IRC, like #bitcoin-otc, #bitcoin-dev have had over a thousand connected at a single moment.  Not sure of current levels.

Using volume-weighted adjusted price.

Buy Tues Jul 17 ($8.34) Sell Friday Jul 20 ($8.20).  Lose 2% (after fees)
Buy Tues Jul 24 ($8.63) Sell Friday Jul 27 ($8.89)   Gain 2.5% (after fees)
Buy Tues Jul 31 ($9.21) Sell Friday Aug 3 ($10.73)  Gain 16.1% (after fees)
Buy Tues Aug 7 ($10.85) Sell Friday Aug 10 ($11.41) Gain 4.7% (after fees)

All total, about a 25% gain.

versus

Buy Tues Jul 17 ($8.34) And Sit On Them.  If sold right now, the current price ($11.45) gives a Gain 36.8% (after fees).

I'm presuming this is a single-use (first to claim) code?

Also, why does the recipient need to enter the URL?  How does it help, especially since the issuer knows where the code was displayed at?

Link:
Spend Bitcoins out of the US market - Australia only for now
 - https://spendbitcoins.zendesk.com/entries/21806042-spend-bitcoins-out-of-the-us-market



The real shame is that these conversion services are even needed.  Spend Bitcoins offered the sole method for trading BTCs to get a Southwest Airlines gift eCode, for example, but what is really needed is for SWA themselves or any one of the thousands of travel firms to add bitcoin as a payment method.

Spend Bitcoins is a pioneer and took the arrows while proving that bitcoiners will use their coins for spending.  I paid for many domain name registrations thanks to GoDaddy egift codes offered by Spend Bitcoins.  Spend Bitcoins was unique with a number of offerings ... like Costco gift cards, and much more.

It is becoming easier for a merchant to start accepting bitcoins themselves.  Bit-Pay's list of merchants coninues to grow.  Mt. Gox's merchant tools is fairly simple to implement for one-off purchases and they provide a Magento shopping card extension.  

What needs to happen to get merchants onboard is a good case of where a nimble merchant added bitcoin and enjoyed a good amount of new business from that as a result.    Perhaps this will be the NewEgg competitor that Roger Ver has described as something in the works.   But you'ld think that some account rep at GoDaddy who was responsible for Spend Bitcoins' account would have noticed the volume drop and think that maybe accepting bitcoin as a payment method might be a good idea.  Or that a rep from Amazon would notice that the volume for those gift codes was pretty respectable.

But it is good to see that Australians will now get the full attention of Spend Bitcoins and hopefully their continued success will be a model that others elsewhere can follow.

Ya, that's a little different from the type of locking I was referring to (which is delaying of account-to-account transfers).  I hadn't thought to exclude Dwolla reversals in cases where fraud had been reported.

Remind me again why the free market that determines which currency to use gives one iota to whether or not a whole generation of other people's devices are made worthless?

Loaded using legitimate funds?  [Edited]

The original weekend dip strategy refers to when there is a downtrend is occurring.     We are not in a downtrend.  

The weekend dip strategy said that: "On Wednesday evening (west)/Thursday morning (east) if the 7-day high for the exchange rate is lower then the 7-day high from the previous week, then more likely than not, a weekend dip will result and gains of three to five percent are likely.  So the recommended practice was to sell at that time, and buy those bitcoins back over the weekend when the selloff starts to reverse."

The weekend dip indicator hasn't flashed green since May.   That doesn't mean there haven't been dips during the weekend, it just means they original strategy didn't suggest to sell mid-week and buy back over the weekend.    Now there appears to be another pattern where buying on Saturday and selling on Tuesday or so, and do that week after week, seems to be a winning strategy.  So there isn't necessarily a dip occurring over the weekend, but that a rally happens early in the week.

There is always a battle between greed and fear and the weekend dips were oftentimes where fear had the upper hand.  Ever since cash deposit methods have been available even on the weekends now, a weekend decline just doesn't snowball into 10%+ selloffs anymore like they used to.

If you aren't already aware of Ogrr, you might also want to list there.  It is an online gaming marketplace, with bitcoin escrow.

 - http://www.Ogrr.com

Heh, some day perhaps, thanks!

I'm curious to see when you do get a GCash transfer where you know the customer is from the U.S. and sent the funds using credit card (or bank transfer) through Remitly.

What I want to caution you on is to make sure you know what will happen in the case where the transaction on the Remitly side gets charged back by the cardholder or the bank transfer (ACH) gets reversed.  

Could you then be exposed to seeing a charge to your GCash (i.e., a reversal of a previous payment) as a result?

This is definitely a challenge.  There is a $20K USD prize being offered for essentially building this.

Title: Making Crypto Easy

"US$20,000 will go to the best actionable idea to properly integrate encryption into an existing product/system, educate users as to how to use encryption and/or build a community who use encryption by default."

 - https://www.accessnow.org/prize

Incidentally, normally a bet will be reviewed at the event date.  When an event outcome occurs before the event date, notification can be sent via e-mail, as described here:



As far as bets made once the event outcome was known:


Any bets made on those after Aug 10th (last day before the event's outcome was determined) get canceled.  This is described in a previous post:


And it also referenced in the Help page:

"Q.) What happens after I bet?"
"A.) [...] If the statement turns out to be true or false before the deadline, bet deadline is changed to the end of previous day and bets are closed."

