Details, details... 

You actually don't have the choice of paying any other merchant in YOUR preferred currency. You have to pay it in THEIR preferred currency, or not get the service at all. Same as with IRS.


I could argue that the main difference between government and merchants is who has the bigger guns. While a merchant can't stick you in jail, if they don't like your currency, they can kick you out of a hotel or your apartment, refuse to sell you food, and refuse to sell you lifesaving medicine, which could all result in punishments similar to what a government can dole out. So, bigger guns, bigger say in what everyone needs to pay. And, similarly, if your merchant only accepts euros while you only have dollars, you can always just exchange your dollars for euros, just as you can always just exchange your bitcoin for dollars when paying the IRS. Again, really nothing special here except for the personal preference of the biggest merchant on the block.

So... where is this intelligent thing you said you were going to add? I think I missed it 

My issue was specifically large central ripple lenders taking themselves out of the system.
Say there's a bug trusted borrower/lender who is Person Z. Then we have two people who are not friends, but both trust Z. They get used to exchanging transactions through Z, since Z is big, wealthy, and has a well established trust (maybe one of those two people is a merchant, depending on Z to process sales). Then, suddenly, for whatever reason, Z decides to take their wealth and leave. Maybe they had a midlife crisis, maybe they died, or maybe they just collected so much wealth by borrowing from others using their trust that they think their time would be better spent on some hard to find tropical island. We already know people will trust others who are not their friends (e.g. pirateat40), so someone like Person Z can exist. Wouldn't the end result be that the ripple network will experience a sizeable default with people losing money, AND that the two people who used to trade through Z will no longer be able to so so, since they don't trust each other directly? (Or the shop will not be able to process a lot of sales)

I'm sure I'm not the first to have thought of this, but...:

I'm still hearing arguments flying around how,
     "Bitcoin isn't backed by anything but people collectively believing is it worth something,"
     "Well, USD isn't backed by anything either, and only has value because people believe it does, too"
     with the usual final retort of, "USD has value/is backed because it is the only way to pay the IRS taxes."

Well, what makes the IRS any different from any other merchant that only accepts specific currencies? The only reason the IRS collects money is for the government to spend it on other stuff. It doesn't do it to prop up the currency. And the only reason the government directs the IRS to collect USD is because the government, like the rest of us, also believes USD has value. There is nothing to prop up USD's worth other than our collective belief, and if the USD value drops significantly, or even becomes worthless, you can bet that the government (and military, and everyone else) will want something else instead, and will direct the IRS to start collecting something else instead of USD. So, really, saying "But you can pay taxes with it!" is a fallacy that assumes the IRS is some separate body in charge of determining currency value, instead of just another merchant/business collecting whatever value it believes in, with the same goal of being able to spend it later.

*checks*......
Yay for using Armory, and splitting up the coins among a few dozen addresses 

I think Bitcoin is a Ripple killer. Ripple is an exchange network, based on a network of trust. I think Bitcoin has shown rather conclusively that trust just doesn't work. Thus, I think Ripple will become rather chaotic, and may fall apart, when large trust "nodes" (people with a lot of connections that ripple payments go through) decide to take the money and "exit the network," filling the web with holes.

With the block halving, my profit is gone, and I had to shut down my miner. I still have Bitcoin-qt and P2Pool running, thinking having a full node available will help other P2Pool users somewhat (have about 24 incoming connections). Someone let me know if I'm wrong about this?

Age of coins maybe? Mine were almost virgins  (mined them myself)

Or a preview of things to come 

Mars has water. Not a lot, but it may be enough. And if you use some solar panels to pump electricity through that H2O, you'll have some H fuel and O to breathe. But yes, it's not as nice as landing on a tropical island. However, tropical islands don't have drinkable water (unless you manage to find a spring), and don't really have food, unless you feel like chewing on vines and bark. So, although it looked prettier, back then it was rather inhospitable as well.

Happy halving day! I am sadly stuck at work, so ALMOST missed it (was "celebrating" on my phone)

Everyone was trying to get their transaction in. People paid A LOT. I only paid 0.005BTC fee for mine, and it didn't get included.

GPG is very easy to use with a tool like Kleopatra. Also, you can run all your OTC commands in a private chat with gribble, without anyone seeing anything. I'm not suggesting taking OTC off IRC. IRC can stay as the backbone of the system, same as it did for Bitcoin node database. I'm just saying that someone (or many someone's) needs to code an easier to use interface for it. One that can be recognized as a well used and established reputation database.

Because if it's easy to use, it would be possible to figure out intuitively just by looking at it, or at least by asking a friend. Having to pay an expert to explain it to you is kind of the opposite of easy to use. An easy to use OTC system would walk you through getting a GPG key, and would let you register/login with the key and rate people from anywhere, simply by selecting their name and filling out boxes, using a simple web interface that walks you every step of the way. Not make you log into IRC, learn commands to join a specific channel, and type out long strings of code.

Maybe BitPay only has US banks, and thus transfers to Euros are prohibitively expensive?

If you got paid to teach it, then it's too hard. Ideally this system would be easy and intuitive enough for anyone to use. GPG already has tools that make using it easy. OTC needs something like it, too, even if it's an app (or a web app) that interfaces with IRC in the background.

Considering how often it happens around here, maybe it's not as much of a "clown college" as you think.

No one besides us IT types will use a system that requires knowledge of IRC, and use command line type interface to update stuff. This thing needs a good web app or something.

Requires you use IRC to manage your account and give ratings, for one.