Yeah, I'm a programmer as well. I've mostly been trying to think up something for myself to do, but I'm always willing to consider work. Website Development, Portfolio, Resume

Yep, for silver and gold, hen people say ounce, they mean troy ounce.

For copper and other non-precious metals, and ounce is avoirdupois.

Ounces are stupid. Grams FTW!

Those are pretty good prices.

I drink tea, but I'm a bit too poor right now to be ordering. (I'm working on that though)

The Paysius guys wrote a plugin for me when I asked. It probably helps that I know them and my cart (Ubercart on Drupal) is fairly popular. It only took a couple days to get it written, installed, tested, and debugged. There's been a couple hiccups due to my webhost being retarded, but we got it figured out easily enough.

This is exactly why I created Shire Silver, and why I continue to hope that someone develops a distributed shareholding system akin to bitcoins itself. I'd love to work on it, but I'm not quite up to speed on the tech & security yet.

It just worked for me, but I had to go to bitcrate.net, not www.bitcrate.net.

That's not quite right. Physical bitcoins cost more because they have an added value, being able to be traded without being online. The fact that they cost more to produce than the bitcoins they hold merely means they won't be produced unless they are valued/sold for at least that price.

Why not make the checks credit card sized? More per sheet and you could fit more in a wallet - even put them in their own slot.

If you notice, he's sitting at the desk of one of the main guys promoting Mountain Hours. Mr. Weeks is a good salesman, and a likable guy - I'll bet he and Adam hit it off at PorcFest.

I disagree. I think what we need is the tools and processes to make it easy for people to plug it in to their "legit" businesses. It will never grow big enough unless mainstream people use it.

Making it easy to use without disrupting current business practices is essential.

Get some businesses there accepting it. Show people coming for this event how it works, how easy it is to use. I imagine there's going to be a lot of talking and people attending will be overflowing with new information, so if you want people to remember it you have to do something a bit remarkable.

Showing people that you can buy chips with bitcoins anonymously, or a nice dinner, or some crappy "what happens in..." t-shirts will go a long way towards making it stick in their minds.

Don't just go and talk to folks. Show them. That helped a lot at PorcFest.

Just tried to log in to see if there was anything worth retweeting and got this: Invalid Twitter OAuth request

I'm guessing DNS change messed that up and it'll get fixed when DNS propagates.

You obviously don't have a grasp of economics and unintended consequences. Eminent domain is harmful to economic development because it reduces or eliminates owners' ability to plan and use their property as they want. If you can be held hostage to the whims of others then you cannot effectively plan. So any proper arbitrator will tell you in plain language that you cannot build a road across the land of someone who doesn't agree with your proposal. You are also totally ignoring the fact that there will be many other options besides building that portion of road over the resistor's land. Your attempt to limit the possibilities to only ones that create a conflict are infuriating.

Before I read Machinery of Freedom I was a minarchist. I didn't understand how things could possibly work in an anarchy. I still don't know how every last detail of every economic action by every single actor in the world would happen. What Machinery of Freedom got me to understand was that I don't have to have all the answers. The people making up the market will figure it all out by acting each in their own interest, and so no central planning is necessary. In fact, many things will turn out vastly different than any of us can even conceive. Maybe several technological advances will create options that no one now would expect. Maybe someone will figure out a better philosophy that answers many current social issues. But the point is, not only don't we know how it will all work out, but we don't need to know. We just need to trust that individuals making their own choices and acting in their own interest will provide all that is needed.

Merely making a trading platform open source would add some small value, but what would really shake things up would be a P2P trading platform. Think of bitcoin itself compared to centralized banks, and make the same paradigm shift for owning shares/bonds. No central repository to get thwacked or controlled.

I really like GLBSE and find it to be a great benefit to the bitcoin community, but IMHO it would be better if sites like that were merely portals to the P2P share system - comparable to online wallets such as blockchain's.

You can buy some at Coinabul, which has apparently earned a good rep. You can also buy some from me at Shire Silver.

It might be worth noting that my product isn't intended as an investment, but as an alternative currency. Use Coinabul for investment grade purchases.

There are other options available as well.

BTW, I've been having some issues with my webhost shutting down the port I need to complete bitcoin transactions, so if you get an error, just use the contact page on the site to let me know and it can be done the old fashioned way (which frankly isn't difficult at all).

I like the first one because it looks more like a standard business check that I'm used to.

For a business check, have you considered making a version with a perforated note area? It could go in a ledger book and a treasurer or bookkeeper would put the amount and purpose on the note area when funding & filling out the check.

BTW, have you guys seen these yet?
http://shiresilver.com/product/silver_daniq
http://shiresilver.com/product/silver_dirham
http://shiresilver.com/product/gold_one_tenth_dinar

FTFY 

That machine (the Moneylith) was great to have. I had my Shire Silver cards in it and they sold out, and I didn't have to sit around all day at the booth. I know the Casascius cards did well too, as did the silver dime cards. PorcFest is a great place to try out alternative currencies - possibly the best place as so many of the thousand or so people are economically literate and don't like government money.

As well as bitcoins, there were silver dime cards ( donttreadonmeme.com ), copper rounds, "suns of liberty" (a hand made thin silver bullion ingot), some junk silver, plenty of barter, and of course my own Shire Silver. This year I didn't do much advertising beforehand and most people accepted it, but then I've got a few years of experience and history so I didn't need to.

For anyone interested in coming next year, keep an eye on http://freestateproject.org/content/porcfest for the details.

Please do understand though, that this is a very libertarian event. People attending are expected to live up to the non-aggression principle. If seeing lots of people walking around open carrying bothers you then you won't be comfortable.

Here's a view of the kinds of people attending. Two years ago when I was watching my 3 month old son I really had to go to the bathroom bad, and his mother was off somewhere. I handed my son off to a total stranger for a few minutes. The next year I handed him off for an hour to someone who I only knew through Facebook. These are the kind of folks you like to deal with.

It was great meeting y'all there. The panel was fun, although I thought it was a bit too geeky and not enough about "how can I fit this into my existing business processes". Next year will be even better.