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.

Let's say that you got thousands of votes here, 100% in favor of this change.  And then let's say even the group of core developers somehow lost their sanity and agreed to make this change.  It would not make any difference.

Here's why.  Come December when block 210,000 arrives, there will be a blockchain fork between those using clients that follow the original protocol (which drops the reward to 25 BTC per block) and those that have clients that follow these new rules.  Any coins starting from block 210,000 and on that are still at the reward of 50 per block (i.e., follows the new rules) are worth less because they won't be accepted in many places (i.e., only at the places that use a client that follows the new rules).

I personally won't be using any client that includes this change and as a result my client will reject any blocks mined using the new rules.  It won't even relay them.

I expect my exchange will not want to end up being the bag holder for worthless coins after people have converted the "new rules" coins to fiat and then withdrawn the funds, so they too will only run clients that do not accept these new blocks from the fork.  The same thing happens with merchants -- your new rules are not welcome there either.

Blocks mined under the original rules will continue to be mined by one or more mining operators, and their new blocks (which will by then generate coins at the rate of 25 BTC per block) will continue to propagate via others following the original rules, will successfully verify, and will continue to be used by those trading.  The blockchain under the original rules will not even see a hiccup while the fork essentially gets ignored.

So to do what you seek you don't need just a majority from users on this forum to vote +1, nor do you need even just a majority of developers onboard to successfully push through such a change.

You would need an economic majority coming from those who accept bitcoins to sign on to the change.  You need exchanges, merchants, and individual investors and traders  -- anyone who accepts bitcoins in exchange for something of value, to want to adopt the new rules.   I cannot imagine gaining their endorsement for any rule change that devalues coins.

These are European style?

No escrow of the underlying commodity?  Naked options can be brutal.

There are others;

 - libBitcoin
 - Armory (see Extras)
 - Bitcoin ABE
 - BitcoinJ
 - BitcoinJS

Money laundering is the processing of criminal proceeds to disguise their illegal origin.

Let's say I were to give you a wad of cash, and asked you to deposit no more than $800 per day into several accounts that I control.  For providing this service I give you permission to keep 5% of whatever amount you deposit.

Would that be washing?  Maybe.   Would that be illegal?

If those funds were legally obtained, then no, that would not be illegal.  (From what I know.  IANAL)

There are legitimate reasons to mix coins.  If my customer that paid me can tell how many bitcoins are in my wallet, I might then be disadvantaged at negotiations if I cry poor mouth yet it is discovered that my wallet is fat, for example.  Or perhaps I don't want to become a target by a hacker should my wallet size or identity be determined from the blockchain data.   Mixing helps me retain financial privacy.

Would an SEC action count?  4:1 odds say not likel anything will be done, at least not before October.

 - http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=334

I have a specific use case where the target bitcoin address is not necessarily my own.

Perhaps I pull up to the automated car wash which accepts bitcoin for payment.  It spits out a ticket with a QR code for me to send my payment to.  

Let's assume I have a smartphone, iPad, or whatever, but no bitcoin wallet on it. I don't even need data service or SMS even. [Edited]

So the price of the wash is 0.8 BTC.  In my wallet today, I carry a few $20s.  So similarly, let's say I carry a few 2.0 BTC banknotes in it.

I pull out a 2.0 BTC bitcoin banknote from my pocket, using this app on my smartphone I scan the banknote for the "From:" then scan the QR code from the pay terminal ticket for the "To:".  

The car wash terminal then spits out a receipt and on the receipt is the change in the form of a QR code, a private key, funded with 1.2 BTC.

So then using the app on my smartphone I scan that "Spend" QR code from the receipt as the "From:" and then scan the "Load" QR code from the next 2.0 BTC bitcoin banknote in my wallet as the "To:".

So this app is just a utility, scan the "From:", scan the "To:", spend the funds, done.   There's never any bitcoins stored in a wallet on my mobile or with an EWallet.

California is a pretty big place ...  can you be a little more specific?  L.A., San Fran/bay area, San Diego, etc.,?

Mt. Gox will probably require that you verify your identity with them.

Their terms on the signup page read:

I wonder if I should place a bet statement on Bets of Bitcoin predicting how many days before someone sees this precedent and gives it a try with two of their own accounts.

There is a service that might help, if you weren't aware of it:

 - http://btcbalance.net


Also, via API:
 - https://blockexplorer.com/q/addressbalance/<address>
 - http://blockchain.info/q/addressbalance/<address>

For Amazon.com (U.S.), there is also:

 - http://coincard.ndrix.com

And the other two are already mentioned in this thread, http://BTCBuy.info and http://SpendBitcoins.com

Not just importing it but spending it (sweep) to another address from the wallet.

Mt. Gox mobile client does this.

A motivated mobile app developer can probably sell a few copies of an app (and/or mobile enabled web-site) that does nothing more than scan the "spend" (private key) of a bitcoin banknote I received, do a second scan for the "load" (on one of my own notes), build a transaction to spend the funds and submit it (e.g., to blockchain's pushtx), and to display the amount + success / failure (i.e., wasn't a double spend.)

