That's not true. Discounts for cash are allowed, but surcharges for plastic are not allowed.

This is why password strengthening algorithms are not sufficient for a brain wallet. They are designed to be "good enough" for a few years because they assume you can make the user change his password in the future when it's time to increase the number of rounds.

Brain wallets must potentially remain uncrackable for the rest of the user's life.

There is no substitute for passphrases of sufficient entropy. Telling users, especially unsophisticated users, that their funds are safe with anything less is negligent.

Sufficient entropy might not be 256 bits, maybe 168 would be enough, but whatever that number is there is no safe alternative to using it that's going to hold up over time.

You tragically misunderstand how the United States Just-Us system works.

Slackers...

Clearly this site is the modern Oracle of Delphi.

That's true today based on current RAM prices. Will that still be true 10 or 20 years from now? What happens if somebody relies on that assumption to store their life savings?

The problem of protecting web site passwords and the problem of protecting financial assets do not share the same threat model.

It's an improvement but Moore's law is ruthless, especially considering the economic incentives to recover those keys and how bitcoin mining causes people to accumulate massive amounts of computing power.

Imagine how many keys an FPGA rig made obsolete by ASICs could test.

That's the problem with brainwallets. Anything less than 256 bits of entropy will probably be brute forced at some point.

To make a truly secure brainwallet passphrase take the output of and convert it to PGP words

Miners who find themselves in possession of obsolete gear (GPUs after ASICs hit the market) could very well become those determined attackers.

I don't understand why you post here at all.

1. The sender (you)
2. BitInstant
3. MoneyGram
4. ZipZap
5. The recipient (Mt Gox/Dwolla/Coinapult, etc)

As far as MoneyGram is concerned, you are sending money to ZipZap (a bill paying service). ZipZap is who gives your money to BitInstant (after taking their fee).

BitInstant is the one who tells ZipZap about the "bill" that you will be paying so that ZipZap can prepare to receive it.

Once BitInstant finally gets the money they can send it to whichever destination you chose.

Who gets the deposit? If it's the same organization responsible for handing out scammer tags or not it would give them a financial incentive to not tag scammers.

There is an idea that's been floating around for a few years but hasn't actually happened yet:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=20135.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53765.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=93294.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=108763.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=128919.0

This may be heresy, but I've stopped liking either one of those series.

The only thing that would make LastPass better is if they would accept bitcoin for their premium subscriptions.

More specifically it means that someone would make a promise of indefinate duration to deliver a chicken for 1 BTC (or whatever) upon demand.

The reason it's so hard to come up with a system for voluntarily resolving disputes is because most of the population is literally brain damaged.

Most people start out in infancy having obedience extracted from them by force and threat instead of mutual negotiation. Those early experiences permanently impair their ability to resolve differences peacefully or have successful voluntary relationships.