If you are buying as an investment, then you take what comes with investment -- a risk of loss.

Those who buy bitcoins as they need them for making purchases aren't exposed to exchange rate risk, they buy bitcoins and they immediately use them to complete the purchase of goods or services that they needed the bitcoins for.  So whether or not this is a bubble means little for them.

Nobody knows the future though.

The metric that should be closely watched is the transaction counts.  They have been rising.  
 - http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-popular

Now the amount of currency to accommodate that level of activity might only be ten million USD worth of bitcoin though (a wild guess).  So that would value bitcoins at a $1 each to support Bitcoin's current economic activity.  So anything over that is for the most part speculative value.  Could it go to $20, or $100?  Sure.   But until the transaction volumes (and underlying bitcoin amounts) gets sufficiently higher, it is still 90% speculative.

Cool, so you have something your booth visitors can use to play bitZino (blackjack and video poker) or SatoshiDICE using real money then!

DDoS attack using authenticated accounts?   Or perhaps someone knowing that investors watch this metric and gunning it in order to sell at a higher price?

But there has been a steady rise in the metrics:

Here's a chart showing growth in new topis per day.

 - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmcTCtjBoRWUdHJuUE1mUkFxa3A0eHBDQkxZLVVFZmc#gid=5

The BBC article on Bitcoinica was about the only widely read media that might have had an influence.

Bitcoin's essence is a system of money that has no central authority. 

The only way to prevent any party from exerting control and prevent individuals from cheating is to make the authority be consensus of the network, where participation comes from the expenditure of work.

Of course, if there was an easier way to accomplish this goal in a manner that is more efficient such a suggestion would be welcomed.  To date, not a single suggestion of an alternative has been workable.

The factors that matter in order to give you the best answer include:

 - Where are you located (country)?
 - How much are you looking to buy?
 - What payment methods do you have available?
 - How soon do you need access to the proceeds?
 - Is privacy important?

A fairly comprehensive list of options is compiled here:

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Buying_bitcoins

I'm missing something basic then obviously.

I mark the checkbox, I see only "Updated IP Lock Setting".   I uncheck the box, I again see only "Updated IP Lock Setting".  There is no IP Address or comma separated list shown anywhere. 

For the wallet from which the attempted spend occurred -- it sits showing as 0/unconfirmed.  The Bitcoin.org client has no method to deal with it, nor can you manually remove it without doing wallet surgery with a third party tool.

Perhaps I should to clarify.  Bad things will happen if you end up making double spend transactions (inadvertently or not) because you had the same private keys in multiple wallets.

There's also some buzz recently occurring with regard to the mining "bonds". Apparently only recently did some finally become aware that with these mh/s "bonds" that as long as difficulty goes up, the bond issuer never needs to buy any mining capacity whatsoever and could meet all dividend payments as agreed to simply by paying out from principal.   While not technically in the same category[edited] as a "ponzi", there hasn't been much in the way of vetting to ensure the mining operator truly had control of the expected mining capacity.

Thought I'ld cc: some links here in case anyone might care to see how that all works as well:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=98517.0
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=100303.0

Was there any reason whatsoever to use the title that you did?

This is a service that has been around for over a year.  Your thread searching should have found that, but if not, here's a link:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=12506.0

And they've been active since, with the most recent post:
  - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99214.0

Can you name a service that has a length of siimilar participation that is not legit?

Please consider changing the title to something neutral.  If you are just looking for feedback, then that would be an appropriate title.

As far as your question, yes -- I have used them (T-Mobile prepaid wireless).  It was a great transaction.

TIL:

"Business has been a tad slow, most of the HUGE orders we were getting via BitcoinRigs have stagnated."
  - http://de.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/mdum2/zareason_fortis_computer_now_available_with_the/c30cdys
(that was in late 2011).

This is milking the last bit out of bitcoin-driven sales before nobody mines using GPUs anymore.

Is this a touristy area (lot of foreigners), by chance?

The factors that matter to answer your question include:

 - Where are you located (country)?
 - How much are you looking to trade?
 - What type of cash are you looking to receive?
 - How soon do you need access to the proceeds?
 - Is privacy important?

A comprehensive list of cash-out methods is at:

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Selling_bitcoins

This really only works for donations and where there is no need to know who the sender is.

Related:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3779.0
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=31716.0

I still can't understand.  Are you looking to acquire gift cards or sell gift cards?

Selling gift cards as an individual is really going to be hard to do, especially not having established trust already.

If you have a prepaid gift card, you can mail it to Get-Bitcoins.com and after they spend it they'll send you the proceeds for your sale in cash:
 - http://www.Get-Bitcoin.com


If you are looking to buy a gift card, and pay using bitcoins, then there are many options for that:
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Gift.2FDebit_Cards
 - http://coincard.ndrix.com/ (Amazon gift ecodes)

Bad things will happen if you are running a copy of the same wallet.dat in more than one place at a time.  Same thing goes for importing a private key into multiple wallets and using them simultaneously.

 - http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/509/153

If alll you want to do is mine from multiple hosts against a single bitcoind on a LAN, that can be done.

There is a big difference between using PayPal to buy bitcoins versus cashing out bitcoins where someone pays you via PayPal.

For the latter, there are a number of services that offer this, including:

 - http://www.FastCash4Bitcoins.com

For buying bitcoins and paying with PayPal, that is against PayPal's acceptable use policy.  [Edit: Here's a good description of the risks:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=107044.msg1174312#msg1174312 ]

Because it is a P2P transaction, they aren't always aware of it when it happens so that's why you'll see plenty of successful PayPal P2P transactions.  But that doesn't make it a smart thing to do.  Here are some methods:


With VirWoX you can buy SLL using PayPal or Credit Card, then trade SLL for BTC:
 - http://www.VirWoX.com


This does't help you get bitcoins right away, but in the future you can buy physical Bitcoin, paid for with credit card:
 - http://memorydealers.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=bitcoin


Here's one method those in the U.S. might be able to use to buy bitcoins using credit card.

There is a new money transfer service called Remitly.   They let you send funds, with the transaction funded by a credit card, to the Philippines -- via the GCash network.  This is primarily intended to be for remittance payments to the Philippines.

There is an exchange in the Philippines that performs exchange to and from bitcoins, and accepts GCash payments for the purchase of bitcoins.

So, ... to use Remitly, the send money form will ask for your name, address, date of birth, and last four digits of SSN.  

The Philippine exchange:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=88320.msg1087417#msg1087417

This method hasn't yet been attempted so if anyone does try it, feel free to share the results.

Good point, but regressing to FPGA and/or GPU which are already plentiful, would be a method essentially still available, just that it might be considered on stand-by.

That's presuming that the price at Mt. Gox is "the market price".  As we've seen, prices there may vary from those at other exchanges, by as much as 2 to 3 percent, consistently.


If it doesn't matter what time of day, then just so that it is consistent and widely available, you might want to specify that the price used is the closing price at the end of the day (UTC).  If the contract is short term (under a year), the Mt. Gox BTC/USD market will probably still have plurality over other markets but just to cover the bases, the language might want to say something like the closing price from the BTC/USD market with the largest volume on that day.

I don't see how a set of IP addresses would be specified.  All I get is a checkbox which yields the status message "Updated IP Lock Setting".