some of them should take their 2 BTC seed and pay someone to translate their market pitch into proper English.  could be a good investment!

as far as i know, there is a single car for sale using bitcoins.  it's in australia.  you can find the details in the marketplace on this forum.  you'd have to buy this car and use it for your road trip, and the gasoline you buy would have to be from a gas-for-bitcoin merchant (they don't exist yet).  again, the bounty i'm offering is not intended to support a road trip.  it is intended to show that there are enough diverse merchants that one could survive on bitcoins.

won't work -- not enough significant digits.

If you buy the gun with bitcoins and store the meat in a refrigerator bought with bitcoins and pay for the electricity to run the refrigerator in bitcoins, then you are eligible for the reward.  As of right now, i believe you can do two of the three.

"Stuff you already have" won't count.  If you consume it, wear it or live in it, it must be purchased with bitcoins or have sprung up from the earth.

It's a very good article.  I wish you hadn't showed the rising price of bitcoin relative to USD at the end.  You marginalize the importance of bitcoin once you bring up the question "yeah, but how many dollars can i get for it?" 

If you can buy your food from a merchant who accepts bitcoins and would offer others a similar rate for the same product, i think this would qualify as a proper bitcoin/food exchange with respect to this bounty.

So, for example, XS Wild Berry Blast Energy Drink from Markm's store is available for purchase using bitcoin (although i can't find the bitcoin option at checkout).  if you buy this drink from Markm for bitcoins, i would consider this valid for the bounty, since he is a bona fide bitcoin merchant.

I would not consider the following scenarios valid:

You message a bitcoin user who is willing to order you a Domino's pizza and pay Domino's in dollars, then you give the user some bitcoins.

You go to a soup kitchen and get food for free, and later donate some bitcoins to their cause.

There was a point in Autumn 2010 where CPU miners realized that it was too difficult (read: expensive) to generate bitcoins.  I stopped in September. Our alternative was to unclick Generate Coins and go to MtGox to buy them with USD or start selling goods for Bitcoins.  This was an important boost to BTC value relative to the dollar.  A fraudster at MtGox and a slashdot mention later, and bitcoins were trading .40.

I mention this history because certain GPU miners will soon start realizing that it will be too difficult to generate bitcoins.  And if these miners still want bitcoins, then they will have to go to the marketplace and try to buy them or earn them.  This will lead to a boost in BTC value, just as when the CPU miners stopped their machines last year.  Only GPU miners with the most efficient machines in the coldest parts of the world sucking energy from Danish windmills will be left generating bitcoins for a profit.

P(you know what P means here) < .5

$95k * P(BTC replaces USD) <= $1.02   

network power is estimated based off of blocks generated since the last change in difficulty.  You won't get a very accurate number for a couple days after difficulty switches.

do it on tuesday, do it better, and you'll get some coin

i pledge 20 BTC.  video footage helps

Before you explain what you mean, can you provide us with a third metaphor?  Maybe use talking animals for those of us slow learners.

blockexplorer could probably help you track down which door the bitcoins were behind.

Once bitcoin becomes stable, any owner of bitcoins should wish that a small number of others' bitcoins were lost every year.  In fact, I hope that many of you lose your bitcoins right now.  Not too many of you, but at least some.  What else would you ask of a scarce currency, myrkul?

A solution to what?  Don't lose your bitcoins.

I don't think it is in the spirit of the project I envisioned to be able to pay a bitcoin buddy 10 BTC to provide you food and transportation.  That's almost a worse outcome for the project than if you were to buy a pre-paid Visa. the project funding would just be going to your friends and not to real bitcoin merchants.   This isn't a project about going on a sweet bitcoin roadtrip culminating in a bitcoin meetup in some Euro-accepting bar.  You can do that in a different thread.  I'm talking about buying food and shelter from REAL bitcoin merchants, almost starving and freezing to death, living off of coffee and herbal tea driving around in an Australian '84 Lemon with an empty tank.

Curious-- How do you plan on going from France to the UK by using bitcoins?  I know of no bitcoin-accepting tunnels, airlines or ferries.

well done, gavin!  and you're right... "Making Money" is not appropriate as a title. 

pro-tip:  save on heating bills by running a bitcoin-miner