The value of a currency comes from circulation and acceptance. At this initial stage, the value of Bitcoin will increase when it is circulated as opposed to hoarded, which is going long and holding on to your Bitcoins. Ironically, the more people who are 'long Bitcoin' in this scenario, the worse it is for Bitcoin and thus the people holding it themselves. Spend your Bitcoins, make it more widely accepted. That's the only way for the 'currency value to increase'.

Crypto-currencies are digital alternatives to traditional government-issued paper monies. Given the current state of technology and skepticism regarding the future purchasing power of existing monies, why have crypto-currencies failed to gain widespread acceptance? I offer an explanation based on network effects and switching costs. In order to articulate the problem agents considering crypto-currencies face, I employ a simple model developed by Dowd and Greenaway (1993). The model demonstrates that agents may fail to adopt an alternative currency when network effects and switching costs are present, even when all agents agree that the prevailing currency is inferior. The limited success of bitcoin — almost certainly the most popular crypto-currency to date — serves to illustrate. After briefly surveying episodes of successful monetary transition, I conclude that crypto-currencies like bitcoin are unlikely to generate widespread acceptance in the absence of significant monetary instability or government support.

It sounds like it will be the best choice for private email available. I know StartPage is highly recommended for internet searches as it uses the google search engine but without all the tracking.

Not sure where they will be based out of - I highly doubt it will be the US as that would defeat the whole purpose.

Unless it becomes possible to send and receive messages to non-bitmessage users I highly doubt it will gain much acceptance. There's too much network effect to overcome.

The most recent studies find a significant negative correlation: An increase in government size by 10 percentage points is associated with a 0.5 to 1 percent lower annual growth rate.

Andreas Bergh and Magnus Henrekson make a strong case that there is a robust negative correlation between government size and economic growth. They base that conclusion on a review of econometric literature using panel data for high-income countries.

..... elementary economic reasoning that tells us that economic costs of taxation rise approximately in proportion to the square of the tax rate provides a more powerful case against big government than the results of cross-country econometric studies.

.... The chapter of the book I enjoyed most is the one discussing the effects of high taxation on the choice between income-earning activities and non-income-earning activities. Economists usually view this as a choice between work and leisure and some even argue that high tax rates are likely to make people happier by inducing them to enjoy more leisure with family and friends rather than working. In the real world, however, when people are not earning income much of their time is spent on unpaid household chores. I doubt whether people obtain much more pleasure from housework and weeding the garden than from working for pay.

Snowden had a 200,000$ salary, I'm sure that with Russia buying his confidential information he will be doing great.

I will be offering Bitcoin Private keys laser engraved in diamonds pretty soon. It's a little bit more complicated then originally expected so there are a few things to work out still, but my service is coming. :-)

build successful but:

Any chance most of this can be done, or workable, by the end of September? I'd be nice to have a public demo of the system at the Amsterdam conference, since it would give Chris a chance to actually explain the system and answer questions for those still having trouble wrapping their heads around this thing. Also, deadlines are good

Former NSA and CIA chief Gen. Michael Hayden speculated on Tuesday  ...... he went on to dismiss Snowden supporters as “nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twenty-somethings who haven’t talked to the opposite sex in five or six years.”

marcus_of_augustus, if you want someone with more free time on his hands to code it, you'll have to do it yourself or add to the bounty until you attract more programmers or until it pays enough to work on the project full time.
the only thing that's not going to help is bitching.

btw as you can see on github, I started coding (not related to your bitching though!).

Testimony has no legal precedent.  It never has and it never will.  Congress COULD (but didn't) act upon the chairman's testimony to codify it in the form of statute explicitly defining gold as "non-money".  Had they done so it would be the law of the land and gold wouldn't be money however they didn't and as such the testimony was just that, testimony.

If you still don't get it, well I have to conclude you are trolling.

It holds no legal weight

Find a court precedent saying that and you might have something.  Ben Bernkake's comments are just that comments, they aren't the "law of the land" anywhere on the planet.

For status updates I've told the OT team that I would take a week long break, it has now gone on to 1.5 weeks because I got hired into a huge option that will fund my career and pays now, with the OT taskes I get paid when I'm finished and at the rate I can gather responses from the OT team (at the rate I can collect enough information to code more basically) -- they are hard at work its difficult to get a straight answer which is nothing new in the programming world so nobody skwak at them because of that reason.  I expect the delay to go on for the rest of the month based on my current rate of work over work load ratio at my recently more higher paying gig. The MC app will get finished but we are running at the most appropriate rate possible to get it done(as cyiam as put it clearly he knows best about these work/task related issues more then anyone i know if you ask me). The amount of Bitcoins the tasks have been assigned I feel are appropriate too, however if you want it done faster with the same quailty you have to pay more.
 It costs money/resources/energy/management/food/water to program you know.