This lets me have the value stored on these bitcoin banknotes at all times, with no reliance on an EWallet.  And since the mobile wallet apps and web-based EWallets do not yet have the ability to redeem and sweep, this limited functionality app would at least make these notes functional now, not in some vision of how things could work down the road.

Let's say you could.  Then what would you do with this voting power?

This is not what has been happening and is not what happened here.

Can you name one instance where Dwolla has locked funds?  [* If you are thinking of the "30-day probation" restriction as being a case of "locked funds", that's incorrect, and see below for that.]

There was one report of "locked funds" and it was that the user had to verify identity, but there have been no reports that Dwolla has ever locked customer funds once the customer has provided identity.

With Dwolla, all account-to-account (A2A) transfers are instant.  This means that the second I transfer funds from my Dwolla account to yours, I no longer have access to those funds and you have the ability to spend the funds immediately.  This is not hours, minutes, .. this is instant, like before the page showing the transaction status has completed.

In this specific instance, the problem is that Mt. Gox is not processing the withdrawal request in a timely manner.   They have acknowledged this long-running problem (a problem that started in April), and have said the problem will be gone within a matter of days thanks to recent developments.

[* New Dwolla accounts are placed on a "30-day probation" where they have the restriction that funds cannot be sent to four specific Dwolla accounts -- those of Bitcoin exchanges.   The probation period starts the first day that the funds have successfully been added to a Dwolla account from a linked bank account.  Once the 30-day probationary period has passed, these accounts can send to Bitcoin exchanges just like any other Dwolla account.  This is not "locked funds" though.  During this probationary period the Dwolla customer can return those funds back to their own bank account, trade with other Dwolla users, spend the funds at other Dwolla merchants, etc., .... so the funds are not locked or "frozen", they just can't be send to these four Bitcoin exchanges right away.]

Trading bots don't know the difference between "oops, sorry we had to clear the order book so there are no asks" and "rally rally rally".

So there were some (a lot) of trades that would not have occurred were it more evident of what happened (an order book not truly reflective of supply and demand).

This happens a lot from Mt. Gox ...   they are a release early and release often organization.  This is another instance where the cost of errors from doing this are absorbed by Mt. Gox's customers and not by the exchange.

So if you made a little money when that happened congratulations, but it was not predictable (well, not to those of us who don't know when Mt. Gox will be putting into production new versions of their software) and hopefully not something that repeats.

I remember this same conversation about a year and a half ago when Bitcoin spiked from forty cents to parity with a dollar.   There was no reason in the world for it to be valued so high and that it was a bubble and would collapse.

It did drop 40% after ($1.10 to $0.60 ish) but I'm still waiting to buy back the bitcoins I had sold at $0.50.


If bitcoins are truly determined to be a form of "prepaid access" which can be spent internationally and is sold to those in the U.S., then FincCEN might be of the opinion that no matter the amount, the seller needs to collect identity.  If they were to state it clearly like that it would definitely set the mood.

There could be some widely used software that sends out an automated update and the update happened to have a wallet stealer buried deep inside, thanks to an automated build and release system that a hacker was able to slip in a few lines of code without anyone noticing.  That would not be a good thing for bitcoin.

Here's another scenario.  The block reward drop could come, and the price stays at this $10-ish level.  People that bought assuming it would go up from here, start selling, and it is back to single digits, which gets exacerbated by the momentum traders.  Especially once a method to short bitcoins on margin returns.

Perhaps much of the demand is coming from ponzi victims running out and buying bitcoins and handing them over.  When the ponzi ends, not only will that demand for bitcoins drop off, but the ponzi-master spends them suddenly to lock in the value at a higher price.

Lots of things to legitimately be worried about.

That's why buying bitcoins to hold cannot be considered anything but speculation.  But for a $100 investment, the downside is $100, the upside potentially could be a lot more than $100.

I believe you can pick up a prepaid debit card (e.g., $5) at retail (e.g., convenience stores, drugstores, Walmart, etc) which can be loaded with Moneypak up to $500 USD (without registering it).  So the total for fees then is about $10.  For $500 that's about a 2% fee.  [Edit: But to buy the card, say like a $50 card, initially so you'ld need $55 USDs cash, which doesn't really work for you.]
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=64805.msg1082874#msg1082874

You might also work out an arrangement in advance to pick up USDs cash with someone on LocalBitcoins, or them sell to you the initial prepaid card and you load it from there.
 - http://www.LocalBitcoins.com

Third party services don't always monitor this forum board.  You might wish to report your problem in the main thread for Blockchain.info:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40264.

You might be able to use the card to purchase SLL (Second Life Lindens) on VirWox, and then trade those for BTCs:

 - http://www.VirWoX.com

Or you might be able to use the funds to purchase a physical bitcoin from MemoryDealers.com:

 - http://memorydealers.ecomm-search.com/search?keywords=bitcoin

But those are about the only options to use the card to buy online.

The other approach is to mail the card to a vendor that will first spend the funds from the card, and then will use that amount towards bitcoins and send them to you.

 - http://QuickBitcoins.net
 - http://Get-Bitcoin.com