What did you use to figure out what the value of a Dollar "should" be?

The foundation has to be known by the effectiveness of it's action.
Others would have the same criteria, regardless of structure.  Maybe they are organized regionally, or by a particular focus.  Or by a particular currency/coin type.

Consider the circumstance of a case where there were some entity or group supporting a great new technology, call them GOOD PEOPLE, and there are others opposed to the existence of Bitcoin, lets call them the "Bad Angry Negative Killers" for our purposes here.  Wait that is too long, lets shorten it to BANK.
So BANK maybe wants to do all kinds of things to ruin Bitcoin, subvert or wreck the technology, insert bugs, make legal barriers where they want them, they could strive to control the dialog around the technology through the use of the 4th estate and generally bend it to their will.

What would BANK do to accomplish this?  They might put the top programmers on their payroll, they might create an authoritarian entity to stand in front of the technology and present it to the legal authorities, thus framing the case law created by their engagement.  Perhaps they would even be on both sides of important cases, funding prosecution and defense through diverse channels.  They might install representatives of the major communication channels into the organization to frame the debate.  It would create circles of secrecy so that only certain insiders could know what motivations are driving it.

Basically BANK would do all the same sort of things that the GOOD PEOPLE would do to support the technology, but the outcomes would be entirely different.

Some people are going to naturally distrust any structure that can be used as a leverage point, just because of the capability for that leverage to be used by BANK or by GOOD PEOPLE.  Others are going to look to enhance such structures and use leverage to build faster.

It is like any position of power.

If you want the power to decide who lives and who dies, you can get some of that action by being a doctor or being a soldier, and either way you can do much deciding.  Arguably more often by being a doctor.

Yay

6uRz1caWRZQQZhuNEfDz6hHQoPW1FZRq1P

I think they were saying "Congratulations on the launch", but something was lost in the translation.
(Translations from Trader to English is like Orcish to Elven, the inflections are tricky.)

Its not a bad idea to get a written legal opinion upon which you can rely, if it is something you are worried about with your particular facts and circumstances.

It might not be perfectly answered yet.

Some definitions are here:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/31/103.11
But the particular facts and circumstances may be left to judgement.  (A court might decide)

http://www.fincen.gov/financial_institutions/msb/definitions/msb.html
gives a little bit of a criteria and references subpart (ff) in
http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid=b107c5dab4a6f575f300393188cdb545&rgn=div5&view=text&node=31:3.1.6.1.2&idno=31#31:3.1.6.1.2.1.3.1
which gives a longer list of definitions.

There seems to be an indicative arbitrary threshold of US$1000 per person per day, but it may be less clear than that.

Getting a judgement is one thing, collecting it is quite another.

Yay puzzles

It might be useful to look for some statistics, and measure things other than our opinions, or even measuring the opinions might be good...

How many Bitcoin businesses are there in each country?
How many Bitcoin Businesses are harassed by the government of that country?
How many are shut down?

We will still get sampling errors from places where folks are not allowed to speak ill of their wicked overlords but at least we would have something.

I've decided to make available a special commemorative edition of the Bitcoin Silver COLD HARD CASH quarter bitcoin, at the Convention.  No one will be able to get one unless they are there, in person.
Others will probably have to get them from you if they want one.   
So if you are going and can stand to part with it, there might be some collector that will buy it from you.

These will only ever be available until Oct 31 2013 (The 5th anniversary of the Satoshi Nakamoto white paper).  After that, never made again, and the first place they will be, is at the Bitcoin EU Convention 2013, September 26th~28th

Some details are here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=269535.msg3139398#msg3139398

As we are waiting on the different elements of this to all come together (thank you for your patience), a friend pointed out this to me:
https://recalescencecoins.com/coins/

At 1.65BTC each, they are about 7x as expensive.

It occurs to me that there may be enough collectors to support collectible editions, and I have a lot of ideas about that.  We are already offering a few things for that.  The First Strike pieces, but those are earned rather than sold.

We are also likely to offer some special items to our high-volume purchasers for the pre-order. 

And a third offering, a hand-stamped edition for the 5th anniversary of the Satoshi White Paper.

These pieces will have a hand stamped mark, in celebration of our wise founder's publication on Oct 31 2008.  The end of next month will be the fifth anniversary and in celebration of that, we will mark a few with a stamp to commemorate this.



The first opportunity to get one of these will be at the formal release announcement at the Bitcoin Europe conference in Amsterdam in 2 weeks.  Details will be made available as decisions are made

 

Thank you for this.

Arguably so under definition 3 if "miles" constitute "stored value".
http://www.fincen.gov/financial_institutions/msb/definitions/msb.html

...but I am not making that argument.

Also arguably, if I make a coupon and issue more than US$1000 worth of them...

The rule is non-functional, non-enforceable and probably nonsensical in that it does not achieve its policy objective and does more harm than good.
Ultimately I'd doubt it will catch any money launderers and will push otherwise taxable revenue outside the taxable jurisdiction, but I suspect that lesson will be learned the hard way.
With a total market cap of just over a billion, Bitcoin remains way to small for any serious money laundering anyway.... and it leaves more trails to follow than Hansel and Gretel and much easier to follow than crumbs of bread.

Thing is, for honest money, it is really pretty awesome.  FinCEN is really missing the boat.

Full fare is probably worth it even for a single day anyhow.  I don't know how you are doing it so inexpensively.

Yes, but CC use KYC making them FinCEN complaint.

Hitting a 6 month high might pull some coins out of a few pockets anyway.

Yes, we need a curious amalgam of amicus curiae.

Would be nice to have a bunch of "foundations" "framers" "plumbers" and all the rest of the house. 
If you are prone to organize a group, the field is wide open.

I would guess that "the government" and "hostile industries" can well afford the member fee if they care to watch the sausages being made.

It is unfortunately political, and so the best are often not even in the running, they are too busy getting stuff done.
I have nothing bad to say about any of the candidates, but having met Elizabeth, and worked with her a bit, I would like to see her have more challenges worthy of her talents.

Life is long, and the world large.  I am often surprised by chance meetings.  Fortune sometimes brings us to be in the right places and times.