weeks worth of gold bar the minimal they would sale for is $1500 plus a weeks wages. that's if their was not much demand and the miner was desperate to sell it just to break even.
but if the demand is high, the miner can sell for higher prices and rake in the profit.

same with bitcoin,  its electricity and computer components mainly, as oppose to excavators and 'washer' machines. bitcoins are getting harder to mine a block hence the higher price. then add on the costs of a few grands worth of rigs the miner has pre-paid for they will want more buck for their BTC. the amount of profit ontop of costs varies depending on the demand for it.

so just wait till ASICS hit the majority. at first there will be a flash flood of BTC hitting the market which may cause a drop, due to too much supply and not enough demand. but once the difficulty changes a few days later the supply amounts will decrease, demand will then increase again which would cause a rise.