Bitcoin reaching critical mass in New Hampshire?
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66832.0


At Chaos Communications Camp (CCC) 2011 apparently there was a BTC Village




There have been threads discussing where the community might be responsive to using bitcoins:

Bitcoin in Honduras' new charter cities
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53990.0

A "bitcoin ranch":
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2713.msg37137#msg37137

20Mission / San Francisco:
 - http://www.thebitcointrader.com/2012/05/bitcoins-hogwarts-san-francisco-tech.html

An individual attempt to start community building:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83803.0


Consider how Meze Grill, probably the best known retail merchant to accept bitcoin, didn't even have enough customers wishing to pay using bitcoins that they never even bothered to reinstate a method to accept bitcoins following the MyBitcoin mess.  The staff at Whiskey Dicks, the only restaurant in Florida to advertise that they accept bitcoins, doesn't know how to accept bitcoin for payment and can do so only when the owner is around.

A merchant isn't likely to look into adding bitcoins as a payment method until there are guarantees, such as those that come from the business' customers asking if they can pay using bitcoins.  In a normal cross section of the population, there generally just isn't a concentration of bitcoiners sufficient to justify the expense to accept bitcoin (in terms of hardware but also for time to train staff, etc.).

Bit-Pay claims to have signed up more than 500+ merchants for its ecommerce payments system.  Since these merchants are already receiving bitcoins then they might then also want to start using bitcoins to pay their labor force and their supply chain rather than converting to dollars (or whatever currency they use) first, like they generally do now.  It is when this extension up the supply chain starts to happen that the Bitcoin economy can enjoy a network effect.  With most supply chains being global nowadays, using bitcoin throughout the supply chain even doesn't really do much for trying to get a local community to adopt bitcoin.  But it might give an indication of where, when they start to occur organically, they might begin to appear first.

Great to hear.

So do you plan to deposit Dwolla at Mt. Gox (without having your Mt. Gox account verified) again in the future?

Glad you got access to your funds.

I guess I could have worded my question a bit better.  How will you provide the private key to the purchaser of the card then?  e.g., another card, or on a piece of paper or what?  And then will it be mailed with the card, or sent electronically?

Are you planning on printing the corresponding private key with the card?  Or are you thinking the Bit-Pay model where the card is tied to a hosted wallet service?

Site is responding with the error:

In the U.S., Camp BX will send out a USPS money order, registered mail for $7.
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Camp_BX

Unlikely.  If the payment doesn't make it into a block, then SpendBitcoins probably wouldn't have been able to use it in a payment, at least not with the stock Bitcoin.org client.

Yup, though the BTC/CLP spread was pretty big, especially with the volatility.

 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/thCLP#igWeeklyzczsg2011-06-01zeg2012-02-15ztgSzm1g10zm2g25

They also listed BTC/PEN (Peruvian nuevo sol) but never started trading it, apparently.

I see that btc-direct.fr says they will be offering to Mexico as one of the countries they sell bitcoins to (via their SMS-based carrier billing network).  I know that is North America, but since it the closest alternate method to the north I thought I'ld mention it.

What would bring you to that conclusion?

Is this for online/e-commerce or retail point-of-sale?  Also what country is the merchant in and where are the customers from?


For online/e-commerce, Paxum would have been ideal, as you could withdraw the funds to your Bitcoin exchange account.  They've since been forced by VISA/MC to terminate their relationship with any Bitcoin exchanges.

OKPay, which works with bitcoins, used to at one time accommodate Visa/MC payment methods for their merchant accounts but it looks like they no longer do:
 - https://www.okpay.com/en/services/accept-payments/index.html

If you accept Amazon Payments, those funds can be sent to another Amazon Payments user who would trade for bitcoins, for instance.

Using the banking system, the fastest approach would be to use something that can sweep your funds once they reach your bank into a Bitcoin exchange as quick as possible.  Dwolla's FiSync would do this For example, a transfer from a Veridian credit union to Dwolla is nearly instant (hours), then to a Bitcoin exchange is just a short while as well.

But finding something that goes outside the banking system, I doubt you'll find much.    If all you want to do is protect against the exchange rate fluctuations, you could have a USD account at an exchange, and then make a trade that matches each card transaction, but that takes having a full days revenues sitting at the exchange each day to be able to accommodate this approach.   (i.e., cash management becomes a pain).

Get-Bitcoin is another exchange that cashes out bitcoins to Western Union.

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

There are some that offer this.

Get-Bitcoin is one.

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

There have been delays, with every single exchange that does Western Union cash-out, so keep that in mind.

Well, you can get nearly 3:1 odds with that wager:
 - http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=312

Here's another thread on the topic:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=67185.0

Without shorts covering on a selloff, the selloff intensifies.

