I have been thinking about this particular problem and I believe the key isn't in agreeing to a universal time, but elapsed time.  I know exactly how much time has elapsed in the past 10 minutes with very little drift.   Every node sending me messages also knows exactly how much time has passed.   Furthermore, almost every node has access to NTP so has a reasonable estimate of what to expect.    Every node would only build off of blocks that had relatively accurate times (in their opinion) and every node could validate that every other node waits at least 10 minutes before sending them candidates for the next block.   So there is no need to agree on universal time, only to vet that other nodes only broadcast at the proper intervals.   Nodes violating this social behavior would be disconnected.    The network would develop a rhythm.  So lets define a simple heuristic that a node could use with near zero knowledge... it will only forward new blocks it receives 10 minutes after receiving the last block it accepted.   The node knows who informed it of that last block and thus could instantly detect other nodes 'cheating' and sending too soon.

Other comments on shipping are welcome.

When cows were used as a medium of exchange, nobody called it “biocurrency.” In the cultures that traded seashells to escape the inefficiency of barter, they didn’t call it “calcicurrency.” It was just money.

New forms of money such as bitcoin are exciting for their technical underpinnings, but we might not want to make them more forbidding by calling them “cryptocurrency.” Cryptography is an important part of many digital currencies’ administration, and it is central to bitcoin, but at their core they are all just money.

The choice is not whether to have digital currencies. The choice is between adopting digital currencies the hard way or the easy way. The hard way is trying to outlaw banking, payments, and other financial services denominated in new currencies. The easy way is embracing them, making them part of mainstream financial systems, and accepting the greater liberty, power, and privacy they accord to individuals.

That's true, you wouldn't ever have enough money to buy it.

The change in bitcoin price will affect the price you guys have to pay.  With the recent change in BTC price, the price will need to be adjusted.  I tried to find a BTC/USD price ticker so I could tie the price to the dollar, but had no luck finding one .  

Phone can get hacked, device can not. Would you prefer to use a phone as a cold storage device?


People have google authenticator app but they still use yubikeys.

Ive asked this question before and I only get shady answers from Coinbase. They just say that its a mathematical formula and the price is what it is, they will not adjust it for you in any (or their fees). As far as I can tell, it's a mixture of (1) how much BTC you are selling or buying to them - try entering the sales for 10 BTC and then enter 100 BTC and you will see what I mean (2) the number of BTC that they have bought that day. You can see this by checking their buy/sell spread in the morning and then again in the evening. Ive seen instances where there is zero spread between the two and its usually in the mornings and (3) the liquidity providers that they have. This is why the price changed dramatically when Gox went down. My guess is that they were using Gox as a liquidity provider (a counter-party). But once the USD withdrawals stopped, they stopped using Gox and set their own price with a combination of the above and (my guess) the prices on both CampBX and Tradehill (and maybe a few others).

Again, these are all just my guesses after doing many, many transactions with Coinbase

Compressed or uncompressed only applies to public keys, not private keys.  All private keys are the same, there is no compressed form.

I always send out escrow contracts directly via PM, and signed with my public key to prevent such MITM attacks. I guess I could set up a site for this, but escrowing is just a hobby for me...

How is this different from the 52 states (plus the rest of the world) borrowing dollars from the Federal Reserve, dollars, which too get printed out of thin air?

Portugal has defaulted on its national debt five times since 1800, Greece five times, Spain no less than seven times (and 13 times in all since 1500).

By contrast, Anglo-Saxon countries rarely, if ever, default. In this country, we haven’t reneged on our debts in nearly 1,000 years, though there have been close shaves. The same applies to Canada, Australia and the United States.