Bitstamp doesn't offer assurance that they won't have their bank accounts frozen and confiscated by the US government because they haven't paid sufficient protection money in the form of licensing and permits.

That's what is holding back Bitcoin exchanges at the moment.

The 1929 Depression was caused by Herbert Hoover bailing out his banking cronies, and was perpetuated by the New Deal.

Incidentally, Herbert Hoover tried to do the same thing a decade earlier but was overruled. That's why you've never heard of the Great Depression of 1920-1921.

Volume on CampBX is low because the only methods they make available for adding and removing dollars from an account are ones suitable only for hobby traders (no bank wires).

There is a very strong demand for Bitcoin in the US, but the legal barriers to entry here are substantial.

In the meantime, anyone willing to help fill the retail demand for Bitcoins via in-person LocalBitcoins sales can stay quite busy.

In any section of the forum where trust ratings are shown, you can click on "Trust" in their profile and the link will take you to a page that gives all the details.

Signing up through Tor isn't enough - you need to connect to the VPN via Tor as well.

One should never assume the VPN operators are honest, because despite their best intentions they can be coerced and also forbidden from telling your about it.

From a privacy perspective the reason to use a VPN is to use sites that block connections from known Tor exit nodes.

As an exchange, CampBX is a successful proof of concept but they haven't continued developing it beyond that point.

Unless it becomes possible to send and receive messages to non-bitmessage users I highly doubt it will gain much acceptance. There's too much network effect to overcome.

No, but I'll give you a SHA256 hash you can quote for future reference:

I think that six month from now the top bitcoin-dollar exchange is going to be one that is not currently listed on bitcoinity.

This video might help:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bakOKJFtB-k

There's a mail server in the I2P network that it linked to the outside internet via a relay.

That would be wonderful. I don't care if the information being sent is sensitive or not - I want as much of  the email I receive to be encrypted.

Because corruption is highly profitable.

Yes it does.

Giving third parties control over your private keys is always a bad idea.

Anybody who was using Tormail should have been encrypting their messages anyway.

This actually represents one of the most informative PR releases that's ever come out of Mt Gox.

Now all they need to learn is how to give out specific explanations for their problems when those problems first start to appear, not after months of letting everybody speculate because of a lack of information.

Government is the name the most successful mafia in a particular region calls itself.

Regardless of whether or not that mafia is engaging in conflict with other mafias, they are always at war with the people unfortunate enough to live in their area of influence.

This is the third "Bitcoin is doomed" story I've seen today.

I think some people just want to buy in cheaper.

Zhou Tonged, Zhou Tonged, why have you forsaken us?

It depends on what you're trying to access and your threat model.

A VPN alone will protect you from ISP-level surveillance, but the VPN provider can compromise your privacy. That might be an acceptable risk if the provider is located in a different country.

Tor is potentially more secure if used correctly, but many web sites block Tor exit nodes.

I'd like to see some VPN providers allow access to their system via I2P, as that network is better optimized for hidden services so should get better performance than a Tor connection.

I've helped more than 100 people buy Bitcoins for the first time by reselling Bitcoins.

Most of them probably would have bought eventually, but more than one has told me they only bought because there was somebody in their area with a good reputation that was willing to meet them and explain the process.

Maybe that's not what you meant, but it certainly is one way to help adoption of the currency grow.