 - http://betsofbitco.in/help


Those two you linked to were:

Marco Rubio will be selected as Vice Presidential running mate for the GOP presidential nominee.
 - http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=264  

Marco Rubio will be the GOP nominee for Vice President
 - http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=291  

Here's a another open one:
GOP convention will select Ron Paul as vice presidential candidate
 - http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=463


Here's one that is "waiting" (closed to new bets) and can be ended as well:
Mitt Romney Will Choose A Woman As His Running Mate
 - http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=481

Except that the entire value of losses in that currintrading scam totaled about $50K USD.  This is between one to two orders of magnitude greater.

Also, scams were allowed in that virtual world and there was almost no legitimacy in anything.  EVE players involved were just thrill seekers, essentially.

That currintrading post-mortem is great reading though.  It gives great insight into the mind of the ponzi master.




One thing that doesn't get enough consideration is that there are people who do not want Bitcoin to be successful.  Perhaps Austrian economics drives a stake through their belief system or for others it is the fear that Bitcoin will displace their gold and silver where Bitcoin threatens the value of the wealth they've accumulated over the years.

For whatever reason, there are people who would like nothing more than for a ponzi scheme to suck up hundreds of thousands of bitcoins from those who willingly handed them over and to some day read headlines about a several million dollar ponzi that will further sully the Bitcoin brand.

Even without being invested themselves, these ponzi-promoters will argue endlessly to support the ponzi as to them the end justifies the means.

So, the operator of a ponzi and the feeder funds are in it for the profit.  There is then a vocal minority that will defend it.  There is also the ponzi investor base that are either sheep being led to slaughter or are aware of the risks and continue on believing the collapse to be far enough out that the potential to snag profit exists yet.  Few of the victims can claim innocence when later making pleas for mercy to get their money back.

Seeing growth in not just the number of "investors" but in the amounts involved is something both entertaining and satisfying to those who want to see maximum pain inflicted to Bitcoin.  The longer this goes, the bigger their smile.

Instawallet is a different type of EWallet than Blockchain's wallet.


That version looks different from mine.  Have you updated the app to the latest available on Google Play?

With the version I use, the "Unique ID" is not shown unless you gesture up on that QR code and it will then show.    

If you are going to have someone scan your QR code to send a transaction to you, tap the QR code and it will show a larger version and your Unique ID will not show.  Do not reveal your Unique ID to anyone.  It is all that is needed to access the funds -- it is like a bearer instrument/bearer code.



That blockchain identifier is how you get access to be able to login to your Blockchain wallet.  That link with the Blockchain identifier is what you might add to your bookmarks so that you can access the wallet at a later time, but it doesn't necessarily need to be kept secret.  

You can edit your Blockchain account and associate an alias so that you don't even need to bookmark the URL with the identifier.  You should also edit the account and add your e-mail address so that you can have it send you an encrypted backup of the wallet.

The Blockchain wallet requires a password to access the wallet, so that is the only thing you need to keep private.

There are a few threads on the topic, ... but there is a striking under-representation (proportionately) of those actually from India involved with Bitcoin.

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=87000.0
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=58524.0

Now that Mr. Bitcoins has a cash deposit method for India (deposit cash at any HDFC bank), consumer-level access to bitcoins is easier:
 - http://www.MrBitcoins.com

There are methods for cashing out to bitcoin, electronically, as well.  There are now several methods to cash out bitcoin into PayPal (e.g., FastCash4Bitcoins.com does this).  CA VirtEx exchange allows withdrawal to Payza.  Payza funds may then be withdrawn to banks in India.  And, of course, most banks accommodate international wire transfer but the fixed fees for that are expensive and that method makes sense only when larger amounts are involved.

I've started to see individuals offering to do trades on LocalBitcoins (Mumbai, New Delhi):
 - http://www.LocalBitcoins.com

With so many remittances going to India, local buyers looking to invest/accumulate bitcoins in exchange for cash will likely find that there can be some good buying opportunities over time as individuals discover that bitcoins can work for remittance as well.

Because bitcoins are non-reversible, it would make sense for someone to offer cash-out service where the payment is made via mobile payments network or with cash deposited in the recipient's bank account.  An example of that occurring elsewhere is in the Philippines, where Mang Sweeney's exchange will convert bitcoins with one of the methods being sending the money through GCash (Globe's mobile money transfer network).

[Update: There is another thread describing ECurrencyZone, which accepts cash deposit at banks in India for buying bitcoins and provides cash out to a bank account in India or cash deposited into a bank account:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=102735.0 ]

Probably the 2011 NY Bitcoin Conference had the most in a single location ..., there were maybe 50 or so people, I believe?

The 2011 Prague one might have been of similar size.

The planned 2012 London conference has higher ticket sales .

There are online communities with several hundreds online at a time.

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 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.

Those mining like to crow about how little they pay for electricity.  Perhaps you can find a trade by contacting a miner directly:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=97239.msg1073771#msg1073771
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=64232.msg1073804#msg1073804
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=97239.msg1074675#msg1074675
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=97239.msg1082084#msg1082084

And a possibly related thread:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99262.0

Worst case, you can head to the border and trade on an exchange in a neighboring country?
 
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BitMarket.co

Also, UKash is sold in Colombia.  If t is sold in Venezuela, that can be used to deposit at Bitcoin Nordic.

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/UKash
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Nordic

Is the Southwest Air exchange method gone for good?

Added to the Bitcoin wiki:

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