A Bitcoin node hits maybe 100MB a day.  Or about the same as a half a dozen Youtube music videos.

Users of Electrum or other lite clients consume a trivial amount of bandwidth.


The internet would see that as damage and route around it.

And the rerouting won't be just because of price, but also to protect privacy and prevent censorship.

Wireless technology lets a metropolitan-wide mesh network compete against an ISPs.  These can be privately run or community operated.  Wireless mesh, with point-to-point links to extend coverage,are allowing these networks to reach over a thousand square miles.

The technology is either here now or approaching production-level status, depending on the features and costs targets.

Just as Bitcoin is a method that disintermediates the banks, the Free Network Foundation and Project Meshnet and Commotion Wireless even are methods that disintermediate the ISPs.

 - http://www.FreeNetworkFoundation.org
 - https://www.ProjectMeshnet.org
 - https://CommotionWireless.net

One of the tools that might be useful are if a delivery network were employed.

For instance, in Los Angeles and New York City there is HipMunk, which bills $5 to courier your item across town for delivery next-day(ish).  So for cash-out service, this works great, and lets a single buyer reach and wider geographic area.  Since there is only on hop between buyer (well, HipMunk might internally make it a couple hops), there is much less risk of the item getting lost.

In San Francisco is Postmates, which offers a pesonal courier / delivery network as well.

I describe how HipMunk could be used in this manner and link to Postmates here:
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=74912.0

Are there other cities with these types of personal delivery networks?

Postmates in San Francisco offers the same type of personal courier / delivery network.

 - http://postmates.com
 - http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/17/postmates-debuts-get-it-now-on-demand-courier-service-to-the-public

In cities in the U.S., including nearly all small ones even, BitInstant gives an easy method to buy bitcoins.  But there still is no easy method to sell bitcoins and get cash.  

Postmates guarantees each delivery from loss (up to $150).

These same-day or next-day(ish) delivery networks are removing the logistical hassles for providing a cash-out service.

Sometimes it isn't what you can buy with bitcoins that makes the difference but how you buy.

With every use of a credit card you need to provide name, address, zip, etc   To buy a song on iTunes with bitcoin would make the process much more convenient compared to using a credit card.  CoinDL shows how this is done.

When I buy a place ticket, there is a "high risk merchant fee" that gets subtracted out from my payment before the travel agency gets the funds.  With bitcoin, there's no risk as far as a chargeback so the travel agent could gain market share by offering a lower price, yet still earn more profit than competitors because of the lower payment network costs.

Once your income starts coming in the form of bitcoins (which will probably occur with freelance workers, such as oDesk / TaskRabbit / Zaarly type of work) then it is a hassle to cash out to your bank.   So the advantage is to simply buy using bitcoins then.

As more and more point of sale purchases move over to Square, Dwolla and other low cost cash transfer systems (eventually bitcoin as well), signature-based credit card transactions will be subjected to a higher rate of fraud   So VISA/MC/AMEX lose their most profitable transactions (bigger ticket items) to competing systems, but keeps 100% of the fraud occurring with signature-based card authorizatoin methods.  As a result the fee amount VISA/MC/AMEX must charge to absore this fraud will go up, hastening the move by consumers to the less expensive cash-based payment services.

And there is the potential for the exchange rate to work in your favor.  A $100 in Dwolla will buy $100 worth of merchandise at the point of sale.  It's possible that your 20 BTC will today buy $100 of merchandise, but next week buy $110-worth.

And finally, there is exclusivity.  Nestor created a new board game and is only selling it when bitcoins are the payment method.  Nestor is doing this to help promote bitcoin, but the concept is likely to repeat itself.   If the merchant wants bitcoins for the lower transaction fees, no chargebacks, and immediate settlement (after funds confirm in about an hour) and refuses to take any other payment method, then that's what the consumer will be nudged into owning a bitcoin wallet.
 - http://nestorgames.com/#unitydeluxe_detail

They are asking for a photo ID so that you can confirm that you truly are the individual who owns the Dwolla account.

You are refusing to give that to them, with the excuse that you can't trust them with that very valuable piece of information.

Fine.   But that was their policy for Dwolla since May 25th.  And when you signed up with Mt. Gox you agreed to the terms of service, which say:


I''m sorry that Mt. Gox is doing a shitty thing (requiring photo ID for all accounts that use Dwolla).  But whining (yes, after the first time, it now is considered whining) here on the forum isn't going to get you your $100 back.  Sending in your photo ID will get you your $100 back.  If you choose to not send in your photo id, you are free to do so, just that doing so will cause you to not get your $100 back.  It will eventually (years ?) be turned over to the authorities in Japan as abandoned property.