That's a great question for Satoshi! Perhaps, he will make a cameo, and explain how he planned for the Bitcoin infrastructure to avoid being bought out by the current banking systems he identified as the problem in the beginning. Maybe he already explained; have to search his writings again...

...unless of course, he was a banker trying to make a killing by starting the whole thing...  Nah; that just conspiracy talk... 

I usually don't agree with The Bible, but i agree with TheBible that's here. 

However, it was inevitable that some of the "Bitcoin community" would make deals and sell out to the bankers, because they naturally want the lifestyle the bankers have. That's only possible by joining the establishment, rather than being a revolutionary...

The real fun will begin when the major mining pools and commercial mining operators will start making deals with the government regulators and being bought up by the banks...

That's actually when Bitcoin will be full-speed ahead to the past or "square 1"... In any case, might be an interesting saga for a long time.   

Some currencies, such as B and metal might be goods; i think in the US, the paper currencies are properly called "A Bill of Goods". 

For new merchants, seems safest to use payment processors, until the B world comes out of beta. 

Has anyone emailed Google and Yahoo already to have Btc exchange rates listed in their Finance sections?

Well, in any case, it sounds like you are not in danger of Ven, and you already have TEM, which seems more useful in Greece.

Plus, we are already too busy with Bitcoin, its clones, the upcoming RippleCoin, Pecunix, eDinar, SLL, and whatever else is being designed. We don't want to overdose on virtual currencies. 

I wonder if it's even true that the Greek government is using it. If you've never heard of it, then it's probably not often mentioned in the Greek media...

Who in the Greek government would be the one to ask if it's true that they use Ven?

It's peculiar that the virtual currency Ven only seems to trade against fiat currencies, and we don't have any xchanges to it in the B world, nor have i seen it at any of the non-bitcoin virtual currency exchanges ...  

Upd: I see: it's one way only. Once you buy Ven, you can't get fiat with it again. 

Yes, that was my question for you guys: if anyone in the .gr space mentioned the Greek gov and VC's before. I had heard of Ven before, but not in conjunction with anything Greek.

The closest thing to VC in Greece, as far as i know was TEM. 

+21.000.000 They don't need our Bitcoins; we should not send them anything! 

Has anyone used Voucher-safe for a real transaction yet?

There is a new article on it at DGCMag, and i see my old install of it supports Bitcoin now. 

Well, if it's just how you use it, where are jgarzik calls to shut down or ban even just verbally a number of B laundering sites there are in this world, or SR, or a number of Bitcoin "services" that have since defrauded their customers, or whatever in the B world that is expressly forbidden by US law?

If you believe that the SHA-256 "technology" has not already been exported to every corner of the world, you probably also believe that the US citizens all drive the speed limit on their roadways too...  (A long-standing public display of hypocrisy and stupidity on a massive, national scale, among many other examples...)

We all know how corrupt, self-serving and hypocritical the laws are in every country, and this one is no exception, except to jgarzik and the like for their own self-serving and hypocritical reasons...

jgarzik is not quite right, if i understand the issue right.    Seems to me that it's also expressively forbidden for US citizens to create and distribute currencies, which doesn't stop jgarzik from using or developing Bitcoin...

Makes me wonder whether the Teodesian guy is really right...

In fact, doesn't the US Constitution only allow the use of Au/Ag as money, and that only the US gov can issue that also? Maybe even the US governement is in violation of its own laws? 

Since i remember the kind of POS abortion mtgox was until Jed unloaded it on Marc before the 6/11 crash, i am not a fan of jed development. (...particularly, because his view was that those with a lot of Bitcoin to trade should be protected from the market forces within dark pools of  mtgox back then...)
 
I did like his idea of a minerless p2p cryptocurrency when he first brought it up. It's great to hear that it's being morphed into a much-needed and long-awaited p2p implimentation of the promising project that Ripple is!

I think the ultimate would be Bitcoin+Ripple + OpenTransactionServer + whatever this guy meant by "perfect cryptocurrency", but 1-step at a time, i guess...

Anyhow, good luck, jed! Please put security first this time!

Does anyone have comments regarding the greek references in this article?

Поздраляю наших уважаемых колхозников и шахтёров-одиночек с успешным выполнением плана первой четырёхлетки, и заветов великого вождя народов - Сатоши Накамото! 

Желаю Вам лёгкой добычи, и успехов во второй четырёхлетке! 

Thanks! Looks like a nice tool for the traders!

So, assuming you guys are right, seems that the MtG pump & dumps - whether they are generated by MtG  trading with itself or not - will continue in the foreseeable future, because among other reasons at steadier rates "the arbitrage" is not profitable enough...

The non-"traders" and the merchants will just have to put up with the rate instability, and constantly pay exchanges and processors (aka "the traders"?) to convert back to fiat on both ends to avoid bigger losses...

And some of our members here will continue to wonder why they "can't give Bitcoin away" to their friends these days, or donate it to Wikipedia, or why widespread adoption hasn't happened yet... 

I guess, that's just life in the "truly free market". 

Depending on whether this legislation declares "War on Virtual Currencies" or not, the whole Bitcoin world might become a criminal network. 

Seems that "Grexit" is postponed about a year. 

+1 The arbitrage is a neat theory of the future, or the way things should be, which i also hoped would be true back when MtG was the only xchange...

I think it's not true, because we regularly see small 20-30 cent discounts at #2-3 exchanges, from which "the traders" don't "quickly take advantage of and close the price gap."
                                                   
So, we see tall mountains of discounted B there, which would be easy to move, and know from that "the traders" don't actually have even small fiat funds at those xchanges to move B for arbitrage...

When there is a juicy pump and dump going on at MtG, they simply follow that pump & dump's general price levels... 

So, it will be interesting to see which hypothesis is true, when Bitcoin is big enough for the regulators to move into the xchanges. 

(We'll then at least have some certainty that the xchanges are not adding a few zeros to their databases to trade with themselves in order to fleece their new-money "customers" in the consequent pump & dump waterfalls. And we might finally see the pump & dumpers bring us a p2p dark xchange, where they can continue their games... )

I am in for 1B.